On 26 July 2010 18:47, Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If there is a decision to be made (and I'm not
sure there is), I would
personally argue that we should take steps to make sure that authors
are informed about the FSF position on the GPL, but not try to enforce
it ourselves (except possibly for the extensions and skins actually
deployed by Wikimedia). I don't see much benefit for Wikimedia in
taking a hard line with third-party software contributors over the
licensing of their extensions.
There isn't really.
One, it would probably take Automattic actually attempting to enforce
their copyright on WordPress as they view it, and winning - or
achieving a quick settlement and GPL release of the theme code the
second a real lawyer reads the GPL, as has happened in every GPL
enforcement case to date. Perhaps PHP will be treated differently to
C. But until that occurs, if it occurs, no answer exists and one
cannot be discussed into existence, or Slashdot would have solved all
problems by now.
Two, each developer holds the copyright on their small piece of the
code and can enforce it without asking anyone else - as has been
reasonably well tested by every GPL enforcement case to date - and
Tim's opinion or wikitech-l consensus doesn't actually stop them.
You could ostracise developers who go against the group interpretation
of what the GPL should mean, of course, if you feel that's
appropriate.
- d.