Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmillikin | Hacker News Reader

  Looks like GPL zealots are doing their job for them now.

I'd like to see some justification for this statement.

In my experience, the people who try to extend the GPL beyond its lawful or reasonable capabilities are more interested in forbidding competition than guaranteeing user freedom. For example, MySQL's bizarre claims that their protocol is GPL'd and that non-GPL reimplementations are infringement, or Matt Mullenweg asserting that the GPL is a construct of the address space.

If RMS or Eben Moglen make a claim regarding the GPL, then it's worth analyzing and debating -- but Joe Nobody, author of Yet Another PHP Blog Engine, cannot be considered a reliable authority on GPL or copyright law.

View on HN

I'd like to see some justification for this statement.

Microsoft's contention was that using GPL'ed software exposes you and your intellectual property to risk. The motivation of the parties making very broad GPL claims is not relevant - what's relevant is that it is precisely the sort of thing Microsoft was insinuating and precisely the sort of thing the linked missive tries to disclaim.

Joe Nobody, author of Yet Another PHP Blog Engine

Matt Mullenweg is hardly Joe Nobdy, nor is Wordpress Yet Another PHP Blog Engine. He represents his claims as legally sound and offers the opinion of lawyers who are, according to him "the world’s preëminent experts on the GPL". See:

http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/

Does anybody care about Wordpress, though? The only times I ever hear about it are when somebody's discovered another few dozen security holes. It seems to be more of an experiment in poor design than a serious project.

If his beliefs are correct, it is illegal to distribute proprietary software that only runs on Linux.

Some of the biggest blogs run on it though (cnn, gigaom, techcrunch)

Does anybody care about Wordpress, though?

Yes. This is a well-established fact.

If his beliefs are correct

If his beliefs were correct, nobody would touch anything GPL'ed with somebody else's penis. His beliefs are either posturing or a sincere misunderstanding of copyright.

  Does anybody care about Wordpress, though?

Wordpress is used on 18 million sites. Active blogs -- they track the pings to the version check server when people log in to their administration page.

I was with you until you wrote this. Why can't programmers understand licenses? What's wrong with writing blogging software?

I think you're misunderstanding.

There is no reason a programmer cannot understand copyright, and there is nothing wrong with writing unoriginal software. But if somebody's going to make extraordinary, unsupported claims about the law, they need to have some experience or authority to back it up. To my knowledge, Mullenweg has neither.

If Eben Moglen said tomorrow that the GPL applies to any software in the same address space, then it would be dramatic and worrisome because he is a copyright lawyer and is one of the world's leading experts on the GPL. If the cashier at McDonalds said the same thing, I don't think it would deserve the same amount of consideration or concern.

I'm a big fan of Eben Moglen as well, which is why we contacted him and the Software Freedom Law Center to analyze WordPress and give an opinion on themes specifically:

http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com