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> The CEO of Wix admitted that the derived work in this case contains "more than 3 million lines of code"... The copyright owner of the GPL'd module could sue them to have all that released under the GPL, and (assuming Wix wouldn't comply) then we would finally know if the license holds up in court or not.

The copyright owner would win, but all they would likely get out of the court is an injunction stopping Wix from distributing the infringing product and monetary damages. They would probably not be able to force Wix to release source code.

If the GPL code is just a wrapper around MIT licensed code, as has been claimed, Wix should be able to quickly change their code to use that MIT code directly instead of using WordPress' GPL wrapper.

That would still be a major victory for the GPL. To my knowledge it has never been tested in court in the USA.

Everyone knows that the GPL is being commonly violated by companies that just don't care and developers who don't understand it. Any US legal precedent around GPL would be welcome.

Say again? The Netfilter case was the first and is famous. Harald Welte vs. Skype was another.

You're quite right -- I was thinking about US only, not worldwide. Will edit to correct.

I suspect the reason those cases have been in Germany and not in the US aren't simply that Harald Welte happens to live in Germany, because the US surely has people who would like to put up a fight.

I guess a big part of the reason is that suing in Germany is costly, but not "you'll be poor for the rest of your life" costly.

If as some have commented, parts of the MIT license attribution were removed, Automattic might not have been legally allowed to distribute the software either. At which points the involved lawyers would have a field day trying to figure out how binding a license is that you use for distribution of works that you are not allowed to redistribute.

WordPress isn't even properly GPL-licensed. No license in the top-level app file [1] [2]. The included license file doesn't selectively attach itself to all relevant files, and not to source files that have a different license [3]. WordPress contains copyrighted material that's definitely not GPL-compatible [4], so even if the previous points are considered irrelevant, it remains questionable if the source can be distributed under the terms of the GPL at all [5].

[1] https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/index.php

[2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html

[3] https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/license.t...

[4] https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/wp-conten...

[5] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html See term 7.

Copyrighted song lyrics are not gpl compatible? Well, hmm. Do you have a better example, say of included code under an incompatible license?

The bigger problem is that the lyrics are probably in direct violation of copyright unless they were used with permission. They shouldn't be part of the GPL code unless the copyright holder has permitted that too.

As it stands there semm to be two readings from this: 1) the plugin is not part of the GPL code and de-facto unlicensed ("All rights reserved"), meaning the plugin can not be included in GPL redistributions of Wordpress; or 2) the plugin is part of the code and the code is therefore not eligible to be distributed under the GPL in the first place.

IANAL and I'm not intimately familiar with the US legal system but I'm pretty sure the license applies to all code not explicitly covered by any other license, even if it's not added as a file header (otherwise all similar projects in which the license is merely distributed as the LICENSE file and referenced in the README would be unlicensed too). Term 0 actually only says a notice must be placed in the "program or other work" -- placing that notice in the readme seems sufficient if the readme is part of the program/work. The suggestion of how to apply the license is explicitly just a suggestion or recommendation, not a requirement.

The existence of non-GPL plugins without a proper exemption however might be problematic for re-distribution of the bundle in other GPL software. It could be argued that the plugin in question isn't part of the code covered by the GPL but then the official Wordpress distribution itself is obviously also not entirely GPL and can't be redistributed fully under the GPL.

For an example of partially GPL-compatible software re-distributed under GPL consider the program formerly known as IceWeasel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat (a modified version of Firefox minus the proprietary branding).

It's interesting that the Broadway play opened on January 16, 1964, just 16 days after the starting date for automatic renewal of copyright set by the Act of 1992. Had it opened just a couple of weeks before, and not renewed¹, it'd be in the Public Domain by now.

¹ Only 15% of works were renewed after its initial 28 years of protection, which just goes to show the insanity of the current default duration.

No, they could sue to bring them in compliance with the license.

ONE of the options to be in compliance may be to release the entire project GPL.

Another option may be to simply remove the offending code.

And the losing side (or settlement) may include attorney's fees.

There is no clause to the GPL that says "if you break our license even once, we get your project!"

I'm not a lawyer, but Section 5 of GPL v2 states:

"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it."

"Another option may be to simply remove the offending code."

This would remove their dependence upon GPL'd code, thus obviating applicability of the entire GPL, including section 5.

Deleting a pirated movie you downloaded doesn't absolve you of the original copyright infringement.

The music and movie industries have changed tactics in that they go after the uploader/sender of a copyrighted work. And you would be correct that a simple "oh, sorry, I'll stop sharing that" would probably not suffice to remediate a case that's gone to court - the damage is already done: those that downloaded can't 'unwatch' the movie, and a sale can probably be proven to have been 'lost' as a result.

However, we've seen software copyright cases over source code being remedied in this exact manner. Courts take the type of IP into account. Perhaps a judge might think if the code can simply be replaced without tremendous effort and without drastically affecting the end users' experience, then that infringing piece of software probably wasn't that instrumental in the full app and thus the monetary benefit to the infringer from the infringing code wasn't all that great. Further, in GPL infringement cases, I don't know that the owner could demonstrate damages; we'd be stuck with a punitive award from the court. And here's the rub: GPL hasn't gone to court in the US.

> Perhaps a judge might think if the code can simply be replaced without tremendous effort and without drastically affecting the end users' experience, then that infringing piece of software probably wasn't that instrumental in the full app and thus the monetary benefit to the infringer from the infringing code wasn't all that great.

Exactly. If Wordpress can make a case that the code was integral to Wix's product (maybe even to the point that the product is considered a derived work under copyright law, not just in the GPL sense) or that violating the license gained them an unfair market advantage, they might be able to sue for damages.

Isn't that exactly what it does if enforced to the letter? That's exactly why companies not building SaaS applications have historically been cautious about it. Of course it comes down to the definition of "derived" and how a judge and jury interpret that.

My point was if there was a breach of the license, there are a variety of options to become compliant.

The leadership of each group may negotiate and find a solution. If that doesn't work, they'll hire lawyers who will attempt to negotiate a solution. If that doesn't work, it may go to court.

Saying "it must be resolved by X" is premature at best.

The GPL has been tested in court and the license holds up. I suspect many cases actually settle because they were not winnable for the violator and they were looking at substantial damages if the case came to trial. In this case there's usually some kind of confidentiality agreement [1].

If you ship GPL code and don't release sources for the entire derivative work that is a very shaky economic model.

[1] http://www.americanbar.org/publications/gp_solo/2012/novembe...

Nit: Wix is based in Israel, where the weekend runs Fri-Sat (because Sabbath) and Sunday is a normal working day. Although the blog is timestamped Oct 29 (Sat), which is during the weekend in any case.

It has been tested in court. Not all aspects, but there is no question as to whether it is enforceable.

Hasn't the GPL been tested in court repeatedly?

Not in US court. All US cases so far have settled. Though given that the pro-GPL side is usually just looking for compliance, not $$$, those settlements suggest serious doubts about winning in the minds of the alleged violators.

There have been a few in German court (Hellwig v VMware most recently). And probably some in other jurisdictions as well.

The fact that GPL cases often settle does not mean the GPL is weak. In fact at least in some cases it's because the violators know they will lose and have no motivation to proceed to trial.

Also, "pro-GPL" suites play out a little differently than many people suppose. The plaintiffs are not necessarily looking for compliance but trying to collect license fees. To pick an obvious example, let's say you develop an app with Oracle MySQL using the MySQL client libraries. By linking to the MySQL libraries (for example the Connector/J JDBC driver) your application has become derivative. If you ship a binary you now either need to release all derivative code under GPL V2 or pay Oracle a commercial license fee.[1] However, if you just ship with the Oracle driver and don't release code your GPL license automatically terminates and you are now liable for the commercial license fees.

This kind of case is open-and-shut if the copyright owners get a copy of your binary with linked libraries. This is also the kind of case that should never come to trial unless the plaintiffs are really greedy or the defendants somehow don't understand their legal quandary fully. Start-ups often use GPL for this reason--it's a powerful inducement to license.

[1] https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/5.1.html

Edit: on the license fees, if you don't have a license you might owe payments going back years. The sum can run into the millions depending on the extent of violation, not to mention legal fees, disruption of having to do discovery, etc.

I don't think it has actually been "tested" in the true sense here. I believe every known case has either been settled out of court (so the court hasn't even had a chance to adjudicate), or has been decided based on some other technicality (like unclear authorship/ownership of the original).