[License-discuss] WordPress GPL software

[Johnny A. Solbu]

On Thursday 26 September 2019 00:53, zak wrote:
> SPECIFICALLY , if John Doe modifies a WordPress theme and makes it
> available for sale... and Joe Blow buys it, and re-sells it as-is for less
> than he bought it for (multiple times)... is Joe Blow doing something
> illegal?  If not, exactly what licencing is in play to justify that?
> 
> I've read through various pages at opensource.org but I'm no lawyer (or
> programmer) so I'm afraid I don't understand the finer points of modifying
> original open source software, calling it something new, and selling it as
> its own entity.... while still being licensed as open source.
> 
> SPECIFICALLY, can someone else legally re-distribute (sell for less or give
> away) the commercially available software (eg. themes and plugins), without
> permission of the people who developer them? Are the modified, commercially
> available themes, plugins, etc also GPL simply because they are created
> using original WordPress GPL software?

That depends on what the License of the plugin is.
If the commercial plugin is a modification of another existing plugin, what is the license of that original plugin?

If the original plugin is GNU GPL licensed, then the modified commercial plugin cannot be released with any other license than the GPL license. Meaning, the commercial plugin cannot restrict or forbid something which the GNU GPL license allows.
And if so, anyone is free to distribute the commercial plugin, and the commercial plugin seller cannot do anything about it.


However if the original plugin is a Free Software license that does not have a «gpl clause» (for lack of other terms) that says one cannot add aditional restrictions, such as the MIT license for example, then the commercial plugin can be released as closed proprietary software, and resdistribution of that can be prohibited.


So again, it all depend on the licensing.

If you can enlighten us on which exact license the original plugin have and what the exact license on the «commercial» plugin is, then we can better answer your question.

-- 
Johnny A. Solbu
web site,   http://www.solbu.net
PGP key ID: 0x4F5AD64DFA687324
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