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Also by Krow

Plugin License

posted by Krow on 02:32 PM August 29th, 2001   Printer-friendly   Email story
Slash
Its been asked over and over if Plugins to Slash must also fall be released under the GPL. The official word (from the corporate folks) is that we don't care. In our opinion Plugins are independant and can be licensed under whatever the creator wants. And we encourage an Open Source license. Changes to the core code of course have to be under the GPL.
This is our opinion, not the opinion of the FSF or any other group that uses the GPL. If they decide this is invalid, then we will stop using the GPL. Your mileage with other projects may vary, but this is how we will treat Slash plug-ins.
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  • Hypocrisy (Score:0)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yet another example [slashdot.org] of the hypocrisy [spectacle.org] of VALinux and Slashdot!

  • Nice. (Score:0)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's nice to see CmdrTaco & Company reveal themselves to be true hypocrites.
  • If they decide this is invalid, then we will stop using the GPL.

    What the hell are you people thinking? Doesn't this strike you as blatantly hypocritical, considering that Slashdot is (or was, anyway) one of the biggest advocates of the GPL, above all other open source licenses? For a site that is nothing if not political, Slashdot would look mighty stupid running software that was (by their choice) no longer under the GPL.

    Also, if you are planning on changing the license once it becomes inconvenient f

  • You're more than welcome to fork off of the GPL'd code if you want.

  • I for one am glad to see this.

    I hope to GPL most or all of the plugins I write (and I am planning a few). But I'm happy to have the choice, and making some money on one or more of them might not be out of the question...
    --

    Yoder Internet Development [yoderdev.com]: Honest and Affordable Web Solutions
  • Ok, I'm going to move further across this grey area so maybe this is tricky to answer. I have a visitor-creatable bulletin board system on my website (ie, anyone can host a BBS there although it is a specialised type) that was initially created as a completely independent application.

    Then one day I decided I wanted Slash on my website. So now I've fitted created a second implementation of my "login" API on my BBS so that it uses the login tables from Slash. Further, it means all the user management can be

  • Well are you giving your code to anyone else? If not it's a moot point -- the GPL does not require you to distribute modifications.

    Even if you did distribute it, I *think* you would be OK with a non-GPL license, at least as long as you don't ship it integrated with Slash. Just ship it in a separate package, and if you do modify Slash files then distribute those modifications as separate patches.

    If you take code from Slash and put it in your main package, you definitely have been hit by the GPL "virus". Not that that's a bad thing. :-)
    --

    Yoder Internet Development [yoderdev.com]: Honest and Affordable Web Solutions
  • This is the right decision for the future growth of Slashcode as a content management platform. As I said on the mailing list when the license question was first kicked around:
    A plugin architecture ought to be a means to interface other products to Slashcode sites and should not dictate the terms underwhich those programs are distributed. It is widely believed that incorporating any GPLed code directly into another product forces a developer to GPL that product (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProp rietarySystem [gnu.org]). If plugins cannot be written without incorporating GPLed code, then we should be looking for a way to alleviate that....

    For the record, I am not against the Slashcode being licensed under the GPL. I just think that the plugin architecture should be as open and legally unencumbered as we can possibly make it.

    --

    --

    Dave Aiello
    Chatham Township Data Corporation [ctdata.com]

  • Thanks, I think that's the answer. I'm unsure whether I would be selling it or not. When I eventually drop the whole thing, there's a good chance I'll open source the whole thing anyway.

    I'm pretty sure I can distribute a non-Slash version and then separately distribute a free open source plugin that would get it to work with Slash =P

  • thanks for the clarification - and feel free to ignore the claims of hypocracy. Open Source does not equate to GPL. You can write open source and still not use the GPL license.
    --
    http://news.DiverseBooks.com/ SF and Computing Book News

  • Re:Hypocrisy (Score:0)

    by Anonymous Coward
    or "Yet Another Good Reason to use Nuke (or a fork)"
  • No problem. The article was drafted by myself and Taco. Its a bit strong in language but it gets across the propper point. Open Source does not mean GPL, and any license that restricts the end user on their own code (especially when its not a patch, but their own work in a plugin) is certainly not an open license.
    For my own code I tend to use both the GPL and the BSD license. All depends on what it is, and what I need it to do.
    --

    --
    You can't grep a dead tree.

  • Re:Hypocrisy (Score:0)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No thanks. Anyone following Geekizoid knows what a piece of shit it is.
    So, Nuke is a rip-off/fork of Slash that has yet more forks from it? Yeah, sounds like you have your act together.
  • Slashdot is not a GPL advocate, it is an open source advocate. Open source encompases many different licenses. The BSD license fit's into the opensource world and so do many other licenses including apache license, mit license etc. If the license does not fit, do not use it.