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No Support => General discussion (no support!) => Topic started by: msianep on May 25, 2006, 06:10:43 am

Title: GPL license on Coppermine's Plug-In
Post by: msianep on May 25, 2006, 06:10:43 am

Hi,

The coppermine plug-in is an application interface, i.e. an API interface that help others to integrate their code to work with coppermine.

I would like to know, whether my coppermine plug-in code is considered opensource GPL or not?

Any idea?

Title: Re: GPL license on Coppermine's Plug-In
Post by: Joachim Müller on May 25, 2006, 07:48:44 am

If the plugin itself does not contain code from Coppermine, then you don't necessarily have to release it under GNU GPL, but you're free to release it under another license. Of course one could argue that you have to look at the code first to check if it contains code taken from Coppermine or not, which is impossible if it's closed source. Keep in mind that you're even allowed to sell GNU GPLed plugins.
We, as open source devs, of course like the idea to subsequently share everything our users create as an add-on to coppermine for free under the GNU GPL, and basically that's the whole idea why Coppermine got released under GNU GPL in the first place. But we understand that others want to make money with their intelectual property (you need to live on something), so this is something that can't be answered easily. After all, a load of lawyers is living on the fact that it's not easy to make a difference between resulting code and "fresh code" that has come "out of nowhere".
Related links:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIDemandACopy
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLCommercially