Matt,

You asked the Software Freedom Law Center to clarify the status of themes as derivative works of WordPress, a content management software package written in PHP and licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

We examined release candidate 1 of WordPress 2.8, which you provided to us at http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.8-RC1.tar.gz. The “classic” and “default” themes included in that release candidate comprise various PHP and CSS files along with an optional directory of images. The PHP files contain a mix of HTML markup and PHP calls to
WordPress functions. There is some programmatic logic in the PHP code, including loops and conditionals.

When WordPress is started, it executes various routines that prepare information for use by themes. In normal use, control is then transferred via PHP’s include() function to HTML and PHP templates found in theme package files. The PHP code in those template files relies on the earlier-prepared information to fill the templates for serving to the client.

On the basis of that version of WordPress, and considering those themes as if they had been added to WordPress by a third party, it is our opinion that the themes presented, and any that are substantially similar, contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.

In the WordPress themes, CSS files and images exist purely as data to be served by a web server. WordPress itself ignores these files[1]. The CSS and image files are simply read by the server as data and delivered verbatim to the user, avoiding the WordPress instance altogether. The CSS and images could easily be used with a range of HTML documents and read and displayed by a variety of software having no relation to WordPress. As such, these files are separate works from the WordPress code itself.

The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code. The template is loaded via the include() function. Its contents are combined with the WordPress code in memory to be processed by PHP along with (and completely indistinguishable from) the rest of WordPress. The PHP code consists largely of calls to WordPress functions and sparse, minimal logic to control which WordPress functions are accessed and how many times they will be called. They are derivative of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress functions they call. As works of authorship, they are designed only to be combined with WordPress into a larger work.

HTML elements are intermingled with PHP in the two themes presented. These snippets of HTML interspersed with PHP throughout the theme PHP files together form a work whose form is highly dependent on the PHP and thus derivative of it.

In conclusion, the WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress’s copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.

Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.

Sincerely,
James Vasile
Software Freedom Law Center

[1] There is one exception. WordPress does reads CSS and image files to create previews of templates for the template selection portion of the administrative interface. Even in that case, though, nothing in those files calls any WordPress functions, is treated as a command by PHP, or alters any other WordPress data structure. These files are read as data and used to create an image and display a miniaturized version of a webpage to the user.

Even though graphics and CSS aren’t required to be GPL legally, the lack thereof is pretty limiting. Can you imagine WordPress without any CSS or javascript? So as before, we will only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible. To celebrate a few folks creating 100% GPL themes and providing support and other services around them, we have a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes.

Pick your flavor and check out the possibilities available through WordPress MU, WordPress.com, WordPress.com VIP and WordPress.org.

Site screenshots are constantly updated, so what you see is a realtime look at what’s going on with our hottest users.

Don’t see something there that should be? Suggest an addition! We’ll check it out and add it to the bunch if we think it makes the cut.

Bringing the new theme directory under the WordPress “extend” umbrella allowed us to take advantage of all the infrastructure that has already been built up to support WordPress.org. If you’ve browsed through the plugin directory, you’ll feel right at home in the new theme directory.

We’ve gone through great lengths to make this as painless as possible for theme authors. You don’t need to know anything about Subversion (our back end magic takes care of all that for you), just login with your WordPress.org username and password and go to the upload page. From there you upload your regular theme zip file and we take care of the rest.

Once you upload your new theme we do a few automated checks for some of the requirements for each theme. If we find one that you missed we’ll provide you an error and description of what needs to be fixed. When a theme upload has been accepted we’ll send you an email and put it in the queue to be reviewed, to make sure we didn’t miss anything. After the theme has been approved you’ll get another email letting you know that the theme is now live.

That catches you up to where we’re at today. When you finish that theme you’ve been slaving over, upload it to the new directory and let us know what you think. Since so much has changed since the old theme directory we’re starting fresh from zero. If you’ve got specific questions or suggestions contact us and we’ll do our best to get them answered.

Mark Jaquith has been using and contributing to WordPress since 2004. Mark especially enjoys watching people use WordPress to express themselves in areas of the world where free expression is suppressed. But, being a voracious consumer of information, he probably reads your cat blog too.

Peter works as an Embedded Software Engineer developing a web-enabled BMS controller. Using WordPress since version 1.0.1, Peter spends his spare time triaging bugs on Trac and investigating new open source tools. When not at the computer Peter can often be found photographing flowers, animals and cars and listening to a wide variety of music.

• Back up your blog. It never goes out of style, and we have a nifty Codex page with a few different methods.
• Check for the latest versions of your plugins. Here’s a list of known compatible and incompatible plugins with 2.3, Google Sitemaps seems to be one causing a lot of issues. (Forum thread.) Upgrading might get you cool new features anyway. Don’t forget about our plugin directory.
• Enjoy the last time you have to check for plugin updates manually, as 2.3 will do it magically behind the scenes.
• Read up on how to modify your theme to add tag support.
• Consider switching your install to use Subversion to make updating ultra-easy.
• Make a list of your friends who are less computer literate so you can help them upgrade. (Maybe throw an upgrade party?)

If you have any other ideas put them on your blog and pingback this post.

WordPress got the most votes. I was interested to see the Drupal CMS platform placing high in this category–above the consumer-oriented publishing products Typepad and Vox. Even combined, these two Six Apart services didn’t come close to winning the same number of votes as Drupal.

Glad to see our open-source brother-by-another-mother representing. The rankings in Publishing were WordPress, Adobe Flash, Drupal, Blogger, and Google Analytics as the top 5.

That’s all fine and dandy, but having all these plugins isn’t that useful if you’ve got no place to find them. Even though we have provided development hosting at wp-plugins.org for years, we hadn’t had a user interface to the plugins hosted there, which I think was a travesty.

No longer! Our ever-expanding “extend” section now has a brand-spanking new plugins directory where you can browse, download, rate, and comment on all your favorite plugins. I highly encourage you to go check it out.

For users, this means:

• There is now a central place to find and download WordPress plugins.
• You can get a much better idea about plugin quality and compatibility from the site.
• In the future you’ll be able to get notification inside of WordPress about plugins you use that have updates.

For developers, you now have:

• Exposure to the millions of people who visit WordPress.org every month.
• Free SVN hosting for GPL plugin development at wp-plugins.org. (Like always.)
• Automatic download packages and free hosting of those.
• Statistics about how many people are using and downloading your plugins.
• Prominent links to your homepage, and the ability to specify a Paypal donation link from your plugin page.

As a developer all you need to do to start taking advantage of the new plugin pages is to include a properly formatted readme.txt file along with your plugin.

Props to Michael Adams, Mark Jaquith, and Matt Thomas for making this dream a reality. We hope you all enjoy it and if you have any feedback blog it and link back to this entry so we get the pingback. Happy downloading!

However, just because what we’ve done has worked in the past doesn’t mean it’s the best for the future. We have to take a self-critical look at assumptions we have about our development process and WP itself. The upcoming release, which has been long coming, is a perfect time to focus on WP’s secret ingredient… you.

If you could add anything in the world to WordPress, what would it be? If you could name the thing that frustrates you the most about WP, what would that be?

Now you can tell us. We’re announcing new projects—two sides of the same coin.

The first is simply called Ideas, and it’s a place where you can share your wildest WordPress wishes with the world, and also vote on other people’s ideas. This allows people outside our normal circle of developers to have a direct say in what goes into the next version of WordPress. For 2.2, which comes out in late April, we will include the top voted on features, so propose something, tell your friends about it, and link it from your blog.

The second we’ve named after the Yiddish word, Kvetch. This is a place where you can quickly and anonymously express whatever might disagree with you in the WordPress world. Let it all loose, but try to keep it PG rated, and we’ll show a random kvetch on the page once we get enough in the system.

Both are just part of putting you guys—our users—first. It’s easy because there’s so many of you.

Browse Happy is a site dedicated to educating people about browser alternatives that will give them a better online experience. We’ve promoted Firefox for a long time within our administration interface, this will allow us to expand our promotion to cover other excellent browsers as well. If you have any ideas for the site or would like to share your story, please let us know through the Browse Happy contact and submission form.

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