Title: Fixing abandoned plugins?
Last modified: October 16, 2018

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# Fixing abandoned plugins?

 *  [Luke](https://wordpress.org/support/users/lukejongibson/)
 * (@lukejongibson)
 * [7 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fixing-abandoned-plugins/)
 * Saw a question regarding the legal side of removing links and the reply saying
   everything can be modified as seen fit, so what about old plugins be rebuilt 
   and re-released after being fixed? Is there any additional legal steps in that
   case?

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Moderator [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/)
 * (@jdembowski)
 * Forum Moderator and Brute Squad
 * [7 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fixing-abandoned-plugins/#post-10786698)
 * We don’t do legal advice here but
    - If you fix a plugin
    - If you maintain the history, author credit and GPL license in your version
      of the fixed plugin
    - If it is truly abandoned
    - If it’s a fork (best) meaning there’s more to your code then just a fix such
      as improvements, new features, etc.
    - If the author and/or the plugins team agrees
    - then you can submit and publish the fixed version here as a fork. Or if the
      author is agreeable then you can take over the exiting plugin here.
    - That has happened in the past with the [Post SMTP plugin](https://wordpress.org/plugins/post-smtp/)
      and I think that one is now maintained by a new person.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘Fixing abandoned plugins?’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [old](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/old/)

 * In: [Everything else WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/miscellaneous/)
 * 1 reply
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/)
 * Last activity: [7 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fixing-abandoned-plugins/#post-10786698)
 * Status: not a support question

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