There is a wordpress theme I am modifying to create my own derived work. This original wordpress theme has the GPLv2 licence in it’s root directory, so I assume that the entire theme is GPL code.
There is a particular php file which has the following written in its first few lines:
// This code is protected under Creative Commons License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Is that legal for them to make a part of the code under a more restrictive license? The CC license referenced is more restrictive because it prohibits derivative work, but that is exactly what I am doing is making a derivative work.
So here are my two questions:
- By having the full GPL (version 2) licence in the root of the theme’s directory, is that a legally binding way of saying that the code is licensed under the GPL2?
- Is that legal for them to make that file licensed under that particular CC license?
Ultimately, what I care about is this: I want to make sure that what I am doing is technically legal 🙂
None of the source files actually say that it is under GPL; except the theme does include jQuery and jQuery plugins (under MIT and GPL2) as well as thumb.php which explicitly says it is under GPL2.
There are three possibilities:
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The author of all the code under the GPL license crafted an exception to permit the code to be combined.
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The author of the all the code under the CC license crafted an exception to permit the code to be combined.
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Someone with no authority to do combined GPL code with CC code. The distribution is (most likely) unlawful as the GPL does not permit distributing derived works with any portions under more restrictive license.
Unfortunately, you can’t really be sure of anything but the licenses on the specific parts of the code, so you should try to comply with all of them. I think that’s possible so long as you don’t redistribute the code. If you need to redistribute it, you have a problem and should seek real legal advice.
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If the license is compatible then there’s no reason why not: several GPL releases (for example, most of the id Software game engines, who you would expect would be particular about getting this right) combine code in this manner. The owner of the copyright for a GPL work is also allowed to define special exceptions that can allow this for incompatible licenses;
see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception.
IANAL, etc.
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“This original wordpress theme has the GPLv2 licence in it’s root
directory, so I assume that the entire theme is GPL code”
Not necessarily, the GPLed code should say so in each source file. There may be other differently;y licensed code in the same directory, themes/icons/tutorials/samples etc might be licensed differently.
The GPLed source code probably has a comment saying “See copying.txt for licence”, so you would expect a copying.txt in the directory. The copying.txt doesn’t confer any license by being there
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From what I understand, what they did is technically not legal, and the GPL license trumps the referenced CC license.
According to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html:
Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such as “Copyright 1999 Terry Jones”), and a statement of copying permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (or the Lesser GPL).
And they did not do that. However, the inclusion of thumb.php immediately makes the whole theme (“program”) under GPL according to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#MereAggregation:
If either part is covered by the GPL, the whole combination must also be released under the GPL
Therefore, I can safely know that the GPLv2 license trumps anything else for the whole theme.
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