UPDATE: It would appear this primar already exists, and already covers things that this proposal was going to manage, so please ignore this.
As more and more people become aware of WordPress and the GPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples., it would be useful that the often difficult to understand legal terms of the open source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. license be documented in some form of GPL/Trademark primer.
primer (n) an elementary textbook that serves as an introduction to a subject of study or is used for teaching.
(I mostly posted the above because I had to look it up myself)
This was highlighted even more to me in a discussion about a WordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. sponsor request between myself and @kristiano, where he raised the idea of a GPL/Trademark primer. As I see it the primer would serve multiple purposes, but the two that stand out the most are
- as a way to better educate those new to the GPL
- as a tool to be used by meetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook./WordCamp vetting processes to confirm 100% GPL compliance
At the moment we have the 100% GPL Vetting checklist, this would probably serve as a companion document to that, and it might even be useful to link to sections of the primer at each step in the checklist.
I’d be happy to start writing such a document but I will need some assistance from my more experienced community members. It would also be useful to have a discussion around what format it should be in and where best to keep this primer.
Comments/suggestions/questions welcome.
