[Plugin: wpSEO] WPSEO GPL Compatible?

Hi Anderton,

thank you for your post, but please paste in the complete paragraph, which says, “It’s free for private use” at the end. We will rewrite this paragraph accordingly that everybody understand, that you can get a free license for unlimited time unless you have a commercial project or ad supported blog.

Sorry for the confusion. You are happy to test this plugin and leave a comment so we can improve it to be even better. And still keeping free of any charge for personal blogs. ??

I understand. But i don’t see how it’s GPL compatible if a license is necessary for comercial blogs.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against the terms in any way.
But it clearly states that all plug-ins att www.remarpro.com extend section should be GPL, or compatible.

Cheers

“It’s free for private use” at the end. We will rewrite this paragraph accordingly that everybody understand, that you can get a free license for unlimited time unless you have a commercial project or ad supported blog

Sorry, but Anderton is right. Your conditions are NOT compatible with the GPL.

See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean and the rest of that FAQ for clarification.

Looks like you guys are right since their already took off the plugin from the website. Which I can understand. It just leaves a little bit of a bad taste not getting noticed of the removal and linked to it the last days. Until some nice users informed us it’s been removed and our links are going to nowhere.

Maybe Automattic, right or wrong, have to consider how they treat WordPress theme designers and WordPress developers, who made this system even stronger and more popular. If they take off our work for a reason, fine. But at least let us know guys! Don’t do the same mistake like other big companies. Communication is the key! In this case silence is not golden.

Sorry, but one thing to say, WHY is Akismet on there, and also featured everyday. Same concept, free only for private user, for commercial use you have to pay. Wonder who is the owner of Akismet ??

seville76,

It is a shame that your plugin was removed without any notice or a “how are you doing?”. But if you were given the opportunity to make your license GPL compatible, would you have done so?

GPL conversations can be fun. Choosing to release software under the GPL is a very beneficial thing for the end users. It shows that the developer wants to benefit his community more than he or she wants to benefit his or her financial situation with that software.

On the developers part, it is an act of charity. They will almost certainly not make money off of the code but may make a profit from a service related to that code.

This is how companies like RedHat money. The code they distribute and sometimes contribute to is not how they stay in business. It’s the service that they provide by managing the systems that use the RedHat Linux distribution.

Your plugin seems like an excellent idea and implementation, and it’s available in at least two languages. You absolutely should try to make a profit for your efforts and I think no one would here would hope otherwise. The only gotcha is that you must continue to do so not having the plugin hosted by the community service that www.remarpro.com’s plugin repository offers.

By offering your software as free for private use, you too are being charitable. Much thanks and I hope many people commercial and otherwise use your plugin.

Regarding Akisment… Well it is different.

Your wpseo plugin would have been perfectly fine except for the condition your put into the license. GPL compatible means I can modify it to my heart’s content, which you did not bar exactly. But you did limit what I could do with it under what circumstances.

With the Akismet plugin I can take that code and modify it for use with another anti-spam service. I can take that code and apply it to any system. The code is free and as long as I distribute my derivative work with the source code, keep a copy of the GPL with the distribution, then I am fully compliant with the license.

The Akismet service is another matter. That is not free but it’s not code that is being distributed either. The service is free for private use, commercial does does have to pay. But as far as the GPL goes regarding the distribution of software, that’s perfectly acceptable.

Good luck with your plugin and please do not be discouraged by these events.

It’s strange that no one had set up a alternative “Extend WordPress” site that allows comercial and not GPL’ed plug-ins.

Hey Anderton,,

actually we thought about it, but it would be such a big workload for what we wouldn’t have time for it.

@jdembowski, thank you for your encouraging comment, of course we will continue with new plugins, it’s just said, that they don’t even bother to give us a notice or tell us what to do to be displayed there. We already tried the way of honesty with customers. Everybody who has a commercial blog should register, but sadly the response was none. So we changed it to the current system.

BTW, Sergej, the developer of wpSEO just released antispam bee which is a superior anti spam plugin, you won’t need Akismet anymore. Check it out. Oh, and it is free for everyone. ??