Talking Drupal #132 - Drupal Licensing and GPL

 


Recorded the day after the US Presidential Election, John , Nick
and I were a bit tired after watching election results throughout
the night, but energized for a discussion with Kevin Reynen about
Drupal Licensing. A recent community ‘conversation’ between
WordPress and Wix sparked our interest to talk about the GPL. If
you are making money on Open Source software, you should pay
attention to licensing.


Watch or listen
Show Notes

What is the Drupal Licensing Working Group?

Everything committed to Drupal repo has to be compatible with
GPL v2

What is the GPL? Based on Richard Stallman’s set of four
freedoms:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose

The freedom to study how the program works, and change it
so it does your computing as you wish

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
neighbor

The freedom to distribute copies of your modified
versions, giving the community a chance to benefit from your
changes



What is the difference between copyright and licensing

You can claim copyright of a module you write, which
means the others must attribute you are the source of
original author. The GPL allows other to distribute and
modify that code.



What does distribution mean and what triggers the
distribution clause?

As is relates to work for hire

As is related to SaaS

As is relates to the contract you are hired under

Distribution vs Convery



Can you sell a module or theme? YES!

Licensing - Drupal interfacing with other products (licenses)
- ie. FontAwesome, CiviCRM, CKEditor in Core, AMP

Major differences between GPL v2 and GPL v3, AGPL

GPL and the use of GitHub

Distributions, Drupal 8, Composure and licensing

How is licensing monitored

Wordpress and Wix recap

Resources

GPL Version 2

Drupal Licensing FAQ

Blog post from Matt at Wordpress

Hosts

Stephen Cross - www.ParallaxInfoTech.com @stephencross


John Picozzi - www.oomphinc.com @johnpicozzi


Nic Laflin - www.nLightened.net @nicxvan
Guests

Kevin Reynen - http://www.colorado.edu/@kreynen