WordPress Review Bans Piracy
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The WordPress Plugin Review Team just released a policy decision about no longer permitting copies of paid plugins to be placed in the WordPress.org plugin repository.
A post in their official blog states “Taking someone’s pay-for code and re-releasing it as free-of-charge is considered (by us — the Plugin Review Team) to be a form of piracy and is not welcome here.”
And to make it clear that the decision was not based on open source licensing concerns, the post was edited to add “This post is not about the GPL. This is only about the existing WordPress.org Plugin Developer Guidelines. You should not, under any circumstances, use this post to frame your understanding or interpretation of the GPL.”
The GPL in the post refers to GNU Public License which doesn’t restrict the kind of usage the review team has banned. The review team takes the stance that their rules are “above and beyond the GPL.”
As a developer, I support the idea that giving away software that was meant to be sold, is wrong. I think the additional terms and licenses including Copywrite that usually accompany purchased software makes it clear how wrong these actions are.
A basic tenant of open source is the value added by continuous improvement and community involvement. The act of simply copying a plugin author’s work without any effort to improve, maintain or further develop it doesn’t add anything of value to the software.
I commend and support the WordPress Plugin Review Team for taking action to help maintain the quality of free plugins in the repository.
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