vacasfer
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WordPress is GPL2 licensed, which means that any plugin or theme which relies on WordPress has to be GPL2 licensed as well.
Which means that any plugin that is published for WordPress has to use GPL2 license, else it is in violation of GPL2 license itself. At most, a plugin can have GPL license, but nothing more restricting.
That means that any plugin that is released to public for WordPress is free.
You can’t be sued for using any modified version of any plugin whatsoever, since to do that they would need to claim a restrictive (proprietary) license, and that would put them in violation of GPL2 license.
In the end, since anyone is free to modify and re-publish any GPL2 code in any way whatsoever, someone who is ‘nulling’ a plugin is not doing anything illegal in the first place - its perfectly compatible with GPL2 license.
Before, people could argue that GPL license does not need to be inherited by code that used a GPL application and tried to weasel their way out of publishing their code under the same license. This is why GPL2 was developed and this is why WordPress is using GPL2 as license.
Someone may try to sue you, may claim that they have a right to release their software as proprietary despite it uses GPL2 WordPress, but they would eventually fail. That doesn’t prevent them from trying to scare you or sue you.
Some exceptions to copyrighted images and creative material which does not involve using any code from WordPress itself exist, and WP repository allows such themes to be present in its own repository. However, the trend and pressure is towards having everything GPL2 licensed, as the recent drive of Themeforest for making every theme on their repository 100% GPL.
Which means that any plugin that is published for WordPress has to use GPL2 license, else it is in violation of GPL2 license itself. At most, a plugin can have GPL license, but nothing more restricting.
That means that any plugin that is released to public for WordPress is free.
You can’t be sued for using any modified version of any plugin whatsoever, since to do that they would need to claim a restrictive (proprietary) license, and that would put them in violation of GPL2 license.
In the end, since anyone is free to modify and re-publish any GPL2 code in any way whatsoever, someone who is ‘nulling’ a plugin is not doing anything illegal in the first place - its perfectly compatible with GPL2 license.
Before, people could argue that GPL license does not need to be inherited by code that used a GPL application and tried to weasel their way out of publishing their code under the same license. This is why GPL2 was developed and this is why WordPress is using GPL2 as license.
Someone may try to sue you, may claim that they have a right to release their software as proprietary despite it uses GPL2 WordPress, but they would eventually fail. That doesn’t prevent them from trying to scare you or sue you.
Some exceptions to copyrighted images and creative material which does not involve using any code from WordPress itself exist, and WP repository allows such themes to be present in its own repository. However, the trend and pressure is towards having everything GPL2 licensed, as the recent drive of Themeforest for making every theme on their repository 100% GPL.