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WordPress Plugin Directory Jumps the Shark?

April 2nd, 2007 | Word Press

Last month WordPress.org updated their plugin directory and bloggers began hailing it as a grand achievement long overdue.

Hogwash.

I do not like the new WordPress plugin directory because it reduces options for plugin authors and plugin users.

Specifically, the new WordPress.org plugin directory requires authors to license plugins with a GPL compatible license in order to be included in the directory.

Here’s why this is bad:

  • Some very nice commercial plugins are now missing from the directory (especially ones that made it easier to monetize a WordPress blog)
  • There’s no reason to favor GPL licensing over other free licensing options like MIT or Creative Commons
  • What’s the purpose of narrowing user choices?

Are all the best plugins free? No.

Are all the best free plugins GPL licensed? No.

If the new WordPress directory is so fantastic, with its tagging and voting, is there any reason to remove links to other plugin directories? Again, no.

Suggestions

Instead of just bitching about Matt Mullenweg’s decision to limit choices through the marketing muscle of the WordPress brand, I’m going to put forward some ideas of how it could have been done better.

As a WordPress user, and plugin author, here’s what I want:

1) the ability to quickly find any WordPress plugin, not just the GPL ones.

2) the ability to list my plugins where they can be found with only one option for licensing.

Let’s face it, the plugin authors that provide high quality plugins and want to charge for them aren’t going to suddenly license their plugins GPL just because Matt wants them to. Instead, they’ll just take longer to find.

Why not create a section of the database that has non-GPL licenses? Or combine the two categories and list the GPL licenses first?

I’d love an advanced search option where I could search for ‘other’ licenses or even ‘commercial’ plugins that I have to pay a bit for.

Or, why not charge a listing for for commercial plugins? Make it a HotScripts directory for WordPress plugins. I know Matt’s not hurting for money, so give it to Habitat for Humanity.

Matt Mullenweg is free to create any plugin directory he and his team wants. It’s his baby.

I just think this recent move dramatically limits options for both the plugin users and plugin authors, I see no advantage for Matt, and it’s a bad idea.

Rant over.

6 comments ↓

#1 Otto on 02.26.08 at 12:10 pm

It would be extremely difficult to write a WordPress plugin without actually making it GPL licensed and still be legal. I suspect that 99% of the “commercial” plugins are violating the GPL.

WordPress is GPL licensed. Any plugin that uses any of WordPress’s internal structures or functions is a derivative and it must also be GPL licensed. Period.

The only reason for the “compatible” part is to allow for plugins that are considered to be public domain code and such, as well as to allow for plugins that use other libraries of free code and which integrate to WordPress in a compatible fashion.

#2 Jack on 02.26.08 at 12:26 pm

Otto,
Thanks for your comment, but I disagree with your interpretation of the GPL license.

If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

#3 Otto on 02.28.08 at 1:27 pm

Then you’re wrong. Read it closer.

“If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program…”

Anything making a call on a WordPress hook is derived from WordPress. If you call any WordPress function, if you use any of the WordPress internal structures, then you are deriving from WordPress.

If your plugin consists of nothing more than a collection of independent functions, has no configuration screen, and does not call any WordPress function or variable, then sure, you could make a non-GPL’d WordPress plugin without violating the GPL. But I’d bet that you’d be hard pressed to find a plugin that does all that.

#4 Jack on 02.28.08 at 2:10 pm

Otto,
You’ve made your point and we will have to agree to disagree.

I’m not going to get into a pissing match with you over something that has no impact on my business.

#5 steve on 03.13.08 at 1:01 pm

Jack if the new directory has no impact on your business why make a post on it?

#6 Jack on 03.13.08 at 1:45 pm

Steve,
This post is pretty old. I think at the time I was just upset that a plugin I had created would be excluded unless I GPL licensed it, and frankly, these days it doesn’t matter very much to me.

But to answer your question more directly, I was referring to the discussion over the specific wording of the GPL license… not the WordPress directory.

Neither one has a huge impact on my business at all, but I could argue that at the time I made this post, the directory had some effect.

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