There has been a lot of discussion about WordPress and the GPL lately. People are discussing/complaining about what you can and can’t do due to the license. It’s all a bit baffling to me.

Whether you like the GPL or not, the license is as much a part of WordPress as PHP and MySQL. WordPress is an existing quantity, if you want to build for WordPress (themes, plugins, etc.) you know what you have to work with – including the license. There are no surprises here.

Just as it makes no sense to complain you can’t build WordPress plugins in Ruby or Python, it makes no sense to complain about having to license your WordPress plugins/themes under the GPL.

WordPress is GPL. Period. The rules are the rules, if you want to play – welcome. If not, there are lots of other projects to explore and contribute to.

More recent discussion on this topic:

• Not Lonely at All – Matt Mullenweg
• Licensing is the vehicle, our users are the environment | Weblog Tools Collection
• WordPress Themes are GPL, too
• Commercial WordPress Themes’s PHP Code is GPL 2 Too – A Fool’s Wisdom