A quick followup on my prior conversation with Theo.
During that chat, I talked briefly about a trademark infringer that was also distributing nulled plugins. I said “Not illegal. Legal under the GPL. But they weren’t changing the names. They were selling their customers Pro Plugins with the licensing stuff nulled out.”
I want to be clear that my reference to legality and GPL was solely focused on the copying and modifying of the code. That is one of the key freedoms of open source and GPL: the right to copy and modify GPL code.
I was not speaking about their right to charge money for nulled plugins. GPLv2 prohibits that because they aren’t providing physical copies or support. This is very different from reputable web hosts, who provide hosting and support for websites and e-commerce stores.
CODE IS POETRY. You said that. 2007 was my first year. I just read this: https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/29/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/ Matt. CODE IS POETRY and you are GUTENBERG. People don’t even know who that is. But I do. I worked for a newspaper 20 years. What you created for people was a work of art. Never forget that.
Thanks for clarifying this Matt. Such websites often distribute insecure plugins that harm the brand image of the products and companies behind them. Yes, they can fork the code but they cannot advertise it nor sell it under the same name. Some hosting providers like Linode often ignore trademark infringement reports and the only solution is using a court order that takes time and money.