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Theme & Plugin Licence

theWholeLifeToLearn Member
in General support
Hi!

I have a small question. It could be a stupid question. I went trough the site I don't think I have found an answer at my question.

I wanted to know if it is possible to have themes and/or plugins under a licence different then Zenphotos one.

I would like to use CC By NC (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial) on my themes.

Is it possible?

Comments

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    Yes, of course. The Stopdesign themes are as well under a CC licence as they are just adapted for Zenphoto but I fear no one really cares about these).

    But note that a theme consists of two parts. The code (meanin mostly the PHP function stuff as HTML/CSS is mostly not covered anyway) and the design of your theme.

    You can put the design under CC by NC but you can't most likely put the code because that involves code provided by Zenphoto. And any code that is based on code from a GPL licenced script is also GPL. Which is of course so with a theme (short explanation).

    Also CC is not meant for software. So you can't put a plugin under a CC licence because of that open source code requirement.
    http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F
    http://creativecommons.org/software

    I think we probably should add a special licence part to the theme and plugin description files.
  • theWholeLifeToLearn Member
    Thank you for your answer.

    It has answered my question. I thought so, that the plugins couldn't be licensed because the code is Zenphotos one.

    I will try to follow the subject on licensing for the future version of Zenphoto.
  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    Licences are a complicated matter and it is of course up to each third party stuff developer how he licences. There are other open source licences that are compatible with the GPL v2 one Zenphoto is under. It might even be possible to dual licence.

    (Even if a plugin is GPL that does not mean you can't sell licences it btw...;-))

    If you want me to mark your themes with CC BY NC on our themes section so people see it beforehand let me know (they will see it when they are on your page of course anyway).

    Addition: Just to clarify, if your theme contains special code that is really only by yourself those parts may very well be protectable by another licences. Complicated matter but for that we try to use only GPL or compatible licenced 3rd party tools (for this reason the FLV player plugin was thrown out btw).
  • theWholeLifeToLearn Member
    Thank you for your answer.

    You don't need to mark my themes under CC BY NC.
    I just wanted to know if it was possible and what are the conditions/possibilities.

    Thanks again.
  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    Ok, we have also added a few sentences about licences to the contributor guidelines now.
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