App Themes and GPL

  • If a given PHP theme file may not make a single WordPress codex API call at all in it, but its parent file that loaded it did so, then does this PHP file need to be GPL as well?

    Imagine a dental office. You go in and a dental assistant schedules your appointment in a scheduling system. Only, it’s not a web app, but a theme inside of WordPress that acts like an app. An app theme will often:

    – use an MVC framework
    – use WordPress to know the connections to access the database via PDO
    – use WordPress API to understand certain file paths or URL paths
    – use WP API for the wp-admin options panel
    – use WP API for theme/plugin activation/deactivation in order to install or uninstall tables into the database
    – use (may or may not) actual pages and posts in the theme itself

    (A.D.D. Sidebar: And why would someone make an app theme that doesn’t even use WP posts or pages? They would because of marketability. Things attached to WP sell well. People like the option panels that they are used to using. They like installing something where they don’t have to keep providing their database credentials. And imagine two app themes for a dental office that are almost similar — you can try one out easily, see if you like it within 3 minutes, and switch to another theme within another 3 minutes, pretty much without having to do all this FTP and database configuration stuff.)

    I do realize what the FSF said here: https://www.ads-software.com/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/

    But did they take into account an app theme? Again, some PHP files of an app theme may not have a single WP API call in them at all. Does that mean they are required to still be GPL too?

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  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    GPL conversations are fun. Yes, the GPL applies to that file as well.

    Again, some PHP files of an app theme may not have a single WP API call in them at all. Does that mean they are required to still be GPL too?

    The GPL is called a viral license for this reason. If that magic PHP file doesn’t make a WordPress API call but uses the other PHP files that do, depends on those other files that do, and cannot work without those files with the WordPress API in them then yes it’s GPL too.

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