WordPress Fork

and publish it under the GPL license.

Yes, and good luck with that.

But, can I delete all the comments saying WordPress, or I have to keep them?

That’s a fun topic. The answer is you shouldn’t delete all the comments saying WordPress because that’s dishonest.

Also because the original authors deserve credit, but as long as you don’t attempt to pass the work others did as your own then your should be fine (but possibly dishonest).

Give this FAQ a solid read.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

Particularly this one

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IWantCredit

And put yourself in the place of all the WordPress code contributors.

It appears that this article has not been updated in quite a while, but I thought it presented an interesting breakdown/opinion on the concept of “Fork” (relative to software).

https://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#forking

Clayton,

That’s a good read. Intent matters so Lyceum https://lyceum.ibiblio.org/ was a fork but just ripping off^H^H^Hout references to WordPress is not really a fork. It’s not like that would compete with WordPress.

Examples:

Cent OS versus Red Hat Enterprise Linux — Brand changes, not a true Fork, but also completely legal

Mambo and Joomla — A true Fork

I hesitate to use the term “derivative works” in contrast to inewspaper’s thoughts about having the desire to remove all WordPress references, but perhaps that’s something worth exploring if the interest is earnest.

More info: https://www.law.washington.edu/LCT/SWP/Law/derivative.html