[www.ads-software.com Plugins] Request Denied – what to do?

  • Resolved itthinx

    (@itthinx)


    12 years, 4 months ago

    When I submitted my new shiny plugin yesterday, I was surprised to find a very quick reply, which denied entry into plugin heaven on www.ads-software.com by a nameless reviewer.

    After reading through the rejection reasons it was clear that the reviewer got confused about the submitted plugin’s license – which is GPL v3 – and the license of the software it works with, which is not GPL’d but available under a free personal license or a paid commercial license.

    I then responded to the Request Denied email but did not receive a quick reply, possibly due to the fact that my email server decided to take a nap when it should have been on duty. So I decided to write a new email stating and refuting, now in a very detailed manner, the how what why where who about the submitted plugin.

    Actually before I started to write that email, I tried to find out what the ‘right’ or ‘de facto’ way to ask for the plugin to be admitted would be, because the denial is based on a misunderstanding of the plugin’s license and other points.

    I did not find much, only one post: www.ads-software.com/support/topic/plugin-request-denied and it isn’t similar to this case.

    In this post, Mark replies “… Can you re-submit …” which I thought might be a good idea to do with mine as well, but not before having explained in detail why I would insist to have it added to the repository after it being rejected.

    So, the reason I am posting this here is because I think it might be a helpful thing for others who get their plugins rejected and, should mine be eventually admitted, how to inform www.ads-software.com about what you pretend to do with your plugin, why you want it added and what reasons there are for you to think that your request has been denied in error.

    This is the email I sent today (typos included ;), let’s see how it turns out:

    (quote)
    Hi,

    Yesterday I submitted a plugin to be included and got the request denied stating that the plugin violates multiple points of the guidelines but it does not violate any of these.

    I sent an email explaining that the submitted plugin does in fact comply with all requirements outlined on

    https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/about/guidelines/

    and that it is licensed under GPL v3.

    I am sending this email because I’m actually not sure if the one I sent in reply has reached you or not – I had problems with my email server.

    Anyhow, the plugin in question is wunderslider-wordpress-gallery and it is fully GPL licensed. What is not GPL licensed, and that is where whoever has done the review (the email doesn’t state a name), got confused about, is the WunderSlider that the submitted plugin works with itself.

    The WunderSlider code is not included in the submitted plugin and people are clearly informed on how it works: free personal license or paid commercial license. Again, this has nothing to do with the licensing of the wunderslider-wordpress-gallery plugin itself nor the way it functions.

    To make it more clear, these are the points that the reviewer critized on the submitted plugin:

    1) GPLv2 (or later) licensing. Your license cannot restrict use of the plugin for any reason, be it ethical, moral, or financial. if people want to use this plugin on a commercial site, they are permitted to do so. Your license is, therefore, not compatible with the GPL and cannot be accepted.

    The plugin *is* licensed under GPL v3 and the stated reason for rejection does not apply.

    1b) Your license cannot restrict editing of the code. This is a core tenant of GPL – the right of the next guy to edit the code and reuse. Pretty much all the clauses here – https://www.itthinx.com/free-personal-use-single-domain-license-fpusdl/ – are contrary to the rights granted in the GPL.

    This license does *not* apply to the plugin submitted and this reason for rejection again does not apply.

    2) Credit links. These are not permitted, save as ‘opt in’ – your ‘little logo’ at the bottom of a page is not permitted.

    The submitted plugin does *not* have anything to do with that and people can chooose freely whether they want to work with the free personal version that includes a logo or the commercial version that doesn’t. Again this doesn’t have anything to do with the plugin I have submitted.

    3) Phoning home. Per your site, your plugin sends usage data back to your servers. This is not permitted unless necessary for the functionality of the plugin, and in those cases, must be clearly disclosed to the end users.

    The plugin does not do that. The free personal version of WunderSlider sends usage data home and people are clearly informed about that. Again this has nothing to do with the submitted plugin.

    More clarification if needed:

    The description of the submitted plugin states clearly:

    “This plugin provides an automated way to convert any standard WordPress gallery that is embedded on a page using the [gallery] shortcode into a *WunderSlider*.

    This plugin requires the *WunderSlider* which is available freely for personal use. A license is required to be purchased for commercial use, see [WunderSlider](https://www.itthinx.com/wunderslider/) for more details.”

    As is obvious from that, WunderSlider is *not* included with the plugin itself and the licenses of the wunderslider-wordpress-gallery plugin and the WunderSlider itself are not related.

    The submitted plugin includes two files, COPYRIGHT.txt and the full text of the GPL v3 license in the file LICENSE.txt. COPYRIGHT.txt states clearly:

    ” GPL-licensed

    Unless otherwise stated, all code in this plugin is licensed under
    the GPL License:”

    You will find that the GPL license applies to all files included in the plugin and it states so in their headers.

    It couldn’t get much clearer now, could it? ??

    My question is, shall I resubmit the whole thing or what is there to do?

    Cheers
    (unquote)

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    I am not part of the plugin review team (reviewing plugins is a HUGE commitment to the community and lots of work!) so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt. Also, I do think that that conversation really should be continued with the plugin team via email rather than debated here.

    I am not a Wunderslider user and have not looked at their software.

    The free personal version of WunderSlider sends usage data home and people are clearly informed about that.

    Informed or not, why even go there? If the data collection was strictly opt-in only that may be different. But it sounds like thats a requirement of the no monetary cost version. Note that I didn’t say “free”.

    From the https://www.itthinx.com/free-personal-use-single-domain-license-fpusdl/

    – You MUST NOT alter the SOFTWARE.
    – You MUST NOT reproduce or redistribute the SOFTWARE or any parts of it.
    – You MUST NOT create derivative works based on the SOFTWARE.
    – You MUST NOT use the SOFTWARE for any commercial purposes WHATSOEVER.
    – You MUST NOT directly or indirectly license, sub-license, rent, lend, sell,

    That’s clearly anathema to GPL’ed software. Not borderline, that’s moving in the opposite direction.

    Here’s a quote from someone else that I saved (she’s very wise) that sums it up concisely.

    Non GPL products are not welcome in the WordPress community. Official WordPress policy states that all plugins and themes that are publicly released are required to adhere to https://www.ads-software.com/about/gpl/

    Any support requests for non-GPL products are usually ignored, in the interests of supporting the community and its freedoms.

    There may be exceptions that are based on grandfathered cases but in my opinion those are good reasons to not include a plugin that’s dependent on non-GPL code.

    Thread Starter itthinx

    (@itthinx)

    Hey thanks for your input Jan, I agree on the actual topic being something that should be discussed with the review team by email and I’m in the process of doing that. The reason why I posted this here is because I found practically nothing about this kind of situation and think it will be of value for others later on to have some kind of information on denied plugins.

    About the license, the plugin that I have submitted is fully GPL licensed. I also admit that the WunderSlider personal license is very restrictive but it has nothing to do with the submitted plugin’s license. I even am considering to make it (WunderSlider personal license) much less restrictive even for personal use, among what it is trying to avoid is people ripping it off and rebranding it for their own good without even giving credit. Anyhow, that is not related to the submitted plugin’s license or code.

    Think about the many plugins that literally plug in a service, people never even get to look at the code of the service or have any say in that and those plugins are hosted happily in the repository.

    Personally I do understand the GPL licensing framework very well and agree with its spirit and intent. I’ve contributed several free GPL’d plugins on www.ads-software.com and am maintaining those in that same spirit.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    No one replied because I went to bed last night. I volunteer at plugin review and have a day job.

    I’ll take a look again, but the plugin as submitted had copies of that license.txt and copyright.txt in multiple places. If its not applicable, then you need to clean up the zip of your plugin a lot.

    Thread Starter itthinx

    (@itthinx)

    Thanks Ipstenu, I really appreciate you having a look very much.

    If there’s anything you see that should be taken out I’ll happily do that.

    Actually it got late for myself yesterday and if you see any non-GPL licensed stuff in what I’ve submitted, then I might have sent over the full pack instead of just the plugin I intended to submit. Ha, that would explain a lot ??

    By the way, please don’t feel pressed on this, I am not trying to hurry up anything ??

    Thread Starter itthinx

    (@itthinx)

    This is the actual plugin that I intend to commit to the repository:

    https://www.itthinx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/wunderslider-wordpress-gallery-plugin.zip

    I think what happened was that the review got the full personal version that you can download from the page and thought that was what I wanted to submit.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    Yeah, you did send the full pack, which was an instant heck-no.

    I’ll review it and reply in your email ??

    Thread Starter itthinx

    (@itthinx)

    Ahhh that really was it then ?? … I should have explained that better when I submitted the thing.

    Thanks again for taking the time to review this. I’ll wait for your email.

    By the way, I’m making the ‘send usage data’ optional on the free personal version. It really should be up to people to decide whether they want to help with that or not.

    Thread Starter itthinx

    (@itthinx)

    Just a quick note with a big thank you to Ipstenu who was awesome helping to clarify this.

    The plugin is now in the repository and can be obtained here: https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/wunderslider-gallery/

    Some points on changes made that I think can be useful for others as well:

    It has been renamed to “WunderSlider Gallery” taking out the “WordPress” part of its initial name because it’s really redundant and makes the name too long anyway – there is really no point in using the WordPress brand in a WordPress plugin.

    The free personal license has been given a preamble explaining it’s reason of existence and the “You MUST NOT alter the SOFTWARE.” clause has been modified to include the intent for that clause to “You MUST NOT alter the SOFTWARE in order to conceal its origin or creator.”

    Two options have been added to the plugin:
    – you can decide whether you want the little logo to show up or not
    – you can decide whether you want it to send usage data or not

    wow thanks this one same with my problem

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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