Who owns wordpress company

VISIT WEBSITE >>>>> http://gg.gg/y83ws?116009 <<<<<<

While the. This article made it really clear. Thank you. But your spin on who owns the open source project missed in some critical ways. Yes, the code is open-source, pursuant to GPL, which is itself a confusing issue. Regardless of who makes it or how, their motivations, or the fact that you almost could get away with rebranding the WordPress core code as your own, that code lives at and is therefore owned by whoever owns wordpress.

Mullenweg is the majority owner of. So, great story, but you missed a big point: in every meaningful way, Mr. Mullenweg and his venture capital partners own WordPress. Thanks for dropping by. WordPress was a fork of b2, WooCommerce was a fork of Jigoshop and the rest is history.

The keyword above is redistribute. But my real hope in doing so is to ensure that this article does not get hijacked, and I hope you respect that request. And yes, I have a history with trademarks and WP, which is of course how I came to know about this piece and be interested in it, but I have no axe to grind; our disagreement was settled to the satisfaction of all.

As I said, I thought this was a great article. Thank you! I was not particulary curious about this, but one can always know more about everything! Thanks for choosing to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our comment policy , and your email address will NOT be published. Please Do NOT use keywords in the name field. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation. Don't subscribe All Replies to my comments Notify me of followup comments via e-mail.

You can also subscribe without commenting. All Rights Reserved. Last updated on April 4th, by Editorial Staff. Understanding the Differences between WordPress. Who owns WordPress.

We will summarize the GPL in three main benefits: You can use WordPress in whatever way you like without any restrictions. You can repackage, rebrand, sell and distribute WordPress without any restrictions except that it is also released under the GPL license.

If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works.

In other words if your theme or plugin has segments of code that does not in any way use components of WordPress itself ie no WordPress functions or references to elements within WordPress then you can distribute these segments under a separate license if they are distributed separately.

The license continues:. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. So if you package your proprietary non-WordPress referential or derivative code along with code that does derive or refer to WordPress ie a piece of code that uses a WordPress function , the entire package, including your proprietary code, inherits the GPL license in perpetuity.

A license inheritance by association if you will. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. As a result once you release a theme or plugin into the wild you effectively lose control. This is fundamentally different from general commerce and normal software licenses.

And when you try to apply general commerce principles to GPL products, things get messed up in a hurry. In place of the product being the commodity, it is the service that is sold.

This is clearly stipulated in the GPL preamble:. This is why you can charge whatever you want to install WordPress for a client or build themes or plugins for a client. Because you are selling the service , not the product. It is a fundamental shift in reasoning, and it requires a fundamental shift in the way many people do business. To keep this article as accurate and up-to-date as possible I am making changes whenever unclarities are pointed out that can be more precisely explained.

Below is a list of those changes:. He is a popular speaker and educator on all things design, web standards and open source. Using WordPress as a CMS, if you could create web applications such that users would pay a monthly subscription, then you can also make money.

If you build a service with WordPress, you can sell that service. The only time the GPL kicks in is when you create code based on WordPress, sell that code, and try to prevent the buyer from redistributing it.

This is exactly where the discussion starts. What is a derivative work? Some people say that if you dynamic link to GPL software then this is not a derivate work, you never included any piece in your own work. You simply instruct the GPL software to do something for you, like you do in a theme. Others say this is not true; the fact that your software needs the GPL software makes it a derivative work. Fact is that much software exists in the world that is based on GPL software but is sold with a commercial license.

Court cases and settlement so far only exist in situation where a commercial party has indeed incorporated lines of code in their own code. To avoid the discussion they often suggest that the GPL software can license their interface under the LGPL license to avoid the discussion. Then people can create commercial software like plugins and themes and the discussion would end. Because with the current situation the discussion can go on and on forever. Excellent points Klaas.

If you somehow managed to build a theme that used the output of the API without at the same time using a native WordPress function I think you are free and clear of the GPL, but at present that does not seem possible. A theme just uses a few basic functions provided by the GPL. No include statements, not a single line copied. You see you can bend this any way you like.

Problem is that many people have a solid believe they are right. Truth is, nobody is right. You can interpret it any way you like. There is room for interpretation, yes, but the GPL makes a clear distinction between derivative works and works based on the output of a GPL application. If on the other hand you built an application that took for instance the RSS feed or some other feed from WordPress and then parsed it, and if that application was able to run without that input, you would be free and clear of the GPL.

Appreciate the shoutout to WP Daily! They have specifically stated that their guidelines go above and beyond GPL and never suggested otherwise. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate. GPL then protects the parts of the theme which do inherit it i.

As far as I know this is the consensus on what is understood to be the minimum legal requirements though its never been legally tested. See the footnotes at the bottom and the other comments. They make a distinction between aspects of a theme that are part of the program and thus derivative, and parts that are considered data and not subject to the GPL. Keep in mind this is a broader article that is also meant to cover the quite likely event of someone being locked out because of a direct breach of GPL by proxy.

They also are involved with the process of building WordPress itself:. Next: total amount of contributors to WordPress 5. Businesses get the most out of their investment in software because they benefit from the maturity, power and flexibility of WordPress as a software, but also on the technical leadership from their solutions providers. In short, WordPress has no shortage of people and vendors who take ownership of the tech on your behalf, so that you can continue to focus on your business mission.

WordPress has a powerful API that lets it communicate with the closed-source systems and programs that enterprises rely on, while continuing to remain functionally separate. For example, rtCamp created a newsletter creation workflow for MBA that plugged right into a their proprietary email distribution platform so that they could continue using their existing user database.

In short, nobody and everybody. WordPress is a robust , mature and proven platform that plays well with other systems and leverages the best that the Internet has to offer. WordPress Foundation is a c 3 non-profit organization that maintains the project, and assists in its development.

Matt Mullenweg founded it in , and it works entirely off donations. Of course, despite not officially being the owners, Matt and a team of developers from WordPress. As such, they hold a large power over decision-making and future changes and make a majority of code contributions.

Then, find the license. Unlike other open-source software that is owned by a person or a corporation, everyone who contributed to WordPress becomes a copyright owner. In other words, no one owns the copyright to the entire WordPress code. The license grants you the right to use, modify, copy, and distribute the WordPress software. Furthermore, you can charge for the distribution of this software, and use pieces of code to develop new software, as long as it remains free.

Reading part 2, paragraph 5 of the license gives a solution.