Beyond Thesis: Does the GPL go to far? What constitutes a derivative work?

For f*ck sake, no. It doesn't go far enough.<p>Don't like the GPL? Don't use it; it's just that you then fall back on standard interpretations of "derivative work", which -- you'll find, are at least as restrictive.<p>8 notes are enough to constitute derivative work for music, as are 4 paragraphs. I'm not aware of specifics for code, but I believe they'll be even less comfortable for you than any gpl interpretation.

I'm not a lawyer, but...<p>I think this article misses the point, and I think it goes wrong right about here:<p><i>The GPL is a license. It deals with copyright law. It defines who is allowed to copy &#38; distribute the software (everyone).</i><p>The GPL "deals with" copyright law, but that does not mean that all of its force relies upon copyright law, nor does it mean that the definition of "derivative work" in copyright law has any bearing on the problem at hand.<p>The GPL is a license, granting users the right to use the software. So, we can use WordPress, because the author allows us to (by means of the GPL).<p>The GPL puts restrictions on our use. Among these, that if we wish to produce any derivative works (under the GPL's definition of "derivative"), we must also release these under the GPL. As far as I can tell, copyright law has nothing to do with this restriction.

If it embeds, in itself, no Wordpress code (not even the examples) and is distributed without any part of WP, I can't see why a WP theme should be considered a derivative work. You could call the WP environment the theme runs in forms a DSL on top of PHP and that a WP theme is no more a derived work of WP than WP is derived from PHP.<p>If, however, it is based on an example template or shares non-trivial code with it, then it's derivative work and should be under the GPL.