Back in 2015 I wrote an ebook called A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL which I made available for purchase on WP and Legal Stuff. You could also buy an audio book version that I’d had professionally narrated by Steve Chase (perhaps better than listening to my voice and easier, I thought at the time, for US audiences to understand…) and there was a business package that provided access to a terms of use builder for WordPress commercial theme and plugin shops. These packages are still available for purchase if anyone wants to take that path (but read on first…).
A few days ago I published a post on WP and Legal Stuff called Taking GPL’d code proprietary. I’ve received a bit of feedback on that post. The feedback suggests the variety of GPL-issues addressed in the ebook remain live ones for many developers. Given the ongoing interest, and the fact that some developers took the time to comment on the post (particularly you Dave…), I’ve decided to make the ebook and audio book freely available for anyone who wants them:
- Ebook of A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL (has been downloaded thousands of times)
- Audio book of A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL (downloadable on Soundcloud).
You can listen to the audio files here too if you like (and yes, I appreciate that listening to an audiobook on licensing issues might not be the most riveting experience):
Hope they’re of use to someone out there in InternetLand. If you’ve any feedback, I’d be happy to hear it.
On, and on a related note, a while back I wrote a lengthy post on WP and Legal Stuff on How to apply the GPL to your themes and plugins (and avoid getting in the shi*). It includes a document automation tool to help you do just that. Perhaps that’ll be of interest to someone too.
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Over and out.
Despite the ‘All rights reserved’ statement on the inside cover of the ebook, its textual content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please note that this licence does not apply to the imagery in the ebook as I am using that imagery under licence from third parties and cannot license it under the Creative Commons licence. This means you can do whatever you like with the textual content I’ve written, as long as you attribute it to me, but you can’t re-use the images.