Angelo Bertolli » WordPress http://bertolli.org Cogito ergo sum. Sat, 24 Jul 2010 02:58:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Is WordPress Becoming Bloated? http://bertolli.org/wordpress-bloated http://bertolli.org/wordpress-bloated#comments Fri, 02 Apr 2010 19:08:00 +0000 Angelo http://bertolli.org/wordpress-bloated I like WordPress–a lot. It’s been my saving grace for constructing websites without having to write the code from scratch. But it’s gotten very, very bloated. I took a look at version 3.0 and the upcoming changes. It looks ok, but it worries me for the future. Now users actually expect updates and new features on a regular and frequent basis.  Whatever happened to just wanting something that worked well, and was patched for bugs and security?  I’m also worried about backward compatibility of things like themes and plugins.

Part of the reason I like WordPress is because it’s written very well compared to most open source LAMP products that came before it.  It has a plugin and theme API which is relatively simple to learn.  I would prefer WordPress to focus on improving the robustness of the API, rather than adding new features.

Overall I’m fairly confident in WordPress’ developers to keep things straight.  I just hope they’re not making changes just to keep themselves relevant.

]]> http://bertolli.org/wordpress-bloated/feed 0 WordPress: the World of GPL Violations http://bertolli.org/wordpress-world-gpl-violations http://bertolli.org/wordpress-world-gpl-violations#comments Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:16:18 +0000 Angelo http://angelo.bitfreedom.com/?p=166 It seems that the world WordPress themes is chock full of questionable use of GPL code.  I really wonder if there is someone I can report this to.  Let me give an example.  There is a site that sells a “membership” to download their themes.  Great, always happy to see someone getting paid for their hard work.  But then I read about the license on this individual’s work.  So just like so many other WordPress themes, it is questionable whether or not you can create a theme at all that isn’t under a GPL compatible license.  What was even more shocking was this bad English:

I reserves the right to change or modify current Terms of Use with no prior notice.

Sorry, but if you give me a copy with a particular license, you cannot change it.  Even if you write this blurb on your website.  But I guess it’s enough to intimidate most Web users.

And now, for the blatant GPL violation:

Several themes also make use of TimThumb, a script created by Darren Hoyt. This file, timthumb.php, is released under the GPL, and retains its respective license as mentioned in the file itself. This file is not governed by the above license, and can be redistributed under the rules of the GPL.

Really?!  So now you’re actually going as far as to distribute GPL code along with your code, that your code depends on, and NOT put it under the GPL?  I really hope that Darren Hoyt gave you permission to do that.

UPDATE: I just took a look at the script, and it’s now under an MIT license.  It still doesn’t excuse the behavior of someone who obviously believes or used it when it was under the GPL.

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