Theming licenses

Webcraft
1

I am in a kind of odd spot with a project I want to do. The idea is to create a unified theming system for the different software that my site is composed of. I say system, because some of the software is more complex than the others, but really I just want to output the same HTML (as much as possible) using each template engine, and then apply the style-sheets and whatever other enhancements I can figure out.

The first wall I come to is how I would license it, because I do plan to distribute it. My difficulty comes because I want it to be consistent, but each of the software projects involved are released under different licenses: DokuWiki (GPLv2; license FAQ), Drupal (GPLv2 or later, license FAQ), StatusNet (AGPLv3) and WordPress (GPLv2 or later, clarification in licensing language).

Huh, I hadn’t caught the change in WordPress going from GPL to GPLv2 or later at the time.

I want to figure this out for myself, but also to clarify how “GPLv2 or later” works.

First scenario, if DokuWiki (or rather, GPLv2) were excluded, I could release a theme under the AGPLv3 and it would be compatible with Drupal and WordPress because it is compatible with GPLv3 (and obviously it is compatible with itself, in StatusNet’s case).

Second scenario, including GPLv2, I can release it under a dual-license of GPLv2/AGPLv3, which while kinda defeats the purpose of the AGPL, allows the theme to be licensed depending on the software that it is for. Hmmm, this made more sense in my head, but now it is just a pain in the ass.

Okay, smart people who I know are not lawyers providing me with legal advice, can you give me some feedback on how to best do this? I personally don’t think that having the theme as AGPL is essential, since I don’t plan on doing anything interesting with the code that is not related to styling, and I don’t think that styling has to be shared with visitors to a site. However, I like the AGPL, and start there when choosing a license. My point is, I am open to discussion, and would like to know what options there are.

Please reply in the comments here, or ping me on my slice of the social web.

Post script: I should note that I left out the non-code license issue aside, in hopes that it would simplify this. I will likely license the rest of it as CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, if that means anything to this discussion.

2

Drew Fisher said:

Actually, releasing something under AGPLv3 means that you wouldn’t be able to bring it back into a piece of software that’s just GPLv3 without either offering the GPLv3 under AGPLv3 or redistributing at least your part under the AGPLv3.

“GPLv2 or later” means the user can pick whether to receive the code under the GPLv2 or the GPLv3 (or presumably, some GPLv4 that the FSF writes). Note that this leaves the choice up to the recipient of the software, not the author nor distributor.

This page may help clear up some of the confusion. In essence: pick the most permissive license that you want your software to be usable in, and it’ll (within that picture) automagically be includable in any license downstream of the license you choose. So something that is Apache2.0 licensed could be used in something that is AGPLv3, but something that is AGPLv3 can’t be used in anything that isn’t AGPLv3.