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A comment on Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview . Parent comment

Re:Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? ... by jackowayed on Thursday July 15, 2010 @03:18AM (#1517171)
What's your opinion on that fair use argument? That's the only way I could see Chris having a legal leg to stand on. It seems pretty clear that Thesis is a derivative work, especially given that it extends a Wordpress class[1], but if a theme's use of Wordpress does fall under fair use, he wouldn't be violating the license.

It seems that if you buy the FSF's position[2] that linking from a proprietary program violates the license (meaning that linking is not fair use), Wordpress themes are definitely not fair use. But I'm not sure if that's been established in court.

[1]: http://apeatling.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/thesis-and-the-gpl...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL#Point_of_view:_any_linking_...

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Re:Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? ... by photomatt on Thursday July 15, 2010 @10:27AM (#1517892)
I don't think this is a case of fair use. There is linking, which in the manner which themes work and are loaded inside of WordPress is very deep, and there is also copy and pasted WP code included in Thesis.
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