Peter Knight (@peterrknight)

There’s a long history around GPL in WordPress and this pressure to conform has come up many times but I don’t think this is about conforming or subjecting one’s business to what a small group of people want / or else. The reason so much importance is put on the GPL is because it is an important component to what protects the freedoms that has made WordPress such a success. Just like you wouldn’t want a bill of rights to be violated, you wouldn’t want to have all kinds of WordPress-based businesses placing their own restrictions, affecting the ecosystem and its userbase in a negative way.

Besides, as has been said by many people before me, businesses have always had total freedom to create products with their own licensing. Businesses aren’t constrained to using WordPress. If you are going to build for this platform, it’s not a big ask to work in congruency with the platform. If your ideology doesn’t align with that, might as well pick a different platform, what is the point otherwise.

The reason prominent voices like the Tavern put a strong preference for GPL compliant products is simple, it’s just more productive to put energy into companies that think in a WP-aligned way, because the overarching goal is to make WP and the community even better.

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