GPL Freedoms – Yep, Porn’s Good!

Did you know you can use WordPress for a porn site?

Did you know you can use Drupal to show autopsy pictures?

The freedoms of GPL don’t just extend to the software itself, but to how you use it. See, most of the time when we talk about GPL freedom, we’re talking about how you’re free to take the code and turn it into a monkey if you want to. But lately, there’s been an effort to remind people that part of GPL also means we don’t restrict your usage either.

WordPress has a link to ‘Freedoms’ at the footer of all admin pages, and that duplicates the Bill of Rights found at WordPress’s Philosophy:

WordPress is licensed under the General Public License (GPLv2 or later) which provides four core freedoms, consider this as the WordPress “bill of rights”:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
• The freedom to redistribute.
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.

Drupal doesn’t spell it out as clearly, but given that they have fetchgals, which can pull in thumbnails of porno pics (if I read that right), I feel confident to say that Drupal doesn’t care what you use Drupal for. Joolma! puts a lot of stock in people using their product for their communities and nowhere did I find note of a limitation of what you cannot do.

The point is valid, however. You can use WordPress, Drupal, Joomla! and pretty much any GPL software for whatever purpose you want, moral or immoral, legal or illegal. This is interesting when you compare it to most EULAs, like Microsoft Office:

7. SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the features included in the software edition you licensed. Microsoft reserve reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. You may not
[…]
• use the software in any way that is against the law;

GPL doesn’t tell you that you can’t use it in a way that’s illegal, and perhaps Microsoft only does to escape a potential lawsuit for someone saying “Aha! You used Office to draft your Mainifesto!” We live in over litigious times. Open Source, by telling us ‘Do what you want, it’s not our beef.’ removes themselves from those issues cleanly and without ass hattery.

One of the tenets of American Law is our freedom to speak our mind. Part of being an American Citizen is that you have the right to defend your beliefs, no matter how much I oppose them, and so long as no one breaks the law, that’s fine. I can ask you to leave my house if you do it on my private property, and you can ask me to leave yours. But if we meet on the street I cannot have you arrested for that. I will defend your freedoms just as you must defend mine, regardless of any agreement or lack there of.

This applies to Open Source because I have the right to use WordPress, Drupal or Joomla! in ways you may find distasteful. As long as I’m not violating the agreement of my ISP, the laws of where my server is located, and the laws of my nation, I’m allowed to call you names, insult your heritage, and show nudie pics of pretty girls. On the other hand, I cannot publish your personal information (it’s a violation of invasion of privacy) and I cannot post naked pictures of you without your consent. Actually, my webhost won’t permit and naked pictures at all, so there’s that.

So when you see a site run by WordPress, Drupal or Joomla! that’s doing something you hate, there’s very little you can do about it. Report it to their webhost if you think it’s breaking the law, but otherwise celebrate people in their freedom.

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

I’m Mika (aka Ipstenu) and I’m complicated. I’ve been on the net since the days of dedicated terminals and Novation CAT modems and solved Missionaries and Cannibals (or Goats and Cabbages) before I was six, and blog about WordPress and technical/computer things at Half Elf on Tech.

See Full Bio