Recently, a WordCamp organizing team raised a question to Community Deputies about a potential sponsor’s product, a WordPress derivative, being promoted in competition with WordPress and putting WordPress in an unflattering light. This question naturally prompted some discussion around where our expectations could be clarified to address WordPress derivatives and how they are promoted by sponsors, speakers, and organizers.
A WordPress derivative can be defined as any software that is built on top of WordPress – this primarily consists of plugins, themes and distributions.
Existing Expectations
The Community Team asks that everyone associated with a WordCamp in an official capacity — organizer, speaker, sponsor, or volunteer — uphold the principles of the WordPress open source project, including the GPL. This helps protect users/attendees, who might not realize that by using a non-GPL plugin or theme, they are giving away the rights that WordPress provides them.
Additionally it is important to ensure that this community remains safe, inclusive and welcoming. To ensure that these values are reflected in WordPress events, the WordPress Community team has long stood by the following expectations for individuals and companies who want to be a part of the WordPress events program as found in the WordCamp Organizer Handbook:
- No discrimination on the basis of economic or social status, race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, creed, religion, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, age, or disability.
- No incitement to violence or promotion of hate
- No spammers
- No jerks
- Respect the WordPress trademark.
- Embrace the WordPress license; If distributing WordPress-derivative works (themes, plugins, WP distros), any person or business officially associated with WordCamp should give their users the same freedoms that WordPress itself provides: 100% GPL or compatible, the same guidelines we follow on WordPress.org. ***Note: this is one step above simple compliance, which requires PHP code to be GPL / compatible but allows proprietary licenses for JavaScript, CSS, and images. 100% GPL or compatible is required for promotion at WordCamps when WordPress-derivative works are involved, the same guidelines we follow on WordPress.org.***
- Don’t promote companies or people that violate the trademark or distribute WordPress derivative works which aren’t 100% GPL compatible.
This brings us to our two questions!
In the comments, please share your thoughts on the following questions to help make decisions on how to move forward on this topic.
Should the WordCamp and meetup programs accept sponsors, speakers and organizers who engage in competitive marketing against WordPress?
How should competitive advertising be defined in the WordPress space?
This discussion will remain open and ongoing until April 29, 2021. At that time we will close comments and summarize the discussion for final review.
Thank you to @sippis @angelasjin @andreamiddleton and @hlashbrooke for their contributions to this post