WordCamp Pune Impact: Two organisations fully embrace GPL, one trademark violation averted

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Themechilly is now 100% GPL!

When ZNetLive, one of the leading hosting providers in India approached to sponsor us, we were more than happy to have them on board. However, we later realised that ThemeChilly, a sister concern of ZNetLive, used a restrictive license incompatible with GPL.

Instead of recanting their sponsorship, the great folks at ZNetLive engaged in a fruitful discussion with Aditya Kane  (WordCamp Deputy and mentor to WordCamp Pune) and myself and switched to 100% GPL Licensing!

This is what Dakshesh Verma, Marketing head –ZNetTechnologies (the parent company of ZNetLive and ThemeChilly has to say about it:

Initially at ThemeChilly, we had a relatively restrictive usage license for our themes and plugins, as we were slightly apprehensive about the possible ‘piracy’ GPL might’ve entailed on our WordPress products; a misconception we had, due to, frankly, our misunderstanding, or rather limited understanding, of GPL and its implications.

Having come to fully grasp how perfectly GPL captures, and passes on the essence and liberty of WordPress to everyone – the developers and users alike, it made good sense for us to have all our products GPL’d.

Being a part of WordPress community, we want our end users to have and benefit from the same level of freedom that WordPress as a platform has provided to us. 🙂

Slidervilla updates its licensing to become 100% GPL!

SliderVilla, another sponsor of ours was GPL in principle since the licensing said that their code was 100% GPL. However, their terms of purchase conflicted with the license and had very restrictive terms. Alexander Gounder (a WordCamp Deputee) pointed this out to us, since we just happened to see the license and not the other terms.

When contacted, SliderVilla agreed and updated their terms within 10 minutes! Sanjeev Mishra the CEO of SliderVilla says

GPL helps in building a strong community around a product or software, and WordPress itself is one of the best examples. It compels us to work together and build upon the original work and put best foot forward.

SliderVilla started because its founders got so much help from the WordPress community in their early days. And releasing our products under GPL license is one way to say thanks and giving it back to the same community.

WordPress in the TLD

One of our sponsors who wouldn’t like to be named (and we respect that!) had purchased a TLD with the word WordPress in it. Unaware that it violated the WordPress trademark, they immediately took it down when informed about the copyright and trademark infringement. Another day and another disaster averted.

High five, community! Make sure you are there at WordCamp Pune to meet them and other champions of open source! Get your ticket now!

WordCamp Pune 2015 is over. Check out the next edition!