Question about GNU license

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MetaGator is starting a consulting business helping small businesses build monetized online communities and is considering using Discourse — licensed under GNU — to manage hosted forums and develop custom plugins for clients. They clarify they won’t modify or redistribute Discourse’s source code, only create plugins for paid, for-profit clients, and ask whether this aligns with both the GNU license’s technical requirements and its open-source ethos. merefield responds by pointing out that Discourse’s source code is already publicly available on GitHub, so not sharing it isn’t a relevant concern. They suggest exploring the Marketplace category for examples of acceptable third-party services and direct MetaGator to resources for plugin development, including monitoring via the Plugin Manager system (link) and adding subscription features to plugins (link). The response implies that developing and selling plugins for Discourse, without altering core code, is a common and permitted practice in the community.

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Hello! I’d appreciate some input on a project I’m starting, to help me understand if it would be appropriate for me to use software licensed under GNU, such as Discourse.

I provide consulting and custom code for small businesses that want to create monetized online communities. Typically they have a Wix or Wordpress site and associated forum.

I’ve started wondering about offering to manage a Discourse forum for some of my customers, and creating custom plugins to meet their needs. I wouldn’t be sharing Discourse source code - these are low-tech customers, and are probably not even interested in installing Discourse themselves, so I would manage their hosting. I also would not be modifying Discourse source code, but I would be creating plugins. This would be paid work for for-profit businesses.

Is this an appropriate use of Discourse? Both in terms of the technicalities of the GNU license, and the spirit of the law, in terms of being a good open-source citizen. I’ve used open-source software for decades for my own personal use, donated and contributed to projects, but have never had a reason to involve it in my business life.

Thank you!

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Looking at this another way, I trust you’ve noticed the Marketplace Category? It might be worth looking through its history to get an idea of what third party services are normal and permitted.

This is surely irrelevant? It is openly available to anyone who browses GitHub.

FYI you might be interested in our enabling platform for third party developers:

Monitoring your plugin

See:

and

https://discourse.pluginmanager.org

Adding Subscriptions to your plugin

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