I consider use discourse in my future website (thanks for making the great software). In case I make some modifications (not necessarily as a plugin), does that require my modifications be GPL ? the modification is only for my website. I’m aware GPL only applies to distribution. However, software…

Thanks. How about the case if developer makes a larger web application with discourse being part of it, e.g., a social media app with a forum component use discourse differently from a typical forum app, e.g., use it as a comment section for an article. will the full app be mandated to use GPL. …

Jay’s point was not a legal one I suspect. You want to retain the ability to one-click upgrade and redeploy Discourse from scratch. All technical modifications should be plugins or theme components. There is an existing API, SSO, Oauth, webhook support and you always have the discretion to host t…

Well keep in mind say with your social Media App you could have a plugin to facilitate connecting to your Discourse Forum. There are already a variety of plugins created to use things like: Facebook Authentication Steam WeChat And more. Problem with modifying/forking is you end up with potentia…

My response was a technical one. Unless you plan to have a team of several people who are doing nothing but merging new changes, you’ll want to develop plugins to solve your problem. Your legal concerns are then moot.

I’m not sure it’s material either way. The fundamental issue will be that you fork Discourse we can’t offer any support whatsoever. The only supported means of extensibility are plugins, themes and using the hooks in the container yml. There’s no limit to what they will allow you to achieve, forkin…

Thank you all for inputs. I found this article with a good discussion. The client side code should be GPLed, but not the server side.

I think you might be missing the point? If you create a plugin on GitHub and place it in a Private Repo, you have full control over modifying Discourse (albeit with plugin approach) and have full ownership and control over those changes. No-one else will see them and you don’t need to fear any leg…

Robert might be better to give him links to Discourse highly customized setups to improve his understanding and/or some of the more powerful plugins & themes.

GPL license for modified discourse for own website

Development

pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman) March 22, 2020, 4:51pm 2

Everyone who has done that has been very sorry. You want to make your modifications in plugins and themes.

You can use plugins and themes that are not publicly distributed.

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GPL license for modified discourse for own website

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