Q2A licensing for dummies questions

Question

I have downloaded Q2A, created my own theme, modified qa-theme.php and qa-styles.css. And this site is for a specific audience in a specific country and is free to use with anonymous or registration. The site is hosted on my domain and I dont have plans to SELL the Q2A install with the changes I have made to anyone for a fee. We do plan to give back the changes we made as a new theme/plugins in the near future after extensive testing. So here are my questions regarding Q2A license -

1. Can I provide value added services for a fee ? Like notes of the q&a as a book format.

2. Can I ask for donations ?

3. Can I link up my members to some experts and take a percentage fee ?

4. Can I get some ad network ads and generate revenue ?

5. Can I make some categories for a fee in the future ?

6. Can I sell my web site to any interested bidder in the future ?

7. Do I have to have the "Powered by Q2A" in any or all pages ? If yes, can it be anywhere in the page ?

8. What situations am I breaking the license ? Please give some examples for dummies. No lawyer language please.

 

Your help much appreciated.

 

Thanks

Answer 1

1 to 6: yes

7: no, see here and here.

8: if you sell q2a code as your own code without GPL notice, I guess... gidgreen is able to give more details

PS: Would like to see your restyled theme.

Comments

Thanks. We are hoping to do some major enhancements to search and UI. We will publish this code and theme in January timeframe. Just started work on it.

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Search module would be great, see also here for demands: http://www.question2answer.org/qa/18173/improving-the-search-search-algorithm-q2a-things-do-better

And here for stuff to do in general (if you like some of those): http://www.question2answer.org/qa/19042/

Answer 2

Kai answered your questions pretty well. Regarding #8, the only way to break the license is to try and distribute Q2A or a plugin under a different license other than GPL.

Here are a few things you can and can't do with GPL:

• GPL states that when distributing the program that the source must be distributed too (or available upon request). But since Q2A is in PHP, all the code is required to run anyway (as opposed to a Windows app which is a binary file).
• The GPL doesn't prevent selling of code. Anyone can sell the code of Q2A to anyone else - but of course why would you buy it when it's available from the site for free ;)
• Any modifications you make to Q2A (the core) must be licensed under GPL too. But as above, that doesn't prevent you from selling your modifications if you want to do that.
• However, because it's GPL, if someone buys your modifications they can distribute them however they like, e.g. for free.
• Plugins and themes for Q2A must also be licensed under GPL (or a compatible license). However, like above you can sell your plugins if you like. You may also license some parts of your theme (such as the graphics) under a Creative Commons license.

Comments

> Plugins and themes for Q2A are your own separate code,
> and even though they depend on Q2A you don't need to license them under GPL.
> You can make your own license to prevent people from selling them on (modified or not).

For preventing other user's misunderstanding, I will point out. This statement is incorrect. Themes and plugins are not independent of the Q2A. In other words, they will work (be linked) with Q2A. Therefore, themes and plugins must be applied GPL or compatible license.

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@sama55 do you have a reliable source for that? Something that relies on GPL code to work doesn't need to be GPL. It's not modifying Q2A itself. And you could take a Q2A theme and use it with something else, if there was something else compatible (for example if I wrote my own qa_theme_base independently).

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@Scott
Did you read these threads?
http://www.question2answer.org/qa/46857
http://www.question2answer.org/qa/46924
Check out to pupi for details.

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Hmm, guess I stand corrected then. I'll edit my answer.

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Thank you for your understanding.