Are developers allowed to say contrib plugin "is part of Moodle"?

Are developers allowed to say contrib plugin "is part of Moodle"?

by Petr Skoda -
Number of replies: 5
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I have realised that the standard Moodle license boilerplate at the top of PHP files may not make much sense for contrib plugins, so I have created CONTRIB-9891 today to get some explanation from Moodle HQ.

There are two potential problems in my opinion:

  1. "This file is part of Moodle - http://moodle.org/" might be a trademark violation according to https://moodle.com/trademarks/, because it may give impression that the plugin is associated with Moodle
  2. "Moodle is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY" - is irrelevant, it should instead say the contrib plugin has no warranty

This question is more towards the Moodle HQ lawyers, but I thought that other contrib developers might be interested.

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In reply to Petr Skoda

Are developers allowed to say contrib plugin "is part of Moodle"?

by Séverin TERRIER -
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Nice catch.

Not a lawyer, but i personnaly think (more logical) that non standard plugins could (ot better, should?) have a different licence, specifying it's made to be used inside a Moodle installation, and "WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY".

Séverin
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In reply to Petr Skoda

Are developers allowed to say contrib plugin "is part of Moodle"?

by Tim Hunt -
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Note that, while the form of the boiler-plate comment is checked by CodeChecker, it intentionally does not check every single word: https://github.com/moodlehq/moodle-cs/blob/main/moodle/Sniffs/Files/BoilerplateCommentSniff.php#L34

I implemented that originally, at the request of the STACK project, so they could say: https://github.com/maths/moodle-qtype_stack/blob/master/version.php.

I agree that this is probably good practice (but I don't bother in most of my plugins, just because it is easier to copy/paste comments from an existing file and not think about it).
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In reply to Petr Skoda

Are developers allowed to say contrib plugin "is part of Moodle"?

by Michael Milette -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Peter, you make a good point. Here is how I've tried to mitigate the issue a bit since many years in my plugins.

There is no actual requirement to use that exact boilerplate. Below is an alternative that passes code checkers. Just replace PLUGINNAME with the name of your plugin and it will make more sense:

// This file is part of PLUGINNAME for Moodle - https://moodle.org/
//
// PLUGINNAME is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
// the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
// (at your option) any later version.
//
// PLUGINNAME is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
// GNU General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
// along with Moodle.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>;.

Notice that I also updated the links to https instead of http.

Hope you find this information useful.

Best regards,

Michael Milette

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In reply to Michael Milette

Are developers allowed to say contrib plugin "is part of Moodle"?

by Séverin TERRIER -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi Michael,

About changing http://moodle.org to https://moodle.org everywhere (because i feel it would be much more logical and consistent), i created MDL-61561 some years ago.

Séverin
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In reply to Séverin TERRIER

Are developers allowed to say contrib plugin "is part of Moodle"?

by Petr Skoda -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Oh, I forgot to mention I have started including the LICENSE file with all my plugins because github does not show the GPL 3.0 license in the plugin card without it. That should be also in line with standard recommended GNU license info.

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