Certainly for the last 3-4 years Matt and other project members seem to have been fairly consistant when they have written about this topic.

Really I’ve only seen it mentioned by Mark Jaquith. Still using the term external and internal with WP is not correct. There also is really no such thing as external and internal APIs.

It facilitates interaction between different software programs similar to the way the user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers.

So its again arguments of the type. “Thats not what we mean” =).
And on the GPL and people not interpreting the “internal API”same way as Mark J.

I think that punishing WordPress for having a flexible plugin system is unfair.

It is primarily to do with link building

They have decided that they will no longer support/condone people using strategies that are explicitly against the terms of service of Web 2.0 properties, or even non-explicitly in the case of forum owners.

It is quite far reaching – they are no longer accepting WSOs or promotion of “link packages” – places to get links just by creating profiles of forums or dofollow comments – the powers that be have decided that it is against the wishes of the sites to be hit by a plague of visitors and maybe forum signups just for the purpose of gaining a backlink.

They decided that it was pissing in the well.

You wrote yourself that 50% of fixes for WP3.0 were by just 5 people (iirc) over on WPTavern – what do you think the chances are that those people support Matt’s view, and that has been the view for a long time.

It is quite possible that the guys who skipped over to the Habari project were those who might object to some of Matt’s interpretations

http://wiki.habariproject.org/en/FAQ

Habari uses the Apache License (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0). For those unfamiliar with this license, the Apache License FAQ page should answer most of your questions.
Developers contributing to the Habari project itself should note that, unless explicitly stated otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion shall be under the terms and conditions of the license used by Habari, without any additional terms or conditions. However, plugins and themes designed to work with Habari are not required to have the same license as Habari itself.
You can find our license included in the source, and http://svn.habariproject.org/habari/trunk/LICENSE in our code repository.

All the legal opinions are just that, but I have seen experts suggest that consistant messaging about what is considered internal, and what is considered external will be important. Certainly for the last 3-4 years Matt and other project members seem to have been fairly consistant when they have written about this topic.Whether that was the case with B2, and the early days of the WP project are hard to tell, but the people involved were probably less aware of the legal intricacies, less sure of what they believed in etc.
Also they can be a little lax in communication. The registered trademark isn’t proclaimed on every page, and the domains policy is buried fairly deep and still abused by people who should know better.

You look on any use of those APIs as fair game despite the frequently stated intention by the authors that they consider those interfaces to be internal.

They are not internal. There is no such thing really with WP. Thats how its designed. If they were internal external software wouldn’t have easy access to them and their use would be discouraged.

The linked documents stated very clearly that copyright stuff had to be determined first, though the DMCA would be part of that.

Jacobsen is an alternative to arguments that then the case would come down to purely contract law, or possibly a counter for fair use.

Mark looks on it as dynamic linking
I look on it as a big ass software patch
You look on any use of those APIs as fair game despite the frequently stated intention by the authors that they consider those interfaces to be internal.

I am not disputing that the courts may determine that you are right regarding dynamic linking in certain circumstances – my Rick Astley example would be an extreme case that I doubt would ever get that far. If someone replaced the whole front end of WordPress or Drupal it would be at the other extreme.
Themes & plugins are somewhere in the middle.

If you can somehow come up with a templating engine which only works using what WordPress regard as external APIs, good luck to you.

Ain’t doing a template engine that replaces WPs. And what WP regards external API differs. Codex says the hook systems is an API. Mark says its not etc. WP itself is more like a platform. Like Android or something.
Also if I were to use the interface approach I could call all WP functions to my hearts desire. Hence the case for dynamic linking.

I can see situations where the dynamic linking argument becomes tricky.
1. If someone creates 1 or more CMS applications which have identical plugin hook & filters to WordPress, but under a different license – that might sound like a lot of work, but maybe someone in the Habari project might decide they want people to use WordPress plugins in some way. You wouldn’t need all hooks/filters to make a few waves as a large number of plugins use common output hooks for header/footer, or work with data such as the post content.
2. Very simple plugins – as an example filtering the_content() or hooking wp_footer() to add a Rick Astley video from Youtube

In the first case I have no idea what might be the final result – I suppose it would come down to effect on the market & intent – it isn’t theoretical either, there is a project out there.

In the second case it doesn’t have any effect on the market place – the amount of code/data doesn’t really matter e.g. HD DVD DRM Key & Digg fun 3 years ago.

If you can somehow come up with a templating engine which only works using what WordPress regard as external APIs, good luck to you.

In some ways it isn’t that hard – even at my level of programming incompetence I could create something that outputs content with embedded tokens that could then be used to add theme elements as a 3rd party application.

Matt Mullenweg himself pointed out this is possible 6 days ago on Neville’s post
http://www.nevillehobson.com/2010/07/16/what-is-community-worth-to-you/#comment-62596376

If you want to “out” potential competitors please do it on your own blog though many of the projects are hardly invisible. I am sure many of them are considering their choices right now.

Out potential competitors? Again with the unfounded conclusions. It was to make a point. I don’t consider them violators of any license. I have not read any ranting on their choice of license thats all. Which is why I think has more to do with the person Chris.

Then the astute among my readers would recognise that the legal precedent set in Jacobsen was that Katzer when they copied the GPL data, didn’t include the GPL license. A competent judge has determined that that was a breach of the DMCA because they removed copy protection.

Different subjects. Datafunction names. Even your astute readers would know that.

Whether I agree with that verdict or not, as far as I can understand (I am not a lawyer) that is a legal precedent, possibly set in the same jurisdiction as someone related to the WP project such as the Free Software Foundation might use.

Again different subject. Data versus function names. If I write a book I can’t use names for my characters that has already been used by other authors?

You can relese your themes that use the Framework under MIT if you want, but I have a feeling (& again I am not a lawyer) the framework itself would need to be GPL, or at least the sections that interface directly with WordPress.

It depends. If I use actual code it would have to be GPL. Otherwise no. You know dynamic linking and all that. If not read about it. Reread Chip Bennetts article. He aint making stuff up and actual lawyers, OSI representatives, law departments on universities all think the same way.

I have no idea whether you read my previous post but as far as I am concerned that is still pissing in the WordPress well – 7 years of WordPress developers contributions under a license they can’t themselves change, and you on an ego trip to prove a point want to release under a different license.

I have contributed a little to WP core one change got in others did not for the 3.0 version. And will probably do more in the future.

And its not an ego trip. What a stupid accusation.
php.MVC uses LGPL, Ruby on Rails,CakePHP uses MIT, CodeIgniter uses Apache/BSD license. Its standard to use that sort of license for frameworks.
So again you jump to unfounded conclusions.

Those themes are 100% “free” as in you have access to source code, gfx & css licensed GPL. Thus yo wouldn’t be limited on the number of sites you can use a particular theme on, or how you could modify it.

They all have various support options, many have a one-time fee for unlimited access, others have some kind of subscription for updates.

If you were flipping a site… there would be no “tax” on the new owner as there might be with one of the themes with a split license, though for theme updates they might have to join whichever site you got the theme you used from.

To be honest it was probably one of my most disjointed posts – my hope is that the decision to go GPL was made well before I posted and that it was unnecessary, though some parts of it I had been holding back for a long long time. I am not vain enough to think it had time to influence any decisions.

I have always understood the attraction of premium themes, I have a few premium theme memberships myself, and I have purchased tons of premium plugins.

My primary concern is not so much the freedom to distribute if something gets abandoned (though if that didn’t happen with B2, there would be no WordPress) but having access to source and ability to modify without restriction for my own use.
I also am not a huge fan of credit links I don’t have a choice over, even more so if it is something I have paid for – they can be a little restrictive with certain linking structures I like to play around with.

As an affiliate I also have real problems promoting something that doesn’t at least meet my own requirements in licensing… I am not a GPL fanboy though it is something I chose to use because it was the right thing to do.