Timber! (More on Number 10’s website)

Here is the output of a Linux command called tree on the original contents of the theme that NMM claim to only have used the stylesheet from1.

~/Desktop/dev_area/networker-10$ tree -phDC
.
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 24K  Jun 21 2007] How To Post Images In This Theme.doc
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 1.0K Jul 11 2007] archive.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 397  Aug 17 2007] archives.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 4.0K Jul 8  2007] comments.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 147  Jul 11 2007] footer.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 80   Jun 5  2007] functions.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 1.7K Jul 12 2007] header.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 267  Jul 12 2007] ie6.css
|-- [drwxr-xr-x 232  Aug 17 2007] images
|   |-- [-rw-r--r-- 88K  Jul 12 2007] Thumbs.db
|   |-- [-rw-r--r-- 2.0K Jul 12 2007] ad_space.gif
|   |-- [-rw-r--r-- 217  Jun 18 2007] bullet.gif
|   |-- [-rw-r--r-- 398  Jun 22 2007] nav_hover.gif
|   |-- [-rw-r--r-- 1.3K Jun 6  2007] sub_rss.gif
|   `-- [-rw-r--r-- 4.3K Jul 12 2007] wp.gif
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 1.1K Jul 9  2007] index.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 18K  Jun 13 2007] license.rtf
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 700  Jul 11 2007] page.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 60K  Jun 13 2007] screenshot.png
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 946  May 10 2007] search.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 257  May 10 2007] searchform.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 2.5K Jul 12 2007] sidebar.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 1.3K Jul 11 2007] single.php
|-- [-rw-r--r-- 2.4K Feb 2  2007] sitemap.php
`-- [-rw-r--r-- 9.6K Jul 12 2007] style.css

I thought I would try to find out just how much of Anthony’s theme is still there. Not being much of a hacker myself, all I have done is simply added each of the file names above to a URL that points to the location of the theme directory in the Firefox navigation bar. So the whole URL in the bar looks like this:  http://www.number10.gov.uk/wp-content/themes/networker-10/filename-to-look-for.

If you try and open a non-existent file, you get a “404” not found message as one would expect. Anything else means the file is present. The way php works however makes it very hard to tell what the contents of the .php files are.

Guess what? There is an awful lot of Anthony’s content still on Number 10’s website. Here’s what I found when comparing the response I got from Number 10 to the original files in the theme package:

  • How To Post Images In This Theme.doc:
    Files are identical and there is a really interesting comment at the bottom of this file that is just so ironic: “to give credit where credit is due, I borrowed this idea from Chris Pearson who is the author of the Cutline theme.
  • archive.php:
    File exists and returns a blank page.
  • archives.php:
    File isn’t present, returns 404.
  • comments.php:
    File present and returns exactly the same response text as is written in the original file: “Please do not load this page directly. Thanks!”
  • footer.php:
    File present and returns a blank page.
  • functions.php:
    File present and returns a blank page.
  • header.php:
    File present, returns a blank page.
  • ie6.css:
    File present, has been modified greatly and Anthony’s header has been removed! But it does contain an identical first line of css styling: #content, #sidebar { overflow: hidden; }
    . Note the spacing and line breaks etc
  • /images
    • Thumbs.db:
      Files are identical.
    • ad_space.gif:
      Files are identical.
    • bullet.gif:
      Files are identical.
    • nav_hover.gif:
      Files are identical.
    • sub_rss.gif:
      Files are identical.
    • wp.gif:
      Files are identical.
  • index.php:
    File present, and returns a blank page.
  • license.rtf:
    File is present and the files are identical. Yet, the copyright notice of the site states “Crown Copyright! so which applies here?
  • page.php:
    File present and returns a blank page.
  • screenshot.png:
    This one is really funny… files are identical.
  • search.php:
    Not present, returns 404.
  • searchform.php:
    Not present, returns 404.
  • sidebar.php:
    File present and returns “Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter to keep updated with the latest information from Number 10, Click here to subscribe”. The HTML source retains comments from the original.
  • single.php:
    File present and returns blank page.
  • sitemap.php:
    File present and returns XHTML header information the same as in the original.
  • style.css:
    File present, as we know already.

So, out of 24 files in the original theme package, only three files have been removed. If you look here in the comments from my post of yesterday, you can read what Dave Smith of NMM said:

1. The only file that was drawn upon from Ant’s theme was the css file.

Now clearly some of the files above will be pre-requisites for any WordPress theme (like index.php for example) but 21 out of 24?.

I’m sure I can smell something quite smelly around here.

Tags: , ,

25 Comments

  • Colin says:

    Nice find!

  • Jack Hughes says:

    WOW!

    >File is present and the files are identical. Yet, the copyright notice of the site states “Crown Copyright! so which applies here?

    If you don’t own the copyright, you can’t change the copyright to be owned by somebody else. That’s the basis that all copyleft licences are based upon…as a recent legal case in the USA upheld.

  • Mike Little says:

    Alan,

    You obviously still think there is some violation here, but you are really missing the way php and WordPress themes work, if you think your ‘evidence’ here proves anything.

    Firstly, the reason most of the file names exist in the theme used on the Number 10 site is because those are the filenames required or recommended for a WordPress theme. See the official WordPress documentation resource here http://codex.wordpress.org/Stepping_Into_Templates and http://codex.wordpress.org/Image:Template_Hierarchy.png

    So, the fact that those files exist only means that a decent comprehensive theme has been created.

    As for the other (non-standard) files, I’ll address them now:
    * None of Anthony’s images are used on the Number 10 site. They have just been left in the original directory.
    * The fact that the license.rtf file is there is actually part of the license terms – so they are doing right by having exactly the same file (which is not Anthony’s file)
    * Thumbs.db is a Windows file and nothing to do with the theme.
    * The non-standard sitemap.php is clearly not used, as the Number 10 sitemap is nothing like that which would be produced by Anthony’s theme.
    * Interesting you mention the sidebar.php file: The fact that their sidebar file produces completely different content from Anthony’s really demonstrates how they haven’t used his file. The one thing in common (a comment introducing the sidebar div) is present in at least three other themes I have by other people.
    * The screenshot is only used in the back end and only of interest if you have multiple themes and you want to switch between them. Clearly not relevant here.
    * The “How to post images” document is clearly not part of the theme, and in fact they don’t use the technique described. But most interesting is the mention of Chris Pearson’s Cutline theme, see my next point.
    * Finally we come to ie6.css. The one from which you point out Anthony’s header has been removed. What is interesting is that Chris Pearson’s Cutline theme contains the same file with Chris Pearson’s header! Anthony has taken Chris’ file, and changed Chris’ name and url for his own. Admittedly only 1 of the 3 CSS lines is exactly the same as Chris’s, but it is the one that is the same in the Number 10 version. However, while Anthony has ‘taken’ 33% of Chris’ file and claimed it as his own, the number 10 ie6.css has less than 2% (3 out of 233 lines) the same as Anthony’s, and they haven’t tried to claim it is theirs.

    So in conclusion, your experiment with the files has proven nothing about the files in the number 10 theme, other than to highlight the place where NMM *have* complied with the CC licence, and the file that Anthony has clearly ‘ripped off’ Chris Pearson.

    But here is a useful experiment you could try with the Network theme you downloaded: install it on your blog (or a test one). Then enable it. Now look at the footer. What does it say? I happen to know it will say

    Copyright 2007 The Open Sourcerer. Design by Anthony Bagget.

    That’s two sentences: The first looks like you claiming copyright last year. Stop! Thief! Or maybe this is meant to imply the copyright of the *content* of the blog is by the owner of the blog. Oh! Maybe that makes sense now. Just like the Crown Copyright notice on the Number 10 site is about the *content* of their site.

    And the second sentence says the design is by Anthony.

    And the design of the Network theme clearly is by Anthony. The design of the Number 10 site is clearly not by Anthony. Though they did use an amount of his CSS file style.css. They may have even used most of it, though that is a maximum of 20% of their style sheet (600 lines versus 3800 lines). But, hey guess what, they left his header intact, thus complying with the attribution part of the licence.

    And while you still have the theme enabled, view source and take a look at the HTML mark up produced by the theme. The structure is very clearly different from the number 10 site, from the order of things in the page to the class names of the elements (apart from the elements produced by WordPress itself!).

    Alan, please admit there is no violation here (Anthony does), and stop flogging this dead horse.

  • Alan Lord says:

    @Mike,

    Thanks for commenting. As I clearly stated in this post “… some of the files above will be pre-requisites for any WordPress theme”

    I was interested in analysing Dave Smith’s comment that they “only used “the” css file”. It seems quite obvious to me that they haven’t.

    They took the theme, edited and changed it as they saw fit (which they are perfectly entitled to do) but have not ‘done the right thing’ by providing appropriate attribution.

    Anthony probably could have been more explicit with his footer (I noted your comment on his blog about this) but he didn’t actually do anything wrong did he?

    It is pretty irrelevant how much or little of the original theme remains. The “decent” thing to do is, as I said yesterday:

    “the right (as in decent, proper, common) practice in these circumstances is to attribute the work in a suitable manner. Such as a simple line somewhere on the site saying something like: “This website is based on an original idea by…”.”

    Anthony hasn’t admitted there is no violation. His reasons for not wanting to pursue this are his own and, as I have commented on his blog, I respect greatly. But I don’t recall him saying he saw no violation. His words were:

    “To Dave: I’m publicly apologizing for the part I took in this. My pride is not worth trying to make you look bad. You told me what happened, and I wish I had just taken your word for it. I don’t need to examine the code to say that.”

    This isn’t a dead horse, far from it. It is a big deal. Copyright and Open Source or “The Commons” are not mutually exclusive.

  • Mike Little says:

    Alan,

    You are right that Anthony does not state their is no violation (my bad), but he has stopped flogging the dead horse.

    As I pointed out (with references) *most* of the files are common to WP themes. BTW that second link should be to the diagram here

    I do not know how the common file names lead you to the conclusion that they have used *any* of the PHP files from Anthony’s theme. You can tell *nothing* about the content of the files from your experiment.

    However if you install the theme, look at the HTML produced by the code, and compare that with the HTML from the Number 10 site, you can see that there is almost no commonality.
    That is a fact verifiable by experiment, I urge you to try it.

    Where these is commonality most of it is the HTML produced internally by WordPress, and the rest is common structure you would use in any columnar WordPress theme (for example, in my WP themes download directory, I have 107 occurrences of a footer div with the id “footer”)

    Some things on the Number 10 site that would be specific to Anthony’s theme, like the sitemap page, and the footer, *could not* have been produced by Anthony’s code. This is another verifiable fact. One can only conclude they have not used his files for those parts of the site.

    The same experiments can be carried out for most of the rest of the site, if you understand the way WordPress uses theme files to produce the content (and I do), you can work out *exactly* which of Anthony’s theme files would be used to produce the HTML. And you can see that the HTML on those pages *could not* have been produced with Anthony’s files. This is verifiable fact.

    You cannot claim a violation of a legal copyright licence on one hand and then state “It is pretty irrelevant how much or little of the original theme remains” on the other. It very much *does* matter how much or how little of Anthony’s theme has been used. And the piece that has been used, style.css, from which their style sheet has clearly been derived, does in fact comply with the (implied) license and credit Anthony. And they retain the licence file to comply with that requirement.

    NMM *have* done the decent and proper thing by retaining Anthony’s attribution in style.css. And as I and others have pointed out – Anthony doesn’t even state that his theme is provided under the CC-BY-AS 3 licence in the theme zip. You are left to imply that by the presence of the licence file. Nor does he specify what, if any, specific attribution he requires.

  • Alan Lord says:

    @Mike, (I removed a dupe of your comment that was missing a closing tag – hope that is OK?)

    I appreciate your diligence yet fail to understand your point. I don’t think I concluded that *any* particular files were or were not used in the new theme for #10. I just looked to see if anything *other” than the css file may have been a contributing factor.

    I have written and edited more than one Joomla! template and have a reasonable understanding of how PHP sites work so I was not surprised about the repetition of file names or class tags etc which is why I made the point about pre-requisites…

    I don’t recall reading anywhere in CC-by-sa that there is a limit to the percentage of the amount of original work that constitutes a derivative work, I think I read somewhere recently that it doesn’t need to amount to much. But if you have a figure for it, that would be great to know.

    We will obviously have to agree to differ about whether NMM have done the right thing or not. I believe they haven’t. You believe they have. That’s freedom of speech and that is fine by me 🙂

    NMM haven’t disclosed (to my knowledge) any information about the individuals who did the “re-design” of the original theme for them. And they also haven’t responded to my question regarding the purity of the backend WP code and if #10 is now the proud owner of their own proprietary fork of WordPress. Your passionate and welcome contributions to this discussion, the comment on your home page: “I am particular about standards and “doing the right thing.” and your obvious deep knowledge of WordPress make me think about the position you are taking in this debate. Did you have anything to do with the Number 10 website?

  • Slated says:

    “None of Anthony’s images are used on the Number 10 site. They have just been left in the original directory.”

    Copyright law pertains to distribution, not just use. The fact that those files are on that server at all means that NMM are subject to the terms of the original author’s copyright. That copyright covers the entire work, not just a couple of lines in a single file, regardless of how heavily modified that file may be … it is nonetheless a derivative work.

    “You cannot claim a violation of a legal copyright licence on one hand and then state “It is pretty irrelevant how much or little of the original theme remains” on the other. It very much *does* matter how much or how little of Anthony’s theme has been used.”

    No it doesn’t. A derivative work is a derivative work. Period. NMM have admitted the No10 site is a derivative of Anthony’s copyrighted work, and the cc-by-sa is crystal clear about attribution being retained “prominently” (yes the license explicitly uses that word). What NMM is doing is not “decent” at all, in fact it’s highly indecent plagiarism.

    What exactly is the problem here? How difficult can it possibly be to put the phrase “Site theme based on NetWorker, © 2007 Anthony Baggett, cc-by-sa license” in the footer? I mean it’s not like it’s going to cost NMM a single penny, is it? To ignore this simple request is pure malice. Add that to their other less than admirable qualities, such as lying; incompetence and plagiarism, and one can only conclude that this company has conducted itself in a grossly unprofessional manner, that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

    Let’s put it this way; NMM were more than happy to benefit from Anthony’s work (and yes that means they got paid), but when it comes time to pay the bill (attribute Anthony prominently, just like it stipulates in the license, just like he intended, and just like he actually was before NMM removed that attribution), they run away like muggers snatching an old lady’s handbag.

    If I were Gordon Brown, I’d want to clear up this mess ASAP, by distancing myself from these plagiarists as much as possible, and insisting that the correct copyright attribution is restored to No10’s Website immediately, before this whole sorry mess affects his own – and the government’s – reputation.

  • Slated says:

    Alan, could you please fix the closing bold tag, after the word “use” in my previous post, as I screwed it up. Thanks.

  • Alan Lord says:

    @Slated. Done. Thanks for your contributions. They are most welcome.

  • Root says:

    The comments on behalf of NMA are laughable. The work is of such poor quality from almost every standpoint it is simply indefensible. The shoddy treatment of the open source ethos is only part of it. 66 validation errors on the home page? Give me a break. White text on black bg. Have these guys even heard of the DDA? The worst bit is how the contract was awarded in the first place. A glance at the NMA site reveals they are typical new media types full of hype about digital pr and the like with no real experience in web dev. But oh – the head honcho recently came from 10 Downing Street or something. I helped the Homeland Security Department in the US set up their WP blog. Government contract or not – a blog is just a blog.
    Millions of home hackers could do a better job than the Armani suited pony tails at a fancy PR agency in oh so achingly cool Hoxton. The real damage is the harm to the open source movement – and the prospects for smaller more creative agencies to work with big organisations including Government. If the figures being bandied about are right my agency would have done the job for about 10% of what those guys did. They made out like bandits.

  • Mike Little says:

    @Alan, no, I do not have anything to do with the site or NMA. But I do work for a company who do produce software for local Government.
    I think the fantasy conclusion you leapt to about the alledged ‘uberpress’ should have tipped me off: You have an axe to grind, and you will grind it regardless of facts or the details of the law.
    As for the version of WordPress, my understanding is that a government agency vetted it for security flaws (as is routine) and that any issues found will already have been shared with Automattic. No paranoia required!

    @slated, you point out on Anthony’s blog how he should correctly publish his works under the licence he wishes. And by implication that he didn’t, as I point out myself in a number of places.
    His theme does not have a copyright notice (though no-one has disputed his copyright claim), and it clearly only attributed that the design was by him in the footer, and the design of the Number 10 site is equally clearly not his design. Once again, the single piece of derived work (the css file) retains his attribution. That’s a fact. Are you claiming it doesn’t?

    @root, the quality of the site is not relevant to the issue. You can speculate/fantasise on how the contract was awarded, what hairstyles people have, and how much development experience people have; but it has no bearing on the alleged copyright violation. One that the copyright holder is not interested in persuing.

    I give up! I forgot one cannot reason with conspiracy theorists.

  • Alan Lord says:

    @Mike, thanks for the response about your non-involvement. However, I did not jump to any conclusion and please stop making false statements. I actually posed a question and did request that I be informed if this was off the mark: “… or are in fact running some uberpress code that has been made ultra-secure and “top secret”. If I am wrong about this please let me know, it is just an assumption on my behalf…”. Nobody has answered, apart from yourself and despite the fact you claim to have not been involved, you seem to know about the process that took place, which is interesting. I was not, and am not paranoid; just inquisitive and interested in seeing fair play.

    I have no “axe to grind” with people who play fairly. I do take issue however with a company that has accepted that they have used someone else’s work and have not provided fair attribution for the original contribution. It’s quite simple and I said before, I really don’t understand why you are adopting this position. From what I can tell and have read, you are a lone voice in a sea of dissatisfaction with the actions of NMM.

    Where did the “conspiracy theorists” come from BTW? NMM have admitted they used Anthony’s theme. All anyone seems to be requesting is that a fair and decent attribution of the original work is provided.

    Please don’t give up. I would really like to understand why you take the position you do and I am sure others would too.

  • Root says:

    You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to conclude that the Government has poured a bucketful of the the taxpayers hard earned money at a half assed pr agency led by one of its own recently departed servants. That is the *crime*. And that is the real story. To suggest that the legacy WP version was somehow approved by the security experts is absolutely farcical.
    And RFLMAO – Mike Little was a founder of WP. Oh the irony.

  • Slated says:

    @Mike

    “you point out on Anthony’s blog how he should correctly publish his works under the licence he wishes. And by implication that he didn’t”

    Well your inference is wrong. What I actually wrote was:

    [quote]
    For the sake of certain “people” who don’t know how to read and/or like to blatantly disregard licenses, I recommend you paste this comment into all your files:

    “Pursuant to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license (cc-by-sa) under which this software is licensed, please ensure that the following copyright notice is retained and displayed prominently on the site in which this software, or derivatives thereof, is published: NetWorker WordPress Theme, Copyright © 2007 Anthony Baggett, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.”
    [/quote]

    What part of “pursuant to the terms of the Creative Commons” suggests to you that this is anything more than a reiteration of that license, for the benefit of “certain people who don’t know how to read and/or like to blatantly disregard licenses”?

    You seem to have either a reading or comprehension difficulty, or perhaps like Dave Smith you just like miss-attributing things for your own benefit. Which is it?

    “His theme does not have a copyright notice (though no-one has disputed his copyright claim), and it clearly only attributed that the design was by him in the footer”

    You “clearly” don’t understand copyright law in the slightest. Here, let me help you:

    [quote]
    Automatic protection

    There is no official registration system for copyright in the United Kingdom (UK) and most other parts of the world. There are no forms to fill in and no fees to pay to get copyright protection.

    So long as you have created a work that qualifies for copyright protection, that is it falls into one of the categories of material protected by copyright, you will have copyright protection without having to do anything to establish this. It is a requirement of various international conventions on copyright that copyright should be automatic with no need to register.
    [/quote]

    http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy/c-claim/c-auto.htm

    The mere existence of Anthony’s claim of “attribution” in footer.php is his “copyright” assertion. He only has to state that he is the author/creator/designer to have that work protected by copyright. But being “protected” by law does not necessarily give him the automatic right of redress (certainly not in the US where he lives). Under the terms of the Berne Convention he does have the automatic right of redress against violators in other countries (such as the UK) though. However, his “right” does not necessarily mean he has the financial means to pursue litigation. I’d suggest that this is one of the main reasons he’s dropped the matter. Certainly a violation has occurred, since the component of his copyrighted work that prominently displayed his attribution (and therefore copyright assertion) has been deliberately removed by NMM, and replaced with an entirely different copyright notice.

    “and the design of the Number 10 site is equally clearly not his design.”

    But it is equally “clearly” a derivative of his work, which NMM have admitted, and in this instance this is the only relevant consideration from a copyright perspective.

    “Once again, the single piece of derived work (the css file) retains his attribution.”

    Once again, the prominent display of his attribution, as explicitly required by both the license and Anthony’s express wishes, has been deliberately removed by NMM, and replaced by only a single explicit copyright notice that attributes copyright to the Crown. That is a violation of the license, a violation of the author’s wishes, and plagiarism. Period. And it’s entirely inconsequential what proportion of the original work remains intact. It is a derivative work nonetheless, no matter how you attempt to belittle it. If this tiny; “single piece of derived work” is so inconsequential, then why does NMM continue to use it, especially given the furore they’ve caused with this copyright violation? Surely it would be simpler for them to just drop this “tiny” component and write their own from scratch. So why don’t they?

    Hmm.

    “That’s a fact. Are you claiming it doesn’t?”

    I’m not denying the facts, it’s you who’s avoiding the pertinent ones, and apparently failing to grasp the remainder.

    Let’s say I write a piece of software, that has a GUI with a splash screen and/or an “about” dialogue box with my copyright notice prominently displayed therein, and which also contains a copyright notice in one or more of the source files. Then let’s assume that you take that software under appropriate development license, where the license stipulates that you must retain prominent attribution to me. But in fact you actually remove that prominent notice from the splashscreen and “about” box, and replace it with your own, attributing copyright to yourself. You then attempt to justify this violation with the excuse that “oh, but the copyright notices are still in the source files”. But the problem is that no one other than you will ever see those source files, therefore prominent attribution has been lost, and the explicit terms for prominent attribution in the license have been violated. The net effect is plagiarism, since for all intents and purposes, the users of that software will only ever be aware of your copyright notice, not the original author’s upon which this derivative work is based. You have prominent attribution, but the original author does not, because you deliberately removed and replaced it.

    This is exactly what NMM have done with Anthony’s NetWorker theme.

    Think for a moment about the term “copyright notice”, and in particular the word “notice”. A “notice” that cannot be seen is, by definition, not any kind of notice at all, since it does not fulfil the purpose of notification. How many visitors to the No10 Website are going to play “guess the URL” to find that “style.css” file containing Anthony’s attribution (copyright) notice? Other than the handful of people involved in this dispute, I’d say none. Therefore that is not any kind of notification; it is not prominent attribution; the work has essentially been plagiarised.

    And the mind-bending thing of it is, that the solution is trivially (indeed pitifully) easy … and completely free too. Restoring the proper attribution will cost NMM nothing, either in time; money or any other form of resource.

    So why don’t they do it?

    And now, ex post facto, NMM are also (in addition to the requirements of the license they violated) aware of Anthony’s express wish to be prominently attributed in exactly the same fashion as before (i.e. they shouldn’t have changed the copyright notice), and yet NMM are still refusing to cooperate.

    Why?

    What does that say about the kind of mentality of the “good” people at NMM?

    Now that I’ve spelled it out for you, virtually one letter at a time, please tell me that you finally understand why this is a problem, particularly for work licensed under the cc-by-sa, whose entire raison d’être is attribution.

  • Mike Little says:

    @Alan, my knowledge of the security check, and the promise to pass on any findings to Automattic, comes from an announcement at the end of a presentation by Simon Dickson at WordCamp UK in July.

    On Dave’s post about the subject, section 6, second paragraph, he states “Given the security issues surrounding the project, i cannot release the theme code we developed to you,”, (my emphasis), yet you speculate about an secret version of WordPress.

    You even say “They are now stuck with a version which will get harder and harder to maintain, and will ultimately be less secure than the publicly developed OSS code that has the world’s eyes watching and improving it every dayÂ….”. That’s not asking a question. That’s making an inflammatory statement based on your earlier speculation. By the way WordPress is GPL licensed Free Software not OSS, there is a fundamental difference, one which is at the heart of this issue: you cannot require attribution for GPL licensed works.

    You say “NMM have admitted they used Anthony’s theme.” No, they haven’t, they have admitted evaluating Anthony’s theme and using his CSS (which they attributed to him), see section 3 of Dave’s statement. And the evidence backs them up in this.

    Once again, I urge you to install Anthony’s theme in a populated blog, compare the generated HTML with the HTML generated by NMM’s theme, and evaluate whether the Number 10 site could have been generated from Anthony’s PHP code.

    This is verifiable evidence you can check for yourself, regardless of rights, wrongs, or anything else.

  • Mike Little says:

    @slated, OK, I phrased my point wrongly. I understand he has automatic copyright in his work without needing a copyright statement. I do understand copyright law as far as my non lawyer mind can. My point was that he didn’t have a copyright statement in the theme in his name. Yet, you claim “they shouldn’t have changed the copyright notice”, and others have claimed that “his copyright statement was removed”. There is no copyright notice in the theme. Your suggestion in you comment on his blog, is what he should have done to make it clear which licence his work is published under. But he didn’t do that with the Networker theme.

    Here is the corrected version of what I meant to say, (I tried to avoid being critical of Anthony at a time when he feels a victim of all this), “Anthony did not release his Networker theme version 1.0 under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence version 3. There is no indication which licence it is published under. The file license.rtf included in the zip, might imply that he means to specify this license, but as you point out, it is titled one thing and contains the content of another. It is hard to be clear what is intended when it is not clearly stated.

    But I read the content of the file, and base my comments on that content. Here are some pertinent points from that file:

    Section 4 paragraph 2: “You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License” — There are no notices that refer to the licence.

    Section 4 paragraph 2: “you must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work” — there are no copyright notices.

    Section 4 paragraph 3: which is all about credit and attribution but too long to quote here, but does say this: “Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit.”

    And that is exactly what NMM did: Anthony’s credit/attribution is exactly as prominent as it was in the original work: in the CSS file.

    You state “Once again, the prominent display of his attribution, as explicitly required by both the license and Anthony’s express wishes, has been deliberately removed by NMM, and replaced by only a single explicit copyright notice that attributes copyright to the Crown.”

    This is the crux of my point, and my belief that NMM have not violated any licence conditions: They haven’t removed his attribution, because they are not using his footer (or any of his PHP files). The Crown copyright is not anything to do with NMM – Here is a link to the wayback machine’s archive of the Number 10 site copyright page from January 2008. Clearly not a WordPress page created by NMM. Clearly stating the material on the site is Crown Copyright. Not the theme, not WordPress, not Apache or PHP. Not created by NMM and therefore NMM are NOT claiming that the Crown own the copyright of the theme as you state.

    Your example of you writing a piece of software with a splash screen sounds great, but is not applicable. There are some problems with your analogy, firstly the license in this case states “at least as prominent as”, which is very different from your example “you must retain prominent attribution”. A more appropriate analogy might be if I took the file handling routines from your software, but all the rest of the application was my code. And if your source files contained your copyright notice and license statement, and I provided those source files with my application. Of course if your licence explicitly required a prominent attribution, I would have to follow those requirements.

    But the CC licence does not “require a prominent attribution”, merely one “at least as prominent” as the original. That is exactly what NMM have done. Anthony’s attribution remains in the derived CSS file.

    I hope I have spelled out for you why I believe there is no licence violation:
    * The work was not explicitly licensed.
    * The new work derived from the original (the single CSS file) actually meets the requirements implied by the presence of the file license.rtf

  • Mike Little says:

    @Alan, @slated, ok it’s really only ‘root’ who is seeing conspiracies.

    But both of you use inflammatory phrases and speculation about this matter. And those things seem to me to be designed to stir up the less diligent reader who will take your cleverly phrased questions as hard facts.

    I am a fervent supporter of GPL and CC licences, copyleft, and software freedom (I’m a fully paid up member of the FSF) but mis-representing any of these licenses, and seeing violations where there are none, do nothing to help the cause.

    On a general note, I believe this issue is a classic illustration of why the CC licences are not appropriate for software, just as the GPL is not appropriate for a song or a literary work of fiction. The CC family are great for songs, artwork, and books, but just unworkable for software.

    And I do urge you both to take that step of installing Anthony’s theme and checking the HTML, I outline above.

  • Alan Lord says:

    @Mike,

    I’m glad you decided not to give up! 😉

    That’s interesting you mention Puffbox. I kept coming back to their site on several occasions last night whilst doing further research… More later 🙂

    With regards to Dave’s point about the “theme code” I can read too. I have just trawled back through various other sites where I am sure I read a comment by Dave that suggested (or it might have even more strongly worded) more than just the theme had been code had been changed. So that is where my query arose. Unfortunately I can’t find the original source yet. I’ll keep looking though.

    Where you quote me as saying “You even say “They are now stuck with…” I find it really strange why you continue to not read the full sentences/paragraphs. I started that paragraph with an If and I concluded it with: “I hope I am wrong and the backend is a regular WordPress release but if it isn’t, then Downing Street really have been sold a pup and are not using Open Source code at all.”

    Thanks for correcting my error regarding OSS and Free Software. I do realise the distinction, but to be frank, most consider the two interchangeable and OSS is certainly more widely used a term than “Free Software” and free is very easy to misunderstand in this context.

    Regarding who used what from where, there are multiple points here. There is the odd comment tag left lying around that pops up in the HTML, so I would guess that they didn’t just evaluate. They have also left all of the original images, text documents etc. lying around too. That isn’t really just evaluating, that’s copying and using the bits that you need in my book.

    As I have said repeatedly, the design of the Number 10 site a derivative work. No one is contradicting that. The issue is about fair attribution and there is a copyright notice in Anthony’s footer (will this get eaten by the comment system? It is the line of php code from the original footer if it does get mangled):
    ” Copyright © 2007 <?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?>. Design by <a href=”http://antbag.com/”>Anthony Baggett</a>” which clearly contains his name.

    Removing this line (or perhaps not including it somewhere equally as prominent) is breaching his copyright. Number 10’s site is a derivative work.

    Oh yes, I still haven’t heard from you what the percentage of the original work needs to be included before it becomes derivative. Although I have looked, I can’t find it anywhere either. 😉

  • Slated says:

    @Mike

    Good grief! Every single point you made above is utterly; utterly wrong … by a huge factor. It’s like you haven’t read anything I wrote at all, much less understood it. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

    First you say:

    “I understand he has automatic copyright in his work without needing a copyright statement.”

    But then you make this contradicting statement:

    “he didn’t have a copyright statement in the theme in his name.”

    But as I’ve already tried to explain to you … his “attribution” in both style.css and footer.php is his “copyright notice”, according to the law, since he only needs to state he is the author to have that work copyrighted.

    You seem to think that it can’t be a copyright assertion unless it contains the word “copyright” or the “©” symbol. Please refer again to the IPO, or better yet call them and ask them directly … please. Hopefully they’ll have better luck getting you to accept and understand this than I apparently have.

    By asserting authorship of his work, that work is automatically protected by copyright, regardless of the presence or lack thereof of the word “copyright”. That copyright protects him in accordance with the license under which the software is distributed, and the license as provided in “license.rtf” demands the original attribution is “at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit“, which in this case it is not, in fact it is not visible to casual site visitors at all, much less “prominently” so.

    “Yet, you claim “they shouldn’t have changed the copyright notice”, and others have claimed that “his copyright statement was removed”. There is no copyright notice in the theme.”

    You keep repeating this nonsense.

    According to copyright law, merely stating that you are the creator of a work is sufficient to give you copyright status. It’s right there in black and white on the UK IPO Website. Why do you have so much difficulty understanding that?

    “Your suggestion in you comment on his blog, is what he should have done to make it clear which licence his work is published under. But he didn’t do that with the Networker theme.”

    He did everything he was supposed to do. He simply didn’t account for stupid; unethical or predatory people who would exploit his work illegally, so I proposed something to make it clearer to such people. That’s all. It’s NMM who have made a choice to ignore Anthony’s license terms, not Anthony who failed to state those terms. You’re just making excuses for them.

    “Anthony did not release his Networker theme version 1.0 under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence version 3. There is no indication which licence it is published under.

    Yes there is. The work is licensed under the terms described in “license.rtf”, which is a legally binding document that forms part of the entire covered work. NetWorker is distributed as a package, both in technical and legal terms. You cannot arbitrarily rip pieces of it out to try to avoid the licensing terms, especially when the piece that is ripped out is the attribution that is the copyright assertion.

    “The file license.rtf included in the zip, might imply” that he means to specify this license”

    It’s doesn’t “imply” anything. It is unambiguously the factual and legal document that applies to the rest of the covered work in the most obvious fashion, since it forms an inextricable part of that package’s distribution. License files are the standard means of conveying copyright assertion for nearly every Free Software package in existence (a fact that I would have assumed that you of all people would understand), and even most proprietary software too. To take a sideways glance at license files whilst proclaiming that you’re “not sure” if they apply, is the most arrogant and obtuse thing I’ve ever heard, and I think you’ll find that any good lawyer would rip you and that pathetic defence to pieces in seconds.

    “but as you point out, it is titled one thing and contains the content of another.”

    Irrelevant. Now you’re just making excuses by clutching at straws. I could include the body of the cc-by-sa, but call it the “NMM are a bunch of Plagiarists – license Version 1.0”, it would make zero difference to the defensibility of those terms, since the terms of an individual license are whatever the author wishes them to be. The GPL, the cc-by-sa, or any other license document is only a template that suggests terms under which the author should license his work. I find it hard to believe that you’ve been involved with software development so long and yet cannot grasp that simple fact. The wording in “license.rtf” is the actual terms that apply, regardless of how it’s headed.

    “It is hard to be clear what is intended when it is not clearly stated.”

    It’s clear that the author mistakenly titled his license, it’s clear that those terms apply regardless of how they are titled, and it’s clear that you are trying to slither out of the issue by being deliberately obtuse.

    “Section 4 paragraph 2: “You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License” — There are no notices that refer to the licence.”

    There doesn’t need to be. The mere presence of license.rtf is all that is needed. You’ll notice that the license does not read “You must have notices to this license”, it merely states that if there are any then they must be left intact. Surely anyone with even an ounce of intelligence can deduce that.

    “Section 4 paragraph 2: “you must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work” — there are no copyright notices.”

    Why do you keep blatantly lying about this?

    As I’ve already pointed out, several times now, claiming authorship is a “copyright notice” as far as the law is concerned. You seem to be deliberately ignoring that fact.

    “Section 4 paragraph 3: which is all about credit and attribution but too long to quote here, but does say this: “Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit. And that is exactly what NMM did: Anthony’s credit/attribution is exactly as prominent as it was in the original work: in the CSS file.”

    This is a ludicrous conclusion, that you’ve misinterpreted and then misrepresented. “Comparable authorship” does not refer to the “same work” nor “as it was before”, it refers to other work that is supplemental to or a derivative of the original. The whole point of that entire paragraph is “derivative work”, as it quite clearly states. NMM have only maintained one part of the attribution in their derivative work, but they have removed the other which was far more important, since it was that removed part that actually displayed attribution prominently. You are simply comparing changes to a single component, whilst ignoring changes to the rest, but the copyright covers the whole work, not just conveniently selected parts of it. Given that under copyright law attribution == copyright, and that the only prominent copyright notice on that site is “Crown Copyright”, Anthony’s original attribution is therefore not displayed “as prominently” as “other comparable authorship credit”.

    “You state “Once again, the prominent display of his attribution, as explicitly required by both the license and Anthony’s express wishes, has been deliberately removed by NMM, and replaced by only a single explicit copyright notice that attributes copyright to the Crown.” They haven’t removed his attribution, because they are not using his footer (or any of his PHP files).”

    It’s is precisely because they are not using it, or an equivalent thereof, that they have removed his attribution from that part of his work that would otherwise have displayed it “as prominently” as their own.

    “The Crown copyright is not anything to do with NMM”

    That’s completely non-sequitur. The only copyright asserted explicitly on that site is “Crown Copyright”, regardless of who placed that copyright assertion there.

    “Here is a link to the wayback machine’s archive of the Number 10 site copyright page from January 2008. Clearly not a WordPress page created by NMM.”

    Irrelevant. We’re discussing the present situation, not the history of that page. Web pages, their contents, the software they run on, and the license terms under which all of the above are governed, may change over time. It is only the present which is relevant.

    “Clearly stating the material on the site is Crown Copyright. Not the theme, not WordPress, not Apache or PHP. Not created by NMM and therefore NMM are NOT claiming that the Crown own the copyright of the theme as you state.”

    But it is not clear at all, since the only explicit assertion of copyright is to the Crown, with only a vague disclaimer at the bottom regarding “any material on this site which is identified as being the copyright of a third party”. That’s perfectly acceptable for WordPress, Apache and PHP, since none of those works are distributed under licenses with attribution clauses, but Anthony’s NetWorker theme is, but that attribution is neither being maintained in the full and original manner, nor even “as prominently” as the only other explicit attribution on that site, “Crown Copyright”. Therefore although the Crown is not explicitly claiming copyright for NetWorker, they are nonetheless using a derivative of that work without attributing credit “as prominently” to the original author, as per the terms of the license for that work. Since they are not honouring the terms, then by implication they are claiming exclusive rights to that derivative work. In other words, unless anyone (we) knew anything to the contrary, it would appear that the Crown is claiming credit for that work. That is plagiarism.

    “Your example of you writing a piece of software with a splash screen sounds great, but is not applicable. There are some problems with your analogy, firstly the license in this case states “at least as prominent as”, which is very different from your example “you must retain prominent attribution”.”

    You really are being intolerably obtuse. Obviously credits in the splash screen and “about” dialogue box are more prominent than those hidden away in a source file that no one will ever see, and therefore removing the original attribution from those locations will mean that attribution is no longer “as prominent as” the new attribution for the derivative work.

    “A more appropriate analogy might be if I took the file handling routines from your software, but all the rest of the application was my code.”

    Irrelevant. You keep honing in on this idea that “size matters”. It doesn’t. A derivative work is a derivative work, no matter how “little” of the original remains, provided that what does remain is actually identifiable as having come from that original work. In this case, NMM have already admitted that their work is a derivative of Anthony’s NetWorker theme, so identification is moot.

    “And if your source files contained your copyright notice and license statement, and I provided those source files with my application.”

    But what if you don’t? You’ve presumed that my analogy was about Free Software, but it might just as easily have pertained to proprietary software. So where is the attribution for my work now? Do you see the problem yet?

    In the case of the derivative of Anthony’s theme, it might just as well be proprietary from the perspective of site visitors, since few of them will know how to access that file containing attribution to the original author. In fact it will probably not even occur to them to even try. Therefore Anthony’s attribution has been lost, because is is not being displayed “as prominently” as the Crown Copyright notice. In fact it isn’t being displayed at all.

    “Of course if your licence explicitly required a prominent attribution, I would have to follow those requirements. But the CC licence does not “require a prominent attribution”, merely one “at least as prominent” as the original.”

    Again this is entirely non-sequitur, since NMM are neither displaying Anthony’s attribution “prominently” nor “at least as prominently” as their own. If you’re going to waste time nit-picking in order to justify copyright violation, then at least try to have some kind of logical and factual basis for it.

    “That is exactly what NMM have done.”

    Rubbish, they have done no such thing.

    I see “Crown Copyright” on the No10 Website, but where is Anthony’s equally prominent attribution?

    “Anthony’s attribution remains in the derived CSS file.”

    Anthony’s attribution remains hidden away in the derived CSS file that no one will ever see. Meanwhile that other component that previously displayed his attribution has been surreptitiously removed.

    “I hope I have spelled out for you why I believe there is no licence violation:”

    No, you’ve spelled out that you will support NMM no matter what, even if they (and you) are completely wrong, as I and others have proved over an over again, despite their (and your) total inability to either accept or understand those conclusions.

    “* The work was not explicitly licensed.”

    Lie. The clear and unambiguous inclusion of the license file contains the legally binding terms for the entire covered work in that software distribution.

    “* The new work derived from the original (the single CSS file) actually meets the requirements implied by the presence of the file license.rtf”

    The “single CSS file” is not the “entire covered work”, and even the use of that “single CSS file” is in violation of the license, since the original author’s attribution is not displayed in a manner that is “at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit”, which in the case of the No10 site is the “Crown Copyright”.

    I find your position on this matter utterly deplorable, especially given your background. I simply can’t believe the extent to which you’re going to deny Anthony attribution to his work. If you are so reluctant to recognise contributors work, in whatever manner they wish to be recognised, then please remind me to never contribute anything to any of your projects, because I’d hate to become a victim of plagiarism, like Anthony has.

    AFAIAC you are a disgrace to the Free Software community.

  • Root says:

    There is something which is hardwired into WordPress developers -past and present – genetic code which I just don’t understand. It is a sustained ability to argue the unarguable. Its just link bait really. The moral values of the whole lot of them suck ass. Its core is a monumental intellectual arrogance triggered by the ability to hack up (very poorly) a bit of php developed by somebody else. That is why they are sensitive about attribution. OT I wonder if anyone in the Govt Comms have a clue as to what argument is raging fuelled by their agents, and allegedly disinterested third parties. Alastair Campbell would never have allowed it. 🙂

  • Mike Little says:

    @slated, OK. Last one. Then I do give up.

    “Good grief! Every single point you made above is utterly; utterly wrong … by a huge factor. It’s like you haven’t read anything I wrote at all, much less understood it. Are you being deliberately obtuse?”

    You seem to be assuming that what you say is my only source for understanding this situation.

    First you say:

    “I understand he has automatic copyright in his work without needing a copyright statement.”

    But then you make this contradicting statement:

    “he didn’t have a copyright statement in the theme in his name.”

    There is no contradiction in those two statements.

    Here is a summary of where I believe we disagree:

    1) You believe the inclusion of a license within a zip file of a work is enough to legally mean that work is published under that licence. I do not believe that without an explicit statement to say the license is to be used, that this is so.

    Consider this: what about a combined work containing more than one different licence file. Do all the component parts fall under all the licences simply because those other licences are distributed?

    2) I believe the phrase “at least as prominent as” refers to the prominence in the original work. I now understand you believe otherwise.

    3) I believe NMM when they say they only used Anthony’s CSS file and that his attribution in the file is enough. You believe it doesn’t matter if they only used a single word from one of his files, they should attribute him in a prominent place on the site.

    These fundamental differences in belief and interpretation of the licence and the situation mean we can never agree.

    You accuse me of lying and you call me a disgrace. I no longer wish to discuss this.

  • Slated says:

    @Mike

    You seem to be assuming that what you say is my only source for understanding this situation.

    How arrogant. How many second opinions do you need for what is plainly obvious? If I said that 1+1=2 would you demand a second opinion? I’ve already pointed you to the IPO Website for proof of what you seem incapable of grasping. Is the IPO wrong as well? I could call Larry Lessig and ask him to explain the cc-by-sa to you too, one word at a time, with a dictionary on hand for words of more than one syllable, if you think that’d help.

    AFAICT the only “sources” you seem to be drawing on are your own idiocy, and the plagiarists who committed this copyright violation in the first place. You’re clearly not interested in the author’s own opinion, nor the community’s, nor even the word of the license itself. In fact you seem to be suggesting that the work isn’t even copyrighted at all. You have the mentality of a kleptomaniac in denial.

    You believe the inclusion of a license within a zip file of a work is enough to legally mean that work is published under that licence. I do not … what about a combined work containing more than one different licence file.

    Oh for God’s sake don’t be an idiot Mike. This is clearly a single work by one author. How many other copyright assertions do you see in that package? None.

    Do I take it that you are challenging Anthony’s right to even claim any rights to his own work now, because that’s what it sounds like you’re driving at?

    I believe the phrase “at least as prominent as” refers to the prominence in the original work. I now understand you believe otherwise.

    Here’s a clue for you, the word “as” is a comparative which actually requires a secondary entity to compare to. How exactly does one compare something to itself? Obviously this term refers to the original attribution being presented in a manner that is “at least as prominent as” other attribution for derivative works. How can you possibly fail to grasp that? This is kid’s stuff Mike.

    You believe it doesn’t matter if they only used a single word from one of his files

    So now in addition to deliberate obtuseness you resort to hyperbole to try to make a point. Here’s what I actually wrote, in case anyone reading this should simply take your lies at face value: “A derivative work is a derivative work, no matter how “little” of the original remains, provided that what does remain is actually identifiable as having come from that original work.”

    Unless Anthony has invented a language all of his own, how could a “single word” be uniquely associated with his work, such that he could assert copyright over it?

    Idiot.

    And by that I believe I’m being kind, since I must assume that your apparent inability to accept even the most simple concepts is not in fact motivated by malice. After all, you are a “Free Software developer”, ostensibly at least.

    You accuse me of lying and you call me a disgrace. I no longer wish to discuss this.

    You do, you are, and good riddance.

    Next!

  • [wonders how much NMM paid Mike for his WP consulting services, and whether he will be billing them for his work in this thread]

  • Simon says:

    I have been absolutely gagging whilst waiting for tga to turn up. lol.

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