Adapt Learning Community: Theme Licensing

Hi,

We are looking into using the Adapt Framework for building some courses at the moment.

As part of this, we will need to create our own theme. This will be a private theme that we will be just using internally for our own courses.

It seemed sensible to base our theme on an existing one, so we were looking at adapt-contrib-vanilla to use that. However, we note that this is currently distributed under GPL. My understanding is that if we were to base our theme on this then we would have to also distribute that under the same license.

This causes an issue for us, since if we want to include some assets within it, which we can't release under GPL (e.g. stock art images etc) then we seem a bit stuck? Including these images within our own theme would seemingly be incompatible with the license.

Is my understanding of this correct? Is there some other theme that we can base ours on which has a more relaxed license?

Many thanks,

Matt

Similarly how does this effect the resultant courses which all contain the framework and are based on the examples which are under GPL?

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Hi Matt, hi Paul,

thanks for raising this question.

In my understanding (and how we are treating it on the Adapt Learning project), this isn't an issue for you and you can create themes based on vanilla without having to share them publicly.

In summary, the GPL license applies to every theme or plug-in or piece of changed or additional functionality as long as it is 'derivative' of the underlying GPL code. (Derivative meaning it is built on and / or cannot work without the underlying GPL code).

However, even though the GPL license applies, this does not force you to share this code or theme back publicly. It does however stop you from selling the theme like a paid for add on. This also applies to other types of plug-ins.

Naturally, we encourage for everyone to share their code but we understand that there are situations where this is not possible, such as in Matt's case.

I hope this helps - there is an older discussion on licensing here, which might also shed further light on the implications and why we chose it. Please also feel free to ask further questions if there are any.

Thanks,
Sven

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Hi Sven,

Thank you for the response. We are definitely very interested in using Adapt, and we are keen to understand the licensing restrictions that would apply to us.

The sort of scenarios where I'm worried that we might have an issue are as such:

- We create a course using Adapt Framework and as part of that we build a custom theme - starting off with the vanilla theme as a base and modifying it to add proprietary licensed images etc.

- We could now put that course up onto our own LMS and let people access it from there - perhaps charging them to access the content; I understand that at this point everything is fine - we don't have any need to distribute the course itself and therefore we don't need to share anything publicly.

- Now let us say that we get approached by a 3rd party, who has seen the course and would like to put it into their own LMS for their employees or whatever; we could sell them a copy of the course to do so - however, we now have a problem: since we have based the theme on GPL licensed code, we have to give the copy of the course to that 3rd party under the terms of the GPL. This in turn means that we have to allow them to be able to distribute it openly, as much as they would like. However - this would be incompatible with the license of the images that we are putting into it etc.

As far as I can see, this would apply not only to the theme - but also to the course content material itself (as Paul pointed out), since that too appears to be also inter-mixed with the GPL based sources. If we were to distribute a course, built with Adapt, then we would seem to have no way to control the intellectual property of the content itself - if we distributed a copy of the course to someone, we would have to do so under the terms of the GPL and then that 3rd party could distribute the course as far and wide as they wished?

It feels to me like there ought to be some separation between the framework (which I would agree could be licensed under GPL sensibly) and the course content and themes - which I think would be better to have more flexibility by including them under some different licensing schemes?

Thanks,

Matt

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Hi Matt,

thank you for the additional questions / scenario.

To start with, I need to disclaim that while I have taken a fair amount of legal advice around the GPL licenses, I am not an expert and hence, my comments are my personal interpretations until the point where we can get proper, additional legal advice (which we will gladly share with the community).

The scenario you describe has prompted me to re-read the GPL 3.0 license and I am currently going over it in some more detail before responding as to what I think the license says. Please bear with me until that point - I'm treating it with some urgency as I know this is an important question.

I am unsure whether a fully built course would fall under the GPL (i.e. with its content and theme) and will need to research this point a little more.

Thanks,
Sven

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Hi Sven,

Thank you for the reply - and for putting some focus into this area, it's definitely good to know and I look forward to hearing your thoughts once you've looked into it further.

We're continuing to look into using the Adapt Framework here and things are looking promising for us from a technical point of view at the moment - certainly there are some good things that it can help us with. I hope that we will also be in a position to be able to contribute some things back to the community to help things along as we progress!

Thanks again,
Matt

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I'm no Lawyer either but i found this from drupal's documentation (also under GPL)

https://www.drupal.org/licensing/faq#q7

it seems to state that where code is licensed under GPL then any added code that interacts with it must also be GPL but this doesn't apply to data (images, presumably text also) so any images will keep their own license (copyright) and will not need to be distributed along with source code.

It seems like this will be favorable for course creators as although they will have to give their source code along with a SCORM package or whatever they deliver to the client, they won't have to hand over the rights to any other intellectual property in the course.

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Hi Matt,

(just to put this into context - I am genuinely keen to better understand the licensing position with regards to courses created and us of licensed imagery, e.g. in themes. If this is found not be working for some of the cases we expect Adapt Users to be able to cover and there is a good degree of certainty over the legal position, I am happy to raise this item with the Steering Group and for us to reconsider the license).

I have read the GPL in detail over the past few days and marked sections, I think are relevant. For reference, the terms of the license are here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

In summary, I am still a little unsure about parts of the query and will carry on investigating further.

Here is my interpretation of the license in this scenario (so far, keeping in mind I am not a legal expert). I am building this on your paragraph(s) for clarity - hope this makes sense.

"We create a course using Adapt Framework and as part of that we build a custom theme - starting off with the vanilla theme as a base and modifying it to add proprietary licensed images etc."

This is a common scenario - I imagine most of us Adapt users would come across this step at some point.

With regards to the functionality of the theme and in terms of the license definitions, my reading is that this means we are "modifying" the underlying work and end up with a "modified version", which is "based on" the earlier work and thus included in the definition "covered work".

The uncertainty is about the addition of the proprietary, licensed images and what becomes of the overall theme with their addition. The following paragraph from the GPL may be relevant:

"A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate."

One might argue that the proprietary images are separate and independent works and themes and courses are therefore "aggregate" works. Having said that, I wonder if the point of "combined with it such as to form a larger program" counters this notion. Further research on aggregate works has not resolved this for me. It seems the term aggregate is intended for situations where you put lots of different programs on a CD-ROM or in a ZIP file. Some references on this:

It feels like the GPL considers mostly "code / functionality of multiple programs" and libraries as opposed to "combining functionality and content".

Assuming that themes and courses based in Adapt are "works based on the program", the following paragraph (5) may be an issue:

"You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:"

[...]
c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
[...]

So, in summary, I now wonder whether this creates an issue for using proprietary imagery in Adapt (which in not our intention and if so, might trigger us to reconsider the license).

I am expecting to have a conversation with a legal expert shortly and will update this thread.

Thanks,
Sven

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Hi Sven,

Thanks for all the effort that you're putting into this - it's good to know that you're looking to clarify the position.

It sounds as though your intentions for what should be allowed for Adapt users match with the requirements that we have for using Adapt, which is obviously a good starting point!

The points you raise make sense and it's good to know that you're looking into it all - I look forward to hearing any conclusions that you come to once you've spoken to your legal expert.

Thanks,
Matt

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I get the *why* behind GPL for Adapt. It's admirable. The license itself just seems vague and confusing for this application (where the code is the distribution). I could be wrong. Just feels like another license type could be a better fit.

Some quick research. Most HTML dev frameworks are MIT licensed. I haven't found any that use GPL but I haven't run an extensive search. If I were running a commercial venture, I'd be really concerned about the language in the GPL. It's a framework and the distributable output of the framework is the framework + media and content.

Maybe it's possible to GPL some parts of the framework and MIT others?

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Hi Steve,

thanks. Having done a fair bit more research this week, I can see how the GPL license applies most readily to the authoring tool and how it might be a little more difficult to apply to and understand in terms of the Adapt framework. I will have a read of the MIT license and see if this could be a better fit for the framework. I know there were previous requests for us to consider this, too.

Any such changes would need to go through the Adapt steering group but I'll keep you posted with my thoughts.

For now at least, I feel we have established that the GPL still meets the requirements that Matt has listed (and that many of the collaborators and community members also have).

Have a great weekend,
Sven

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Ultimately I think you will come to the conclusion that GPL is big barrier to adoption. It comes down to whether you want people to be able to freely use the software - or not. That's why the vast majority of open source code is not GPL - developers realize just how big an issue this is, and understand that the reasons for choosing GPL are not as important as allowing as many people as possible to be able to use your software. Is whatever you think the GPL is doing for you worth fewer users?

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Hi Julian,

thanks. If it's ok, I'd like to get in touch with you to talk through your experience in a little more detail.

Sven

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Hi Matt,

thanks - yes, the intentions are aligned.

I have also had the follow up with the legal experts now. In summary, their advice was as follows:

The imagery / content are separate from the underlying codebase and can be treated as such from a licensing point of view. It is therefore possible for different licences to apply to elements contained within a single course based on Adapt.

The key thing the experts advised was that, for clarity's sake, recipients of the course (which includes framework + content + media files) should be informed about all licences that apply in the course and have to adhere to the terms of the GPL for the framework elements.

The experts advised that if you wanted to limit the distribution of the content and / or media files (i.e. the non-code items), you could do that by licensing them differently (as long as you have the copyright for these elements). They said that as long as you were explicit about this and did not limit the GPL rights to the underlying framework code, you could still control what happens to the composite work (i.e. the entire course).

In this scenario, if any of the users wanted to have access to and exhibit their rights under the GPL to the Adapt framework (or any specific code modifications you may have made) they still could do this and you would have to make available the modified "corresponding source code" upon request as it states in the license in paragraph 6:

"You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways..."

So given the separation between code and content + media, the current licence should still meet your requirements, albeit, you may have to be explicit about the terms under which you license the other parts of the course.

Hope this helps!
Sven

PS: If still in doubt, I'd encourage everyone to get a second expert opinion. And ff you do, please consider sharing this here.

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