Here’s the thing There’s a smallish matter relating to the interpretation and application of the GPL that it might help to clear up. It concerns the topic of the GPL and inheritance. References in this post to the GPL are to version 2 of the GPL. What we read on the web When reading various articles on WordPress and the GPL, as well as articles on the GPL in other contexts (such as the Drupal context), it is fairly common to find references to ‘inheritance’, to the effect that ‘a derivative work inherits the GPL’. Here are some examples I’ve come across on the web: “a derivative work inherits the benefits of the GPL”; “[d]erivatives of WordPress code inherit the GPL license”; “[i]f a plugin or theme makes a call to any WP function then that plugin or theme technically falls under GPL. Which pretty much means, any distributing theme or plugin inherits the the GPL regardless if it’s being sold or freely released”; “if you make a derivative work of GPL licensed code, your …