Are The GIMP extensions Free?

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Extensions Freedom

Many extensions have been created for important software, like Firefox, OpenOffice.org and The GIMP. Unfortunately, only a few extensions you that are avaible on Mozilla site and not all OOo extensions are Free software. That does not always mean that the authors wanted to create proprietary software. There are some misconcepts about this point:

• Unlicensed software is NOT public domain (and in most countries you can NOT release software under public domain); unlicensed software is like "All right are reserved"
• Extensions do NOT inherit main application’s licensed;
• GPL is NOT a valid license – you must specify the version number;
• CreativeCommons is NOT a license – CC published 4 different licenses;
• CC licensed are not valid for software – the authors are trying saying this since several years, but no one even reads what they write;
• A license is a set of rules decided by the copyright owner; if you do not specify who’s the owner, license is not valid (that’s perfectly logical).

On the FSF site, you can find how to use GNU licenses for your software. If you are a developer, PLEASE read.

Free extensions for other software

Free GNU/linux distributions do not include non-Free extensions for any software. If you can find some non-Free extensions in their repository, it’s a bug – please report it.

GNU IceCat (the Free fork of Firefox) has a list of Free add-ons (extensions and themes).

As far as I understand, LibreOffice (fork of OOo not owned by Oracle) is not going to distribute/promote any non-Free extensions. If you know I’m wrong about this, please let me know as soon as you can.

The Gimp extensions

Sinces some monthes, I’m thinking about creating a list of Free The GIMP extensions similar to the GNU IceCat’s list. Fortunately, I discovered that only a free extensions are not free, so it’s much easier to create a non-Free extensions list.

My work is not complete and is ongoing. Here you can find a partial list of non-Free The GIMP extensions that are avaible on the GIMP official site. The Note column explains why the extension is not Free – but, in some cases, it also explains why it is not a major trouble. If you want to help, please feel free to contact me.

Simple Search

Restrict Results:
All Plugins
Plugins Without Copyright
Plugins Without License
Plugins With Invalid License
Generic (invalid) GPL

88 Extensions Found

↑ Top of the table

Notes:

• I’m not checking versions for non-Free OS’s;
• I consider CC BY-NC-SA as a Free license. I don’t care if some “activists” think that non-rich people has not the right to use/modify/distribute software;
• If a license note does not flollow perfectly the FSF instructions but it contains all needed info listed at the top of this page, I’m considering it valid.

>> Browse Source Code

List of The GIMP non-free extensions by Santec is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.