Phosphorus and Lime

A few weeks ago, I noted a reference to Greqo in what looked like a Russian forum for spammers:

Greqo: The Russian Blog-Spammer's Class of Choice?


A couple days ago I received an email from a Russian PHP developer drawing my attention to the Blogoferma site. The Russian developer pointed out that this product appears to be marketed in violation of Greqo's GPL license and he said that the marketer claims that he is selling it with my endorsement.

On the first point: as I noted in my previous post, my understanding of the GPL is that the marketer is free to use my code in his product just so long as he extends the GPL to his source (which I believe requires him including a GPL notice with his product) and makes his source code available upon request. As long as he does that, he is not under any obligation to me and can charge whatever he whatever he wants for it.

Of course, if it is true, as the PHP developer claims, that this product is little more than my code repackaged, anyone interested in the product would probably be better served just grabbing my code themselves for free at the project site. Also, I still look on Greqo as a beta release at best, so I'd be hesitant to trust anything too critical to it at this point.

On the second point: although I believe the marketer of Blogoferma has contacted me and even commented on my previous point, we have never discussed his product. If he claims I have endorsed or approved of it in any way, that's not true. As noted above, he can use it under the terms of the GPL, so my permission is not really necessary. The license is the authority with which he needs to reconcile himself.

And while I don't really like the idea of Greqo being used solely for the purposes of blogspam (or SEO if you will, which is often little more than a bagful of spamming tricks), that's a matter for which Blogger ultimately takes responsibility – and does a pretty good job of it.