This page lists the changes of the documented WordPress Copyright for reviewing purposes (see: Documenting Your Work). It consits of a short and introductory History of the WordPress Copyright Statement, a List of Changes and a Text Review providing the text of each change.
Wordpress had a copyright statement from the very beginning and in a changed form until August 25th 2010. It was introduced 2003 by forking the b2 software (cafelog) taking over the original code's copyright notice. Its place was at the end of the read-me (readme.html).
Next to that notice there was no other reference to any copyright regarding the WordPress package within the work. For example, there is no copyright statement inside the code which can make it difficult to find out more about it (an exception are external files which have a copyright notice).
Already in 2003 and 2004, Matt Mullenweg started to remove the original copyright statement and the statement for third party code.
In 2010 the term "Copyright" was completely removed by lead developer Mark Jaquith. It was replaced with the term "License" then.
Finally in 2011 the old copyright statement was restored and put into license.txt together with a new copyright statement which also reflects the 2011 license GPL version change.
This list shows the changes the WordPress Copyright Message went through from the beginning as a fork and until the recent changes in 2010/2011.
The Text Review lists the copyright notice's text in the read-me (readme.html) and the according information when the change was done below it. The commit-message might be misleading, please refer to the full changeset (linked) if you want to find out more.
Copyright notes: b2 is (c) 2001, 2002 Michel Valdrighi - m@tidakada.com - http://tidakada.com Wherever third party code has been used, credit has been given in the code's comments. b2 is released under the GPL (see license.txt).
01 Apr 2003; r3; by saxmatt. Message: "*** empty log message ***"
Copyright notes: Wherever third party code has been used, credit has been given in the code's comments. WordPress is released under the GPL (see license.txt).
23 May 2003; r48; by saxmatt. Message "Some minor updates."
Copyright WordPress is released under the GPL (see license.txt).
22 May 2004; r1341; by saxmatt. Message: "New readme. Smaller! More readable! Correct!"
Copyright WordPress is released under the GPLv2 (see license.txt).
28 Feb 2010; r13516; by nacin. Message: "First pass on readme.html updates. ..."
License WordPress is released under the GPLv2 (see license.txt).
25 Aug 2010; r15529; by markjaquith. Message: "This readme sentence is talking about the license, not the copyright."
License WordPress is released under the GPL (see license.txt).
26 Aug 2010; r15533; by markjaquith. Message: "We cannot say that WordPress as a whole is GPLv2 (i.e. "GPLv2 only"). Go back to saying just "GPL." Reverts [13516] for trunk. props hakre."
License WordPress is free software, and is released under the terms of the GPL version 2 or (at your option) any later version. See license.txt.
14 Jan 2011; r17301; by markjaquith. Message: "WordPress contains libraries only available under the GPL v2 or later. No one cares about the GPL v1 anymore. We are now specifically saying that WordPress is available under the GPL version 2 or (at your option) any later version. This was discussed with the entire core team."
WordPress - Web publishing software Copyright 2011 by the contributors This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA This program incorporates work covered by the following copyright and permission notices: b2 is (c) 2001, 2002 Michel Valdrighi - m@tidakada.com - http://tidakada.com Wherever third party code has been used, credit has been given in the code's comments. b2 is released under the GPL and WordPress - Web publishing software Copyright 2003-2010 by the contributors WordPress is released under the GPL
06 Aug 2011; r18201; by markjaquith. Message: "Move copyright notices to license.txt. props hakre. props aaroncampbell. fixes #16269"