Are all GPL Licensed projects free to use for commercial use even if they appear to be paid content?
<p>I'm having a few issues understanding how sites like <a href="https://gpldl.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">gpldl.com</a> can call themselves legal. This site appears to purchase paid plugins from various developers like</p>
<ul>
<li>WooThemes</li>
<li>iThemes</li>
<li>Gravity Forms</li>
<li>WPML</li>
<li>WPMU DEV</li>
<li>Elmastudio</li>
<li>Elegant Themes</li>
</ul>
<p>Sites like gpldl.com state that since their plugins/themes are licensed under GNU General Public License, they can then share them with members of their site for free.</p>
<p>Are sites like these actually legal to use? Can I download plugins and themes from this site and use them on a commercial project?</p>

<p>They are GPL licensed. Each WordPress file contains either a licence.txt or readme.txt file that clearly states they are GPLv2 or higher. As such they are free to redistribute the files as they wish.</p>

<p>Disclaimer: We also own a website that distributes GPL licenced WordPress software at <a href="https://www.gplvault.com" rel="noreferrer">https://www.gplvault.com</a> and only accept files that are 100% GPL. The thing to watch out for is that none of the files carry a so called split licence where the PHP and HTML is GPL and the Images and CSS are non-GPL. </p>

<p>There's two possibilities here.</p>

<h3>1. The themes are actually under the GPL</h3>

<p>If this is actually the case, then you can use the projects/plugins/themes commercially, as long as you follow the rest of the terms of the licence.</p>

<h3>2. The themes aren't under the GPL</h3>

<p>Then no. The media was licensed wrongfully. All a copyright holder needs to do is tell you, and boom. You can't use the media anymore. That can seriously cause you problems: you would then have to remove anything and everything that used that media, so it can disappear without a trace.</p>

<p>The decision to choose whether the items are properly licensed is yours.</p>

<hr>

<p>As a side note, you can ask open source licensing questions as <a href="http://opensource.stackexchange.com">Open Source SE</a> (disclaimer: I'm a moderator there) as well.</p>

<p>With GPL licensed software, here’s the rules:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You can charge any amount for the software. Nobody can force you to sell the software at all, or cheaply.</p>
</li>
<li><p>You can charge a reasonable amount for providing the source code, basically if I want the source code I’ll have to pay for your effort to produce it for me.</p>
</li>
<li><p>You are not allowed to charge for the GPL license.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Obviously if you sold the software once for a million dollar, I can ask you for the source code say for $20, build the software and sell it for half a million. So your ability to sell it at a very high price is practically limited.</p>

licensing gpl