Default Gantry template split licensing (GPL/Proprietary Use): can anyone clarify this please?

[mjnagy]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this group, my name is Michael, nice to meet ya :)

Hopefully I can get an official answer to this from RocketTheme (hint, hint lol), but I would also love to hear everyone else's thoughts/opinions on the subject.

I'm an aspiring web designer/developer who has been looking around for a good framework to use for freelance projects and/or template distribution to the general public. I found the gantry framework and so far find it to one of the best, especially in terms of features and extensibility. So I've spent the last couple of weeks learning about it, playing around with it, adding features to the admin panel, etc. It's been pretty fun actually, but before I go any further I'd really like to get some clarification on the split licensing used for the default gantry template. I know that the majority of the gantry default template is GPL, so there are no restrictions there, but today I went through each file and found 19 proprietary use files. Here they are:

1. /less/960fixed.less
2. /less/1200fixed.less
3. /less/error.less
4. /less/gantry-core.less
5. /less/header-dark.less
6. /less/header-light.less
7. /less/joomla-core.less
8. /less/mediaqueries.less
9. /less/offline.less
10. /less/prettify.less
11. /less/utilities.less
12. /less/mixins/index.less
13. /less/mixins/rockettheme/popover.less
14. /less/mixins/rockettheme/utilities.less
15. /less/mixins/rockettheme/buttons.less
16. /less/mixins/rockettheme/dropdowns.less
17. /less/mixins/rockettheme/mixins.less
18. /css/master-ie8.css
19. /css/master-ie9.css

...now, I understand that files such as header-dark.less and header-dark.less can, and probably should be proprietary licensed, since they create the custom look of the 4 default presets using custom css and images. That doesn't bother me, I want to make my own unique styles anyway. But some of the proprietary stuff is just not making sense. For example, less/960fixed.css. It sounds like bug fixes for the 960px layout. Why would that be proprietary? Are we not allowed to use that file? Or can we modify it with our own class names and still use it? How does that work? And how about /css/master-ie9.css? Can we use it or not?

Hopefully some light can be shed on the subject. I'd really like to continue to use the framework for future projects, but I want to make absolutely sure that not I'm infringing on any copyrights before proceeding.

So what do you guys think? Do we have to delete all those files and make our own in order to be free of domain/redistribution restrictions? This licensing stuff can be so confusing :(

Thanks,
Michael

[Julie Hall]

Did you ever get an answer of this? 

[Taimur Aziz]

I'm working on a commercial templates right now which are based on the amazing Gantry Framework but I'm also a bit confused about the "proper licence" text in the top of the .less files and some of the .php files which are extensively modified by me.