Some people code and create good work because they like to share and the praise that comes with it…

If you ask me money is a seperate issue, though unfortunately money seems to drive some people.

If you're coding for WordPress to make money, then perhaps you should rethink your strategy, you're trying to profit from a non-profit natured community, do you not see the irony there.

I also recently thought of this and the way I see it was yes the php of the theme should be 'gpl' BUT when you sell an item / give it away for free in an exchange for a link etc. What this is, is consideration for a contract / license for you to use the javascript/css other integration/adapt ions and integral parts of the theme that would not be a 'theme' without.

So while the 'php' base maybe GPL the extra's are not….that is just my '2 pence'

Personally, I believe that if themes do not make any WordPress function calls, it should not automatically fall under GPL. Unfortunately, I am not a lawyer and, I’m not legally sure .

Matt Mullenweg uses one rule of thumb to determine if something is a derivative work. The rule is, “If you take WordPress away, will the plugin / theme work?” In most cases they will not. That’s why it’s a WordPress plugin / theme.

I think this is a poorly conceived rule of thumb. Most websites wouldn’t run without Apache and/or PHP running on their server; applications wouldn’t run without computer operating systems. As far as I know that doesn’t usually determine their license.
Even if the end answer is still that themes should be GPL, I’d like a better reason than this.

An interesting discussion arises from child themes though. This is because the theme author can make child themes consist of purely CSS files and images. If that’s the case, there is really no reason that child themes need to be GPL.

http://tinyurl.com/wpweekly

An interesting topic that you guys discussed in the WordPress Weekly podcast was Brian Gardner’s new GPL themes and paid support/service model. I’ve email Brian to ask what he considers as service and support. He says that anybody is free to post bugs onto the general forum. Only theme customizing questions and requests are considered as support and should posted at the paid forum. This seems like a viable business model for premium themes, but what about premium plugins? I can’t imagine anybody requesting anything from a plugin author than bug fixes and feature requests. What would be a good business model here?

I would really be interested to hear you interview Brian Gardner on your WordPress Weekly show discussing his premium theme support business model. Maybe that would be a possible future show?

You are right that the original statement is definitely contradictory. I wasn’t aware that GPL allows you to resell GPL’d code for money (thus the update as you said). Sounds like my solution is not viable at all . I must strike it out.

Matt Mullenweg uses one rule of thumb to determine if something is a derivative work. The rule is, “If you take WordPress away, will the plugin / theme work?” In most cases they will not. That’s why it’s a WordPress plugin / theme. A good example of a semi-plugin that is not a derivative of WordPress is sharethis.com. The ShareThis WordPress plugin is derivative work, but the ShareThis widget (javascript you grab from sharethis.com to incorporate into your site) is not derivative work as it can work on any website (not just WordPress).

http://groups.google.com/group/wp-hackers/browse_thread/thread/84c9e862adc63e2e

Matt is a stand up guy, but he has laid forth the guidelines for which he expects theme authors or plugin authors to follow in order to garner the support of not only himself but the wordpress project through the corresponding repositories.

Did he do that before this week and before your podcast (haven’t listened yet, hope to tonight)? Until recently I had never heard of non-open themes being against the license. I’d heard some words against them, but thought it was purely opinion that it was against the open-ness of the WP community. Having read the license, it definitely is not clear what constitutes a derived work. It would make it a lot easier if there was an added paragraph that said something to the effect of “We do [or do not] consider themes and plugins that hook into WordPress functions to be derived works.”

Hopefully I’ll get an answer to that in your interview.

And the point has to be made just for the sake of making it, Matt is not against anyone making money through or off of WordPress. He would just like to see it done in a way that honors the GPL.

By the way,some of those questions were ones I retrieved from the community as they are affected most by these guidelines. I did come up with most of the questions myself though! I agree, Matt is a stand up guy, but he has laid forth the guidelines for which he expects theme authors or plugin authors to follow in order to garner the support of not only himself but the wordpress project through the corresponding repositories. If people don’t want to do that, nothing stops them from doing things on their own.

Any derivative works will be forced to be GPL compliant, so copycats cannot just copy the code and sell it for personal profits.

This is a contradiction. It is completely within the GPL to sell redistributed, unmodified copies of software and it is against the GPL to prevent someone from doing so. I think you probably covered this in your update at the bottom, thanks for the link to the podcast will definitely listen.

Confusion arouse from people not understanding GPL, or from people trying to create loop-holes/made-up-gray-areas for personal gains.

Mmm, partly, but to me the confusion is not at all what the GPL stipulates, but what constitutes a derivative work. If you’re not adding your plugin/theme to the package and distributing WordPress with it or distributing a modified core, I’m still not 100% convinced that it counts as derivative. Maybe Matt’s statements in the podcast will change my mind.

I wasn’t aware of Matt’s intentions for the WordPress theme repository in the first place. After listening to the various clarifications in your WordPress Weekly podcast, I have a lot more respect for the guy (THANK YOU for coming up with those wonderful questions) and after being aware of his intentions, I truly understand the basis for these theme removals.

I also feel that if the premium theme developers are not happy with the new guidelines, but still want to be re-included into the repository, then they should just make the necessary modifications and contact Matt for re-entry. Matt is such a standup guy. I’m almost certain that he will definitely give them a second chance if they follow the new guidelines.

The whole Revolution theme going GPL was very interesting: I think perhaps they looked at the numbers and decided that if we open source it and provide only support etc, we can make more money.

I’m not sure if it was a marketing/sales move though. To me, it seems to me like that is the only thing Brian Gardner can do to be able to fully honor GPL and not start bad blood with Matt Mullenweg/Automattic. (I respect him for doing so!)