Are WordPress Themes open source? Is it right to release them on a pay-to-download basis?
… what these premium theme providers are doing … we would call that “Evil”Chase Sagum
… themes link and use lots of internal WordPress functions, which make them linked under the GPL and subject to being a GPL-compatible license. If a theme (or a plugin) used no internal WP functions or APIs, then it could probably be considered independent, but that would be really really hard for a theme. Matt Mullenweg
I haven’t really talked about it a lot but I’ve been trying to do pay-for-use themes differently. Namely, giving away what might normally be considered a “Premium” theme—my WordPress theme framework Thematic—and charging for upgrades in the form of Child Themes and custom design. I think it’s a little more fair to the WordPress community and the debatable concerns around the ethics of paid WordPress themes.
But there’s still more questions. There’s always questions, isn’t there?
Is there a principled difference between on the one hand, Jon hiring Ian to build a blog – Ian using his own Thematic theme as a base, and makes a custom blog a “child theme” with a distribution of 1; on the other hand, Ian makes 10 types of “child themes” – puts them on ThemeShaper – for a small price.Jon Soroko
Good question, I don’t really know. As far as I understand the GPL license, any GPL work can be redistributed. So, um, maybe? Does that make me “evil”?
More important, I think, is what Jon is trying to get at in his question. “The general, overarching concerns,” as he says in his original comment, around open source, the GPL and pay-for-use WordPress themes. So far, there’s been no definitive answer that I know of. Excepting the oft-linked comment above from the WordPress support forums.
What do I think? I can’t answer that question either. ThemeShaper is supported by advertising from premium theme designers and, of course, I release commercial Child Themes (I call them Themelets) for my GPL WordPress Theme Framework, Thematic, at a premium. I even predicted the end of “Premium” WordPress themes. My opinion, as they say, is biased.
But! I can start a discussion. 
So what do you think? Are WordPress themes open source? Do they inherit the GPL? Does the WordPress community want “premium” themes to exist? Should they?
Update: You must read the comments on this post. There is some really interesting discussion happening. Notable commentators include WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and several designers involved in releasing commercial WordPress themes.
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I have mixed feelings about this issue. On the one hand, I’m a big supporter of Open Source software and have contributed a lot of code under the GPL, LGPL, and other licenses. I have tremendous respect for Open Source and can’t imagine my life as a software engineer without it.
On the other hand, I recently created a personal blog (http://www.sumergocode.com) and after looking at many free themes I ended up buying a premium theme. I did so primarily for the quality of the theme, the support that came with it, and the lifetime updates. Frankly, I’ve got better things to do with my time than mess around with a WordPress theme, so I was more than happy to pay someone to make sure I have a great, easy-to-use theme now, and going forward into the future.
As far as whether the premium authors are violating the GPL, I’m not a lawyer and wouldn’t even attempt to render an opinion on that. As far as the business issue goes, I think there is room for both (free and premium), and I was happy to spend a few bucks to get what I wanted. I think as blogging grows in popularity and extends beyond the initial techies and designers and such, more bloggers will be willing to pay for software and support.
I think instead of focusing on where or not themes should be GPL’ed, that the Open Source community should show that using the GPL has benefits and can be profitable. If a custom theme developer can be a profession , why can’t premium theme developer? BTW, I define a premium theme as a custom theme developed for an un-predetermined, or undetermined group of sites.
I don’t think a link is enough payment, because you can’t have a job or career based on having a link on a theme alone. What if a theme developer doesn’t want to have a blog with ads or what not to earn money indirectly.
Ian, if I may ask, who are the two theme developers you know of considering publishing themes under GPL? Email me if you want it kept private.
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After having a chat with Matt M at the recent WordCamp South Africa, I’m even more convinced that this situation is very much a grey area. I agree that open-source ethics should play a role (and maybe take on more priority over business ideas), but the “premium” themes market is far from reaching a mature phase and the business model itself will go through a few tweaks / changes yet.
Consider Joomla for a minute… They have commercial themes (thats where WP premium themes started) and even though I’m not part of those inner-circles, it doesn’t seem like anybody else is disputing their validity & role within the community. So why should we treat commercial WP themes any differently? Both WP & Joomla are based on the same open-source principles…
Which also begs me to ask the question (sorry Ian – there’s always q’s hehe), that why am I then allowed to charge clients good amounts of money for custom WordPress work, but not allowed to take that exact same work (I wouldn’t distribute client work; only using it as an example) and release it as a commercial theme? Fact is, that I still get paid – for the custom work I get one payment of $100, whilst I get 10 payments of $10 each for a commercial theme. The work I’ve put into the themes are the same (the commercial theme actually requires more work since you deal with 10 clients instead of one); so why aren’t I allowed to make money from that work?
So back to what I said in terms of the business model not being mature… I believe in open-source, but there is space for developers to charge a fee for premium services. That is exactly how WP makes money and runs their business; by charging for the additional stuff…
Consider this: Theoretically it is only the PHP code of a WP theme that inherits the GPL license, as that uses the WP hooks & API’s. So if we had to release our themes for free (on GPL) on WooThemes, but exclude all of our images and stylesheets, you’d get a blank, but working WP theme. Reason I say this is because our images & stylesheets can never be GPL (Matt confirmed this “loophole”). We’d never consider releasing our themes (excluding images & styles) for free and asking a premium for those, since I don’t believe in releasing 2nd-rate themes for free, but this example thus illustrate the grey area and difficult questions influencing premium WP themes.
Ultimately I think the haters should get over themselves. Yes – WooThemes is a business and it keeps me busy, but we also have a passionate community of users (many of them being first-time users of WP!) who are extremely happy with their purchase. The haters are all what I’d call “WP Community Members”, whilst 90% of our users couldn’t give a damn about discussions like these, as they just needed a professional solution at an affordable cost.
I’m all for discussion, as that would allow the business model to evolve and eventually reach that point where it is considered to be fair in terms of open-source vs business. But people should at least be constructive in this regard… Premium theme developers like ourselves, Brian Gardner, Cory Miller, Jason Schuller, Darren Hoyt etc have also given back a lot to the community and we shouldn’t be stoned for making a bit of money on top of all that. So keep the discussion going and let’s figure out the best way forward…
(BTW… Sorry for the long comment… Just have a lot to say…)
If you get a free car but you dislike its colour, you’ll want a paint job. You’ll pay the guy who’s gonna pimp your car and nobody will argue about it. Right?
@Dan Cole Not my place to say—even in email.
@Adii Thanks for the lengthy comment! Any plans to write a longer (or shorter) post on this?
Re. Giving back to the community: That’s the problem, as the “haters” see it. The code is the thing. It’s the releasing of the theme that counts, in this instance, as “giving back to the community”—and that’s where we get the controversy.
@Ian – Yeah… The comment probably inspired me to put my thoughts down in a more ordered way. I generally try to stay away from this discussion, as I feel that most of the people discussing it are very biased and totally incapable of being objective.
I would say you’re allowed to sell WordPress themes. Redhat sells Linux. However, being that the theme is technically GPL according to Matt M, I as a buyer of a premium theme have the right to modify it so long as I release it back to the community either free of charge or at a premium knowing that my modified theme will also be under the GPL.
By the way, I’m not always for premium themes. I’d rather build a custom theme for a client. If I’m paying for a theme I want support and I’ve noticed some of the theme developers for what ever reasons they have decide to sell the entire project (think Market Theme & WP Designer) and than you loose all the support services you just paid for.
IANAL. Until Automattic actually goes after a designer, this will never be clear. (except automattic doesn’t own the entire wordpress codebase, so it would be terribly difficult to round up all the relevant code contributors)
There’s no reason a designer can’t sell premium website templates. Making that template depend on a specific CMS can, however, run you into licensing issues.
However, Matt’s comment is legally incorrect. If using an API transferred the GPL, non-free linux software would be impossible. Reading the codex can also not be proven to transmit the GPL. Code samples in the codex, however, are licensed GPL, not GFDL, so they could theoretically transmit the license. (the reasons for which are ancient, and likely belonging solely to matt).
Plugins (small apps that cannot exist without a larger GPL app) do catch GPL from their parent. So any attempt to profit solely off the advanced features of a theme would be on shaky ground, since those options would catch GPL.
Adii is right, Stylesheets and images do not catch the GPL from their PHP templates, since they act on the resultant HTML, not the PHP itself. To that end, Child themes cannot catch the GPL from either WordPress, or their Parent theme.
I’m always riding the fence on the GPL issue.
I don’t believe any of us could argue that the PHP used doesn’t directly tie into the WordPress API. With themes, as already mentioned by others, we have a major gray area with images, CSS, and XHTML. Those things are not dependent on WordPress. I could take my stylesheet and transfer it over to any software that I like. Maybe someday I might want to make a Movable Type theme (God forbid!).
Honestly, I think the biggest issue for most of us theme developers is with redistribution. We’ve worked hard with creating something and we’d rather not see others giving it away. This is one of the reasons I’ve stepped away from the GPL a bit — people redistributing my themes with links to spam sites and such.
I’m all for folks making a few dollars on premium themes. I believe you should be able to put whatever price you want on your work. I have problems with some fly by night developers putting out crap for a price when there are 100s of better free versions.
Premium theme designers also help push theme development to places we haven’t seen. The handful of them that know what they’re doing, put out some quality stuff and the rest of the community follows suit with free versions of cool things. This, in turn, makes premium theme developers come up with more innovative ideas. It’s a cycle that benefits us all.
Plus, Matt and co. probably benefit more than most are willing to admit from paid themes — I’m sure some users have moved over to WordPress just because they’ve seen some premium themes that they liked. The more people using WP, the better. The fewer people using other platforms, the more WP benefits.
One thing that I do think is that we’re going to have to see some more changes in the business models. The typical $99 theme model won’t last forever.
What it all really comes down to is the users. If users are willing to fork over a few bucks, then there’ll be a place for pay-for-use themes despite any discussion of the GPL. With more and more people turning to WordPress for a solution to building their sites, I don’t think this will be a problem.
Anyway, there’s a few of my thoughts. Maybe I should’ve just written a blog post.
The same way wordpress.com charges for extra space, custom css and the possibility of using your domain name, the same way Premium Theme Designers charge for design, css and support. I don’t see why this is a problem, since the client pays for customization.
Also I’m no lawyer… but I had a quick glimpse at the GPL license(the version that wordpress.org links to) and said some thing like this: “You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.” So even if the theme is GPL wouldn’t that mean you could sell it?
@Cristi – Yes, we can still sell themes, but the buyers can should be able to redistribute it as they wish according to the GPL.
@Justin – Maybe I should’ve written a post, instead of just commenting, as well!
But I agree with all you have said and maybe all of the quality (i.e. non fly-by-night) premium theme developers should start the “change in business model” by calling the themes “commercial themes”, instead of premium. This would obviously only worked if most of the developers agreed to do so… Power in numbers and all… 
@Adii – Thanks for pointing that out. I’m curious of what the outcome of this will be. In the end the only thing that can’t fall under the GPL license is css and images since they are not software… I guess one ca release the theme as GPL and just put a more restrictive license inside the images folder and the css. In the end I think people who buy them do so for the looks, quality and support, not as much for how many widgets the theme can have.
I know there are implications on this but this kind of gray areas will always exist.
@everyone Thanks for all the great responses. Perhaps this will produce some sort of “official” response or remark somewhere. Or—and just as good—more discussion in the WordPress Development and WordPress Theme communities.
For what it’s worth, I prefer the term commercial over premium. Someone called one of my Themelets commercial and I’ve stuck with it. It doesn’t make any value judgements that I’m not prepared to make. (I’m just not Barnumish enough, I guess.)
@Cristi – Reality is that 99% of our users on WooThemes aren’t even aware of any GPL grey area and couldn’t be less bothered. In their eyes, they’ve bought a nice theme, with some nice support & modification help – so why would they worry about whether the theme should be GPL or not!?
Again – that doesn’t justify the business model in its current state, but it does make all those premium theme haters look kinda stupid.
@Ian – Dunno whether we can expect an “official” stance from the WP peeps on this issue…
And I think we’re definitely going to move away from premium and label our themes as “commercial” as well.
As soon as Magnus (my partner on Woo) returns from his Alaskan fishing trip that is…
This issue isn’t going to be solved any time soon or at all. This issue falls under a bigger Open Source issue of dynamic linking. Which is what themes and plugins are doing. The Open Source Community is split on whether or not dynamic linking (calling functions and using their output) is enough to make that script count as a derivative work.
I’d like to see a Commercial Theme be sold under the GPL and see what happens. If no one does it in the next few month, then it might be me who tries it.
More on how Joomla handled this here.
There are many ways you can make money without violating the letter or spirit of WordPress’ GPL license, in fact a lot more than just peddling code. It’s disappointing that so many otherwise-talented designers are focusing on the short-term, not unlike the sponsored links era. I’m happy to give significant promotion to theme designers who stop fighting the license of the platform which enabled their market to exist in the first place, just email me.
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.” — Henry Ford
Matt would you be willing to delineate the ways someone can acceptably make money off WordPress? Please be as exhaustive as possible, if you will.
@Matt Thanks, Matt! I really appreciate you joining the discussion.
Will there be an official response, in the form of a blog post or codex page, that lays out what the GPL means for WordPress themes? Something beyond just a link to the somewhat-unclear-in-this-regard GPL license? Something that addresses the question of images and CSS inheriting the GPL?
There’s a lot of people that want to know so they can make sure they’re doing the right thing.
Every professional lawyer that has looked at the issue agrees at the very least the PHP of themes is covered by the GPL. If people want to go through packaging gymnastics to avoid the GPL of course they can, but they’re missing the point and disrespecting the community.
@Matt … and the images and CSS distributed with that PHP? GPL? Or not so much?
@Matt – It’s not packaging gymnastics, as much there’s also a fine line of respecting the platform and being fair to the designers. I maintain the exact same stance I did in our conversation when you were out there, and that is that the current business model is far from perfect, but it is not yet ready to go 100% open-source. I do however believe that there are good intentions in this regard and that the model will eventually grow into something more “open-source-appropriate”.
@Ian – Thanks for sharing that Habari link. I especially love the following quote from one of the comments re: Joomla:
“In the Joomla! community, many commercial extensions have encouraged open-source counterparts. These have thrived and even eclipsed the original commercial offerings. This kind of competition will be good for the project.”
The story thus far: The PHP in any WordPress theme—commercially released or free—is GPL and subject to the GPL license. This means, amongst other things, that it can be modified and redistributed. This is a good thing.
The word is still out on the images and CSS in WordPress themes. I think. Maybe.
It is not the theme you pay for a premium, it is the work of labor, which in terms of economics, the “Economic base”.
To Chase Sagum:
Yeah because you dont want to pay.
To Matt:
Because IT IS A WORDPRESS Theme…
To Jon Soroko:
Basically, nothing is “as is original” in this big wild world.
Don’t you know the “theory of evolution”?
We all came from the same orgin.
Not even Vincent Van Gogh can tell his work is not from anywhere…
Can you sue some artist drawing your gardening work?
“Man my young brother look just like Justin Timberlake, will he sue me because I try to act like him?”
We are having a lot of fun talking about the orginality, copyrights/patent and etc.
In the interests of objectivity, whether or not you can license images as GPL, icons have been released under the GPL.
Also, in the interests of objectivity, I’d like commentators to remember, if WordPress themes are completely and totally GPL it’s not wrong/idiotic/silly/naive to expect them to be released for free and redistributed for free. But that’s what we’re trying to determine: are they?
Ian and All,
It was my understanding that you can’t package GPL and non-GPL compatible software together without the entire thing inheriting the GPL (including images and CSS).
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FSWithNFLibs
And by the way, CSS can be GPLd as well. It offers no benefit, since CSS is visible to users, but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why CSS can’t be GPLd. It’s code, so the GPL was made for that kind of thing.
@Nathan –
that has to do with statically linked binary libraries. Not relevant here. Neither PHP nor WordPress are dependencies for CSS. HTML/XML are dependencies for CSS.
@Adam
What about this?
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem
“Arms length” here being that the PHP code does not interact with the CSS, and the CSS deals with the HTML output, not the code itself.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem
Plus: I don’t want to get into semantics (okay, I do) but I wonder if this isn’t a question of what we—and the GPL—mean by program and image—or visual design. Is a program substantively different than a visual design? I’d say so. Simply, the former does stuff, the latter communicates stuff (probably too simple but you get the gist). Does the GPL address this difference when it comes to packaging? Or is there really even a difference?
And, not in a “Billy does it, why can’t I?” way, there’s TopNotch Themes’ FAQ that mentions the GPL and redistribution of their pay-to-download themes:
http://www.topnotchthemes.com/faq
P.S. I hope this is all coming off the right way. I just want to know. You know?
The more I think about it the more I realise this whole licensing mess isn’t actually WordPress’s fault. They had to release under GPL because that was the licence Michel Valdrighi chose for b2. He also happened to believe the GPL allowed him to require a linkback to cafelog.com, so it probably wasn’t the best-informed decision ever, but then he wasn’t to know what a monster his little blogging engine would eventually grow into.
So now, if we have to release our themes as GPL, that’s just another consequence of building on top of somebody else’s GPL-ridden code. (They call it viral for a reason.) I still think it is fundamentally nuts to argue that inserting a single function call into an html template renders null and void any other licence of said template; but, well, I’m increasingly prepared nowadays to believe that the GPL is fundamentally nuts. It was never intended for web design. It doesn’t have to make sense in this context.
Of course Matt loves the GPL: he’s been able to build a very profitable business based on somebody else’s ill-thought-out licensing decision. So if he doesn’t want us developing non-GPL themes: fine, let’s not develop non-GPL themes. Why help his company to grow when they’re trying to stifle your growth? Let’s develop for other platforms which aren’t subject to the same bonkers restrictions, and encourage the use of licences which were actually written with creative works in mind.
In short: I am nowadays less inclined to argue the toss about GPL than to throw my hands up in the air and say: fine, whatever, your business, if you want to carry on alienating the design community go ahead. Matt may be shackled to a clunky legacy codebase with a myriad of security holes, a botched admin interface and a licence that nobody understands, but we’re not.
I say this again… 99% of our users on WooThemes aren’t bothered even the slightest about discussions like these. They’re the one’s that are supposedly losing out by paying for a product that should be available free, yet they are pretty happy with their decision and theme. I also don’t think they’d want to give anyone the theme for free (i.e. redistribute it) if they’ve paid for it.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss this topic, but maybe we do need to see it in a whole different light? Or at least try consider other factors that’s being influenced by a bunch of happy users!?
I don’t have much to add here, as there have been some fantastic points made already, but I will just say that I agree with the renaming of ‘premium themes’ to ‘commercial themes’. A premium theme could technically be free (after all, premium simply means ‘of exceptional quality or greater value than others of its kin’). On the flip-side, we’re starting to see the occasional free theme that far eclipses some of the premium ones (such as Agregado). Defining a paid-for theme as ‘commercial’ will help to clear up at least part of this grey area.
I see a lot of customers buying themes and asking webdesign to make them unique. So they give these guys their themes to work on it and then who knows what the designer will do with it…
Regarding the GPL, I don’t understand everything here. Some are saying that Premium Themes are “illegal” because non-GPL and some are talking about redistributing the themes. One comment about wp.com was really interesting. You can pay for customizing your theme’s CSS. So why couldn’t you sell a theme? That GPL thing seems really ambiguous to me and even if WordPress is GPL, there is a big business market from which Automattic takes advantages too…
@Francis WP.com is a little different. Users on wp.com pay for extra privileges, or bonuses. One of which is the ability to modify their CSS through their personal WP.com backend and have it applied to their personal blog hosted by WP.com. It’s a little different than charging to download a possibly GPL product. It’s charging for a service made possible by a GPL product. The same idea would apply to the sometimes derided, sometimes applauded, possibly still happening, WordPress.com Theme Marketplace.
WP.com and Automattic don’t violate the GPL in anyway I can think of. In fact, they’re a really good example of making money with a GPL project. Anyone can start their own WP.com with WordPress mu. Anyone. (The only caveat is the requirement of being remarkable—that’s the biggest technical hurdle) Check out GetShopped.com to see a really nice example of a commercial WordPress Mu project.
Yes, this is a very important distinction for developers to note: The GPL kicks in when you distribute code. As Ian points out, you can build services on GPL projects, charge for the service, and never give your code away. But once you distribute the code (under the GPL), it’s out of your hands.
I’ve worked at a couple of companies that rely on that fact. One was a company that was sort of a cross between eBay and YouTube, and the other provided “captured portal” networking solutions (like when you’re at a hotel, and they automatically redirect you to a web page to agree to terms of service before you get internet access). Both company’s services were built upon GPL’d software. I think in the second case, they had to get a license for MySQL due to the fact that they were selling app servers. But in neither case did they have to give up any rights to their custom code, because they were selling services, not code.
It’s been pointed out that with themes, it may be possible that the CSS and image files can be separately licensed. The PHP code is too tightly coupled to WordPress (it won’t run stand-alone), and thus gets “infected” with GPL. But the CSS and images are useable outside of the WP context — any HTML page, whether generated by WordPress, TypePad, DreamWeaver, NotePad, or your dog randomly hitting your keyboard with his tail, could utilize the CSS/images, as long as the right tags/ids/classes are presented.
It’s a minor loophole, to be sure, since the bulk of what makes a WP theme really unique and useful is generally going to be in the PHP. But it’s there. (I think. IANAL either.)
That’s an interesting point, and one I’d like to ask for clarification; if I use WordPress to developer a custom app for a client and then *distribute* that to my client, have I not triggered the GPL?
And another concern; if distributing to my client triggers GPL, am I forced to make it available somehow (other than to my client?) Plus is there any requirement to do do anything more than like develop install instruction, documentation, etc?
The point I’d like clarified is how do GPL deals with custom code that is distributed to just one client.
Essentially it seems that some kind of statement from the source would be helpful, focussing on two issues:
1) Do the WordPress founders genuinely feel that people who sell themes are “disrespecting the community”? If so, how? [ethical concerns]
2) Are paid theme developers breaking the terms of the GPL? If so, how? [legal concerns]
Should it turn out that the answer to 1) is yes, then it’s simply a matter of personal morality and whether or not an official statement against paid theme developers shapes public demand for their products. If the answer to 2) is also yes, then it becomes a legal issue, and developers have to weigh up the likelihood and associated risks of being prosecuted. But, without those answers, this debate will run on for a while.
Should it emerge that selling any file (or zipped package) containing a WordPress function is illegal, it would put a great deal of WordPress developers in an incredibly tricky situation. Here’s why:
It’s surprisingly difficult for WP developers to build a business model that doesn’t depend upon code sales or downloads, and instead focusses on a service or advertising offering only. What’s more, many WordPress developers are former service-only web people who are attracted to WordPress precisely because it supposedly allows them to shift their businesses into a product-based model to create more free time and a better quality of working life, as ‘lifestyle design’ champions like Tim Ferriss’ are currently advocating.
Faced with the sudden loss of a product-based business, developers who wish to earn a living via WP are left with five options:
1) Give away themes and plugins and provide add-on support and customisation services, or do custom design only;
2) Give away themes and plugins and drive traffic to create advertising revenue;
3) Give away themes and plugins for the warm glow alone;
4) Jump ship to another platform or build their own;
5) Get a new job.
From my experience so far, I feel that 1) and 2) are probably not viable business models (can you name 5 people making a living this way?). Solution 3) is probably what the WP founders would like to see, which may also have a bearing on the quality of some of the existing free themes. My feeling is that, to attract seasoned theme developers and talented graphic designers, WordPress needs to openly support and promote them (on a commission model such as the iPhone App Store) and not bash them publicly by saying that they are ‘disrespecting the community’ or ‘focusing on the short-term’.
If no support is forthcoming, I fear that they’ll be left with options 4 and 5, neither of which would be good for the ‘community’ in the long-term.
So, perhaps the question should be reframed: not “is it right to sell paid themes loosely derived from GPL code?”, but “how can we all work together to make WordPress better, whilst acknowledging the relative merits and confines of the GPL?”
Finally, should it emerge that it’s illegal to offer paid theme downloads, another tricky question emerges: “Do developers who are paid to build one-off custom sites using WordPress have to make their theme files available to anyone who asks for them?” If not, what makes them special? They’re still profiting from GPL-derived code. If all developers were suddenly forced to make their code for individual projects available, I suspect that many companies will be put off using WP for commercial sites altogether, and that it could become a publishing platform solely for not-for-profit individuals and organisations. (As a blogger with a unique self-built custom theme at http://putthingsoff.com this would also put me off using WP.)
I think it’s an interesting debate, but one that needs higher input to further. Thanks for sparking it off, Ian, and sorry for the lengthy comment!
Nick, I think you omitted at least one potential option worth considering:
6.) Sell themes that are also licensed via GPL. Provide support to paying customers. Include functionality in your sold versions you can legitimately excluded by architecting the functionality to work independently of WP but build shims that interface your functionality to WP.
I think this is potentially a viable model because it respects the GPL and (according to WooTheme’s @Adii most customers won’t even know about the GPL and thus will happily buy and will also get the support.) Of course @Matt may dislike this because he may feel it circumvents the GPL but based on recent legal opinions I’ve read (can’t find a link right now) I’m pretty sure this would address the legality and also for the most part the ethics.
JMTCW.
Regarding Nick’s question in the penultimate paragraph of his comment:
Luckily, there is a clear answer here: No.
See the following FAQs from the GNU Project’s (GPL) site:
Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
If I know someone has a copy of a GPL-covered program, can I demand he give me a copy?
If I distribute GPL’d software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge?
Essentially you’re the gatekeeper. If you distribute your GPL code then anyone can do whatever they want with it. If you keep it to yourself then no one can do anything with it; or demand that you give it to them. So you’re safe when making custom sites for clients.
Finally, keep in mind that I am not a lawyer (IANAL)!
Those answers generate a few more questions, i.e.
1.) “…if you release the modified version to the public…” what does “the public” mean? Could a theme developer create a “theme club” and then release the modified version only to club members? Are they “the public?”
2.) “…requires you to make the modified source code available…” mean? Does that mean the person has to allow people to download from an FTP site? Mail them a CD with the source? Something else? All for free?
I know you are not a lawyer so can’t be sure, so this is a general question for the community.
BTW, for everyone who is wondering … it is NOT ILLEGAL to sell GPL software. So Premium theme developers are not “violating the GPL” by selling themes:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
@Nick – Nice comment and I believe you to be spot-on. You ask some compelx questions, which just shows exactly what the problems are within this situation.
@David — thanks for the clarification about custom one-off themes. Phew!
@Nathan — you’re right, of course. The main GPL-related issue that WP theme developers should be wary of is the question of redistribution rights. Under the licence:
This represents a threat to paid theme developers, because the GPL-linked code (the PHP files) are free for a purchaser to redistribute. Of course, most theme developers could try to circumnavigate what they would deem to be ‘illegal’ distribution by claiming that they own the rights to the CSS files and images.
I suspect that, for all the fuss and furore, probably nothing much will happen in the short term, and that paid theme developers will continue to support and encourage WordPress use whilst building healthy, perfectly-entitled businesses around it, unless a case is made against one of them, the legal basis for which appears to be non-existent right now, and the action of which would prove incredibly bad for publicity.
In the longer-term, it would be great to see a healthy paid themes community develop at a central location with the support of and benefit to the whole WordPress community.
This is already happening to a certain extent. Automattic have started hiring designers to produce semi-exclusive themes for wordpress.com. (I say semi-exclusive because they drag their feet about releasing .org versions, though you can get hold of them if you know where to look.) Monotone was the first, they just released one by Design Disease and there’s another by Derek Powazek in the works. They seem to have abandoned the ‘marketplace’ model in favour of a more traditional client-based relationship where Matt hires you to produce a theme to his specifications then distributes it as he sees fit. The only major problem they’ve had so far is that the majority of .org designers are unfamiliar with .com and don’t anticipate the many and varied ways .com users will find to break their themes.
Of course, wordpress.com remains as closed to the majority of theme designers as ever, and requesting the addition of a theme or even an upgrade of an existing one will get you nowhere. But that’s where Automattic’s focus is now and for the foreseeable future. They’re not especially bothered about whether or not designers support .org: if it doesn’t benefit wordpress.com, they’re not interested. Free-as-in-beer GPL themes which can be ripped and modified for a multi-user setup are potentially useful to them. Complex premium themes with a host of options, not so much.
I sent a quick (poorly phrased) email to the Free Software Foundation—publishers of the GPL—about this. I don’t expect an answer, but what the heck.
Here’s the email:
You can email them at gnu@gnu.org if you’d like to ask them yourself. Perhaps if enough people ask them, the FAQ can be updated to respond to some of the inquiries here.
This is a great discussion, and in my mind it’s not hurting a damn thing to sell “premium” themes. There are plenty of free ones out there but if customers want something that is tight code and comes with support, I think it’s well within the “spirit” of things to allow the providers to get compensated for their time.
Warm glow doesn’t pay the bills.
However, @adii, your argument that “99% of our users on WooThemes aren’t bothered even the slightest about discussions like these” doesn’t really matter. Just because somebody doesn’t care that the merch they bought is stolen doesn’t make it acceptable. Even if they don’t know it was stolen when they bought it.
I support your position, but that’s not a great way to back it up.
@Tim Grahl – Well, the merch isn’t stolen…
All I was suggesting that the users don’t mind that they have to pay for the theme and they’re not fussed about the possibility that the theme could be GPL’ed.
@Adii –
While it’s true that unknowing users are being provided with sourcecode, so much of the thrust of the GPL is intact, it’s still not being followed. The license specifically states that you cannot tell users of a GPL product that they may not redistribute.
@Adam – 100%. Until however the issue – of whether our images & CSS is GPL’ed – is solved, there’s no reason to change the model. Plus, even if whoever decides that the images & CSS inherits the GPL from WordPress via the theme’s PHP, then Nick still raises a few tough questions which needs to be considered.
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@That Girl Again — Interesting to see how WordPress.com is taking the focus for collaboration efforts. It’s a step in the right direction…
@Ian — great idea to get some official word on the licence and inheritance issues. If whole themes/plugins fell under GPL licence, it would mean that anyone currently distributing paid themes via bittorrent etc. (and there are plenty out there) are doing so legally, which would rock the boat a little.
@Adii — you’re right. If the licence issue was clarified by gnu.org, it would still leave a few questions. The core ones for me are:
a) What exactly does Matt mean by theme developers “fighting the license of the platform” when it’s acceptable to create commercial works under the GPL?
b) How is selling themes, providing support, offering tutorials, and dedicating your working life to WordPress “disrespecting the community”?
c) How can selling themes at a very reasonable $80 a shot be “violating the letter or spirit of WordPress’ GPL license”, when Matt has raised $29.5 million in venture capital for a portfolio of products founded on the GPL licence?
I’m genuinely puzzled by the ‘official’ WordPress stance on paid themes. I know the overall goal is an honest one, but something doesn’t add up. Perhaps there’s another reason paid themes are being discouraged?
In some countries, $80 is a week’s average pay. In other countries, $80 is a month’s average pay. Stating $80 is “reasonable” is simply rationalization. I’m just sayin…
The bottom line is it is someone’s choice to pay for a theme or not
that is the bottom line
if something is for free it is often to achieve a business bottom end despite it being free
Open Source leads many developers to earn long-term and when it comes to themes and the add-ons this is (imo) what makes WordPress stand above the rest.
do note the IMO
Under a GPL licence, you can sell any code but you have to provide the source code to it so others may use that code and advance it, if necessary. Your design, which is primarily images, CSS and XHTML, doesn’t fall under GPL and that’s why this is such a grey area.
Given what I’ve just said, if you took the images, css and xhtml out of your theme, you’re left with some pretty boring code that doesn’t do much.
So, with that in mind, licence your CSS, XHTML and images however you want and you end up with something sellable.
Ethics doesn’t come into play here. As All4Data pointed out above, we all have a choice to pay for something or not, to give something away for free or not. You can discuss ethics till you’re blue in the face but that’s never going to change each person’s own right to choose whatever they want to do with their time and money.
If this ever becomes a problem and people start trying to sue other people for selling themes, you’ll find that the opensource community will quickly react by releasing a GPL library of hooks that can be abstracted from the theme itself, enabling selling of your code totally doable. Heck, if you wanted to, you could do this right now.
@Nick – Ditto. With you here, I need not comment further!
Argh man, all this GPL talk makes me feel like I’m in church. Fundamentalists and religious people also always talk about what is right, according to their holy scriptures. In this case, the holy scripture is the GPL! But why be so religious about it? Rules are not meant to be hard and never flexible.
It also kills me to constantly see businesses being threatened because in this wonderful new web 2.0 world, everything has to be free. Free as in beer.
Nobody wants to pay for anything that is intangible.
Does premium themes hurt the WordPress community? No. They can download free themes. It’s a free choice. Does premium themes hurt the platform? No! I think it is part of an ecosystem.
Stop all this open source hippie crap. Open source works, but there also has to be some energy and commerce in it. As long as choice is free.
Should great designers and coders earn money from their efforts, and be able to make a decent living? YES!
Nick obviously has more time to comment than I do, but this one thing stood out:
“From my experience so far, I feel that 1) and 2) are probably not viable business models (can you name 5 people making a living this way?). ”
I have personally met, without exaggeration, thousands of people that make their living from services and advertising around WP.
Also whenever That Girl Again says something about the thinking or intentions about myself or Automattic you can safely assume it’s usually the exact opposite. Her suggestion that we don’t care about anything outside of .com is wrong, for example Joseph is basically dedicating 100% of his time right now to the .org theme directory. (Which is getting over 10,000 downloads a day now.)
@Matt Somehow this is not the answer I was looking for… You’ve responded to those accusation (if I can call them that) but made no effort toward solving this mess. I’m sure you are right regarding what Nick and That Girl Again said but that’s not why there are so many comments. Somehow I believe that it’s going to remain like this(meaning there won’t be any repercussions on “premium” theme designers) no mater what’s the outcome of this!
The funny thing is that the most interesting thing I found out from all these comments was habari.
Thanks for the reply, Matt. I’m interested in learning more.
I’d love to meet some. It would be great to learn which of the WP developers giving away free themes are still making a living off WP-related services full-time. If somebody can link to some who have moved out of their parents’ houses, that would be even better. I’m not being facetious for the sake of it — I’m just genuinely interested in meeting up with people who can prove that such a business model is viable.
I know that there are several professional bloggers earning a decent full-time living on the WordPress platform, but I’ve yet to talk to any bloggers or developers who are making a living directly from WP who aren’t also offering paid themes or plugins.
Nick,
You raise a good point. I know many many WordPress theme developers in the community, and every one that is making enough money to do it full time are selling themes. It seems that, at the moment, the only way to release high-quality themes and make a living is to sell those themes.
Here’s the current problem with the “free themes” market right now. There are the occasional renegade developers who released a high quality free theme. But take a look at their sites. How often do these guys release new themes? How often do they innovate with new features? Very rarely.
Why? Because they can’t. They’re too busy providing free support to the users of their themes, and working a full-time job, and doing “side work” to make some extra income. They simply don’t have the time to keep pushing forward at the same pace as the premium designers.
So, unless someone comes up with a way to eliminate the need for free theme developers to work that full-time job, there’s just no way they can compete (in terms of features, design, and pace) with the premium designers. Period.
Oh, and by the way, releasing free themes in order to attract “custom requests” is not a viable business model. It just isn’t. It’s very hard work. I did it for about 10 months, and I wouldn’t recommend it. The turnaround time people demand, and the volume you have to do in a month’s time is just too much for most people to handle.
Custom work means custom (and strange) requests. It gives me a headache just thinking about the kind of stuff I was asked to “figure out”.
@nick: I don’t know if what I earn every month for WP is what you would call “a living” but I make good money with WP without having yet released a public theme, free or paid. And I know several people around me that do the same. You can make business around WP without having to sell themes…
…don’t know if it does answer your question !
… and sorry for my bad english… that is not my native language !
Jesus, that’s a narrow way to define it. Making a living from wordpress does not mean making themes 24/7. Nor does making free themes 24/7 confer quality.
As a design firm, we do about 90% of our web-based work in and around wordpress. Yes, it’s been a while since I released a theme. That has nothing to do with where I’m working, more with my personal life, where I do not, in fact, live in my parents basement.
Someone in one of the other wanky posts about all this said that Red Hat sells Linux. That’s incorrect. Novell and Red Hat sell service contracts around Linux. There are plenty of business models around services, and membership, and support, that don’t require selling a GPL product.
That’s not to say that I don’t think that a) CSS and images don’t catch the GPL, unless they are specifically stated to be released under it b) API’s and Documentation to not dependency make.
Adam,
I’m not saying people can’t make a living around WordPress … it is possible and it happens all the time. But we’re talking about quality GPL themes getting released on a regular basis. Find me one theme designer who doesn’t sell their themes who has released more than 1 or 2 high quality free, GPL WordPress themes in the last 6 months.
If there are any, I can give you the names of 2 premium theme designers who have released more than 1 high quality theme for every 1 free theme designer you can name.
My point isn’t to play “gotcha” … I’m just trying to illustrate that the bulk innovation is coming from the premium guys. Why? Because they make money from the themes they develop. Like it or not, if there’s no monetary benefit to releasing a theme, then the themes just won’t every be developed. (just take a look at 95% of the themes in the /extend/themes/ repository).
@Nathan –
That’s incorrect. Premium themes don’t drive innovation in free themes; their licenses prevent them from doing so.
You are right Nathan, innovation comes form the guys who do premium themes. They invest more time because they know they are going to sell them. I did not see a really good quality free WP theme for a long long time…
Adam,
Of course, that’s true. That’s not what I was saying. In fact, I was implying just the opposite. Because the money is in premium themes, free themes are lacking much innovation. So … in order for free themes to match the innovation in premium themes, there needs to be a way to monetize the free themes as well. But it has to be in a sustainable way.
I fear we’re missing the point here. As long as it’s more profitable to sell quality themes than give them away, the innovation will lie solely with the premium theme developers.
“Free” is nice and all … but don’t forget how much people like “new”.
The concern isn’t quality—I’m sure there’s just as high a percentage of crap commercial themes as there is free ones. Innovation, yes. Technically. That’s what the GPL is meant to foster, as I understand it. It’s intended to be a ladder up to the giant’s shoulders. What counts as innovation in WordPress themes is a whole other topic though.
But let’s bactrack a little.
Are WordPress themes open source? Do they inherit the GPL? We don’t know. Almost certainly the PHP is. The CSS and images might be. They might not be. I may start talking about flowers.
Does the WordPress community want “premium” themes to exist? Some do. Some don’t. If there’s no ethical or legal reasons why they shouldn’t exist—that is, if their restrictive distribution doesn’t violate the GPL—then they at least have a right to exist.
Just a clarification. I’m pretty sure that just being PHP code isn’t sufficient to make it inherit the GPL. For example, if I use an Apache-licensed PHP library and wrap it with PHP code to make it a WP plugin and then distribute the plugin, I don’t force the Apache-licensed PHP library to be GPL. Of course the code that wraps it to make it a plugin would be required to be GPL.
Again, I don’t buy it. I haven’t seen a single feature of a Premium Theme that didn’t exist in a free theme first.
Adam,
if that’s true, then why are premium themes so popular?
Nathan and Adam >
They are popular because getting paid means that professional designers can devote time to do professional quality themes.
Oliver,
That’s exactly my point.
Only recently we were discussing why some on vB.org were so uptight but maybe it is a developer/coder thing
the comments are somewhat touching on personal angst relating to haves and have nots
Popular as in, there are lots of people selling them? Or popular as in, lots are being sold? The first is true. The latter? I only know of one group of designers that are making a living solely based on selling commercial themes. It’s hard to tell without public data.
… but would WordPress know? Can they tell that from the plugin/theme api?
Author: Adam
Comment: Again, I don’t buy it. I haven’t seen a single feature of a Premium Theme that didn’t exist in a free theme first.
I for one would never buy a free theme
Ian,
“I only know of one group of designers that are making a living solely based on selling commercial themes.”
I know several. And I can say, with rare exception, that the ability to sell premium themes full time is directly proportional to the quality of themes released.
As someone who isn’t really part of the WP design world, I find it a bit odd to hear all this debate over innovation. When I went looking for a theme, innovation was the last thing on my mind. I simply wanted a theme that looked good, worked out-of-the-box, made it easy for me to tweak, was optimized for the search engines, and was going to be maintained for the foreseeable future so I wouldn’t have to be looking for a new theme any time soon. Now, if that’s what you call “innovation”, then I guess that’s what I wanted. But to me that sounds more like service, support and stability. And that’s what I was willing to pay money to get.
Patrick,
“service, support and stability”
You might be on to something there.
@Nathan The designers I know of are you, Cory and Brian.
Anyway, let’s not get hung up on innovation. We’re all going to have to agree to disagree on that. That’s fine. And like, Nathan has said before, “people buy stuff, even if there is a free alternative.” That’s fine too.
As many WordPress users find, “service, support and stability” are not exclusive to commercial themes. They’re exclusive to good themes.
Come on guys… 74 comments and this whole situation isn’t anywhere closer to any so-called truth!
We had the same kind of discussions around this so-called WordPress community last year and everyone was predicting the end of the premium theme, because it is GPL code and bla-bla-bla, but a year later, there’s just more premium theme developers (which means there’s more people buying the themes). All of this just comes down to the point I’ve made a few times already: irrespective of whether the WP community wants these themes or not, most of the users aren’t fussed about what the WP community wants.
So until this situation is sorted out (do I need to mention images & CSS again?), premium theme developers will continue doing what they’re doing now, since they’re supplying to a demand.
Irrespective of right or wrong; we’re going in circles and next year this time, we’ll be discussing this again.
Ian,
“As many WordPress users find, “service, support and stability” are not exclusive to commercial themes. They’re exclusive to good themes.”
Who has more time to devote to “service, support and stability”? Free theme designers who are trying to balance their theme with work, family, hobbies, etc.? Or the guy who, instead of working a full time office job, can provide (at least) 8 solid hours per day to “service, support and stability”?
At this point in time, I gotta go with the guy who charged me a hundred bucks rather than the guy who does “service, support and stability” whenever he can squeeze it in. I’m not saying that is 100% true all the time, I’m just saying most of the time.
@Nathan You’re probably right there. The designers working full time at it probably have better support.
@Adii You’re right. The question of images and CSS needs to be sorted out or nothing will get done.
Does everyone sort of agree in an I-am-not-a-lawyer-ish way that images and CSS are not GPL but the PHP is? It seems like as long as commercial theme developers release their themes in a manner that makes that clear everything is above board.
Now, are commercial theme developers ready to see their themes released on the WordPress themes directory with different skins and (different names, obviously)? Thesis with a Photoshop-y background and jquery effects? A stripped down Fresh News with swiss style typography and minimalist approach? A pulp-fiction themed Revolution? All for free?
Not trying to be provocative (okay, I am kinda). But that’s what we’re talking about now.
Saying that graphics/CSS/JS are closed source means that nothing even based on that appearance will appear on wordpress.org/extend/themes. Not even the typography. It does mean that if someone’s built a cool options panel or whathaveyou, that building something based on that is not illegal.
Do keep in mind though, that this requires someone who payed for the theme would have to choose to release it.
@Ian
That is the question indeed. I don’t, however, think it’s just a matter of just the CSS and images. You have to take into account the custom PHP that a lot of these themes include as well. I’m not talking about WP-interfacing PHP either. I’m talking about some heavy-duty PHP functions that were written and included in these themes.
So, if someone wanted to download Thesis, strip out all the CSS, images, and custom PHP that didn’t use WordPress functions, then I suppose maybe you could argue that. Good luck making the theme work as good as it did though.
Whether or not premium developers would be ok with that … I very much doubt it. Not to mention the fact that one little DMCA takedown notice is enough to scare most people away from even trying it.
Nathan:
I’ll only speak to numbers I’m personally familiar with. Automattic doesn’t do consulting services in the traditional sense, but we have referred $millions in business to folks on this page:
http://automattic.com/services/wordpress-consultants/
Larger contracts (six figures) generally go to “shops,” not individual freelancers. Many of these folks donate their time and efforts back to WP.org, which creates a virtuous cycle of the platform becoming more popular and therefore a bigger market for their services.
I’m disappointed that there seems to be a general disregard for folks doing GPL themes — the best ones I’ve seen this year have all been Free while honestly the majority of paid stuff I’ve seen has been fairly mediocre.
If you take paid themes to their logical conclusion you end up with designers basically being a commodity and sites like Template Monster dominating. (It’s happened before in other communities.) I would hate that. I want to empower and reward designers in the long-term, and I think that’ll come from multiple people collaborating in an Open Source manner, just like it has with WordPress. What’s great about the great Free themes is they inspire dozens of others that build on top of them, like when Hemingway came out and looked different from everything before it and then became the base for other exploration.
I think Ian and Nathan’s last two comments pretty much sum up the crux of the issue.
As Ian said:
See, as another IANAL, and as someone who is not emotionally involved in the issue in any way (other than sheer interest in licensing and copyright law – but I got into law school, I didn’t go), this is how I have always understood the whole GPL thing. Packaging might be become about semantics and it might be as simple as putting stuff in different folders, I’m not sure how it would have to work, but while I agree that CSS and images aren’t what the GPL was designed for, it isn’t clear that the CSS anyway doesn’t fall under the GPL in some way.
In regards to any PHP outside of the WordPress hooks — keep in mind that as far as I can tell, PHP-based stuff (at least PHP 4 stuff) has to include the PHP license. There is an option exception in the GPL for PHP, but anyone wanting to get around not making their PHP stuff available by way of a non-WordPress hook loophole will want to keep that in mind (or at the very least investigate what requirements the PHP license holds one to).
Nathan said:
Frankly, it really doesn’t matter if they are OK with it or not. It also doesn’t matter what the DMCA does – because as this very discussion is proving, the arguments are grey enough and murky enough on both sides that I know if I were served with a takedown notice for something that was trying to claim copyright or IP on something it couldn’t make that claim on (like a PHP template, which is essentially what we are getting at), I’d fight it. Armed with the knowledge of the whole debate, I doubt too many hosts would get involved enough to shut someone down for a perceived copyright violation, or an “unauthorized” use of a theme.
Right now, the real problem I think that theme developers are going to face are over their own licensing terms like “developer” and “personal” that put arbitrary restrictions over footer links and how many times something can be used. It’s going to be really hard, if not impossible, to enforce any kind of limit like that. The GPL and even Creative Commons is pretty clear about what “attribution” means and it does not mean you have to have a physical link in the footer and the limits on how many servers an individual can put a theme on (assuming they paid for a license or whatever we are calling this) is completely tied up in the greater mess.
I think if theme developers are honest with themselves, that is their biggest problem with the idea of accepting or even openly licensing their stuff under GPL. If they do that, they can’t put license limits on a theme (you could do support limits, not physical limits) and they certainly couldn’t file a DMCA against someone who released a slightly modified stylesheet and theme for free or for payment of their own. Right now, theme developers are at a risk if they do try to file a legal claim, because unless you want to spend a lot of money defending your position (and the FSF and companies dedicated to supporting the GPL have more resources than you do), you probably aren’t going to get the outcome you want.
I really don’t think this is about users or customers. People will buy something for support, for convenience, for lots of reasons. I think the right product or the right product with the accompanying service can make money regardless of the license structure. And while I’m actually not a huge fan of the GPL or Richard Stallman in general, if you are going to develop an add-on for a product that IS GPL, you need to take the licensing issues seriously.
The reason that the market keeps getting bigger is because there hasn’t been a test case. WordPress probably won’t go after theme developers because it isn’t worth it to them. The action comes when a theme developer takes on another developer or a user for violating the terms of the license as they see it. That’s the only way we’ll probably ever get a definitive answer to this entire mess.
In my opinion, a lot of the “PREMIUM” sites I’ve seen lately are just taking other magazine style themes and merging them together and calling them “PREMIUM”. None of them are really functioning and looking like a custom theme. Just pulling parts and copying other GOOD themes.
I personally make my living designing custom wordpress themes. The clients I work with know there are free themes out there and a lot of clients come to me to create a CUSTOM design to fit into that free theme. I do not see any issue with someone designing custom or commercial themes for people to pay for.
Yes, there are a lot of free themes out there. Yes, a lot of people use them. Then you have a lot of people who want to look and feel unique when someone visits their site. Why should that be a problem at all?
Most custom blog designers and commercial blog designs I’ve seen and talked to also have released free stuff throughout the past couple years. I am in the process of releasing two (magazine style and regular blog style). Should I be punished because I also sell custom designs?
Interesting discussion! As a new user, i think the idea of paying for a theme is really one of choice. I personally will continue to pay for those themes i think fit my interests. And btw, premium themes in my experience come in all ‘grades’. The advantages of using the themes to new users i think make economic sense most of the time e.g. shortening the turnaround period, ease of use and support. These may not be a big deal to experienced users but for me they make WP a brilliant CMS (IMH short experience ofcourse).
However, the redistribution issue is one that can not be ignored. I should think not many users are going to buy a theme for redistribution purposes but how do you balance the incentive for developer innovation and the need to encourage wider WP usership and experimentation? How do you get flexible on users creating derivatives of your works without compromising your efforts? When you look at the numbers from say theme clubs, at what levels would you consider lifting restrictions on derivative themes and/or ensuring partner user partnership on derivative works for say 2nd tier theme income? What about limited theme developments for users who can then decide how they redistribute and/or use more flexibly (paying more ofcourse per theme)?
I think the bigger picture is importnt; there is the other 3B of the world that is yet to get web2.0 going, and my guess is it will be some market? How do you position your expertise, through easing the use of WP through your themes, and making them more accessible (and usable on mobile devices). I think the time is now to start looking at business models that take the longer term into account. The users need you, you need the users and you need to make WP even more ‘dummy user friendly and everybody wins. Otherwise the idea that the users simply ain’t aware of the issues isn’t exactly a smart of doing things. Just my 2 cents as new user!
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As most of the comments on this thread are from theme developers and people who are heavily involved in the WordPress community, I thought I’d put a slightly different slant on it from a happy customer’s point of view.
I’ve been running websites for years and like so many website owners a few years ago I discovered “blogging” and added a WordPress blog to a few of my sites. I didn’t have a clue that WP could offer anything more than add this diary style section to my website — I was naive about the capabilities of WP, but so are probably 99.9% of WP users even now.
Then, by chance, I came across some of the custom work that Chris Pearson had done for clients and it was a “lightbulb” moment for me. I suddenly realized that WP could be used as a complete content management system, not just a “blog”, but after much searching I couldn’t find ANY free themes on WordPress.org, or anywhere else, that would provide me with a starting point for building and managing complete websites with it. I appreciate that in the last year this has probably changed, but at the time this was very much the case, especially for a relative beginner to WP.
The ONLY out-of-the-box type solution I could find was Brian Gardner’s original Revolution theme. It was a premium theme with a price tag of something like $50 at the time, but after spending days – perhaps even weeks – searching for something I could use as a starting point, paying the designer a small charge for his work didn’t just NOT worry me, I was absolutely DELIGHTED to have found him.
It was a complete no-brainer for me….. I could go on tirelessly searching, attempt to learn everything from scratch myself using the information in the Codex, or I could fork out fifty bucks for an out-of-the-box solution that would show me at a glance how all of the templates were tied together.
I didn’t know anything about the GPL and personally I couldn’t have cared less. My time was more important to me than the $50 I was going to spend on something that would teach me exactly how it all worked. I was looking for a solution – and in this case it was “the perfect solution” – along with good, solid support if I had any questions about customizing the theme.
As a professional website developer I didn’t want to rely on free themes with poor design, lack of features, “potentially” bad coding and zero support, so I was more than happy to pay a small premium to Brian, who at the time was the only person who had stepped up the game and taken theme development to a whole new level.
(No offence intended to any other theme developers who were doing a similar thing 18 months ago – it’s just that I probably couldn’t find you!)
And my story isn’t unusual by any means. If more WP users were aware of its full capabilities and knew about the products and services that are available to them, the demand (as if it isn’t already!) would be huge. Most people just don’t know how damn powerful WP is…. yet.
So, rather than deliberating over what a GPL license means, why not ask yourselves this question……
What do your customers/users REALLY want?
The answer may surprise you.
While I’m glad that the best themes Matt’s seen this year have been GPL, it would have substantially helped his argument if he could have brought himself to name them. Perhaps their creators have yet to email him begging for ‘significant promotion’.
Ian, you should create a poll on this issue. It’s kind of hard to read though 80+ comments and get a stance of where everyone is. Besides that, each comment is a page or so long.
I’m going with, “Theme developers and designer deserve to be rewarded and innovation deserves to be promoted.”
@That Girl Again Actually the best themes I’ve seen all year have been free. I haven’t bothered to check if they were explicitly released as GPL but they were all free.
And yes, I have been keeping track but I won’t give my opinion now—I’m saving them up for a roundup in December.
Anyway, it would be really cool if Matt did write a post about his favorite free themes. I’m sure the theme authors would appreciate the links, traffic, coolness, etc.
@Dan Cole I’m not sure a poll would really help things here. It seems pretty clear what the consensus is re. “Should commercial themes exist”. The commentators on ThemeShaper—for the most part—say yes.
That said, email me when you release your commercial theme licensed under the GPL. I’ll try and send some traffic and attention your way.
@That Girl Again Oops, wait. On reflection there were 3 that weren’t free. Most were free. But the single best theme I’ve seen was free. Although I think it was commissioned. I think. I’ll have to ask the theme author.
The reason why this topic comes up for debate every few months is because there is simply no definitive answer. It is not illegal to sell WordPress themes and as long as it’s a lucrative pursuit for designers, the premium theme market will live on.
What is hard to accept is that for every premium theme put up for sale there is usually another equally as good free theme released under GPL or near equivalent license. There are still some folks out there who release high quality themes at zero cost with no back link obligation and not for the purposes of a sales gimmick.
I’ve long thought that there should be a definitive WordPress theme gallery, endorsed and possibly run by the folks at Autommatic and made up of the top free WordPress themes. I’m talking about a gallery that would be peer reviewed and each theme would need to pass stingent criteria to be accepted. Criteria based on coding standards, aesthetic standards and usability etc. This would become the WordPress theme flagship and would run parallel to WordPress.org. It would be the first port of call for anyone looking for a WordPress theme. All paid themes would become a secondary option.
I’m aware that such a resource would take substantial time, money and manpower to build and maintain, but given the WordPress trajectory, the aims and ethos that it has followed over the years, it seems like a logicall and hnourable step. I’d be willing to chip in on such a venture and I’m sure many others would too.
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Would they, though? I seem to remember Matt appealing for volunteers to run themes.wordpress.net when he managed to get the subdomain back from Thomas, and that came to nothing.
At the moment, Automattic only has about thirty employees, of which they can only spare one to maintain the current theme repository. Forget about vetting or judging: just weeding out the most obviously broken themes and throwing the remaining ones up there is a full-time job. As Matt makes clear above, we should be grateful to have even one person working full-time on .org themes (and it took a year for them to be in a position to do that much). Realistically, Automattic are not going to take on another dozen or so staff members purely in order to run another non-profit-making community resource, not when they could put those people to work supporting corporate clients or developing for wordpress.com.
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Open Source is what it is, and adding value is a skill not necessarily all of us have, so some people are prepared to pay for a premium theme vs. laying out for custom web development. It really makes sound fiscal sense, and the constant stream of WordPress updates will ensure that your expensive website isn’t obsolete in a year’s time. People like Adii and Woothemes really add value, and I can only see premium themes becoming more and more poular….and divers, of course. Exciting stuff!
This is a really interesting discussion. As someone who has been involved with open source and the GPL for over a decade, it has never ceased to amaze me some of the common misconceptions about the GPL by some of its most ardent and vocal supporters.
First of all to clarify the legal issues surrounding the GPL. It is perfectly legal to sell GPL software. The obligation that a distributor of GPL software has, whether for profit or not, is to provide the source code of the GPL work to the distributee. This is where the GPL doesn’t precisely fit source-only code models. However, I could sell an obfuscated php version of the theme, and I would still be obligated to provide the source to anyone I sold it to. That said, there’s nothing preventing someone I’ve sold it to from giving it away for free after the fact.
The prevailing analysis about copyright is true: Work that is not directly tied to a GPL work (through API’s) is not required to be GPL, therefore images and CSS which can be used independently of the php templates can be released under any license of the creator’s choosing. They can be combined in the same distribution package. The GPL does not ‘infect’ proprietary code it is distributed with. To correctly follow the GPL, however, the php parts that use the API should retain the GPL notices.
This mess could have been avoided by the theme API being under the LGPL which allows linking without license inheritance.
Now as for Matt’s comments about vendors being ‘disrespectful’ to the community, I think that’s an unproductive way of viewing the situation. Premium distributors offer a value-add to the community in a different way than open contributors. Not everyone feels that their time spent coding should be released as a free for all back into the wild. It’s great for us that there are some that do. But open source software in general would not be in the strong position it is today without the aid of commercial support. There’s room for everyone at the table.
I was going to respond, but Samuel basically said everything I was thinking.
I don’t think anyone is making the rational argument that commercial themes don’t have value (whether through service, support or a quickly made, quality base), it is just about how it is licensed. The CSS’s linkage is debatable, I don’t think images are, realistically, but that doesn’t preclude a theme from being sold.
I understand theme developers fearing that their work will be undercut or given away for free, but as I said before, that’s a trade-off of contributing to an open source project. In most open source project,, releasing the source code doesn’t necessarily have a huge impact on the commercial viability of a project, because people still have to compile the code, modify it to work on their systems, etc. CentOS is a few weeks behind RHEL for that reason, it takes time to take the source code and make it easy for end users to install, but plenty of people, businesses especially who need support, will buy RHEL licenses. With WordPress and PHP based stuff, it’s a bit different because the source code IS already completed. The end user just has to upload the file. So I understand why commercial themers worry about losing business; it is a valid concern. But its validity doesn’t change the terms of the licensing structure associated with the project.
I also agree that had the theme API been released LGPL, though I’m unsure how much b2′s legacy impacted that decision.
I believe that quality commercial themes add value to an open source project, they don’t detract from it. The only real debate is about licensing. I think that if the theme developers and WordPress could continue to discuss these sorts of issues in a forum that isn’t a blog post (not that this isn’t great, Ian) and the GPL requirements were better outlined, much of this would be cleared up.