I’ve watched with interest as the premium WordPress designers have struggled, some graciously others less so, whilst trying desperately to apply restrictive licenses to property derived from code that is already protected by a well established general public license.
I have previously argued that it was impossible to prevent the future release of a modified or developed premium WordPress theme. I pushed this argument further by suggesting that anyone could acquire any premium WordPress theme, redevelop it, and then release it for free.
A handful of premium WordPress theme designers queued up to throw stones, despite the fact that it was pretty clear that they had no legal platform from which to launch their attack.
One person in particular, whilst trying to scare me with stories of his past life as a lawyer, even threatened me with legal action if I continued.
Of course, I ignored him, safe in the knowledge that he was legally impotent.
The argument raged for a while and metaphorical punches were traded. But still the question remained unanswered.
Is it possible to prevent the future development of any given WordPress theme with restrictive licensing?
Now, it would seem, an answer has appeared.
And that answer is, as I had argued all along, no.
It isn’t possible to prevent future development and release of any WordPress theme since all themes are, according to WordPress, covered by a general public license.
Some premium designers have already come out and openly agreed with the WordPress ruling. And it is to their credit that they have done so.
However, some haven’t, preferring to stick their heads in the sand and hope that no one pokes holes in their leaky business model.
This is a very important milestone for WordPress themes. It is now officially acceptable to take a premium WordPress theme, redevelop it, and release back into the community for free.
Is this the end of Premium WordPress themes?
Perhaps not. But premium WordPress theme designers are now faced with a choice. They either accept the situation and focus on the support side of the business, offering real value, or they can stand back and watch helplessly as their themes are returned to the community where they belong.
Great news for the WordPress community, great for WordPress designers who build their business model on the addition of real value, but not so great for anyone trying to profit from code that was never theirs to begin with.
Very well written. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
This argument should have not taken place at all (while very interesting to read & discuss) you made a very solid argument and the solid case won, plain and simple.
In my view I see nothing wrong with taking an existing theme and re-developing it. However, I always believe in giving credit where credit is due.
In cases regarding wordpress themes, the moment you release a design (shell) for an opensource platform the designer accepts the inherent implications that derive from such a public release.
Invariably, a public release will get snatched up used and abused and if the abuser (re-developer) is ethical the initial designer’s credit should stay in tack.
A designer should be flattered that their public release is being used by the public for which it was inteneded. The designer has already been paid for their design and if that paying public wish to modify the theme as I modify my car, why not!
Great news!
I think that you’ll see many premium theme developers turn out their own work to the public, but slightly stripped down, opting for a donation support revenue stream then offer new income streams through:
- high end custom theme development
- installation
- customization of existing themes
The word premium will begin to refer to a higher level of theme (ie. basic vs premium) rather than paid themes..
I still like studiopress.com’s themes and would be happy to pay .. their rates are great and work excellent.
Ashely, I was interested to see the Software Freedom Law Center analysis appear so quickly after your previous post referencing the GPL. Without arguing the merits of WordPress being GPL (as opposed to say BSD, etc), it’s quite clear that code that interacts with GPL code must also be GPL and therefore, while CSS and graphics are copyrightable, executable code itself is not.
Perhaps, as someone much more familiar with the WordPress landscape, you can comment on the emergence of WordPress “frameworks” (Thematic, for example) and associated “child-themes”. Frameworks make sense because they provide some abstraction and separation between the features of a theme and its visual design. It seems like Thesis (I haven’t installed it) has also something like a framework internally, albeit tied to a single built in child-theme, as opposed to multiple child-themes.
The upshot of these frameworks, which I can’t help but notice, is that they allows developers to continue selling copyrightable child-themes, if they choose, since presumably the child-themes are made up only of CSS and graphics (also haven’t tried any yet).
Just wondering if you’d care to comment on frameworks in general, if you find this model potentially to be and good compromise for developers, and also if you find frameworks generally to be valuable technically.
Also, I just wanted to say that I’m a fan of the minimalist design and typography in your themes.
-Sean
Lol, just lol.
Maybe one day someone finds a better way to make a living out of designing-skills, but until then i will continue to take money for my designs, just can’t live from air and love …
Monique, no one is expecting everyone to give things away for free. But premium WordPress theme designers have to understand that the code is not theirs to sell. If they want to sell their design services then so be it, but they cannot sell something that is built on code that was never theirs to sell.
An architect can sell his designs. But he can’t sell a house that he has built on land that he does not own.
The designers that don’t like this can hurl insults all they like, and moan and bellyache until the cows come home, but WordPress code, the code that underpins all themes, will always be covered by a GPL.
Sean, thanks for your compliments, they are much appreciated. Frameworks and child themes are certainly a work around for designers who want to sell their WordPress designs. But the premium guys know that selling a one stop solution is a lot easier than telling a customer to first install a free theme and then upload a skin.
Trouble is, for the designer, that they can’t add a license wrapper around the one stop solution if it includes WordPress code. Which, of course, it will.
Have you ever looked into a WordPress theme-folder? Or even into single files you find there, especially the .php files? Even in the .php files you won’t find any code snippet you can’t find in other, non-wordpress-related .php files too. There is nothing “built on code that was never theirs to sell”, just plain old .php, .css and .js files.
I think your comparision is flawed and a little bit naive. You know wireshark, the most well-known tool for network protocol analyzing? Their core is based on GPL too, but nobody would doubt that there can be tools based on and designed around it, which are not free. Or a even better example is Mac OS X. It includes software licensed under the GPLv2 and LGPLv2. Does this mean the source of OS X doesn’t belong to Apple? Try to alter OS X and redistribute it for free and we’ll see … ;)
Forcing people and companies into the role of service providers can’t work out, as for example for a theme alteration every fool can hire the next best chinese or indian via elance or other portals who does this in a convincingly matter for under 10$/h.
You as a musican should understand, that creative people need creative freedom. That doesn’t include flouted and underpaid assembly line work.
Maybe thats a reason why many good designers i know have resigned from doing templates and retreated to appropriate paid and valued contract work that nobody can’t just take and redistribute for granted.
Monique, are you ignoring what I am writing on purpose or just trying to be difficult? I never said that designers should give things away for free. I said that designers should not restrict the further development of work that is based on GPL code.
If a designer wants to sell a design then that’s fine. They can license it if they wish and prevent anyone from copying it. And the designers know very well that they can do this. But they still choose to build their work on top of GPL code and then tell everyone that they can’t touch it.
They can’t do that. I don’t make the rules. It’s just the way that GPL works.
The solution for the premium designer is already in place. Framework and child themes. So why don’t they use this approach? Because they know it will greatly reduce their ability to sell the product since more technical knowledge is required by the potential client.
If you really want to solve this problem then design things that can be licensed. Design child themes or theme skins.
Answer me this. If you are correct then why are the premium designers, slowly but surely, going GPL?
Why don’t they stand and fight for their apparent right to restrict development?
All WordPress themes are underpinned by GPL code. You calling black white doesn’t alter that fact.
Everyone has creative freedom, not just creative people. I can make or design what I like, and I can choose to give it away or sell it, attaching a license to it as I see fit. But I can’t take GPL code, sell it to someone else, and then tell them that they can’t modify it and send it back to the community.
Let’s imagine I write a piece of music. I give that music away on my website and I use a creative commons license to tell people that they can pull it apart and use it for whatever they like.
Then let’s imagine that someone decides to download my music, remixes it, and then sells it, claiming that they produced the whole thing from the ground up.
And then let’s imagine that this person attaches a license to his version of my work in an attempt to prevent it’s further distribution.
How does that situation help anyone? Who benefits other than the guy who slapped the restrictive license on it?
No one does.
Your comment about Chinese and Indian workers is, frankly, a little offensive. You seem very keen on market forces but don’t like it when anyone from outside your own border can do the same job for less money. Perhaps you should pursue a job in politics and attempt to address the screwed up global infrastructure that makes low paid, relative to your own currency, work a reality.
According to you it’s ok for an American designer to make a living from his trade but not an Indian or Chinese one.
If the Indian designer has the skills and decides to undercut the designers within your border who are you to stop him?
Hello Ashley,
how exactly do you differentiate between an “ordinary template” and a child theme or framework?
When buying a wordpress-template, where is the GPL-Code in there? A wordpress-theme just isn’t a remix of GPL-Code, it’s an entirely new creation (if you don’t just copy code from others, that is ;) ).
This situation helps not only the designers, but also the community. How many professional designers will do themes, if they are just able to take money for providing services around the theme? How many good wordpress-themes, which after a certain amount of time often get released for the community (and often advanced code from them is inspiring other, free themes) would be prevented by this?
With my comment about Chinese or Indian people i didn’t want to be offensive. I appreciate their work and of course they have the right to make money from their skills too.
It’s an entirely different issue though, if we should outsource every possible work to the most cheapest person in the world and so drain our own economy. This overdue discussion will take place in a bigger scale when normal office work and other brainwork gets outsourced that way in a bigger scale, until then i can only say i find it not fair that they have the right to compete with people inside our county but don’t have to pay any sort of withholding tax or something and thus only profit from our economical strenght and even harming it, but giving nothing back.
I think it should be noted that the Upstart Blogger WordPress themes are all licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution licence, which is mildly more restrictive than the General Public License which, according to you, automatically applies to all themes. There’s nothing wrong with the GPL, I supposed – of course, you don’t want people nicking your work without crediting you, hence the choice of the Creative Commons Attribution licence – but if, admirably, you have enough trust in the salt of human kindness to believe that most decent people will leave credit intact unless they heavily modify, surely you should do as you are calling for all themesters to do and use the GPL yourself?
Thank you very much for such awesome wordpress themes, I have been looking for a long time and these templates are what I trully like to put on my blog.
Lol, just like flashdisk drive. Should they all be shared for free just because they don’t make the CPU? :)
Or perhaps the company should only claim the design? :)
If so, I guess Photoshop, Adobe Ilustrator, and friends should be free as well :)
Long live to the piracy!!! V^_^.
Not so much piracy but a great model to operate by is sharing a low-end version for free and then charge for the premium version of the theme. The same should apply to software, free limited version, and pay for the premium.