Would you like to make a full time income from your blog? Download the free 30 day blogging course and start making money in just 30 days.Open source software is a wonderful thing. It allows a community to grow around an idea and for that idea to develop along with, and because of, that community. Code is moved forward, modified and generally made better. Each member of the community can work freely, unencumbered by anything that might get in the way like copyright, or ownership, or money.
Wordpress is open source. And here is the proof, quoted word for word from wordpress.org/about,
WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.
Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 5 web site without paying anyone a license fee.
Wordpress themes develop in much the same way. Open source themes are created, modified, and advanced by the community. Indeed, many of the Upstart Blogger themes have been derived from the Sandbox Wordpress theme. And, furthermore, some Upstart Blogger themes have been moved forward and taken to new levels of sophistication by designers such as Wangjel, Will Wilkins and the Art Culture guys.
I am pleased and flattered when people modify Upstart Blogger themes. I am even more pleased when they move them forward and create new and exciting works.
Everyone benefits and no one loses.
Everyones happy. Or are they?
Enter the premium Wordpress theme. An ingenious way for certain Wordpress designers to make money, sometimes lots of money, from selling Wordpress themes to anyone willing to pay. Those who decided to fork out the cash are rewarded with a Wordpress theme that is very often not much different to the thousands of high quality Wordpress themes, often referred to as free premium themes. In addition to this the customer sometimes gets support from the theme author.
These premium themes come with a sting in the tail. A license is added that attempts to prevent anyone from modifying the code in order to release it freely to the community, putting a thin, and almost certainly unenforceable, legal road block in the way of future development.
Any attempt to develop the code contained in a premium Wordpress theme with a view to releasing it into the community is branded as plagiarism by the person who sold the theme.
But what if that premium theme already contained code that had been developed from another theme, or many themes, as is extremely likely given the organic nature of Wordpress theme development?
My recent links to a certain seemingly renegade blogger haven’t been added for fun or provocation, they have been added because his actions caught my eye and I believe it’s time to have a frank and open discussion about what he is proposing to do, namely to modify and develop a premium Wordpress theme and release it for free.
If he was proposing to modify and improve a regular theme he would have the support of the community. If he made a good enough job of it he would become popular and, if he was really good, revered. But because he is choosing to modify a premium theme he is being called a thief.
Devils advocate time.
Wordpress is an open source community. And so is Linux. Imagine the outrage if I modified Ubuntu or Fedora and then sold my new hybrid Linux distro for $97 along with a license preventing further development. And that outrage would be absolutely justified. Modifying open source code with the purpose of selling it and, furthermore, preventing further development of that code is not acceptable within the open source community.
Now who’s the thief?
“Devils advocate time…”
Indeed… Avon Blake is needed at this moment in time.. and if people are watching, then I would assume their eyes to be open…
If they are not.. then I would assume them to be sleeping…
He is not yet a renegade blogger because he doesn’t have enough posts to be even called a blogger… A renegade in general - absolutely… but not a renegade blogger… not yet.
Seems like there are two different issues with avonblake - first is the issue you talk about here - the other is his unscrupulous tactics to get his blog off the ground. I agree with the devil’s advocate on the first issue - but he’s only doing it for his own monetary gain in the end, since that stunt is surely getting him traffic/revenue.
thank you for your words :d
this premium themes are never ready to use their creators are just “fishing in the dirty water”……..so many people is asking for customization of premium themes, i guess almost everybody who buy them.
I think it is useless to buy themes, but to create a nice community where people who customize and people who need help can meet can be a happy place with nice force.
When you disagree with someone selling a service in a gift-based arena, you can choose not to buy. You can tell others not to buy. You can tell others the way that you disagree.
However, stealing is still stealing, and it’s still wrong.
How very relativistic. The truth of the matter is that the premium theme developers are honoring the terms of their agreements. The renegade blogger is not. Its not rocket science.
Chris and Clint - Think a little deeper. Is it ok to apply restrictive licensing to open source code purely to make a profit?
I suppose that if Avon can prove that Thesis borrowed most of its code from another WordPress theme, then he would have a case for his argument.
However, as a Thesis user and a chronic WP Theme testing addict, I can say that I have never encountered a theme prior to Thesis that had such a robust set of options available on the back-end via the WP Admin Dashboard.
You make a valid point about borrowed code, but Chris Pearson has released some other very popular WP themes for free before Thesis, so whose code was borrowed there?
If anything, Thesis appears to be the next iteration of the Neoclassical theme (which is free and an excellent theme to use as a base for a design or to use out of the box as-is).
Anyone who made more than five bucks selling a WordPress theme should be thankful for their success and STFU when someone exposes their lazy profitability.
donate to the developement? participate in it ? promote on their site the development? give free to non profits? offer free to schools, to kids?
BALANCE?
teenagers have fire in their actions always, and personally i love the way as he mess in the middle of the “powerfull” people even if it is not “legal” the message of it is clear.
I don’t if you have kids, but if you have you know sometimes they don’t know how to say what they mean. BUT they mean and that we have to understand, and if we can “refresh” our own actions we stay up to date with life and become “better”?
I’m struggling with this issue - I’m on the fence. For one thing, open source doesn’t always equate with “free.” Some os platforms are for sale but their code is open to modification.
If a business hires me to design a site, and I do so, then integrate it into WP for ease of updating (handing a great system to the client behind the design), I’m going to charge a little more for that work than for a static site. Is that wrong? Shouldn’t I hand the business the theme for free, since WP is open source?
It may be that premium themes fill a niche for businesses looking for something that took a whole lot of time to develop? I’m not advocating for the devils (premium developers) necessarily, just thinking out loud.
Do you think innocent people are being duped? Or are somewhat knowledgable people (who are smart enough to use a them to begin with) making an intelligent choice?
I’m all about ethics, so my desire is to find the RIGHT answer, not to stir the pot. I appreciate your opening the discussion!
What about making websites with php? Php is an opensource, so, per your argument no one should get paid for making websites with php?
maybe we should start giving free premium-like theme. to compete the pay version. so that people have a choice. a road to give back open source wordpress theme.
@Brandon Cox: You make a really good point.
“Some os platforms are for sale but their code is open to modification.”
This is the case with Mac OS X where the base of the OS, Darwin, is open source.
The same goes for Sun’s Solaris operating system.
There are proprietary parts of each, as in the GUIs that each company makes for the respective operating systems, but the base usable system itself is still governed by some open source license.
As a matter of fact, there are a lot more projects like this than we care to acknowledge. Even Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, which are open source, monetize by selling something. In Canonical’s case it is support for the Ubuntu operating system.
Very good discussion.
Eftu, it’s called SAS - software as a service. You and I can make products and services based off PHP, but we cannot take PHP itself and make a product out of it an sell it. In essence, that’s what these premium theme providers are doing. The ones that are “piggy backing” off a free theme are taking an open source product and making a proprietary one out of it. That’s not right! In Google terminology we would call that “Evil”
Chris Pearson’s advocating the devils with his “developers’ licence” that allows folks to do whatever they like with the Thesis theme code. And at least Avon Blake’s being open honest about it. QuickPress is a blatant rip-off job.
Elijah is right to say that we’re all getting a bit excited about nothing, it must be said. Avon Blake has just made noises, without following up
Ashley, I didn’t talk about whether premium theme makers are in the wrong or in the right. I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know for certain whether the GPL applies or doesn’t.
Someone should get a lawyer to look this over, or Matt of WP should get one to expressly set up/interpret the license for WP themes. Until then, we don’t know if this stuff is stealing or not. And since we don’t know, assume that they are. You can’t retroactively undistribute stolen goods.
I find this a very interesting discussion - it’s provoked a lot of thinking. I’ve had a couple more thoughts about it too. One is that nothing that you zip up into a theme actually belongs to WordPress. It isn’t software. If you just put it on a server and access it, it doesn’t run. It’s like an accessory.
WordPress requires its theme directory submissions to be distributed with a GPL-compatible license, but can that expectation be transferred to all themes everywhere?
I do think that buying a premium theme and purposely selling a modified version for the purpose of violating a presumed illegal license is ethically wrong. I know the thought is that the license shouldn’t be valid, but until the issue is settled, I think we should err on the side of saying that two wrongs don’t make a right.
I guess my question is, can a theme developed from scratch which includes php code for purposes of WordPress usage be considered a completely separate commodity from WordPress itself? If so, I think you can charge for it.
Brandon - Thanks. I’m pleased it has sparked such a healthy debate.
If the code has been developed from the ground up, with no help from the community, then I agree, it is ok to charge for it. But, realistically, can that ever happen?
Also, I agree that buying a theme, or finding it for free which Avon claims he did, with the sole purpose for altering it and reselling it is ethically wrong. But I’m pretty sure he’s not doing that. He appears to be planning to release his modified version for free. He hasn’t declared his hand yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if he has paid for the developer license. If he has, is it then ethical to modify the theme and release it for free?
If Chris has sold him a developer license and then told him he can’t develop the theme he’s on shaky ground.
So a WordPress theme is built with open source code and should therefore be open source, is that the argument?
Right now there is no rules or definite laws that I can find that say how all this works.
All I know is that any law or rule or similar is basically just an agreement by a majority of people. There will always be those that defy the majority for reasons we may or may not understand.
I think that Automattic could probably remedy this entire situation in no time flat by releasing some files with a different license attached.
PHP, MySQL are open source too -
:-)
Open source means open sourcecode, it doesn’t mean that nobody is allowed to earn money with this ..
read the licence and do not say that I’m steal code and knowledge .. this is not right
regards
Why are most of those coders (premium themes programmers, theme designers) so shy away from selling their services for $$$? But instead selling crippled (modified from opensourced code) themes at premium prices without shame. Most of the P-themes I load tested (not all) expect heavy hard coding by finding the right lines and open the right tpl files.
Believe me, those who are willing to pay for a P-theme instead of dl the closest free theme available (and change at one’s will) certainly not because the royalty free stockphoto head banner used is different. They expect more “finished” ready to use solutions and not DIY ones.
Selling crippled theme at a pixed price is a take it or not case; selling services after hooked customers will be quoting free prices at will….
a scam … not cool
Who cares, people are buying the design, not the code.