Premium Theme Business Models

[andrea_r]

Actually, the Shifter theme was out a while back, and it had a source guardian thingy to go with it. There was no way to get the theme running without it.
(not without extricating it from the theme itself, and as I recall, it was embedded pretty thoroughly)

[Jeffro]

heh, I remember when I was gun ho for Shifter. I redistributed a copy to someone and when they got wind, I was contacted by their intellectual property lawyers and it wasn't a very good feeling.

At any rate, I love the discussion taking place here.

As was mentioned earlier, the premium theme business model in terms of those who abide by the GPL are running on the honor system. So what I'm wondering is, if the WordPress userbase gets wind of what they are allowed to do under the GPL as it pertains to themes, will we ever see the premium theme market crumble or do you think that those business models will simply change to not be GPL compliant?

Also, if a theme is released that is not GPL compliant because lets say it has restrictions on it, how is that theme licensed?

[dancole]

As was mentioned earlier, the premium theme business model in terms of those who abide by the GPL are running on the honor system. So what I'm wondering is, if the WordPress userbase gets wind of what they are allowed to do under the GPL as it pertains to themes, will we ever see the premium theme market crumble or do you think that those business models will simply change to not be GPL compliant?

I think those developers and designers would just go back to a more restrictive license. But setting a price tag, in my option, does filter out some of the people that would break the honor system.

There really needs to be a middle ground between 100% free & 0% unique themes and 0% free & 100% unique themes. There is a BIG problem with having only free themes. How many people do you know that work for company, but do it for free? Developing a theme takes time and a lot of work. I don't see how people can justify demanding $5,000 (or what be it) from someone, with a post script note saying your worthless. Which is what a few people are doing when they demand themes to be free and justify it by saying that's how much they are willing to spend on thousands of dollars worth of some designer/developer's time.

I'll just see were that goes... I'm not done with my thought, but I've gotta go and I'm not really sure what I was going to say next. Hopefully I didn't sound too serious.