Are WordPress.org culturally anti-business?

[JohnM]

I wonder who`s in charge for the theme repository. Does anyone know ?

Guidelines need to be better and clear, and communication must improve. Its kind of ironic that its not possible to comminicate about themes with an organization using trac, irc and p2 for collaboration for other stuff.

[JohnM]

The info we have today is:

All themes are subject to review. Themes for sites that support non-GPL (or compatible) themes or violate the WordPress community guidelines themes will not be approved.

If you want your theme to be proprietary or promote things that violate WordPress' license on your site, the directory probably isn't the best home for your work." further up on page is the main thing though

promote things that violate WordPress license on your site is the important part of the "guidelines"

Is selling of gpl themes or gpl theme services violation of the license ?

btw: Matt is writing on a post about wp.org.rules and other gpl org.rules, hopefully it will make guidelines clear.

[Ryan]

Is selling of gpl themes or gpl theme services violation of the license ?

Not according to Matt Mullenweg.

[chipbennett]

[Emphasis added]

The info we have today is:

All themes are subject to review. Themes for sites that support non-GPL (or compatible) themes or violate the WordPress community guidelines themes will not be approved.

btw: Matt is writing on a post about wp.org.rules and other gpl org.rules, hopefully it will make guidelines clear.

Hopefully, someone can clarify "[t]hemes for sites..."

That construction makes no grammatical or logical sense.

[JohnM]

Not according to Matt Mullenweg.

That we know.

However telling that you sell services or gpl themes inside your theme files are sometimes allowed and sometimes not allowed. Most often not allowed. With plugins though it seems like its more likely to be accepted.

Chip:
Hopefully, someone can clarify "[t]hemes for sites..."

That construction makes no grammatical or logical sense.

All your has commercial gpl belong to me

[Cais]

All your has commercial gpl belong to me

Obscure, but still funny.

[Jeffro]

Hmm, I've ignored this thread for awhile cause I'm not sure how to participate in it but the thought of Matt publishing a post to make the guidelines more clear between the theme and plugin repositories I hope settles the majority of the debate.

[Rarst]

[Emphasis added]


Hopefully, someone can clarify "[t]hemes for sites..."

That construction makes no grammatical or logical sense.

I don't know if this is case here, but for non-native English speakers for<->from is very common typo in either direction. And I think phrase makes sense with from.

[davecoveney]

Good news chaps - it took a while, but they responded yesterday to let me know that I can advertise our services in the readme.

All they want is to make sure that it's clear that people are allowed to modify their themes themselves should they choose to.

I can live with that, though I suspect that someone who doesn't understand the GPL and its existence elsewhere in the set of files is unlikely to be someone who goes delving around theme files much anyway. Still, WP did respond, and they're not anti-commercial. Glad I argued it though :-)

[Jeffro]

Glad to have that all cleared up. I didn't think they would be anti-business.