Making a Living off WP Theme Development

[Jeffro]

I can't begin to tell you how many big fat yellow Thesis squares including the 300 pixel sized ones I see on peoples websites and within their RSS feed. Man what a marketing engine he has. Great discussion by all and I'm glad Ian and Justin shared their viewpoints as they are right in the thick of things.

[davecoveney]

I think the scariest thing for most within GPL is that someone can legitimately reproduce the value added side of your business without the expense of actually developing your code. In other words, as the developer you're always a little behind your competition on the value add side.

So that's where the authority and respect comes in. I don't think you'll ever see a Microsoft or Apple scale business on the back of GPL, but there's no reason why a decent living can't be made out of it. But it's not easy - at all. If Apple gave away OSX, would they sell as many Macs? If Microsoft gave away Windows 7 would we all cheerfully send them donations or pay for support? I don't think so.

What the GPL does do, and why it gets such fervent support, is that it opens up opportunities to people who would otherwise stand little chance of getting recognised for their abilities. And that, more than anything, is the key to it all.

[Brad]

I agree with Ryan. The GPL allows you to improve upon another's work and release it. If your a theme developer and you are releasing themes under GPL, don't cry about someone selling or giving away your work. You knew the repercussions when releasing under that license in the first place.

On the other hand if you choose a more restrictive license, you will be in good company, i.e. WooThemes, ThemeForest, iThemes, Gorilla Themes, DIY Themes and many others.

Perhaps Automattic should consider putting a team together and releasing high quality, feature rich themes like those found on the sites listed above and give them away. I believe in entrepreneurship, small business, freelancers, etc., but put it out there for discussion as the current approach seems to be causing some hard feelings.

I can never understand why some consider it immoral to redistribute GPL code. If someone redistributes my GPL code then that is my own stupid fault for releasing it as GPL in the first place. If I wasn't happy to accept that, I wouldn't be releasing GPL software.

Expecting others not to redistribute your code just doesn't seem in the spirit of the GPL IMO.




That isn't just a moral argument, it is a legal one. GPL requires credit to be given to the original author.

[Jeffro]

Hoping that the Gorilla Project stays within the confines of the GPL, I hope that group of people turns into a great project and ends up juicing the repository with some great looking themes. Hope to see a post from Ma.tt pointing people to the Gorilla Project once they are up and running.