GPL commercial themes

[Ryan]

Hopefully this doesn't encourage everyone to start charging for their GPL themes.

[davecoveney]

Personally, I'm of the view that if you're releasing GPL code then it should be free to download for all, not just members.

I may change my mind if nobody ever pays to join, of course! That is, once we start accepting members again - we decided to stop taking new memberships quite a while ago until we worked out our business model. Let's see...

Anyway, nice to see ourselves on the commercial list. Big thanks to Matt & Co for listing us there - really helps raise our profile and noticed a modest increase in traffic already.

[dancole]

Personally, I'm of the view that if you're releasing GPL code then it should be free to download for all, not just members.

I may change my mind if nobody ever pays to join, of course!

By what I hear, Nathan Rice was unable to get a single person out of a couple dozen to donate even a single cent to him for any amount of help he gave out on a person-to-person level. Which makes it sound like the average WordPress user feels entitled to any and all software and or support surrounding WordPress. This is clearly not the case for everyone, but it seams a particular group is unkind to the work developers put into this, which is sad.

[JohnM]

Personally, I'm of the view that if you're releasing GPL code then it should be free to download for all, not just members.

Sure - distribute GPL code for free, and support and other downloads for a fee is the better model for the community.

However there are theme support/documentation services that are expensive but shitty, and some that are cheap but excellent.

There are different ways of doing business - some focus on quality in products and services, while others focus on hyped marketing and the selling process.

[davecoveney]

By what I hear, Nathan Rice was unable to get a single person out of a couple dozen to donate even a single cent to him for any amount of help he gave out on a person-to-person level. Which makes it sound like the average WordPress user feels entitled to any and all software and or support surrounding WordPress. This is clearly not the case for everyone, but it seams a particular group is unkind to the work developers put into this, which is sad.

In the early nineties I wrote a few bits of shareware - mostly OS utilities and the likes. The difference between registered and unregistered was simply down to the 'Please Register' nag being left from the top. Now, one package in particular was moderately well received and I got registrations... but they made up a tiny percentage of the user base.

But hey - I used to use PKZIP for years and I'll admit... I never registered it. Kept thinking I should, but without any real reason to do so I never bothered.

Laziness is the issue - why register or pay when the experience isn't any greater? I really really value the air I breathe, but I don't particularly have a great desire to pay for it, though I suppose I would at a stretch, if someone threatened to turn it off.

But the flipside is this - whilst it does take a lot of effort to build a theme, in the overall scheme of things it's simply not that big a thing. And the cost of reproduction and distribution is so close to zero for each theme that it's hardly worth thinking about. Instead, I now think of our themes as part of a bigger process - that of getting our company known about and understood and on the back of which we can sell some high-value services and, in the future, products. Ultimately, thousands of people could become members of our community, and there could be tens of thousands of people being exposed to our themes and company names on a daily basis.

And engineers were never that highly valued by end consumers anyway - if you took the price of a DVD player, probably only a few pennies ever end up in the pockets of the engineers who did the real work. Most of the rest goes on manufacturing, distribution and sales. Most of which doesn't apply to themes which cost £0 to manufacture, almost £0 to distribute, and just a little effort to sell.