Themes inherit the GPL

[hallsofmontezuma]

I absolutely do not want to start another GPL debate, but hopefully this settles the issue:
http://wordpress.org/development/200...s-are-gpl-too/

[Brad]

Ah, common sense prevails however the horse has already left the barn. Sounds like if you want to sell license restricted themes, your best bet is via child themes. That said, I'm happy the major theme developers have gone GPL.

[chipbennett]

Interesting. I agree that common sense seems to have prevailed. If only Matt had taken a common-sense approach to begin with.

I would say "I told you so," but, really, the issue is (mostly) moot at this point - and, honestly, I've never been trying to be intentionally antagonistic on the issue.

[matt]

The post confirms what I've been saying forever now: the PHP is definitely linked by the GPL, images and CSS and JS aren't necessarily but only want to promote pure GPL stuff on wordpress.org.

[Brad]

While I'm very happy that my favorite theme clubs are 100% GPL, I would hope that all theme and plugin developers are welcomed by the WP community no matter what license they choose as long as it's legal. I believe that the market will determine which models are the most beneficial and successful.

[AlexDenning]

There will always be those who will try to take advantage of others' hard work, and whilst I'm (like most others these days) all for the GPL, does it not just promote shameless ripping off of 'premium' themes?

[Otto]

There will always be those who will try to take advantage of others' hard work, and whilst I'm (like most others these days) all for the GPL, does it not just promote shameless ripping off of 'premium' themes?

Sure, if you also consider people making money by selling "premium" themes to be ripping off everybody who's ever contributed code to WordPress.

People put in a lot of their time to contribute code to a open source project like WordPress. They do it mostly for free, or because they enjoy it. Then they give that code to the world, to do with as it will. All they ask is for people who use that code to do the same, and give their code to the world as well. And "give" doesn't necessarily mean "not pay" here.

So, if theme designers are not willing to do the same as the people who's work they're making a buck off of, then my general opinion is somewhere in the realm of "too bad, they can use some other piece of software if they don't like it".

That said, many theme designers are seeing the light and seeing that their business model is not really selling of the code or even of the theme. Selling a piece of software only really works as a money maker when you sell it an extreme number of times. But sell support and sell feature development, and you'll keep putting cash in your pocket for an extended period of time, even with only a few users.

Give away the razor. Sell the blades.

[Brad]

Article relative to the discussion:

Study: GPL loses ground in open source development
http://tinyurl.com/kpmvnl

"Black Duck also noted that more software providers have moved to an "open core" licensing model in the past year. Under this model, companies offer proprietary extensions around an open source core, with examples including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Continuent, Black Duck said."

[Jeffro]

There is just something funny about reading only because I figured the general attitude from Microsoft on open source was that it was worthless:

At the same time, Microsoft's open source software license, MS-PL, is gaining ground in the open source realm, the company said in a report Tuesday.