With last Wednesday’s announcement by ThemeForest that they too are going GPL along with recent announcements from StudioPress, Press75, iThemes and WooThemes… one has to ask why is everyone all of a sudden going GPL? Is it cause they really want to feel like they’re contributing to the WordPress community? Is it cause they really want their customers to share the same rights as the developer? Or is it cause WordPress.org recently announced their commercial theme directory, they don’t want to be left out in the cold and they realize the potential link juice and incoming traffic from the “mother ship?” My money is on the latter.
Now let me start out by saying whatever the reasoning is it shouldn’t really matter as WordPress.org is doing a huge favor to these developers by adding a section for them. This is especially true considering WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has recently (around Christmas I believe) stated he didn’t like the term “Premium Themes” cause it placed other free themes in the directory as less of a product, but as we all know he couldn’t have actually thought that if he’d ever looked at the themes in the free repository. Although they’ve gotten much better over the last couple years, the free directory is still somewhat of a joke especially when one can purchase a premium theme for around $60 that is fully supported and easily modify it to fit their needs and look completely different than anyone else who’s purchased the same theme.
What has bothered me a bit is the reasons given for going GPL. While it should really matter and doesn’t in the long run anyone who knows the WordPress industry knows the reasons given are generally not actually the real reasons and are somewhat misleading to the average end user. In the end though the average premium theme customer doesn’t really care about the GPL or even know what it is as I’ve Tweeted many times before.
What bothers me even more though are the users that almost demand and go after theme developers about how their themes aren’t really “true GPL” cause they’re not 100% free. Well you know what? That’s crap! These guys are doing this as a business and WordPress even went out of their way to clarify this recently and stated that…
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
All GPL means is that you’re giving the same rights to your customers as you have. Plain and simple. I guess I’ve just never understood how some people can have the audacity to demand you provide them with free work. I’d love to demand they do their job for free and see how they like it. These developers are working extremely hard to provide good clean code with advanced options and awesome support forums and communities for easy modifications. Weather they charge you for the theme or for the support is irrelevant as you’re already getting a superior product compared to the free theme repository.
Let me also clarify this post isn’t to bash anyone either as I have total respect for all these guys and am personal friends with a couple of them, but my point was to just say although many developers do want to contribute to the community… the reasons given publicly probably aren’t as simple as they seem and that’s ok as these guys have families to feed, employees salaries and affiliates (like myself) to pay.
My personal opinion is that being on the GPL bandwagon or not is irrelevant considering people generally just want a theme they’re going to use once on their one or two blogs and change up every year or so. Also the thieves are going to rip off the themes anyways within a day or so of it being available. Look, if the movie and music industry can’t stop it, WordPress theme developers sure aren’t going to stop it. Those aren’t their customer base anyways as those people weren’t going to pay in the first place. Plus their not going to get the theme supported which is a huge draw to these themes.
In the end I don’t think being GPL compliant really matters except for the fact that WordPress itself won’t offer their blessing and list the theme series on the commercial directory. No one wants to be the odd guy out, but if you happen to not want to go the GPL route we’ll always list your theme series here at WP Theme Store wether you’re GPL compliant or not. While we don’t have even 1% of the clout WordPress.org has, we make up for it with detailed information and hopefully soon a growing community of premium theme users that will offer reviews/rankings of previously purchased themes and offer an alternative to the general commercial theme directory for bloggers and site owners looking for the perfect WordPress theme which in the end is exactly what premium theme developers/designers are doing for their customers… offering them an alternative to the free, unsupported theme directory with better products, services and an overall superior experience.
Visit the following link to learn more about WordPress and the GPL.
