Comments on: Important Change: New General Public License For All WordPress Themes

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:58:43 +0000

if they released under the gnu/gpl licenese, am i valid to share the templates?
i dont understand this

By: In the Woods - Important Change to WordPress License Takes Effect Today! Please Read.

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:36:03 +0000

[...] Last month, I notified you all that, to better preserve the spirit of WordPress, beginning August 4th, WP themes will be sold with two licenses: all WP code will come with a GPL license, which allow for redistribution; the remaining HTML, CSS, JavaScripts, and images, luckily, will still retain our standard license. [...]

By: mlando

mlando — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:28:38 +0000

Not really digging this.

Often times the stuff you find in premium themes are customized/ altered/ reinvented beyond the abilities of the platform. Extending and expanding possibilities. Yes the platform is open for us all to use but if it was not for people with vision to use and expand it we would all be using Kubrick!

A lot of time goes into developing a quality PREMIUM theme. It takes many hours to figure out how to manipulate the capabilities and various techniques to weave together ideas that make a theme unique. Often times utilizing components that are NOT WP and finding ways to make them play together.

Allowing code that took hours to create to be ripped and repackaged really leaves me a bit sour.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:16:24 +0000

Additional thought. Those authors that aren’t keen on this change: Think about it, a large majority of those who purchase the themes are likely not going to be able to easily take your hard developed PHP back end code and churn it in to a sell-able item. It would require all of the graphics and templates you had created to accomplish that, which falls under the standard license.

Some good in it anyway…

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:12:39 +0000

Good job, ThemeForest!

By: ThemeForest GPLs All WordPress Themes | BLOGCHINA

ThemeForest GPLs All WordPress Themes | BLOGCHINA — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:16:52 +0000

[...] web template marketplace ThemeForest is changing its WordPress theme licenses. As of August 4th, all WordPress themes will be sold in two licenses: GPL and Standard License. The [...]

By: Why Is Everyone And Their Mother Going GPL With Premium WordPress Themes?

Why Is Everyone And Their Mother Going GPL With Premium WordPress Themes? — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:12:52 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:40:14 +0000

@Alex – really and how are they going to see this PHP coding without buying the templates to see it?

I think a lot of the backlash is from people who don’t really understand what is being said. I know everyone is complaining that they put hours into making there templates into WP themes, but come on it’s not that complex and once you have done it a few times it’s not really that hard. And really I’d probably prefer to buy the HTML templates over the themes created by some of the people here. The one I just recently purchased had everything hardcoded into the main page and horrific. And the other 2 WP themes I bought were nothing special, few functions added to their HTML. These guys aren’t writing anything more then some WP functions into their HTML templates, not some magical new thing written every time.

And to top that off, I have yet to find a template that had some real JS written for it. Out of the 10-12 that I have looked at they are just jQuery plugins written by someone else and given away freely that you are then putting in your template to sell it. Even the JS is straight out of the example code. The code they are writing is hardly close to original work and should never been thought as being something that could be protected. And I have no proof other then the majority of the comments on the themes I have looked at, but it seems people are really mainly buying the templates because of the “cool” jQuery plugins that you use, so trying to defend you need to protect your code when it’s really you selling other peoples code as your own is hardly something to complain about.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:01:52 +0000

This is not going to be good. Authors are going to start a riot when they see buyers posting themes with the same or similar PHP coding.

By: ThemeForest Goes GPL For it’s WordPress Themes

ThemeForest Goes GPL For it’s WordPress Themes — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:42:29 +0000

[...] ThemeForest marketplace will now be licensing the PHP portions of their WordPress themes under the GPL. To better respect the spirit of WordPress, beginning August 4th, all WP templates on ThemeForest [...]