What these people are doing, is signing their right away to control the code in order to get into the system (WordPress website) and gets the benefits REAL GPL code gets (reputation and respect), and then claw these rights back under the guise of ethical practice.

A+ best in class.

Honestly guys it’s an interesting intellectual debate but we as a community are not actively coming up with any solutions with this big circle-jerk of ‘my cause is bigger than yours’.

We are all learning and building together.

Keep learning, keep building, and don’t expect an open-source community to put food on the table unless you’re willing to be creative about how you choose to work within the confines of the GPL!

Hyperbole aside, if we take Alex’s original example, Brian could actually beat Alex to the punch by offering a framework specific variation. And not just Carrington, but others like Thematic as well.

Having becomer a fan of the framework concept, I took a few premium themes I paid for and hacked them for use on a BluePrint css framework, and others for use on Thematic.

There are benefits to these frameworks that can greatly enhance these premium themes (they tend to expand the tunnel vision of the designer). I would have preferred to pay a theme designer like BG or Woo for the framework option, versus having to pay someone else to have the themes modified for me.

Disclaimer: I didn’t distribute these modded themes, so gave little thought to GPL at the time, but Alex’s scenario made me think (actually it had me wishing it wasnt hyperbole).

While I understand the central point Alex was making was about GPL and redistribution, I dont think many theme designers understand the underlying benefit of the scenario he painted.

About three days after opening the site, I received about a dozen nasty emails, regarding using these GPL premium themes. Wow…lots of traffic really fast.

Turns out those whiners that sent the nasty emails were upholding the original theme developers stance on his interpretation of the GPL.

I notice that some commercial WP theme developers, use the same theme over and over to develop themes, just changing the CSS. They refer to those themes as “new themes”.

When I designed a new theme based on the original GPL themes people got upset. Went on the attack.

I wonder why they get upset if some else changes the CSS in their themes and offers them to other WP users? You would think that the so called “original theme” developer would be happy that someone made their theme look different, maybe even better looking.

Profiteers can spin the GPL anyway they want to. The reason premium theme developers flipped to the GPL model is to gain access on the WordPress.org Commercial Theme Directory when it’s made available.

Like they say: Read the GPL. If you don’t like what it says, change your license or move on.

Expertise + Distribution = PROFIT.

If I were to release all of your themes for free on my site, you claimed I’d be “completely exploiting thousands of hours worth of development time and purposely trying to use the GPL for their immediate personal/monetary gain.”

How is that different than the fact that you’re using thousands of hours developing the platform of WordPress for your own monetary gain?

Sure you’re now contributing to the free code base of the GPL, and yet you and the other premium theme creators are using language to discourage people from exercising their right to freely distributing your themes.

I think you touched on your answer previously and that is that your package includes support and updates where others won’t be.

In my mind, you and the other premium theme developers should make that your selling point, and drop the intimidating language to try and dissuade others from flexing their GPL rights.

Early on in my IT carrer, (when Linux was in it’s infacy) and GPL was bantered about, I never really grasped the idea. “Free” anything really never is free. “Pay me now, or pay me later”.

With software I purchase, support for a given ammount of time is expected, including upgrades etc. I am licensed to use the software according to the vendor’s agreement (no two company’s licensing agreements are the same – that is also a given).

IMHO, GPL and the whole “free software” movement is a communistic idea, not freedom based (no matter what has been said). How is intellectual property protected in GPL? It’s not as GPL holds that there isn’t such a concept. The same holds true in communism as all things are “supposed” to be shared “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. What happens to the incentive to produce if one cannot keep the fruits of his labors? It eventually fails.

To me, relying on “services” is really a crutch in GPL. How many have actually paid for “support” using a GPL product? Given there are many support forums available to figure things out at no cost.

From my experience, getting “free” software and paying for support doesn’t sell. Once the software is downloaded, installed and working, usually there is no need for support!

If I write a program, given a choice, I would not put it under the GPL umbrella. I would rather market it, sell it, and keep the fruits of what I produce.

Andreas has truly mentioned that “The main problem with GPL is you can’t make money from what you produce only from your services. ” I agree with you