Why dont you feel guilty because you want to earn money from open source spirit.

You should think before making this only way of living for your family.

I think you’ve gotten some information incorrect. Hybrid is a framework for developers and designers to build upon. It was never created for the average blogger (even though many do use it).

$25 for understanding how to use the theme? Hardly. There are 1,000s of people that use the theme just fine and never join the club. The only reason the theme has paid documentation and support is because theme club members have paid me to take the time to write out the documentation. Otherwise, there’d be next to nothing in terms of docs because I simply wouldn’t have the time to write them out.

I suppose I could just hide everything behind a payment wall. I could stop letting folks try the theme out before investing any money into the community.

I can’t wait to see the plugins you get built for less than $75. Best of luck with that.

@Justin Tadlock: Hybrid is an awesome framework, and it’s free, or just $25 a year w/ “support.” But it’s completely useless to someone who wants to work on their site, not ON your theme. As a free member of the “theme club” you can’t access even the most basic of documentation, like what each template does or even WHERE the plugin areas are. You are the guy in the desert that sells cups, but won’t tell the parched man where to fill up. Since when does paying for “support” mean “Pay for even the most basic of documentation?” or “Pay up or you won’t even be allowed to see what you’re actually INSTALLING?”

It’s themes like Hybrid and Thematic (and even Carrington to a lesser extent) that make me feel that GPLing themes is a BAD idea, and they’re the poster children for the effort. GPLing a theme is starting to equate with “making a theme impossibly difficult to use so you can charge for support.” And framework is starting to mean “must be a developer to use at all.”

@Alex when I first learned about your Twitter plugin I installed it and then realized I couldn’t include/exclude particular posts. A quick email from your WP support service was happy to tell me they could “try” to do something for me for like $75 an hour.

I could hire someone to write a NEW plugin for less than that.

I’m writing this as a completely hypocritical user of the WP world’s MOST un-GPL’d theme in existence. In fact, you could call it the antiTHESIS of the GPL… but here’s the catch:

I use a ridiculously expensive theme that spits on the efforts of every GPL theme designer, and yet, and yet, I’ve never once actually needed support. The thing just works, and I’ve modified all sorts of things on it, things that are supposed to be easy to do with Hybrid and Thematic and Carrington. It’s possible, perhaps, to do these things, but by no means easy for the average blogger.

If we GPL’d hot dogs some of you would start giving away meat by-products and flour, and charging $250 an hour to use your oven.