Earlier today I posted about the GPL and WordPress themes. I was attempting to make a point I feel is important and should be discussed, but obviously did so in a very poor way.
Regardless of my intent, in retrospect I regret the way in which I raised the topic and how I authored the post. I’ve never (intentionally) used this blog as a lightning rod or flame bait, and I didn’t intend to start with that post. My sincere apologies to the theme devs that have recently GPL’ed their code (WooThemes, StudioPress, iThemes and any others).
At the risk of sticking my other foot in my mouth (wouldn’t be the first time), I’d like to revisit one of the core issues around these paid GPL themes, using the following scenario as an illustration.
Imagine: a client comes to me and asks to me to build a site for them using WordPress and a paid GPL theme. The ciient also wants a set of customizations made to the theme and site functionality. Some of the custom functionality requested is different visual treatments for each post, based on the post category. This is a fairly common request for larger publishing sites, and one of the reasons we built the Carrington CMS theme framework (which automates this).
The approach I’d take here is to use the paid GPL theme, and integrate the Carrington framework for handling the post display with custom templates in the paid GPL theme.
Now (assuming the client is fine with releasing the code) I have at worst a reference implementation and at best a working theme that could be useful to other developers, end-users, etc. in the WordPress community.
Everything in the chain (WordPress, the paid GPL theme and the Carrington framework) are all GPL licensed. My preference would be to make this code available so that others can build on it as well. Developers love examples, and I think it would be useful to show how easily the Carrington framework can be surgically integrated into a theme to provide certain functionality and make their lives easier.
What would the reaction be if I released this code?
I think it’s clear from the comments on my last post, there are some people in the community that would think this “isn’t playing fair” or “shows lack of respect”.
Isn’t that the opposite of the spirit of Open Source and the GPL? Shouldn’t we be celebrating the ability to share code and build on what each other has created?
I obviously have a vested interest in the WordPress ecosystem remaining strong. I also want people to be able to make a commercial living in that ecosystem (my team included).
However, I don’t think it’s reasonable to build that ecosystem on the premise that we should ignore certain freedoms of the GPL – and I feel like some folks are asking for that to happen.
I think it’s worth discussing.
Alex, what you have described here in this post is completely within the scope of the GPL license. That is the true spirit of it, and I would certainly say that it is “playing fair”t. Ever since Revolution (R.I.P) went GPL and I rebranded to StudioPress I knew what I was getting into, and what would possibly be done with my code/themes. (and this is of course, part of the freedom in which the GPL governs use/redistribution.)
I think those of use who have GPL’ed our themes are more saddened by the fact that certain individuals are completely exploiting hundreds or in my case thousands of hours worth of development time and purposely trying to use the GPL for their immediate personal/monetary gain.
Yes, that is part of the deal when we choose to go GPL, and I’m not asking the community to ignore the GPL license and what it stands for.
Just saying that there is a HUGE differentiation between what you describe in your post (which is the true spirit of the GPL) and people who build sites marketing my brand/themes and undercutting my theme packages just to make a few cheap bucks.
Unfortunately in those cases, ethics won’t win a court battle.
Blah, sorry for the typos, it’s well past midnight and I’m on vacation and shouldn’t even be working! 🙂
I don’t see the difference here – besides the lack of outrage (so far). The end result is the same – the free distribution of a paid GPL theme. All perfectly within the GPL and spirit of Open Source.
I don’t think you stepped out of bounds Alex, I think some people just took it the wrong way. Granted, this post does a better job of phrasing it politely 🙂 Either way, your point is worth discussing.
Brian:
I think we can all agree that the sleazy sites essentially “pretending to be you” are not in the spirit of WordPress. As you said, this just part of the deal when you go GPL. The bottom line is people like this will always exist, but they will hardly ever stick around. The benefits for the WordPress community and your business (which depends on that community) of going GPL far outweigh the costs of these people’s actions.
[…] just posted a follow-up to his earlier post: https://alexking.org/blog/2009/06/17/…and-a-question Excellent discussion going on here and in the comments of the aforementioned […]
This is an excellent example as to why the more things that are GPL, the better it is for everyone else. There is nothing wrong with this example as it truly shows the power of open source.
However, what I don’t want to see happen is someone getting ahold of a commercial GPL theme and then redistributing it as is for free, essentially undercutting the original author. Those are the people that end up being called an ASS in my book because they’ve done nothing to improve the original product, it’s obvious they didn’t learn from the code base, and I think this is totally outside of the spirit.
Sure, the GPL allows people to undercut commercial theme designers if they wanted to, but if you’re not going to redistribute the themes as a better product or somehow improve the overall community, you’re a sleezebag.
Thanks Jeff, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! 🙂
In a lot of those cases, all ends up well, as the person who purchased from the “sleezebags” realize they did so when they can’t get support from us. I provide them a discount code to upgrade to the official All Theme package minus what they spent so that in the end, they are extremely pleased to be included in our great community.
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Jeffro, you hit the nail on the head…
“However, what I don’t want to see happen is someone getting ahold of a commercial GPL theme and then redistributing it as is for free, essentially undercutting the original author. Those are the people that end up being called an ASS in my book because they’ve done nothing to improve the original product, it’s obvious they didn’t learn from the code base, and I think this is totally outside of the spirit.”
Alex’s alludes to doing this, {yes, I get it … it is supposed to be hyperbole}, but was done so poorly that it shows disrespect to his peers.
Now more of these, as Mr. Gardner calls them, “sleezebags” will take Alex’s suggestion and do this to turn a nickel because they have no scruples.
I say “disrespect” because he did not think this through, nor does it seem that he first got some feedback from his peers, before writing his initial post.
If the system breaks when people do what the license allows, the system was broken already.
Keep in mind that there is soon to be a mechanism in place to promote and reward the community members that adhere to the “Spirit of WordPress” in the form of the ‘GPL theme’ authors section on WordPress.org (announced by Matt at WordCamp SF 2009).
Those without scruples and decide to play unfairly will not receive the kind of attention that the others (like Brian, Alex, et al will). This, in my mind, will only help build momentum towards everyone doing the right thing.
That’s exactly the problem. These theme authors have just released their themes as GPL because they want to get all the benefits of GPL-ing their stuff, but they don’t actually want true open source community around them. In fact, they want the opposite as evidenced here. There is nearly a riot when someone talks about redistribution – a core tenet of Open Source.
Whuh? People re-releasing GPL themes aren’t sleazebags at all – they’re perfectly entitled.
They don’t even have a moral problem, because this is how open source works.
Say Mr Sleaze comes up with a great improvement to one of Brian Gardner’s GPL themes, why shouldn’t he be able to offer that freely? With the whole of the theme included? The whole point of GPL is to allow people to do that – they have freedom. Anything else is failing to get it.
It’s funny, when I argued against the GPL in some cases and came against a wall of people saying I didn’t get it… now I seem to be on the other side telling people that clearly they aren’t ‘getting it’ either 🙂
I’ve always said the GPL is all about freedom, and the moment you license under the GPL you’ve given people a lot of freedom. Somebody undercutting you is a problem, but the only solution is that of community support. People taking your work and redistributing it aren’t sleazebags, though, so long as they abide by the license.
As a blogger but not a developer, I find the matter of the controversy around GPL and non-GPL WordPress themes interesting, but I don’t know if I am supposed to DO anything with it. Is this something that WordPress bloggers should really take a stand on, one way or another, or is this purely a matter of discussion for WordPress theme developers?
I personally like Carrington (and _love_ the design of the Crowd Favorite site), I like Brian Gardner’s StudioPress designs and have bought them, and I like Chris Pearson’s designs and have bought and use Thesis. I also like the work of other designers, but as a retiree, it doesn’t make sense to me to buy every theme I like. I don’t want to outlive my money.
Just curious. I’ve followed several threads on this topic, and I still don’t know if I should do anything with it or not.
@Brian Gardner said:
“In a lot of those cases, all ends up well, as the person who purchased from the “sleezebags†realize they did so when they can’t get support from us. I provide them a discount code to upgrade to the official All Theme package minus what they spent so that in the end, they are extremely pleased to be included in our great community.”
That is an excellent way to take something that is potentially harmful to your community and revenue, and turn it around. Now you can use that to really integrate people into your community and they will be truly grateful to you for allowing them to do that.
If I were you I would promote that more.
Nicely done sir, I am impressed.
@Bruce Keener
Let’s suppose you got a theme as an end user. Maybe your buddy see it and would like to use it on his personal blog. The GPL allows you to pass on this theme to your friend (even charge him for it if he’s not a good friend). Other licenses may not permit you to do this. To use the example themes you mention: Carrington and StudioPress themes allow you to pass it on to your friend; Thesis does not.
That’s only one example of why the GPL is good for end users.
I think it’s great that the major “premium” theme developers are releasing their code under the GPL. Not sure how much benefit there is for me but I love the embrace of the community.
However, I have question their motives.
I’m not sure why no-one has brought this up but what advantages are there for woo and the like to release their code under the GPL–is it really to give back to the community?
I believe that to be the case but these questions are warranted.
The real advantages of releasing paid code under the GPL are:
1. Marketing.
2. Removing the legality of bundling other GPL code within their package.
That second point worries me a lot. I understand it’s freedom that allows them to pull my code and benefit from it financially but it needs to be reciprocated. Meaning, if they can use the GPL to their advantage financially then why can’t we use “premium”/paid GPL code without being called an “ass”.
Lastly, I agree someone just posted all “premium” the themes for free is an asshole move. There’s no benefit, especially since it rapes the original author’s ability to grow.
I hope my negative questioning is all for not.
I cant see a problem with redistributing GPL themes. Thats one of the points. The main problem with GPL is you can’t make money from what you produce only from your services. For most this means if you want money you have to work for it.
Of course you can provide additional services that might be made automatic but most don’t get this. From what I’ve been reading, a lot of if not all theme and plugin developers have zero clue when it comes to leveraging their stuff in a non-consulting fashion.
this is incredible. It’s exactly why I would never consider releasing my work as GPL (and I was thinking of it). See, if you are Bryan Gardner or WooThemes you could go GPL and still hope that you can make some money because you are big on the web and you already have a name behind you.
But me, being an unknow guy from Mexico who is trying hard to make a living and if I released my work under GPL and you, The Alex King, repost my work for free, nobody will care who I am or if I’m having difficulties paying the rent.
Sure: “GPL ftw!” “Yay freedom” “That’s the spirit of the opensource” that is all bullshit if somebody use that freedom to take away food from my table.
I like opensource, but I prefer my three meals a day.
Themes have to be GPL legally – you don’t get a choice. I don’t care about taking food off your table if you don’t care about following the license terms.
No apology necessary.
Anyone who releases a theme (or anything else) under the GPL is already giving a blanket permission for redistribution (paid or free) by anyone who receives the original. That aspect of the GPL could not possibly be any clearer.
I have a feeling that the people who are now releasing paid themes under the GPL are doing so in large part because of the public position that Matt has taken recently in regards to WP themes potentially being inherently required to be GPL’d because they are derivative works of WP itself. (My apologies to Matt if that is a misrepresentation of his position / opinion)
Whether that angle is true or not (I don’t intend to debate that point here), it kind of feels to me like the “premium” themesters want to be aligned with Matt and his support of GPL themes, so they’ve made their themes GPL, but they’d still like to restrict the freedoms (specifically distribution) that the license is meant to provide and protect.
Can’t have it both ways, folks. If you choose the GPL, then you have chosen to allow redistribution (paid or free) with NO requirement that you be asked or consulted. If that ISN’T what you want, DON’T use the GPL.
You don’t need to apology, you just have a different idea.
It is nice explanation by Brian. GPL should show the true sprit of freedom. But I think 100% freedom is not possible (and not feasible) in GPL.
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
I use WordPress, purchased a theme, donated to the developement of another and I am a beta tester. I test, look for errors and report what I find. I don’t make a living at it.
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.
[…] was making a point, illustrating a possible, and likely, scenario (see his followup post, by the […]
[…] An Apology and a Question | alexking.org an interesting GPL debate over the letter vs the spirit of the license as they pertain to the WordPress community. my own take is that what is legally permissible is inevitable, one way or another, so that should be planned on. (tags: wordpress gpl themes alexking commmunity opensource commercial ecosystem) […]
Brian, while I respect the thousands of hours of work you’ve spent on your themes, you’re doing the exact same thing you describe in your scenario.
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.
[…] An Apology and a Question Imagine: a client comes to me and asks to me to build a site for them using WordPress and a paid GPL theme. The ciient also wants a set of customizations made to the theme and site functionality. Some of the custom functionality requested is different visual treatments for each post, based on the post category. This is a fairly common request for larger publishing sites, and one of the reasons we built the Carrington CMS theme framework (which automates this). […]
I got spanked. I changed the CSS completely on several GPL WordPress themes and setup a site where I was going to offer them free and for sale.
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.
The flip side of this is that the non-dev user of a theme obtained from someone other than the creator is likely to be in need of support at some juncture. That is where the money lies under GPL going forward.
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.
[…] as Revolution decided to release their themese under the GPL and Alex King called them on it to see if they really understood what the GPL meant. Going by the comments, some don’t: I think those of use who have GPL’ed our themes are […]
@Ben Cook
– “How is that different than the fact that you’re using thousands of hours developing the platform of WordPress for your own monetary gain?”
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!
[…] lost “all respect†Alex, again, for merely pointing out the idea, not actually doing it. Alex later apologized for that post he made […]
I keep reading these discussions hoping for an understanding, but it never happens. I’ve rarely used any theme right out of the box, I end up making significant modifications on every project to the themes I start with based on what the site needs, on both free and paid themes. When can I say it’s my theme? When could I enter my link in the footer and remove the original authors link? Sure, just changing the colors isn’t enough, but if I change colors, images, sizing of elements, and do some custom coding, when could I say it was mine?
I believe everybody has different idea, so no need to have an apology. You just express your idea.
[…] themes seller goes GPL. I think that’s good, but as Alex King pointed out (and then at least somewhat rephrased), the pure fact that themes are GPL’d means that anyone can do anything with them. Including […]
Whats happening here isn’t about ethical pratice, it’s about DECEPTION.
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.