Matt Mullenweg, the Big Daddy of WordPress, was on a podcast last night with Jeff Chandler where they talked about the whole “premium”/proprietary theme market place that exists today.

This all started with the pulling of 200 themes virtually overnight from the WordPress.org repository. Things got a little out of hand and a lot of theme developers were up in arms.

Most of the proprietary theme developers are in the business of selling themes for WordPress that do not match the very nature of the GPL license that WordPress comes with. The main gripe is that theme developers restrict what can be done with those themes once a customer buys them. Now, I’m no license expert but basically what that means is that if you are selling themes with a one license, multi-license, credit removal, non-distributional type of setup you probably won’t get any support from WP and Matt.

The main question is, Do you really need the support of WordPress if you are doing well on your own?

Well, let me ask you this. Don’t you think it would be better for your business if you had the support of the very platform you trying to make money from?

Weborithm does have one of its own proprietary themes on offer at FreshPressThemes, it does not come with a GPL license, but it does have a one price, use anywhere and how many times you would like license. I am still reviewing what I will be doing with this.

Listening to the discussion yesterday got me thinking about a lot of things concerning the propietary theme marketplace in general. Weborithm has mostly been in the business of custom theme development since the start, which completely complies with the GPL, what our customers do with their themes is up to them. We just charge for our time. So far it has worked out well for us.

But obviously I have bigger and grander plans. Having heard last nights discussion I’m glad I was on the right track when I thought up my new venture {still unannounced} some time back. A lot of things are happening right now within the WordPress community and the theme marketplace, and I would say that you will probably survive longer, and thrive, if you have the approval from WordPress about your business model.

After all, without WordPress the world would just be…boring!

Everyone loves a deal around this time of the year, so I have some for you myself.

If you would like to grab a copy of our SuperPress Theme, you can get it for only $67.00 {it still comes with WP Auctions for free}. Original price was $87.00. Make sure to select SuperPress Light - you can download the theme here.

If you are looking for a blog design I am offering a discounted price of $1200 for a brand new design for your blog. Simply get in touch with me via this contact form to get started. Mention “Holiday Code” in the form to me.

Original price is $1349. It’s will be going up in the New Year. So now is a good time to get started on a new blog design if you have been waiting for it.

Both offers are valid till Dec 31st, 2008.

With that being said, have a good Holiday everyone.