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WordPress Themes, GPL and Money
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!
2 Responses to “WordPress Themes, GPL and Money”
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Thank you for tuning into the show and for the links. I think we covered a lot of ground within that interview and provided a lot of food for thought. Glad to see you thinking or rethinking your strategy with premium/proprietary themes. It is worthy of mentioning that, if you are doing fine without the support of WordPress, chances are good that all of this doesn’t apply to you but as you mentioned, wouldn’t you like the support of the community/project that your work is based on? Makes sense to me.
Looking forward to see what business model you have chosen to pursue.