Last week we talked a little bit about premium Wordpress themes when we discussed the business model at Theme Forest. That got me thinking about the whole premium Wordpres theme market a little bit more.
It is no secret that the creators of Wordpress aren’t really that jazzed about premium themes. After all, these themes are built off of their open source software. In all actuality, no Wordpress designer really has the right sell a premium Wordpress theme. Am I right on this?
My question though is this, what other options does a premium Wordpress designer have to sell premium themes? How can one make money, but still be in line with Wordpress?
4 Comments
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You are only bound by the GPL when you distribute WordPress. When you make copies. Because it is the sole right of the author to make copies (this is copyright), and if they decide to give up that right by allowing someone else (you) to make copies, they can offer any terms the like (a license agreement) in exchange for giving up their rights (both parties gave something of value, hey, that’s a contract).
But theme and plugin developers aren’t distributing WordPress. Therefore they are not bound by the license agreement (GPL).
Why does WordPress say otherwise? They claim that themes and plugins are derivative works of the WordPress software. Therefore you either make copies under their terms, or you’re infringing their copyright. A claim that has never been tested in court (not just for WordPress, but any claim that linking out to functions of GPL-licensed work creates a derivative work and is thus subject to GPL). And is wholly not in line with any way derivative works have ever been interpreted in copyright law in the US.
Uncharted legal waters, yes. You won’t get a more clear answer from the FSF or any other open source group; they can’t give one, because again, nobody’s ever brought a case to court to have a judge decide.
Personally, I think it’s baloney. There’s no basis for calling a WordPress theme or plugin a derivative work of WordPress. You could substitute WordPress with any other PHP code that defines the couple functions a theme/plugin use (add_action, add_filter, the_title, etc) and have the theme/plugin continue to function without WP there at all. And it’s not that big a stretch to make a comparison to a plugin that calls an API over the web, instead of in other PHP code on the same system; does your site become a derivative work of FeedBurner if you use its API to add a subscriber count to your site?