Wordpress Paid Themes are History!

Or maybe not...

Just follow the story here:

Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | WordPress Creator GPL Says WP Template Must Be GPL'd

That reminds me I have to get rid of a few footer links. :D

So, if the Thesis creator played nicer in the playground and permitted extensions of his work, would all be good?

I think the previous legal opinion that I saw on this indicated that the theme code was under GPL, but the images could still be copyrighted.

Matt is a TOTAL idiot IMO. Thesis is THE best premium WP theme. It's has flawless CSS, is very well written (unlike 99.999% of WP themes) and is VERY SEO friendly out of the box.

Matt is just jealous because HE and his team don't offer such themes on WordPress.com. WordPress is likely under pressure to figure out how to monetize their product (because it is offered free) and making the bigest mistake of his life by pissing off Chris, the maker of Thesis.

If he start's shutting down premium theme makes like DIYThemes.com, they will likely simply start writing templates for Joomla and/or Drupal. Bad, bad move IMO.

I use WP MOSTLY because I can use Thesis... If Chris created a Joomla theme that looked as good as Thesis and had the great interface that Thesis has under Joomla (like I am sure he can) then I'd switch to Joomla in a heartbeat. It's not WP that keeps me using WP, it's themes like Thesis that keep me using it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Social-Media

I use WP MOSTLY because I can use Thesis... If Chris created a Joomla theme that looked as good as Thesis and had the great interface that Thesis has under Joomla (like I am sure he can) then I'd switch to Joomla in a heartbeat. It's not WP that keeps me using WP, it's themes like Thesis that keep me using it.

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Please, Joomla is probably the worst CMS of the big names you can find online, I don't see any reason to use it if you don't have to, SEO for Joomla is a joke and I don't even want to mention security and it's taxonomy system

My opinion - this is going to be bad for the whole wordpress community.

Several years ago the people at joomla tried this same thing, and it caused a rift in the joomla community. The SMF forum removed its support for the smf-joomla bridge, and the joomla support forums switched to PHPBB instead of smf.

Its almost laughable at what Matt Mullenweg is pulling.

If images can be copyrighted than I will suggest chris to add some images in thesis and we pay for those images lol . I am hardcore thesis fan and member of it from last 8+ months .

Matt Mullenweg's opinion is more "wishful thinking" rather than legal fact. It is all part of the open source concept.

I don't think it will stop anyone from selling themes, but people will take a different view of the licensing issues. While I can understand the code as being an extension of the GPL, the images and other elements are not.

Myself, I would love to see all paid themes disappear.

Too many paid themes look too darn much like free themes.
Or is it vice versa?

So you add a new graphic or picture and it make a free theme a paid theme?

Never tried thesis as it seems like either you love it or not.

They ARE history, the wordpress,org database has every possible theme any designer can make. And they are all free. Currently there is no need for any themes to be purchased, websites are analyzed more on what content they offer. Not the visual appeal.