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Licensing is the vehicle, our users are the environment

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July 5th, 2009
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Blogging Essays, WordPress
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Comments

  1. Andreas Nurbo (9 comments.) says:

    GPL does not in itself “benefit” users only developers.
    I would argue that if WP (and its predecessor) had used the BSD license it would be much better =). Would probably be better competition then.
    The most common thing with most GPL software is that the usability and design is crap. Which doesn’t exactly benefit the community =). There is the same problem with WP.

    GPL hasn’t exactly benefited Linux on the desktop market and BSD based Mac OS X is both better usability wise and has a much larger market share and better software.

    But its good to know where the GPL stands in relation to themes.

    • Otto (215 comments.) says:

      The GPL absolutely benefits users. Users are the ones that have to live with these themes and plugins on their sites. What happens when a critical plugin stops being maintained, or a theme author refuses to support his work? With the GPL, the user has the option to go find somebody else to help him with that theme or fix that plugin. Without it, the user could be legally stuck, unable to modify that part of his own site, and required to switch to another theme or plugin, perhaps at significant effort/cost.

      Licensing has no impact on usability and/or design. Your argument there is just nonsense.

      • Andreas Nurbo (9 comments.) says:

        Yes you can go and pay someone to maintain code. As far as I can tell very few do this and if they do they don’t release it. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you do.
        When the author stops the code stales and dies in almost all cases.
        If it were a more permissive license perhaps a company would continue to work on the product and provide you with updates perhaps for a price. But the code would not die.

        Licensing has indeed an impact on usability and/or design. Design etc cannot be as easily shared/developed in a community as code. A lot of people can code(most badly) very few can even spell to usability.

      • Ali Hussain (12 comments.) says:

        A good discussion going around. I completely agree with Otto

  2. Christopher Price (1 comments.) says:

    I think the decision is fair, though the enforcability continues to relegate it to moot-point status. Someone who buys a theme can agree that it is licensed outside of GPL, and that they won’t take action.

    That said, the SFLC analysis of course emphasizes GPL, but (to my surprise) does give theme makers the wiggle room to continue to enterprise (by privatizing the CSS code, etc).

    This encourages core theme integration to spread, but allows for intricate designs and specializations to remain licensed how the theme creator chooses.

    It’s a win for both sides in the long run.

  3. Ahmad Wali (1 comments.) says:

    I think GPL always benefits users and now the Thesis theme agreed to provide GPL licensing. The decision is good and it is fair.


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  1. blognews (blognews) (104 comments.) says:

    [planet wordpress]: Weblog Tools Collection: Licensing is the vehicle, our users are the envi.. http://tinyurl.com/ptn9au

  2. WordPressYes (WordPress Yes!) (94 comments.) says:

    Licensing is the vehicle, our users are the environment: I have been following the WordPress Theme GPL discussio.. http://tinyurl.com/ptn9au


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  3. […] it, some are not quite as excited. Matt wrote a response as well. If you want the whole roundup, this post gathers a lot of the opinions around the web. It’s a good issue to talk about and developers […]

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