Revolution Theme Going Open Source: Brian Gardner’s Revolution Theme for WordPress is going 100% Open Source. All the themes that are currently on Brian’s Revolution site will no longer be available as or October 31st and will be replaced with a set of new themes that will be developed and released under the GPL. The original Revolution themes will continue to be supported for those who have purchased them in the past. The new GPL themes will also be sold in packages that include support, access to customizations, tutorials and other items. Brian explains his decision in the linked post, talks about his plans for the future of Revolution and explains why he chose to remove the original Revolution themes from his site.
I have met Brian at various conferences and we have become friends. In our past discussions on valid and financially viable models for theme developers and designers to adopt, Brian had expressed his concerns on adopting the GPL for his themes. Not that I had anything to do with this decision (I did not) but I had asked him to take a closer look and I had assured him that the community he could build around GPL themes would be supportive and would respond very positively. I applaud this move. Matt also posted about this change. Disclosure: Revolution Theme is an advertiser on this blog.
Hey Mark – thanks for posting this. I appreciate your commitment to spreading new in the WordPress community, great job in general! Also, just wanted to reiterate that it was great hanging with you at WordCamp. Lots of fun times ahead for us all. Thanks again!
This is wonderful news for the WordPress publishers who bank on highly professional-looking templates to gain more momentum in their particular field.
Making the Revolution collection available as open source will make it possible for everybody to make it even better.
Kudos to Brian Gardner!
Hi Mark, this is a great news! Revolution Themes going open source… WoW 🙂
I don’t know about you but all Revolution themes look like they were made by an amateur thought all the options are nice!
Wow that’s good to hear, and a better move to remove the premium revolution themes since it would be unfair for those who have paid for the present revolution themes. Great move. its for the best of both parties (user and designer)
And so the chargebacks begin on everyone who paid over $300 in the past 30days for something that will be free.
Richard, I really don’t know why you have a problem. I’ve already said that the themes are not going to be made available on the open source site.
Hey Brian,
Your Revolution products are so awesome that I could care less if you made all your current themes available for free download.
My purchase was well worth the investment!
It saved me loads of time and headaches that I would have surely gotten trying to get the look and functionality I wanted on my own.
Thanks and good luck with the “new you”!
I’ve always been interested in the revolution themes, because they are clean and they are so well laid out. But I couldn’t afford them. Nice to know they are going open source. Looking forward to checking them out!
It looks like the folks at Revolution 2 have decided to ditch the whole “open source” thing. Now they all cost 59.99. Was it a smart publicity stunt to say they were going open source knowing the whole time they would switch it in the end and charge for their themes?
The Revolution themes are no longer free, but must be purchased. This change back to premium, paid themes was not exactly publicized, but that’s their prerogative as a business. But if they are not free anymore, why is there still a banner to their site on the main WordPress Themes page: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/? I know their themes are still GPL, but is this in the spirit of GPL? If WordPress is allowing commercial themes to be publicized there, then that option should be available to all WordPress premium theme developers.
I agree, but it looks like WordPress removed the Rev2 ad. We are currently discussing this here too: http://www.wptavern.com/making.....evelopment