The latest thing going around the Internet is a debate between Chris Pearson, creator of popular Thesis Theme and Matt Mullenweg, creater of WordPress.
Chris’ theme runs off WordPress, which is GPL licensed, but his theme is not GPL licensed, which Matt feels is illegal. The two go head to head in deciding what should happen. It’s an incredibly interesting situation and it’s quite tricky to decide which way to swing, but if you have a read, take a watch and read the summary below, it definitely seems Matt is in a better position.
Digging into WordPress summarized this perfectly:
Matt: Thesis is violating the law because it violates GPL.
Chris: No it isn’t.
Matt: Businesses can thrive under GPL.
Chris: So?
Matt: Why won’t you bring Thesis over to GPL?
Chris: Because I would feel like I’m doing something against my personal beliefs.
Matt: We might sue you.
Chris: Bring it on.
That pretty much summarizes things quite well. If you want to read and watch further, here are the links:
- Mixergy Debate [video] > A must watch!
- The Next Web
- WordPress.org
- Matt’s website
Personally I feel that Thesis Theme should act under a GPL license.
What is your opinion?
I listened to the debate earlier today, and I have come to the conclusion that Chris Pearson is a douche !
He acts all and mighty saying he is one of the top 3 people involved with wordpress. WTH !!
Anyways, I don’t think I can ever see myself buying the Thesis “Theme” anytime soon. There are loads better alternatives out there.
Ye @Marc – After listening to it and reading other articles, I’ve decided that he’s more interested in making money than caring about the whole initiative of open source. As Matt said, there are plenty of companies that are successful using the GPL licensing, so he should be able to do it too. Sounds like he’s just got an “I don’t wana” attitude going, which is somewhat immature. At the other end, he does have a few good points, but none good enough to convince everyone to take his side.
So, I’m with you.
My personal opinion on this matter: http://fuckgpl.com/ ;)
Haha Fred, come on, tell us why you feel this way?
When I reviewed the menu of open source licenses available to use to license my ctnlist mailing list app, I opted for the MIT license because it is the most open and non-restrictive.
GPL locks developers into a restrictive licensing model.
Best way to illustrate this is to take the Premium WordPress theme creators. Because WordPress is licensed under the GPL, all themes and plugins must also be licensed under the GPL, because they are derivative works.
[I believe the argument is about whether themes and plugins ought to be considered derivative works or not.]
Therefore I can go buy some premium themes and start selling them in direct competition to the creators without them being able to claim copyright infringement and theft of intellectual property.
The MIT license, otoh, allows developers who extend my code to copyright their extensions and retain full rights to their intellectual property.
Richard, I think that’s exactly what Matt is saying, because themes and plugins are derivatives, they should follow the same licensing. I also think there’s a little more to it, Matt’s extremely passionate about open source software, so for him, he doesn’t mind people making money from it, but he feels strongly that it should be open source.
I must do some research around MIT licenses, sounds like a very good option. I wonder if Matt would accept an MIT license instead of the GPL license..
I don’t think any other license is compatible with GPL.
ChrisP wouldn’t want to use the MIT license for his theme. He’d probably want to use a straightforward copyright notice. Ditto for the premium theme developers, because if they release their work under MIT, anyone can acquire a copy of their works and begin selling them in direct competition without legal problems.
Ah, ye that much I know, was just wondering whether MIT license would be respected by Matt or not. Chris definitely wouldn’t want to use MIT licensing, haha.
It’s a good debate, one which is difficult to decide which party is more “ethically” right. In court, I reckon Matt would win hands down though.
I don’t think Matt will sue anyone. The premium theme sellers might want to sue anyone who starts reselling their themes, but I they might lose.
It all hinges on whether a court decides that WordPress plugins and themes are derivative works of WordPress or not.
Most themes are not unique. They mostly all offer the same functionality (which is provided via calls to WordPress built-in functions). Even layouts follow patterns with changes made only to colour scheme and graphics.
I think it’s impossible to copyright a colour scheme or layout, so it all comes down to graphics. Many of the graphics are just depictions of standard icons, such as RSS feed.
When you start dissecting themes, trying to find uniqueness, probably very few themes actually qualify. They mostly take pre-existing art and re-arrange things a bit and choose different colours. Hardly copyrightable.
Themes are cookie-cutter creations for the most part. They follow a recipe. They only work with WordPress by calling WordPress functions.
An overhyped theme vs a bloated CMS. How interesting.
“bloated CMS”, you should look at Drupal and Joomla, and EE for that matter ;)