[theme-reviewers] Why can't theme authors have a second version of a theme?

Sat Sep 27 17:33:52 UTC 2014

Maybe disrespectful is the wrong word – but if a bunch of WordPress.org admins say no to me, I would drop it and move on.

Saying things like, "I'm sorry but I didn't know my company was now being governed by a bunch of WordPress.org admins, who now get to make business decisions about my product names, and release cycles.." seems a bit disrespectful to me.

We should all be happy and honored to be WordPress theme developers, and should applaud and appreciate the admins for doing what they do – even if we disagree with them sometimes.

I'll leave it there though, as this doesn't have anything to do with me.

From: theme-reviewers [mailto:theme-reviewers-bounces at lists.wordpress.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Wampler
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2014 10:23 AM
To: Discussion list for WordPress theme reviewers.
Subject: Re: [theme-reviewers] Why can't theme authors have a second version of a theme?

I saw nothing disrespectful in anything Cyberchimps said.

 <mailto:wptr at edge22.com> Tom

September 27, 2014 at 10:55 AM

Was reading along all of yesterday, and was glad to see it go to an admin vote.

It seems all of the admins (so far), have voted no – so why isn't this a dropped topic?

It seems to me that Cyberchimps staff aren't going to stop until they get what they want – even if it means being sarcastic and disrespectful. 

Sad to see.

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 <mailto:bhadaway at gmail.com> Bryan Hadaway

September 27, 2014 at 10:42 AM

@Bruce - I'm not really even worried about the legality of anything. Ultimately, whether non-profit or not, wordpress.org is ultimately someone else's website and to be hosted on their site we must play by their rules. Fortunately, it's a community that doesn't generally set hard-and-fast rules and say take it or leave and instead allows open debate like this.

All one needs to do is take a step back, remove both .org and the developer from the equation and think about what's going to cause the least amount of frustration for the end-user.

That's how our internal conversations go down with the CyberChimps team. To me, that seems like the most logical and objective approach.

@tskk79 - Alright, well I'll thank you for your input and wish you a good weekend. Hopefully we can put a pin in this until Monday.

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 <mailto:tskk79 at gmail.com> Srikanth Koneru

September 27, 2014 at 10:32 AM

@Bryan, there is nothing new in your information except the FUD that you have trademark to "Responsive"

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 <mailto:weavertheme at gmail.com> Bruce Wampler

September 27, 2014 at 10:11 AM

I just sent a note to Trent, too.

I'm not 100% sure that these people recognize that they really aren't a little free software organization any more, and even though the base organization is non-profit, they are certainly subject to a whole lot of interstate commerce law. I have little doubt that depriving us of our brand name is not even remotely legal.

I  would seriously consider joining with you in seeking legal counsel and even in a lawsuit if it comes to it. They are wrong, and they would be depriving us of our legal rights, even if they are a volunteer non-profit. And they are so wrong.

Bruce

 <mailto:bhadaway at gmail.com> Bryan Hadaway

September 27, 2014 at 10:02 AM

@Bruce - Thank you very much for hopping into this discussion, as ironically, everyone has been using your theme as an example for precedence of how this situation should be handled in favor of NOT allowing us to do what we need to, when in fact how you handled the major Weaver upgrade is exactly how we would like to handle Responsive's new upgrade.

Not confusing at all and definitely in the best interest for the end-user. The alternative suggestions so far, just develop backwards-compatibility (bloat), discontinue one version to open another (dropping support for users that don't want to switch), changing the theme name (confusing users who are looking for the newest incarnation), update directly over version 1.0 (inevitably breaking many websites and taking the blame for it) etc. have all been both more difficult in terms of development and more confusing for users, besides being contrary to logic.

What you've done and what we would like to do is hands-down the most graceful way to handle the situation. Hopefully, we get a yes on that.

Thank you.

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-- 
----------- 
Bruce Wampler, Ph.D.

Software developer 
Creator of first spelling checker for a PC 
Creator of Grammatik(tm), first true grammar checker 
e-mail: weaver at weavertheme dot com

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