[theme-reviewers] How are derivative works identified?

[Ian Stewart]

On 2011-10-04, at 1:57 PM, Chip Bennett wrote:

> Well, in an ideal world, we would be able to tell via the Copyright/License attribution trail. Unfortunately, we don't live in that ideal world. :)
> 
> The derivatives of Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven are generally pretty easy to spot, once you've spent some time in the code for both (likewise with past default Themes, such as Kubrick and Default). With others, it's more a matter of just eyeballing a ton of Themes, and starting to recognize patterns. (Code in functions.php is usually fairly telling, as is the markup for the Loop and for comments.)

Are "derivative" themes just themes that use mostly the same code? Not counting the design? I thought the idea of keeping out derivative themes was to keep out re-colored default themes. I say this as someone who thinks it'd be awesome if more themes used 99% of the code in every default theme template. It'd make the review process better for all involved and make it easier for awesome designers to distribute awesome themes without having to be the awesomest coders.

Also, I'm pretty sure every theme I've ever made or worked on is largely derivative code-wise. Thankfully.

Ian