[theme-reviewers] Lite Themes

Thu Oct 2 09:00:18 UTC 2014

@Emil - Your note is directed to theme authors and not theme reviewers. I
don't think the mailing list is best place for this note. A better place
would be the guidelines or a blog post.

This note is not consistent with the theme review name guideline
<https://make.wordpress.org/themes/handbook/guidelines/license-theme-name-credit-links-up-sell-themes/#theme-name>
s.
>"Themes are not to use related Theme names (e.g. WP Theme Name, Theme Name
WP, The Theme Name, etc.) in their name."

On 2 October 2014 10:39, Michael Hebenstreit <michael at mhthemes.com> wrote:

> Emil, actually, when I first read your email this morning I really
> couldn’t believe it. I thought I still am dreaming and it’s only a
> nightmare. :-)
>
> But I thought let’s see what the reactions are on this because I thought
> maybe I just don’t get it and it’s a misunderstanding. But now that I read
> that Thomas has the same thoughts, I’ll also want to give my 2 cents.
>
> Are you sure that no longer police theme names at all is a good approach
> for the theme directory? Because I’m not sure on this and there is a pretty
> good change that this becomes quite a spammy battle. In the end a lot of us
> are running a business and we all have to pay our bills. Developers on
> WordPress.org provide free themes for users, many of those free themes
> have even premium character and did cost countless hours of development
> time. But we’re still have to pay our bills and it doesn’t mean that
> everything is for free. So there must be a fair way to monetize our
> efforts.
>
> In the end there is also competition, but as on the free market, there
> have to be some rules to keep it a fair game. I’m also not a fan of
> policing everything and the rules and guidelines on .org are getting quite
> heavy…sometimes it’s a bit too much in my opinion (no offense). But when it
> comes to naming policy, there suddenly seem to be no rules at all, which I
> actually don’t understand. Especially not because it’s a very important
> thing to protect your brand and products. I’m fine with not policing names
> at all, as long as there are no collisions that have the goal to harm
> developers. We’ve seen a lot of rip offs recently from developers who are
> just copying themes to have a few minutes of fame (until their themes get
> removed…) and there is a pretty good chance that we are getting similar
> issues with names, especially when successful themes are getting ripped by
> those guys who have no creativity and honor at all.
>
> For example if a developer chooses a generic name, he must be aware that
> also other people could us it. For example if he chooses „Apple“ then I
> think it’s fine when someone else uses „Apple sweet“, „Apple blue“, Apple
> green“, etc… That's the disadvantage of a generic name and you can’t really
> protect it. Developers must be aware that choosing generic names might not
> be a good idea, especially when it comes to issues regarding naming
> policies. A generic word usually can’t be a brand. Ok, I see, my example
> with Apple was a bit stupid! :-D But I think you get what I mean.
>
> But I think it’s something else when a brand is involved. For example
> Thomas has a theme called „zeeDynamic“ as „ThemeZee“ is his brand. I don’t
> think it should be allowed to upload a theme „zeeDynamic better“ for
> example. This just would be ridiculous. It’s the same with other brands. If
> your brand is „AB“, and you release a theme „AB Wonderful“, than it should
> not be allowed to release „AB Wonderful with stars and strips“ or similar.
> Just „Wonderful“ would be fine in my opinion (if „Wonderful“ itself isn’t
> related to the developer / theme shop), but developers should not be
> allowed to use the brand of other people to push their own stuff.
>
> Imagine you release a theme called „Emil News“ which is very successful
> and then someone else releases a theme called „Emil News Theme“. Wouldn’t
> you want to have a serious conversation with this guy? His name is probably
> not „Emil“, but just „Idiot“. He uses your name to push his theme, this
> shouldn’t be allowed, at least when it comes to names of theme shops or
> brands.
>
> As you see, this is much more complicated than just saying „names are not
> policed at all“ and we might want to discuss this further as this is
> unacceptable from a business point of view.
>
> Kind regards,
> Michael
>
> Am 02.10.2014 um 10:03 schrieb Thomas from ThemeZee <contact at themezee.com
> >:
>
> Well, it was perfectly fine for theme developers to name their themes with
> "Lite" or "Pro", because nobody could take the name with the old guidelines.
> Now names are no longer policed, but a lot of developers have named all
> their free themes "Theme Name Lite" and it will be confusing to change that
> for existing users.
>
> And what is about the other way around? Some developer releases "Theme
> Name" and after that another developer comes up with "Theme Name Lite".
> Allowed or not? It has basically the same result that there are two
> different themes with nearly the same name. When names are no longer
> policed in any way we will soon have a lot of different themes with
> similiar names.
>
> And my final question: Can I release a dummy theme "Theme Name" in
> addition to "Theme Name Lite", which I'll unapprove right away? Basically
> can I block theme names? Since names are no longer policed it seems the
> only way to prevent the case you have mentioned.
>
> 2014-10-02 3:56 GMT+02:00 Sakin Shrestha <info at sakinshrestha.com>:
>
>> Yes, really hard to understand it. This type of naming will simply
>> undesirable. Especially lite, pro of already approved theme. Can we discuss
>> about this in coming theme review meeting and have a fixed review rule for
>> names.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 7:37 AM, Srikanth Koneru <tskk79 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hard to keep up with TRT policies, so if someone submits destro
>>> pro/lite/uno/prime/donkey, it will be allowed since names are not policed ?
>>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 7:14 AM, Edward Caissie <edward.caissie at gmail.com
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 8:10 PM, Emil Uzelac <emil at uzelac.me> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If you submit a theme called "Theme Name Lite" you are leaving the
>>>>> door open for anyone else to submit a different theme under "Theme Name"
>>>>> only.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This is true of any theme name using more than one "word" ... see my
>>>> example of "Opus Primus" and someone submitting "Opus" months later.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Edward Caissie
>>>> aka Cais.
>>>>
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