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

Sat Sep 27 16:24:53 UTC 2014

Well, that's a mess. I thought I was replying Bryan via private mail. But
now that what I said is public, I stand by it. Bryan or Trent in no way
suggested a lawsuit, but I stand by what I said.

Your little rule about theme naming is restricting interstate commerce.
Even though WP.org is a non-profit, volunteer driven organization, WP.org
is still the basis for an extremely large fraction of the world's websites.
You open the repository to developer's from all over the world. So you fall
under all sorts of USA and international law. This law would look very
unfavorably at the sort of restrictions that stop people from using a well
developed brand name, legally trademarked or not.

Whether you want to believe it or not, WordPress.org supports a huge global
economy in building websites. It is subject to trade law, and this branding
restriction not doubt violates countless laws over the world. You've
provided the mechanism for supporting commerce, and you can't arbitrarily
restrict it by this naming rule.

Sorry, but this is reality! You are bigger than you think, and you have a
huge set of responsibilities not to destroy commerce and people's
livelihoods based on this engine you've created.

Bruce.

On Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Bruce Wampler <weavertheme at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>
>   Bryan Hadaway <bhadaway at gmail.com>
>  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.
> _______________________________________________
> theme-reviewers mailing list
> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>   Weaver Theme <weavertheme at gmail.com>
>  September 27, 2014 at 9:54 AM
> And by the way, "Weaver" and "Weaver II" co-existed as live themes for a
> couple of years. And there was MINIMAL confusion by users between the two.
> But I can't imagine the chaos that would happen if "Weaver" were dropped
> when "Weaver II" was released. They were not compatible! But the existing
> "Weaver" user base deserved the "luxury" of automatic theme updates, which
> occurred with "Weaver" for at least 2 years after "Weaver II" was include.
>
> And it make sense the that same deal be accorded to existing "Responsive"
> and "Weaver II" users.
>
> And to be honest about this whole thing, would I really be allowed to
> submit a theme called "Twenty Fifteen" right now? NO WAY! "Twenty
> Anything". Nope. "Twenty Whatever" belongs to WP core. I know that, You
> know that.
>
> But according to some of the logic being given in this discussion, the
> release of "Twenty Fourteen" should result in the immediate removal of all
> the other Twenty Something themes. That would obviously be absurd.
>
> Twenty-something is a brand. Any theme is a brand, really. I always
> understood the rule against name variants was to prevent using an overly
> generic name, to reduce theme cloning, and to protect the brand name of the
> original theme author. But I can't that this situation will be that
> burdensome to theme reviewers.
>
> Is the goal of all this to totally prevent using trademarked names
> (whether legally trademarked names, or de-facto trademarks) in the
> repository, even if the theme authors believe in the principles of GPL, and
> the way is now does, and always has, allow developers to make money from
> free software?
>
> So what can we do? "Super Responsive", "New Responsive", "Responsive
> Revised", "NextGen Weaver", "Weaver Rewired"? It is really important that
> theme shops be allowed to leverage brand names, and as long as there aren't
> theme directory name conflicts, it seems that authors of existing themes
> should in fact be allowed variants on the same name. Perhaps a simple
> revision to the policy that only the original developer (or authorized
> successor) (like WP and Twenty-something!) can submit theme with variants
> on the name.
>
> Bruce Wampler
>
>
>   Weaver Theme <weavertheme at gmail.com>
>  September 27, 2014 at 9:23 AM
> I've just seen this whole discussion, but at the risk of really killing my
> own theme, I need to give some input.
>
> A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, (so it seems now), I released
> my first theme called 2010 Weaver. I changed that pretty quickly to simply
> Weaver. For quite some time, the original Weaver theme was a top 20 most
> popular theme. So the "Weaver" became a known and respected brand.
>
> After some time, I did a major rewrite of the theme that was essentially a
> completely new theme. But the "Weaver" brand was recognized and important.
> So, I released the new version as "Weaver II", and continued to support the
> old "Weaver" theme for a couple of more years. So there was "Weaver II" and
> "Weaver", and I really had little issues with confusion of the users, and
> over time, I finally discontinued support for the original "Weaver".
>
> So today, Weaver II also has tens or hundreds of thousands of users, just
> like "Responsive". But time for a new generation, which I've been working
> on for over half a year now, and which has been undergoing extensive
> testing by my user base. I have intended, following a marketing plan based
> on past experience, to release the completely new, completely rewritten,
> and completely incompatible version as "Weaver X" - not the roman numeral
> X, but X as in X Games or other "eXtreme" brands. The goal, of course, is
> to release a new, updated, state of the art options based theme, while
> keeping my pretty large user base connected, and the "Weaver" brand active.
>
> This is really critical - whether that be "Responsive" or "Weaver" or
> whatever.  In many many ways, this is no different than the WP brand of
> "Twenty-Something" themes. How, really is "Responsive", "Resposive II",
> "Weaver", "Weaver II", or "Weaver X" any different than "Twenty Eleven",
> "Twenty Twelve", etc. The brand is "Responsive", "Weaver", and "Twenty X".
>
> I've developed a highly successful and popular theme using the "Weaver"
> brand. I've worked very hard to make the free version found on the WP theme
> repository to be a robust, fully featured theme that is not a limited,
> restricted "Lite" version. Sure, I have an upsell version, but the base
> versions are still extremely functional. My history of developing and
> releasing GPL software goes way way back - over 20 years.
>
> But - I recognize the value of a brand name, and deeply believe that as
> long as the themes we contribute truly fall into the spirit of free
> software, there should be minimal restrictions on limitations of how theme
> developers choose to leverage that brand name.
>
> Bruce Wampler
>
>
>
>   Liane Blanco <lianeblanco at gmail.com>
>  September 27, 2014 at 8:04 AM
> Cool, I didn't think so but wanted to make sure. I would hate to have to
> rename it since the name fits it so perfectly. I generally like one-word
> names for some reason....
>
>
>
>
> --
> Insert clever phrase here
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> theme-reviewers mailing list
> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>   Rohit Tripathi <rohitink at live.com>
>  September 27, 2014 at 7:32 AM
> I don't think that's a problem. But if it was Haunted 2.0, then it would
> have been a problem.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 27-Sep-2014, at 5:20 pm, Liane Blanco <lianeblanco at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Can y'all clarify something for me re: names. I have submiited a new theme
> called "Haunted" to the directory, which has not yet been reviewed. There
> is another theme called "Haunted House" that I did not write. The two
> themes are quite different in appearance and style. However, in my theme
> trac page for Haunted, the list of previous versions pulls up "Haunted
> House".
>
> Should I change the name? I would rather not as it really fits the look of
> the template, I don't think there's any way someone could confuse the two
> themes. Thanks!
>
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 10:15 PM, Trent Lapinski <trent at cyberchimps.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 26, 2014, at 10:02 PM, Bryan Hadaway <bhadaway at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> *@Otto* - No worries man :).
>>
>> Sure, Responsive is a dumb name, but it's our dumb name, a name that is
>> beyond established and that will continue on.
>>
>> Let's remain objective and on-point though.
>>
>> We're asking for an exception in a unique situation. Hopefully we can get
>> a definite yes or no on whether we can get
>> http://wordpress.org/themes/responsive-ii live while also still
>> supporting http://wordpress.org/themes/responsive for end-users and
>> making the upgrade optional, not mandatory.
>>
>> Please think on it and if it's a no, we'll figure out something else, we
>> always do.
>>
>>
>> Well put Bryan.
>>
>> Again from the beginning here I was simply looking for an alternative or
>> a solution to this problem.
>>
>> I e-mailed this list for help, not to be pushed around.
>>
>> Otto, just a year ago we were working on solving problems together in
>> person at WordCamp SF, I’m not sure why can’t do the same online.
>>
>> I don’t make the trends, I just follow them. We just want to release our
>> new theme that we’ve been working on most of this year.
>>
>> -Trent
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
>> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Insert clever phrase here
>
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>
> _______________________________________________
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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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