[wp-hackers] Re: Removal Of Over 200 Themes?

[Chris]

Well there's the rub Jeffro. They modified their terms of putting themes 
on the repository. If you check their terms, they added the following at 
the bottom:

    All themes are subject to review. Themes for sites that support
    "premium" (non-GPL or compatible) themes will not be approved.

I'm with you. If they wanted to do this, that's fine. Why did they do it 
so quietly, slip this bit of text in the terms, and then kick a bunch of 
people off of the repository? This wasn't just a "we're catching up on 
some overdue cleanup," this is a calculated attack against "premium" 
theme producers which has also involved innocent themers that play by 
the rules but didn't match with the politics at Automattic.

I'm all for Automattic doing whatever they want, but I want to know why 
they do it quietly. If they are truly doing it for the benefit of the 
community, shouldn't they get the community involved?

In closing, I have to share that this move by Automattic has me 
wondering about the future of my involvement with the community. Full 
disclosure, I work for iThemes, which you would know if you visit my 
blog. I have previously released three plugins on the repository, two of 
which are worth noting: WP Easy Uploader and WP Developer Assistant. I 
am also working on developing WP-Roadmap.com, a totally free service 
that attempts to help developers by mapping the structure of calls in 
WordPress. Should I now fear having my plugins dropped from the 
repository and having my WP Roadmap site blacklisted because of who I 
work for?

Chris Jean
http://gaarai.com/
http://wp-roadmap.com/



Jeff Chandler wrote:
> Pete's situation as per the comment reference in Najots reply is very 
> interesting. What happened to Pete (if thats how it happened) is I 
> think out of line. In relation to the linking issue, here is the 
> actual statement as part of the requirements to be hosted on the 
> repository.
>
> No hidden, paid or sponsored links in the theme. Links back to the 
> author's site are fine.
>
> What if the authors site happens to be a site that sells themes? I 
> mean, it's not paid, it's just that the theme author is releasing a 
> decent product for free to be used by anyone and the authors site just 
> happens to be a guy running his own pay-for-theme company? Wouldn't he 
> be considered the theme author in which case, fall in line with the 
> requirements?
>
> Jeremy Clarke wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Navjot Singh 
>> <navjotjsingh at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  
>>> I don't understand this policy of removing theme of a author who 
>>> only shows
>>> ads of a premium theme. How does GPL violates in this case. Please 
>>> refer to
>>> http://www.jeffro2pt0.com/why-were-200-wordpress-themes-removed#comment-2952- 
>>>
>>> Adii's comment here on what I mean. A person whos releases a GPL theme
>>> but
>>> only uses a affiliate banner of a premium theme site - Does this also
>>> violates GPL in a way?
>>>     
>>
>> No, the paid links thing is a completely different issue from GPL.
>> It's a policy for inclusion in wordpress.org/extend (as i understand
>> it) because they want to keep quality high and avoid exploiters just
>> looking to make money by re-releasing existing themes with paid links.
>>
>> You can be as commercial as you want with GPL code as long as you keep
>> the license attatched to your product. GPL-compliance and "no paid
>> links" are just two seperate qualifications to be in the theme/plugin
>> repositories.
>>
>>   
>
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