[wp-hackers] A question about donation link

[Jordi Canals]

2010/1/16 Jeremy Clarke <jer at simianuprising.com>

> The resulting discussion of GPL and attribution is fascinating, but to
> return to the original question I think it's obvious that regardless
> of what actually happened to get his theme denied access to the repo,
> the *proposed functionality* of asking for a donation when people
> remove the footer link is 100% appropriate and should be allowed in
> the theme repo. It is an example of very good usability to only ask
> for a donation when people are actively removing other benefits you
> derive from their use of your work. I think we can all agree the GPL
> has nothing to say about it and that donation asks like the one in
> WP-Supercache are far more imposing and annoying to clients than this
> one.
>
>
It's a petty that this link to the donations page has blocked all theme
updates on the WP-Themes site from December 18 and they are considering to
completely remove the theme. Just because them considered the text as a
commercial licensing option. The text was: "If you remove public themes,
please consider donating to the project".

Them asked the text to be removed and I did it the day after (Dec, 19). But
because of that the theme updates have been blocked and I had to spend a big
amount of time trying to tell them the link was removed and the theme is
only released under the GPL license.

Jordi, thanks for your dedication to making the footer credit an
> explicit option in the UI. It makes it WAY easier for people to use
> theme upgrades since they don't have to effectively fork their copy
> just to remove the credit. This should be a common practice, and I
> think your system of asking for a donation at that moment is a perfect
> way to raise the appeal of such options for theme developers (as well
> as encouraging users who don't want to donate to reconsider their
> decision to remove the link :)
>
>
It's a petty that because this, the theme was blocked (as said).  I also
thinks the best way is to allow doing it without hacking the theme which
makes updates easier. And now, the theme users are compaining to me because
I announced a lot of new features for the 2.0 release and the theme is not
available at WP-Themes site. I'm really disappointed with the guys who
manage the site and approve the themes publishing.

On the next releases, I just will completely forbid to remove the footer
with a big announcement on the code as the clause 7b og GPLv3 allows me to
require the preservation of author attribution. This is just the worst
solution, and far away of my original wish to allow an easy removal of the
theme author attribution. With this attitude, WordPress guys made me to be a
lot more restrictive about author attribution removal.

This really discourages me to continue developing and maintaining WordPress
plugins as all them are GPL and freely available.


> --
> Jeremy Clarke | http://jeremyclarke.org
> Code and Design | http://globalvoicesonline.org
>
>
Jordi Canals
http://alkivia.org