So it’s official: the longest-standing argument in the WordPress community has finally been given a bullet to the head.
For everyone of you that has been involved in arguments / discussions / heated debates over the licensing & legalities of WordPress themes in the past 18+ months, you’ll know that it was probably the hottest / trending topic in the community. So to finally see the argument laid to rest, is definitely a very welcome change in my mind.
I’m also happy to see that the the Software Freedom Law Centre has announced that the images & CSS within a theme never inherited the GPL license of WordPress. Even though we are fully GPL-compliant now, we got a lot of bad vibes in the past for wanting to (rightfully) protect our designs; so it’s good to know that we at least weren’t entirely wrong for standing our ground.
That said, we’re happily GPL now and kudo’s must go to Matt & his team for continuing to fight for the cause in this regard; as irrespective how much this argument really meant for the WP community – I think that the WP team’s spirit (in this regard) in general has resulted in us having an amazing platform, which we get to use for so many diverse projects every day.
Hatchet = buried. 
19 Responses to “Burying the hatchet (finally!)”
Adii, you’re framing this post as if you were right. In fact, you weren’t and ONLY images and CSS files do not automatically inherit the GPL licensing. The rest of your code such as the control panel etc (read as the bulk of your themes) were always GPL, even if you didn’t intend them to be.
Crap, hit submit too soon.
That being said, it’s great that WooThemes has fully embraced the GPL and I would hope that you don’t object to people fully exercising their rights under the license.
Read the post again… Specifically:
Never said we were right or wrong.
This is simply yet another opinion, albeit from a more trusted and authoritative source. There is still room interpretation and disagreement of the opinion given. In the US at least, a court of law is the final and only avenue that will enable true final word on the matter through case law. Until litigation occurs, there will likely be ongoing disagreement on any matter of points regarding GPL, wrongly or rightly.
I must admit I now realized that I stepped in the trap again…
I actually really did not want to make a discussion of this, but then I published the post; so I guess I was naive to think no one will comment…
So… yes, for sure. Maybe this is not the final word on the matter. But for me this is enough and I think from a company perspective (having switched over to GPL), we’re happy about WP’s stance in this regard.
Great post – I’m really grateful for the clarification from WordPress themselves as I’ve always found GPL licenses (and others) to be pretty confusing in the past.
Personally – I don’t hold anything against people who don’t GPL their CSS and images. I don’t see any reason for those files to be redistributed for free given the amount of hours that are put into them – particularly by the likes of WooThemes.
How can anyone argue that people shouldn’t be allowed to sell their hand-written CSS and graphics files?
Thanks for the kind words!
Every company will be more than happy to have supporters / customers like yourself; so it means a lot to hear you say things like that!
Not so fast. You’d better read the latest post at the WordPress.org blog, “Themes are GPL, too”. They are claiming that *all* theme producers listed on the new commercial themes page are 100% GPL, *including all CSS and images*:
And on the bottom of the commercial themes page, they describe all the themes as “100% GPL themes, including artwork and CSS.”
So as far as WordPress is concerned, all of your “artwork and CSS” is 100% GPL too.
Phil, WooThemes has already licensed their themes (including the artwork and CSS) under the GPL. So yes, everything for WooThemes and the others is 100% GPL.
However, the post at WordPress.org is saying that ALL themes’ php automatically fall under the GPL license, but images and CSS do not automatically inherit that license.
Hehe Phil – my post was written in reaction to the post on WP.org.
So yeah, as Ben said, we’re 100% GPL-compliant in this regard. I only mentioned the images & CSS, because that is what our stance was in the past.
Hi Phil, I did read that part – the only point I was making was that I don’t hold anything against people who don’t GPL their css and images – because I can see exactly why they do it
I watched this play out over in the Joomla Community when I was pretty actively using their software. It will be interesting to see how this plays out with Joomla as a lot of the 3rd party devs had a hard time making the leap to the GPL format (subscriptions, memberships, pay-per-download etc). I hate to see a community go through this but I guess the initial decision to go with the GPL license set it up by the WordPress team.
And Trace is correct. In the US until someone decides to take someone to court then a letter written by a lawyer does nothing. It is just an opinion. You could find 5 lawyers to argue the same counter point. So until someone takes someone to court you may never know what GPL really means. The Joomla organization never took it that far if I remember correctly. I doubt Matt would either.
Yep, Matt is publicly admitted (I think in his State of the Word presentation at the San Francisco Wordcamp recently) that he’d never go to court with this. Whilst he doesn’t give a reason for this, I think a court case would tear the WP community apart and break it into little shreds.
Right. As I’ve said many places, this is still just a big game of chicken, albeit, at least WordPress insofar as the core development team, has at least decided to make its position clear and also get the opinion of the SFLC. But as Adii said, and as the whole Joomla! thing demonstrated, that’s a line I really don’t think you’ll ever see. Suing someone who takes WordPress, makes changes, then sells that resulting product WITHOUT folding the changes back in (or offering them up) would be one thing, that would be a clear GPL violation. Suing someone who has taken time to try to build a business based on your platform and has, as I believe the premium theme market (before many of the big players went GPL) did, enhance and offer incentives for people to use your platform would just be stupid.
But really, they (meaning WordPress’s core developers and Automattic as a corporate entity) don’t need to sue anybody to get the message of GPL across. Starting first with the relaunched theme gallery and now the theme installer, WordPress.org has given a lot of exposure to GPL non-commercial developers. For non-WordPress entrenched users, there is very little reason to look for other themes, because free themes are now searchable and installable from within WordPress itself.
It’ll be interesting to see how (because I know this is the next step) WordPress will allow commercial GPL theme developers to integrate into WordPress to take advantage of some of that built-in exposure and promotion.
My feeling has always been that yes, themes SHOULD be GPL, but that aside from a court case, it’ll never be enforceable.
I do still have issues with the GPL blanket covering graphics and CSS, if only because the license was really, really not written for images or stylings. But then, the license wasn’t written for web applications either (and even GPL v3 doesn’t address web apps in any more clear language), which is part of why this whole thing was so hard to decipher to begin with.
I just don’t think that this will ever happen…
I don’t think that the WP team are that fussed about going out and *really* promoting the great work that we & the other premium guys do, because I don’t think that they recognize the benefit in that.
Well, I am sure woothemes will keep growing regardless of any eventual complaint from the community.
I am really sick of all these arguments. Let’s face it, woothemes exists because it is something people really needed.
And it offers a service worth much more than what they charge.
How can they not see the benefits? The reason that makes premium themes proliferate is that thanks to such services, a “non-technical” person can now run a professional blog using a wonderful platform like wordpress, without having to pay thousands of dollars for a custom design.
Well… I am a “non-technical” person, but WP is so easy to work… that I like use it. But the themes that WP offers are… a little poor to my projects in Internet. So… WooThemes provides to me just I need: a premium theme with a amazing structure. Really, I have paid to this… but only a few dollars… if WooThemes sell his themes more expensive… probably “non-technical” person don´t buy this.
@WP&Woo&another Premium Themes Companies:
Hatchet = buried, please.
the user need all of you (live and alive) 
)
Only is my opinion
Thank you for the very kind words Pedro. If our users are all going to support us like this, then there’s no reason why we couldn’t continue producing top quality themes for years to come.
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