This is just a quick overview of what I think should happen in order to solve this sponsored themes problem.
Actions to be taken by theme designers:
- Don’t use the Creative Commons license in combination with a required link back (Creative Commons ShareALike Attribution)
Don’t force anyone to leave the links. Instead, you should trust on the goodwill of the users of your theme. If they like it: they will leave it.
- Use trustworthy sponsors
Don’t link to shady websites, only link to established websites
- Full disclosure about the sponsored links
Honesty is the best policy…
- Stop promoting theme sponsorships
You are doing it for the community. Not for the advertisers. Therefore stop advertising the themes as a way to get better search engine listings. Everyone who is doing that is giving theme designers a bad name.And besides: if your work is good an advertiser will find a way to get in touch with you.
What I’d like to see from the Wordpress crew:
- Don’t make GPL obligatory
From what I can see the main reason to make GPL obligatory is to stop the required links in themes. Creative Commons without the required links back is perfectly fine if you ask me. (Please note that I’m not an expert in this field but this is just my opinion)
- Stop accusing us of adding adware to themes
There is a big difference between adware and sponsored links.
- Replace the default links of the Blogroll with useful links, or leave it empty.
The added value of linking to some random blogs is zero. Instead remove all the links or link to sites.
You can btw go and vote for that here: http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=560
Ofcourse this overview isn’t perfect. I’d love to see some other suggestions.
April 14th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Actually, they’ve been trying to make GPL obligatory since before sponsored themes were even thought of. The official theme competition, back when 1.5 was released, banned non-GPL themes (though apparently they had no problem with people using third-party copyrighted artwork without permission).
The main problem with saying ‘all themes must be GPL’ is that the vast majority of people have no clue about the implications of the GPL. You can’t use linkware content in a GPL theme, so most stock photos, icons, backgrounds, and photoshop brushes are out. You can’t insist on your link being kept. You can’t insist that people credit you on any modified version of the theme they make and distribute. You can’t insist that commercial enterprises pay you for their use of the theme. If you charge for your theme, the people who buy it from you can redistribute it for free.
Consequently, most of the themes which claim to be GPL-compliant are not in fact GPL-compliant at all. The GPL was never intended to cover design, or indeed anything other than software — that’s why we have alternative licences such as CC. But it’s the people who attempt to be honest about the terms their themes are released under who are penalised.
April 14th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Thanks for making a few things about GPL clear!
Leave a Comment