WPShower – New WordPress Theme Site

Posted on August 18, 2010 by flick

This will be a short post, as I simply want to share a brand new WP theme site that I discovered via WLTC recently called WPShower.

WPSHOWER Logo and Blurb

The site has released 3 lovely and free WordPress themes to date, including Imbalance, Paragrams and iPhonsta. You can see a screenshot of Paragrams below, courtesy of WPShower.

Paragrams by WPShowerSadly there is no ‘About’ page, so we don’t know much about the person or people behind the site, but going by the comment replies on Imbalance, the admin has the nickname ‘Leg’. You can also keep up-to-date with WPShower via their Twitter.

I am really impressed with the releases so far and feel a bit sad that none of my projects are very graphics-oriented content-wise, so the designs would be rather wasted if applied to those sites. Fingers crossed that the next WPShower release will be more text-content friendly!

Posted in Find of the Day, WordPress | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

WP 2.9 Features Vote Results say ‘Media Features – Put em’ in core’?

Posted on August 1, 2009 by flick

The results of the WordPress 2.9 Features Vote came out today, where Jane Wells wrote that over 3,500 people participated in the poll.  Although only the first question was mandatory, Media albums and Easier embedding of Media were clearly priorities for most as they took up more than a third of the votes (34%).

I would have voted for the same thing – particularly for embedding media – since I tend to write and embed about third party content. For that reason I would probably have voted for a better media interface as well.

What is worrying though is that out of the 3284 people (apx 91% of total voters) who answered the 4th question about whether media features such as Albums should be:

  • A Core or standard feature of WordPress; or
  • Bundled with core as a plugin; or
  • Left as a plugin in the Repository.

56.2% said this should be in core! Thankfully there were still many who thought otherwise, but it seems most of these were developers rather than users.

This doesn’t mean that the demi-gods of WordPress development are going to go with the flow, as they said that:

Clearly this issue deserves more discussion, and the concept of how we move toward a system of canonical plugins and/or core “packages” intended for different use cases (CMS, photoblog, portfolio, etc) will be a big topic in the months ahead.

However, as a user, I really believe that if media features were introduced, ‘canonical’ plugins that are either left in the Repository or – at a push – bundled are the way forward for several reasons:

  • They will still ‘hook’ or work effectively with Core, and presumably this will be because-
  • Plugin development may be done in-house or the third-party developer will work closely with the WordPress team; and
  • No excess code in Core for features not everyone uses, as the plugins are mainly standalone, which reduces the size of the core download; and
  • Avoids unnecessary code running in the background; whilst
  • Minimises the possibility of bloated code.

No doubt WordPress will  investigate the routes taken by other software such as Gallery by Bharat Mediratta, which offers 3 different packages for everyday users to download – the ‘Full’ package is more than twice the size of the ‘Minimal’ package – so the compromise is the ‘Typical’ package to ‘satisfy the demands of most Gallery users’.

But having more than one download will probably confuse new entrants to the WordPress user base (I know the Gallery one confuses me – then again, I am easily confused) and I imagine that quite often the boundaries for ‘use cases’  – CMS, photoblog, etc. – might be too easily blurred to offer packages on that particularly basis, but I am open to other thoughts.

This is why the WordPress core is currently great as it is – because it is flexible enough for users to go opt for one or more ‘use cases’, and can be downloaded and installed in (less than) 5 minutes – all in a tidy 2.2MB package.

By contrast, Joomla‘s standard download is 6.4 MB and even Gallery’s ‘typical’ package is some 4MB.

For these reasons, I believe that the new Media Features should not be in Core and should be offered separately as plugins. Leaving them in the Repository or ‘Repo’ would be most ideal in my mind, because the Core download size will be smaller.

Then the issue will be simply how to include these features as an option within a user-friendly interface for users to simply ‘activate’, whereby WordPress core can then download and install them automatically, rather like the Core ‘upgrade’ system now in use.

p/s: More opinions and related posts can be found in the Pingback section at the bottom of the official blog post, including a dedicated WP Tavern thread and even one discussing the presentation of data.

Posted in Musings, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

WordPress Plugin Competition 2009

Posted on July 12, 2009 by flick

Our humble website, WPSnippets, is hardly the first stop WordPress fans will visit when they look up information regarding their beloved WordPress (I recommend visiting WP Tavern and WLTC for that!)  but I do still feel it is important to get the word out as a much as possible about this year’s:

WordPress Plugin Competition 2009

This is an annual competition which, I believe, began last year and has both directly and indirectly resulted in some of the most useful plugins for 2008 – I believe the concept behind one may even have been somewhat ‘integrated’ into WordPress core – it was that good!

The incentive for plugin authors across the world is firstly, a place to publicise their plugin in a forum outside of the WordPress Plugin Directory – particularly to non developers (including myself). Secondly, as WPEngineer pointed out (with thanks to WPTavern for the Retweet), your plugin will receive a lot of feedback. I think he sums it up nicely:

… your Plugin surely gets more attention and more feedback, as I have experienced in the past year. This year should be at least the same amount of feedback as last year, where each plugin was inspect by OZH. Also this year, you can expect to get some feedback from Ozh as you can see at contribution to the Plugin Competition. Sure, the opinion of Ozh can be different then yours, but his feedback is crucial. As a developer, I have learned a lot from last year, my knowledge expanded.

Just to recap on last year’s plugins, the personal highlights for me from 2008 were (in no particular order):

for the simple reason that they were really quite innovative and ones I personally found very useful (or potentially useful) for my own sites (fan and private club ones) and these were to name but a few of the multiple plugins that were submitted.

2009 has yet to receive the same level of submissions, which is surprising, given the incentives listed above and some lovely prizes to boot. Hopefully this is because all this year’s potential competition participants are furiously writing up a changelog before posting their entry. :p

As a non developer, some of the new submissions that have caught my eye to date are:

where Changelogger is a plugin that I believe really offers something that should be in WordPress core, and Advanced Export for WP and WPmu will be such an essential tool when moving or even revamping a site as you can select specific content.

The deadline for submissions is the end of July 2009, so – as a WordPress fan who loves plugin developers and their plugins – please can I humbly implore you to send in your plugin for the WordPress Plugin Competition 2009!

Posted in Musings, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Transcript of WordPress Weekly’s Interview with Matt Mullenweg on 21 December 2008 – Part 3

Posted on December 27, 2008 by flick

Since posting Part 1 and Part 2 of the transcript of WordPress Weekly’s interview with Matt Mullenweg by Jeff Chandler, I have received some really encouraging comments from WordPress ‘enthusiasts’ such as Sophia Lucero, who simplified key questions at the start of conversation into a straightforward summary on WordPress Philippines, and also Monika, zaki, Margaret, Hafiz, and that girl again. A big thank you to everyone for taking the time to comment, as the comments really do cheer me on to aspire to greater things… like the completing the transcription :p

Aside from the usual disclaimer below and the note that words I couldn’t figure out are marked with three question marks, without further ado:

DISCLAIMER: Any inaccuracy or omission in this transcript that could cause confusion and result in an inaccurate reflection of Jeff Chandler or Matt Mullenweg‘s views on this topic should not be taken to be their actual opinions.

JC: When the notion of making money by selling themes pops up at WordCamps, you’re quick to explain the WordPress.com business model of selling services and building support and value around the product. But, this model won’t work for everyone, so what is a premium theme author to do, especially in light of these recent guideline changes and what not?

Matt: They don’t have to do anything different. Umm… one of the things though, I’m not in the business myself, so honestly, it’s more likely that they’re going to figure out the perfect model than I am.

But when I’ve talked to a lot of folks at these different WordCamps and said ‘Well, why did you buy this theme?’

I think you break the world down into two people: there are people who have more money than time, and people who have more time than money.

And so basically what they said was that they wanted a good-looking WordPress site, but they didn’t have time to tweak a theme and they didn’t want to figure something out, it basically looked like too much hassle. So what really drew, at least the folks I talked to, to the premium themes were the marketing of services around it.

One, if you look a lot of these folks, they have really nice websites built up around the themes. *laughs* They’ve got main ???, support forums, and really good screenshots of it, and ??? and everything like that. So there’s some really good promotion.

And two, if they’re having trouble, they’ve got really good forums or paid support, or something like that, so you know the forums are going to help you out.

I think people are totally willing to pay for that peace of mind, and also knowing that themes are going to be updated. So for example, when we had a new feature in WordPress like Threaded Comments or Gravatars, or something like that, the theme is going to be updated as well, so people are totally willing to pay for those things. And that… is where I see a lot of the true value being created, in these sorts of proprietary, commercial environments.

And I love what Revolution has done, where they say ‘Ok, so we still sold the theme, and we still bundle the support and everything like that with it, but it’s also available as GPL.’ So they’re able to, within the GPL framework, create a business and respect the underlying license of the community that they are building on top of.

JC: Ok, I’ve spoken to a few premium theme authors and they tell me that because of the GPL…

Matt: We should really separate it out from this point in the conversation, because Brian’s is a premium theme, but it’s not proprietary. So are we talking about proprietary people or non-proprietary people?

JC: Umm… in terms of who I’ve spoken to?

Matt: Yeah (x3) … we should, we should separate it out on how we talk about it.

JC: Let’s see… in this question, its proprietary I guess.

Matt: Ok.

JC: So, I’ve spoken to a few proprietary theme authors, if that’s the way we want to do it, and some of them have told me that because of the GPL, nothing stops… and they point to the example of Brian’s business model. And they say that nothing stops anyone from picking up Brian Gardner’s themes, changing the footer link and undercutting his business by selling support at a cheaper price.

Now, is that a valid argument?

Matt: Umm… sure. Nothing stops someone competing with WordPress.com by downloading WordPress.mu and setting up their own, but that argument also ??? both ???

Let’s say they claim that nothing is GPL, the entire theme is under a license. What’s to stop someone from downloading the premium theme, or buying one, and setting up a site to redistribute it.

I don’t think they have a very strong legal basis on which to prosecute that person that just made every theme available for free, because they don’t have a strong legal basis that their own licensing is built on, so they can’t really go after someone else for violating what they consider their licensing to be.

So it’s … I think that always *pause* there’s going to be situations where you say an evil person could do something bad to it. But that’s not how actually in the real world. What you’re looking at is a lot of things beyond just the commodities that may influence people’s decision.

So I know, that personally as a consumer, if I saw- let’s called it the Revolution theme…from Brian’s site – and then I saw someone else selling the same theme for cheaper, I would want to go to the author, because I figured:

A: I want to see more of these themes, so I want to give him the incentive to create more;

B: It’s the right thing to do, so I believe in that; and then

C: I would feel like no one in the world is going to be able support the theme better than he can.

So that’s just where I would put my business from a purely selfish point of view, I feel like I would get the best experience there.

And it’s still the same argument…where people say… the people pirating software argument. I’m totally annoyed when I download software and it treats me like a criminal, even software I paid for. You know, like Photoshop or something.

Photoshop is not a great example, but umm…. but I always had an Apple iTunes music…

JC: Like DRM on music.

Matt: Yeah, man. It drives me crazy! I’m changing computers all the time and I’ve got iPods and break em’ and I have to get a new one and something like this. And I’ve had it before where it’s like ‘You have reached your limit of number of computers.’ I’m like ‘What do you mean?’ This is my computer and music I paid for, and you’re telling me I can’t use it?

It’s because they’re treating me like one of the bad guys. I think a better model is to just, like I’ve said before, some people are going to pay for your stuff and some people do everything they can to not.

The people in the latter camp, you’re probably not going to convert. They don’t care whether it’s proprietary or licensed or what, they’re just never going to pay you.

So the thing to do is really embrace the folks who do want to pay you for the value provided, and treat them like super stars, like rock stars, not like criminals.

JC: Ok, so redistributing paid themes for free, which is ok under the GPL, thus rendering the business model of selling themes useless as I understand it? Yet, that hasn’t happened. And I wonder if that is because most end users are not aware of the GPL, and all they see is the single-use, multi-use license attached to the themes, and also maybe, because these people have spent 60, 70 dollars on the theme, they’re not going to go sharing it off, or redistributing it because they don’t want to, they’ve made an investment there.

Matt: *laughs* Yeah, I think you’ve just nailed it. One, there’s sort of a benefit to exclusivity, and that’s something that I think people are paying for as well.

But two, to the foremost point, and I think it already has happened and if you Google around you can find any of these themes for free.

JC: So… in your mind, with the whole GPL argument and rendering themes, or the business model of selling themes that are under GPL… I mean, I’ve been thinking about this, and when I’ve delved into it, and I’ve been thinking ‘If people can redistribute these themes for free, how are premium themes still in existence?’ I would have thought by now the premium theme market would have been eroded by everybody redistributing their stuff for free, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Matt: Oh, because I don’t think that the value is in the theme itself, I think it’s in the services and things they’re providing around the theme. That’s my true opinion. And honestly, if someone submitted one of those themes to the directory, we wouldn’t accept it either, because I also believe in respecting the wishes of the author or something. Just like I’m asking them to respect the wishes of the WordPress authors.

JC: Here’s a good question for you… well, these are all good questions… is there a way where premium theme companies such as iThemes and you or Automattic can come to a compromise? Is there a middle ground here between the way companies like iThemes do business and the way you want things done, or there is no compromise?

Matt: Well, one it’s got nothing to do with Automattic. *laughs*

JC: Ok, I’m glad you make that point.

Matt: So is there a way which… we can compromise with the WordPress.org community or me… is that the question?

JC: I guess that would be the question since it has nothing to do with Automattic.

Matt: Umm… I don’t know really. I think that the goals… of our themes aren’t really… there’s not a lot of grey area there: it’s either open source and it’s a benefit to the community or it’s not.

If something benefits the community: happy to promote it, happy to get the word out that and encourage people to check it out.

And I do believe that the support and customisation, all these services that people are doing around premium themes are truly valuable. Other stuff, like uhh… if it’s not really something that we would do ourselves with WordPress.org, it’s probably not something that we’d want to promote on that website.

And again, all we’re talking about is the stuff that’s on the website. *laughs* We’re not going out there and suing people, or doing anything like that; we’re just saying these are things we want to host or not.

And… there’s a million things we could do. There was this screw-up I made years ago about having paid links on the website…

JC: Ah yes, I’ve seen that on a couple of discussion areas. And uhh… these people, you know, I follow these discussions about what you’re doing and the decisions that are made, and you’ve sort of got people here who follow you around and say ‘Oh… this is what he did 3 years ago, he’s still evil.’ *laughs*

Matt: Yeah… I mean, I try to be at the bleeding edge of screwing things up. *laughs* Making it safe so you don’t have to. *laughs*

JC: *laughs*

Matt: No but, yeah… that was two and a half years ago before we had any sponsored themes, right? So it was really just the same thing… same mistake I had made, but now there are just a bunch of theme designers doing the same thing.

I think we just have to be consistent. You know, it’s not that dissimilar to Google’s Webmaster development. Google says you can do whatever you want on your website, but if you do something which drives… damages the web community as a whole, if you pee in the pool so to speak, they’re not going to include you in their index, or they’re going to move you down in their index.

It’s the same sort of idea, you can do anything you want. But the stuff that I think we should be careful about is the stuff we promote on WordPress.org, because to me, WordPress is something that’s… going to be around for decades – it’s going to be around 5, 10, 20 years from now – so the decisions that we make now are going to influence the direction it goes.

And you can look at other open source projects to see how this happens. I mean, what’s going to keep WordPress from becoming a PostNuke or even like a Joomla, where you go to it and it seems like most of the stuff is paid, and there are not that many free resources, which ultimately is going to hurt the viability of the underlying platform.

Umm… I think it’s really a commitment to what got us to where we are today.

It would be dumb to say ‘Ah well, yeah, we beat Movable Type, and they were proprietary and we were open source, and open source got us to this point, but now that we’re popular, we’re going to change our mind and say we don’t believe in open source anymore, we don’t want to promote that anymore just to make money.’

I think that would ultimately kill the project. We need to be true to what got us to this point in order to stay around, stay relevant.

JC: So, one thing, and I’m – you can imagine we have quite an active chat room here – but I want to make this point perfectly clear and that is: You’re dictating what happens on WordPress.org and the sites around WordPress.org; the theme repository, the plugin repository and what you actually promote to the community.

You… for instance, outside of that, let’s say a company or people who have a business selling themes, you don’t really care what it is they’re doing… it’s just that you won’t support them or promote them in the way that they’re doing things, is this correct?

Matt: Well, I care. But, I ultimately believe that market forces will… even things out. I don’t think it’s worth me going after people in sort of a … antagonistic way.

JC: Ok, because…

Matt: I prefer rewarding good behaviour rather than penalising people for doing the wrong thing.

JC: Well, because a lot of people seem to think ‘Well, in order to do things, you’ve got to do things Matt’s way or the high way.’ And… is that true, or is it just that your way is dictated with the way of …

You run and operate… you’re the project leader for WordPress.org and I imagine you’ve got these guidelines in place, and people have to follow them. And if they don’t follow them, they’re not going to get your support and the project support, right?

Matt: Yeah. And umm… but it’s not my way or the high way. You know, there are still lots of websites and lots of places, there can be other theme directories, there doesn’t only have to be one theme directory in the world.

It’s just on the platform I think we want to provide:

A: The best experience to users; and
B: Be true to our open source roots.

I did mention in Part 2 that there was the possibility that the original ’3-part’ transcription may be split into more parts, and – learning from my naivety/over-ambitiousness about how much transcribing can be done in a few hours – this will be the case. However, the next part starts with Matt Mullenweg replying to questions posed by premium or proprietary theme authors, so hopefully this is a good place to pause for the time being.

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Transcript of WordPress Weekly’s Interview with Matt Mullenweg on 21 December 2008 – Part 2

Posted on December 23, 2008 by flick

Following on from Part 1 of WordPress Weekly’s Interview with Matt Mullenweg by Jeff Chandler, it has been really a nice surprise to receive such kind comments from various visitors (including *the* Jeff Chandler) who appear to have liked my efforts at transcribing the interview, and really makes those 2 hours of work seem very satisfying and worthwhile, so thank you all!

Before moving straight onto Part 2, where Jeff and Matt continue their discussion of themes in the context of the direction Joomla and Drupal teams have taken, I must say again:

DISCLAIMER: Any inaccuracy or omission in this transcript that could cause confusion and result in an inaccurate reflection of Jeff Chandler or Matt Mullenweg‘s views on this topic should not be taken to be their actual opinions.

As before, words that I have not been able to figure out are marked with ??? and corrections are always welcome and appreciated!

In this transcription, JC = Jeff Chandler and Matt = Matt Mullenweg and starts 20 minutes into the audio file:

JC: In November, with regards Joomla… I used Joomla for over a year and a half and there are plenty of theme clubs for Joomla. It’s almost like, the situation with WordPress, for the longest time, I’ve been harping on the fact that the themes for Joomla seem so cool.

You can assign modules to the various places on the page, something I’d like to see with widgets. You can assign them to here or there, but in my opinion, the overall free themes in the WordPress world are… pretty crappy. And from my history of using WordPress, I’ve actually purchased two or three premium themes because they’ve offered a design and some features that I just don’t see in the free ones.

But essentially what you’re saying is that it’s getting to the point in the Joomla community… is that you pretty much have to buy for anything good, you have to buy for everything, and that’s completely against what the GPL is all about?

Matt: Umm… well, the GPL doesn’t say anything about whether you can charge or not. In fact, under the GPL it’s completely fine to charge for any ??? software, any ??? copies and everything like that. It’s really just about the freedom that the user and developer have. So, what the GPL says is you’re welcome to sell something, but you can’t tell someone they can’t modify it, or can’t redistribute it, or can’t do anything on top.

JC: Right… I think we need to stress that point that when we say GPL and free, we mean free as in freedom, and not free really as in price.

Matt: Yeah.

JC: Because a lot of the people get this notion that: if it’s under GPL it has to be free. No, it doesn’t. It just has to be able to be modified and released, (and) redistributed for free. I hope I got that right. Hope I didn’t just ??? myself there.

Matt: If we have a minute, I would actually like to read the four freedoms of the GPL. (Quick Guide to GPLv3)

JC: Yeah, we got all the time we want.

Matt: So the first one is the freedom to run the program for any purpose.

Number 2 is the freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a pre-condition for this.

Number 3, freedom to distribute copies so you can help your neighbour.

Number 4, the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements and modified versions in general to the public, so the whole community benefits.

That’s really the core of the spirit and the intention of the GPL.

JC: Ok. And umm… in November of 2007, hot off the heels of WordCamp Argentina, news came out about a possible theme market place, where people sold themes through the market place, and the theme author, as well as Automattic each received a cut of the profits. Now, was that your way of trying to help premium theme authors, and has there been any progress on the idea?

Matt: Well, so… the whole idea behind that was two fold.

One, the most popular request on WordPress.com is more themes. *laughs* That’s the number one thing.

And also, I guess at the time we had around 1.5 million blogs, now we have over 5 million. Anything we offer to that community gets them… really… instant adoption. Umm… it’s not unusual that we offer new products, the next day there’s 50 or 100,000 people using it. So it just seemed like a great, sort of, opportunity for folks.

The second thing was that the trend I noticed, in both other places that have had paid or sponsored themes and everything like that, is that it’s very designer unfriendly.

The economics eventually end up in a place that benefits umm… quantity over quality. So if you look at something, even like Template Monster is probably the epitome of an example for this, is where … they outsource the design, they churn out as many as possible, so they have hundreds and hundreds, so probably paying these guys nothing.

So the only person really making money here; of course the designers are making money, but they are making money… it’s outsourced so it’s pretty little. Then whoever the guy in the middle – the Template Monster or whoever – is just trying to get as many as possible. So the designers are really marginalised, and I wanted something that could sort of re-empower designers. I wanted designers to make a lot of money.

The reason something like this happens on Template Monster is because they have the distribution. Now, because they have 500 themes, everyone goes to them to find… a paid website to get a paid theme. Whereas a designer might only create 3 or 5 themes a year, or maybe call it 10 or 12.

So those were the things I was trying to get around, by giving folks really good distribution, we could sort of… it’s almost kinda like record labels and musicians, right? It’s actually a very, very similar situation. And (in) most of the premium template world, you have these record labels that are essentially buying the talent and then taking most of the profits.

I want to re-enable the musician to ??? their own masters.

And that’s what’s ??? for music as well, so I was a little bit inspired by that.

JC: And back at that time, there was this statement made that Automattic would take 50% of the profits, where the theme author would get 50%. But I believe that was just an idea to kind of explain how it works. Because then many people, like premium theme authors said ‘Well, that’s too much. Why do that when I create a premium theme, sell it and reap in the full profits?’

Matt: Well there’s only one answer to that: it’s ‘distribution’. *laughs* And that’s still the same answer. Umm… you can create the same idea. Of course, we didn’t launch it, so there’s no chance to test this out, and we might have tweaked the percentage based on that, but half-and-half just seemed like a super fair place to start it, and we could tweak it over time?

But think about it, if you put a premium theme on your site, and 10,000 people see it per month or something, you might sell let’s call it … a thousand copies. Or if you put it into WordPress.org and 5 million people see it, it might sell tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of copies. The most popular themes on WordPress.com have half a million users, so there is potential there for a lot more distribution.

JC: In terms of working on the idea… it hasn’t been launched yet. Has there been any kind of progress or what’s the one thing holding it back from being released?

Matt: Well, we worked on it quite a bit. And it got to a point where I said: ‘Well, I don’t think it’s really right to do this before we, umm…. clean up the situation on the WordPress.org site.’

So actually a lot of the code is similar; we took a lot of the development we’d done and put it into WordPress.org. Because if you look at how WordPress.org works, you know you upload the files, there’s a moderation queue and everything like that. Umm… a lot of the same features we’d originally developed for the WordPress.com market place. And I just had Joseph, who had worked on that open source development, put it all in.

So, it seemed like, it would be good to get the WordPress.org site working first.

And the second thing is: I wasn’t really sure how to align the incentives properly. I’m still working on it. I don’t have a good, good idea yet. Because WordPress.com is a hosted service, nothing is ever distributed, which means it doesn’t actually invoke the GPL, so things on the WordPress.com repository are not required to be GPL.

And I was trying to figure out the best way to go about this. In the original announcement I said that anything that was in the repository also has to be GPL. Anything that we’re going to distribute on WordPress.com. And that works, right, because then on .org you get the same theme for free.

But I think it kinda creates a sort of weird situation, where… say there’s a theme that’s 500 dollars or a thousand dollars, or something like that. A user of WordPress.com could just go to WordPress.org and get it for free.

And we said ‘It has to be GPL, but…’ We’re just trying to figure it out, and obviously we haven’t yet (figured out) what is the best way to sort of…. align the economic incentives for folks who are using the market place to still align with the community incentives of WordPress.org.

It’s a tough problem. I mean it’s the same thing I was thinking of when I first started Automattic. I totally believe in all these things, and as long as I’m around, the company is going to do the right thing. But what’s the way to align the incentives so that even if I’m not around, the company will still be… still do the right thing.

For that what we figured out was having everything be open source and Automattic has no intellectual property, and separating out WordPress.org from Automattic and all that was the way to do it, and it’s worked really well. We are now three years in, but I haven’t figured out the way to do that for themes yet.

JC: I wanted to read you something. Getting back to the themes and what not. The Drupal community has debated this GPL-premium theme issue for quite a while now, and according to them, a solid understanding has come from it.

So I wanted to read you a little example that was taken from a Drupal theme developer’s page, and this is what they say:

A theme is made up of several files – template files (ending in .php), CSS, images and JavaScript. The template files are considered part of Drupal, which is licensed under the GPL, which means they are not restricted in their distribution. You are free to share the .php files so others can benefit from them.

However, the rest of the theme – images, CSS, JavaScript – is independent from Drupal and owned by us and licensed by you for one website per purchase. You may not publish or share these parts of the themes with anyone else. Please review the EULA for full details. (Source)

Umm… what do you think about that type of policy. Does that fall in line with being able to sell a theme whilst being completely under the GPL there?

Matt: So basically… what you’re doing in that situation is looking for a loop hole, where you’re saying ‘Ok, because we have to, we’re going license the PHP files as GPL. But all this other stuff that actually provides the value, we’re not going to.’

So if you could imagine, what if we distributed WordPress without CSS, or images or JavaScript. *laughs* I mean, who would use that? Would you use that?

JC: No, no I wouldn’t. *both laugh*

Matt: Of course the value is in the whole package. From a legal basis, I totally see their argument. The CSS is not linked in the same way, it doesn’t call internal functions of WordPress, and it does (is) not required to be GPL.

I think that on the Free Software Foundation’s website, they have sort of a weird thing where they say that JavaScript can invoke the GPL because it’s doing… within the browser’s DOM, it’s doing function calls across it. And if it’s not the intention, they recommend special exceptions to that. So there is an argument in fact that the browser is the execution model that’s ???. And that’s… honestly, I don’t care. *laugh* That’s not… that’s for a lawyer to figure and court cases to figure out and everything like that.

What I care about is what we have control of, which is a: what I do with all my open source projects, which is to make them entirely GPL. You’re never going to get a version of WordPress with differently licensed CSS or JavaScript.

And two, what we promote on the WordPress.org site. *laughs* So what we promote on this site are open source community projects. I think we should promote things that sort of embrace the same freedoms that WordPress itself does, and that’s all I’m really concerned about.

That really concludes Part 2. And as mentioned before, Part 3 moves onto more WordPress-specific questions about themes and actual questions from premium theme authors to Matt. Given the length of Part 3, it may be split (again, sorry!) to sub-parts, but we’ll see how the transcribing goes tomorrow.

Till then, thanks to everyone for your support so far! :)

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