WordPress.org bans Themeforest members from participating in official WordCamp gatherings

Caldazar said
@Dream-Theme

We don’t rewind to that point again (I can’t sell my theme, yadda, yadda, whine), do we?

I’m still not sure you guys are aware of the relationship between WordPress and you: They give, you take – free. They owe you nothing.

That’s where every discourse about ethics has to start, if you want one.

A lot of authors here do contribute to the core, albeit not all, but enough to make that statement sound very inaccurate.

WordPress is only as strong as the community that supports it as a whole.

CodingJack said

Dream-Theme said

mpc said
WordPress foundation thinks all of the code and artwork should be GPL ? In other words our themes should be free?

Yep. Give away themes and sell support. Easy! Like wordprass.com do!

Oh wait, wordpress.com users can’t do any customization, development, etc. So all that wordpress.com support is doing is kinda “to embed a gallery, click that small button…”. This means that they can hire anyone as support staff. Sure it’s easy to profit from such “support”

I’ve read a lot on this topic the past few days and have come to the conclusion that I just can’t respect the other side’s point of view unless they decide to make their themes on WordPress.com downloadable. Because we can argue GPL and “spirit” semantics until we’re blue in the face. Bottom line, one business is protected and the other is not (or wouldn’t be were Envato to go 100%).

Ditto!

Caldazar said
I’m still not sure you guys are aware of the relationship between WordPress and you: They give, you take – free.

Every time someone creates a plugin or theme for a platform, they’re adding to the pool of plugins/themes available for that platform and strengthening the platform’s brand.

Caldazar said
@Dream-Theme

We don’t rewind to that point again (I can’t sell my theme, yadda, yadda, whine), do we?

I’m still not sure you guys are aware of the relationship between WordPress and you: They give, you take – free. They owe you nothing.

That’s where every discourse about ethics has to start, if you want one.

IMO your point view is polarized. They give, we take – free. You are 100% right here.

But don’t forget that WordPress is just another blog CMS without tons and tons and tons of plugins and themes from third-party developers. Objectively WP is so popular and widespread because of them.

So relationships between WP and developers can be characterized as healthy partnership. Win-win for both sides.

[IMO] What’s going on now is pure hypocrisy, that has nothing to do with free software spirit, blah, blah. “It is [100%] business, baby!”

Blaming others is fine as long as we maintain the precision – sometimes we go out of proportion – human forum nature

Dream-Theme said
IMO your point view is polarized. [...] So relationships between WP and developers can be characterized as healthy partnership. Win-win for both sides.

Imagine WordPress threatening to go full proprietary vs. you threatening them to stop creating and selling themes if you have to go full libre.

Plus, the brand-building-argument isn’t as strong against a libre organization than it is against a proprietary company.

I see that this isn’t a 100%-0% relationship, but it isn’t 50/50 either.

What I find disturbing is this bit in Matt’s comment to the recent post by collis :

I’m also curious to see the results of the survey, though based on the feedback you guys got when you made the PHP compliant I’m guessing most of your community won’t care about WordPress’ guidelines or being fully GPL. Direct question: Do you plan to offer the GPL option to authors like Jake regardless of the survey results, or only if the majority of the people you survey “vote” for it?

If you know that the majority of users in this community do not care for the GPL option, then why propose it?

Other times he’ll say the exact opposite, that authors here would like this GPL option but Envato is taking away that liberty by not giving it to them.

Meh!

Caldazar said

Dream-Theme said
IMO your point view is polarized. [...] So relationships between WP and developers can be characterized as healthy partnership. Win-win for both sides.

Both is true in a sense. My point of view is polarized, because I think your win-win-partnership is.

Imagine WordPress threatening to go full proprietary vs. you threatening them to stop creating and selling themes if you have to go full libre.

Plus, the brand-building-argument isn’t as strong against a libre organization than it is against a proprietary company.

I see that this isn’t a 100%-0% relationship, but it isn’t 50/50 either.

Matt, don’t be shy – log in

Caldazar said

Imagine WordPress threatening to go full proprietary vs. you threatening them to stop creating and selling themes if you have to go full libre.

Plus, the brand-building-argument isn’t as strong against a libre organization than it is against a proprietary company. I see that this isn’t a 100%-0% relationship, but it isn’t 50/50 either.

This became an impossible scenario from the moment wordpress started accepting contributions from the community, which means they are going to need to track down every author and ask permission.

In the event that every contributor agreed to give up their rights, lets say for a small monetary compensation, someone can easily fork the last version. Sure, they own the brand, but since you think branding isn’t a strong argument, we can exclude discussing that

I say it’s a solid 50/50 ^^

Typps said
I say it’s a solid 50/50 ^^

Lets comeback to technical discussions atleast from this point. The contribution part is completely absent in Envato (so far), not as PHP but as a front end benefit. As a developer, I would agree it is little unfair. Considering the gain (not commercially but as a framework) we get in the backend – what we contribute as front end is zero due to closed source (only our buyer gains for the purchase – it just stops there). I noticed many times they point something like “If you remove the artwork and CSS files, what remains?”