A tempest erupted in the WordPress community today on Twitter. It’s centered around the Thesis theme and creator Chris Pearson’s bucking of the GPL in it. WordPress is released under the GPL:
The GPL, or the GNU General Public Licence is the licence that WordPress is under. The licence is simple, you’re free to do what ever you want with it, make money with it, go nuts. However derivative works need to be under GPL.
Ever since Thesis was released two years ago, it’s not been released under the GPL. This has become a sticky point for the folks at Automattic. With the discovery of a malicious file in the 1.7 and 1.8b1 release of Thesis today, Matt decided to air his feelings on Thesis over Twitter. And we’re off.
Do a Twitter search for #thesiswp and you’ll see fairly strong opinions, some funny remarks, and quite a bit of snark.
The dustup got started today with WordPress developer (and fellow Coworking enthusiast) Bill Erickson – a damn good WordPress consultant in College Station. Automattic removed him from their VIP consultant listing, CoedPoet.com, due to his promotion of Thesis.
Austin WordPress community – do you have any thoughts? All the major players in this have Austin & Texas connections. I’d love to hear you sound off in the comments.
Update: Aaron Brazell just posted a good piece on the topic with mention of a possible lawsuit.
Related stories out in the blogosphere (will post more as I find them):
- The Great Thesis (#thesiswp) vs. WordPress Debate Rages On
- My Take on the #thesiswp Drama
- On WordPress, Thesis, and profitable GPL software
- Why the GPL does not apply to premium WordPress themes
- Tracking the #thesiswp matter: Part 1
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Hi Pat,
Thanks for letting us know about this debate. It’s interesting, to say the least, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Of all the themes/frameworks for purchase (of which Thesis is just one of many) how many are released under the GPL? I know Genesis is, and it’s because of their liberal policy concerning its use/reuse that makes me want to give it a shot. So I guess the question is, are people unhappy because Thesis is bucking the trend, or because of Bill Erickson’s involvement?
Thesis is an interesting beast. I was helping someone yesterday who purchased Thesis and wanted to make some CSS changes that apparently aren’t possible (or he couldn’t figure out how), and I had to explain how the “Thesis model” worked. Having never actually used Thesis, though, I couldn’t tell him if what he wanted to do was actually possible or not, and since we were just discussing it over the phone, I couldn’t take a look for myself. It did reinforce in my mind, however, that I’d much prefer a theme that made the CSS user-friendly and moreover, allowed you to do what you wanted with it.
Then again I’m a big supporter of open-source software and the GPL (hence my love of WordPress!), so I might be a bit biased against any product that doesn’t fit that model.
I’m not sure how I feel about it.
Yep. Me too. I know I’m unhappy over Bill’s “de-listing” but I know the non-CPL status of Genesis has been a point of contention for the past two years with Automattic. That’s where the battle lines are drawn. Bill’s situation appears to be one of two sparks that kicked off today’s debate.
Hi Pat,
I did an analysis of Thesis code and found several areas where Thesis outright copied WordPress GPL licensed code: http://wp.me/pg2iw-1R