Thesis Theme For Wordpress Is Going GPL (Well Sort Of)
The Thesis theme for Wordpress is one of the most popular and flexible themes on the market. I know of several popular legal blogs, including The Lawyerist and AttorneySync's Lawyer Marketing Blog, that make use of the theme.
After a week of back and forth between Chris Pearson, the creator of Thesis and Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, things finally concluded with the Thesis Theme adopting a split GPL (General Public License) for the Theme.
An article on Mashable tells us:
According to the GPL, software can be sold commercially but the user must be free to share the software, free to modify it, free to redistribute it to the community and free to share copies of his modified versions. In the words of the license, “If you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received.”
The split GPL will allow the parts of Thesis that use WordPress code to be freely shared. All the PHP code is GPL, while CSS and JavaScript code sections remain proprietary.
I find it all a bit confusing to be perfectly honest with you.
Can the software now be purchased, modified, and freely distributed?
Chris Pearson tweeted this in response to what the adoption of a split GPL means to Thesis customers:
@tomoswyn It has no practical implications for 99.9% of people. It just means the PHP is GPLv2 and the CSS, JS, and images are proprietary.
Seems to me this pretty much nullifies what the GPL states.
I'd love to read some comments from our readers (especially ones with legal expertise in this field) letting me know your thoughts on this one.
Comments (3)
Read through and enter the discussion by using the form at the endKirk Chocholek - July 23, 2010 5:39 PM
I've never used Thesis myself, however, from what I know it renders designs via a form of dynamic CSS. Given that it is dynamic and may be dependent on the WordPress code to render its dynamic CSS designs because of this, it is somewhat questionable as to whether the CSS would be excluded from the GPL. The custom Javascript, however, may nullify this issue entirely though. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.
Jeff Berman - July 23, 2010 8:48 PM
Thanks for the input. I'm curious myself.
San Fernando - September 27, 2011 7:59 AM
A variety of business websites seem to be using the Thesis theme, which I love. It's good to hear they're adopting a GPL.