WordPress Theme Thesis Maker Backs Down, Adopts GPL | Hacker News Reader

WordPress Theme Thesis Maker Backs Down, Adopts GPL

mashable.com

48 pointsjolie35 comments

Off-topic: What does Thesis actually do? Most Wordpress "Themes" I've seen actually make your blog look a certain way. Thesis seems to be focused on giving you the tools to do... something to do with how your blog looks, but I can't figure out exactly what. And none of the blogs in the showcase look anything like each other.

Is this intended to replace freelance WP theme designers? Or is it intended to be something that they somehow use in their designs?

It doesn't help that all the video tutorials are behind a paywall... http://diythemes.com/thesis/generate-affiliate-links/

So maybe I am just not in the target market for whatever this thing is, but I cannot understand why I would want it.

I believe it's considered a "theme framework" ... I think it adds panels/setting to the WP admin, allowing you to adjust column widths and other aspects of the blog.

so, its a theme plus a plugin?

does this instantly kill the entire premium theme/plugin market?

Not at all. The rest of the premium theme and plugin market already works under/with the GPL.

fair enough. thanks for the info.

It gives you an area in your admin panel where you can custom functions, change the colors, text settings and layout. It also gives you the ability to customize the css. You still need to hire a designer if you want to differentiate it from other people, unless you're happy with the default.

Firstly, you can see Thesis in action. Go to http://diythemes.com/, then click the picture that says "Click here to see how you can design a Website with Thesis", and you'll get a video showing it in action. It basically adds a panel to your Wordpress Admin page that lets you control a lot of the design elements, namely number of columns, colors, fonts, etc.

Secondly, let me give the point of view of someone who uses Thesis.

I wanted to get my blog up and running. Obviously, I needed some kind of design, if even a basic one. I also wanted it to work as easily out-of-the-box as possible, since I wanted to concentrate on writing things and not mess around with learning Wordpress or Wordpress theme design (I have almost no experience there).

I saw (affiliate) links to Thesis on many sites that I admire, including descriptions of how good it is SEO-wise, and how much it's easy to use and customizable. For someone with no experience, it seemed like a good idea: I could install it, then use a nice web-based tool to customize the heck out of my design (which is what I did). If you watch the video, you can see that it lets you choose number of columns, size of columns, fonts, colors, and a lot more, all without going into any code. The few changes I did have to make in code were little snippets I found with very a simple Google Search, since Thesis is pretty popular.

If I have to get another Wordpress up, I'll definitely buy the package which gives you unlimited use of Thesis, since I already know it, and know that it will take me very little time to get a new blog working, and looking very nice with a very different design. All with likely an hour of work changing colors, fonts, etc. Obviously not a professional job, but definitely good enough to start with.

I'm very open to the possibility that Thesis doesn't help all that much. It's possible that with a few hours of work, I could learn enough about Wordpress and Wordpress theming to get to the same stage I'm at now with Thesis. But I don't know if that's true, and I don't know if I'll be missing important things (like SEO). So I was glad to pay to use Thesis (there's a lesson in what consumers are willing to pay for).

In any case, Thesis is a great case study in marketing!

Can somebody provide me with the GPL'ed parts of Thesis? Shouldn't be a problem, right?

Whew, glad that one is done.

Indeed we can focus more on the code again now :-)

“Even if Thesis hadn’t copy and pasted large swathes of code from WordPress (and GPL plugins) its PHP (PHP) would still need to be under the GPL,”

Is this really true? I never thought a theme interfacing with other software using public APIs is a derivative. Is it just the GPL that sees it this way or is it the actual copyright laws too?

Yeah I don't understand this either. Is there any way to sell a closed-source piece of software which integrates with Wordpress? What's the difference from software like www.copilot.com which uses GPL software (TightVNC) at its core?

It’s not a complete win for FOSS, but at least it’s fair, compliant and fork-able.

It's a complete win for FOSS. The GPL is intended to preserve the rights and openness of the original software, not to force people into releasing their own original creations.

There is a difference between libre and gratis after all.

I love this quote:

"Even if Thesis hadn’t copy and pasted large swathes of code from WordPress (and GPL plugins) its PHP would still need to be under the GPL, Mullenweg wrote on his blog. He also began encouraging Thesis users to abandon the theme and seek GPL alternatives."

Thesis was caught red-handed with GPL code. However, it still bothers me that the guys over at Wordpress would have still considered it a "derivative work" if it only had function calls to WP. Even before they found the code, Mullenweg was saying it was under the GPL, which is wrong.

> Even before they found the code, Mullenweg was saying it was under the GPL, which is wrong.

Which you _believe_ is wrong.

Which Mullenweg and the FSF believe is right. Which is the reason the LGPL exists.

Just because you believe it to be the case that users of libraries are not derivatives of those libraries does not make it true. Nor does the belief of the FSF and others that it does make that true.

"Which Mullenweg and the FSF believe is right. Which is the reason the LGPL exists.

Just because you believe it to be the case that users of libraries are not derivatives of those libraries does not make it true. Nor does the belief of the FSF and others that it does make that true."

If this were the truth, anything compiled using the GNU compiler would be also under the GNU (since you would be compiling libraries from this compiler straight into your application/binary and calling function names).

It really boils down to the definition of a "derivative work". As an example: A Paypal plugin for Wordpress should not fall under this, yet the developers for Wordpress think it does.

The entire situation with Thesis will only hurt Wordpress in the future. As a developer, why would I want to create any Wordpress plugins or themes if someone else is going to lay claim to my work (which really is my work. If the guy from thesis was actually re-distributing Wordpress along with his theme, it would be a different story)?

It's scary to think that the people that have talked about Freedom for so long are getting just as restrictive and bad as the RIAA/MPAA.

anything compiled using the GNU compiler would be also under the GNU (since you would be compiling libraries from this compiler straight into your application/binary and calling function names

There is an explicit exception in the GCC licensing to allow compiled programs incorporating GCC runtime code to be distributed under any license the author wishes. You can read more about this topic at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-faq.html

The compiled program is in fact a derivative work of the incorporated libraries and it is only this explicit exception which allows for the greater work to be redistributed under another license.

Then taking it all the way down to the hardware, every user of x86 should be required to agree to a license agreement to use an x86 processor since it 'interprets' opcodes on-the-fly thus everything that uses x86 is under an intel license QED. I don't know the full details of the thesis theme but use an API doesn't constitute violation of the GPL v2 - see: tivo and thousands of routers, wireless cards, etc.

The are multiple licenses for the x86 ISA. And companies that produce common chipsets specifically allow open development on top of them. They make more money that way.

This wasn't always the case, though.

It's easy to forget history.

My example may have been flawed (it was meant for exaggeration ) but the point still remains that API use is fine under GPL v2.

I assume you have successfully litigated this position in a US court on multiple occasions?

Tivo has released sources for the GPL covered portions of its software (http://www.tivo.com/linux/index.html ).

At least some router manufacturers have also released source code as required by the GPL. For example, see D-Link http://tsd.dlink.com.tw/GPL.asp and Cisco http://homesupport.cisco.com/en-us/gplcodecenter .

Tivo releases what they see as either not a competitive advantage or a burden to maintain. Just like Nvidia releases the shim but nothing relating the how the hardware works - it's a business they aren't here to plant daisies in the FOSS fields there here to make a bottom line.

It's scary to think that the people that have talked about Freedom for so long are getting just as restrictive and bad as the RIAA/MPAA.

Despite your scare language, this isn't new. "Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" [1] was written in 1999.

One of the defining features of the GPL (or any copyleft license) is its reciprocal or "viral" nature. It was created to define an ecosystem distinct from one where source could be encumbered or hidden. And has been updated many times to maintain that ideology in the face of changing laws and legal precedents.

It's a choice to work in the GPL ecosystem. There's a lot of BSD software offering an option that many argue is "more free."

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

"One of the defining features of the GPL (or any copyleft license) is its reciprocal or "viral" nature. It was created to define an ecosystem distinct from one where source could be encumbered or hidden. And has been updated many times to maintain that ideology in the face of changing laws and legal precedents."

There needs to be more warnings out there for businesses to steer clear of anything under the GPL. To call the GPL "freedom" is just laughable. It's a vile license used to feed a political movement. Nothing more.

I'm sorry I bit for your earlier troll.

The text of the GPL is very clear about what it's trying to accomplish on behalf of end users. The industry has been publicly debating the ethics and consequences of copyleft for literally decades. If anyone still hasn't figured out whether it's appropriate for their business (which is far from the hardest decision they'll ever face!) there's just no reaching them.

If glibc were GPL instead of LGPL, you would have to release anything you linked to it under the GPL.

Open Source and Free Software have clearly defined rules ... unrestricted redistribution is not one of those rules.

> It really boils down to the definition of a "derivative work".

That definition is in the GPL. It's not exactly the same definition as that of a "derivate" in the copyright law, but that's a gray area anyway and nothing else besides the GPL gives you the right to create something like Thesis.

Other people besides yourself also want to protect their rights. If it's some author's wish to release code under the GPL, he might have good reasons for doing so, and you'd better respect that choice or use something else.

> As a developer, why would I want to create any Wordpress plugins or themes if someone else is going to lay claim to my work

This is what I call being a hypocrite.

Hypocrite has nothing to do with it. He's free, as a developer, to create derived works from GPL code, and nobody else is free to claim ownership of his work but him. He can use the stuff he created all he wants.

What he's not free to do is distribute those works without complying with the GPL or otherwise coming to an agreement with the copyright holders to allow him to do so.

> Just because you believe it to be the case that users of libraries are not derivatives of those libraries does not make it true.

Just because you believe a set of machine instructions to be a library does not make it true.

The real problem is, we are now trying to legally define something that's really only a convenient mental abstraction for dividing up "things a processor does" into bins. Where does one package begin and another one end? Your processor doesn't know. It's a fiction.

Often, a very useful fiction. But then we get edge cases and the analogy breaks down.

Thesis complied in the most technical sense (no CSS, JS, or images) so I'm not sure how this accomplished anything in the name of "software freedom."

In this case, it does seem like Pearson violated the GPL license.

It is probably worth noting that Google didn't use the GPL license for Android. I'm assuming that Google chose to go with the Apache License for Android because they thought that the GPL license would inhibit some commercial development (e.g. a handset-maker who doesn't like GPL) from building on top of the platform.

"Which Mullenweg and the FSF believe is right. Which is the reason the LGPL exists."

Would you consider a Nintendo cartridge a derivative work of the Actual System? It obviously uses components of the actual system.

This court case: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1086785624507896...

Galoob VS Nintendo

This was about the game genie.

Here is what the court concluded:

"The Game Genie is useless by itself, it can only enhance, and cannot duplicate or recaste, [sic] a Nintendo game’s output. It does not contain or produce a Nintendo game’s output in some concrete or permanent form, nor does it supplant demand for Nintendo game cartridges. Such innovations rarely will constitute infringing derivative works under the Copyright Act."

So, if the theme doesn't use actual Wordpress code (IE: beyond function calls) or "supplant demand" for Wordpress itself, it's not a derivative work.

That's exactly the reason why I would have loved to have seen this go to a court decision.

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