Comment by mgrouchy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgrouchy | Hacker News Reader

Okay, I think this post is ridiculous for many reasons. The major reason being the author just doesn't understand the point.

When he talks about 200 themes were removed back in 2007 from the wordpress theme directory, most of the themes that were removed were sponsored(or spammy) themes. wordpress.org is is the website for the opensourced GPL'd project wordpress, there is no reason for them to host themes that run in contrary to that philosophy. The idea is to create trust in the hosted wordpress themes and plugins, for people who care they know if they go to wordpress.org, everything they download is GPL'd they are free to use, free to modify and free to redistribute.

I don't see that the onus is on Automattic to support any other agenda but their own, they are a business and the ultimate goal is to make money(for themselves).

That being said, the idea of a wordpress theme/plugin marketplace is a fine one, but as many people have already said in this thread it would be easy enough idea for automattic to take as their own. I would find it hard to believe the guys at automattic are stupid so if it doesn't exist already, there is probably a reason(ie/ profit margins are too low to spend the time developing the service, not enough demand, etc.)

"hard to believe the guys at automattic are stupid so if it doesn't exist already, there is probably a reason"

Well, exactly. They have had the idea before, as mentioned in the post, but didn't act on it. They probably did a simple cost/benefit analysis and decided it would be more trouble than it's worth.

Once you start taking money and acting like a shop, everything changes. It's not just the implementation, although that would be significant. But suddenly it's your problem if X breaks on IE8 or Y doesn't work with a new version and the developer is on holiday or Z said it would do this but doesn't and the customer demands a refund, etc etc etc. "But I bought it from you!" comes the flood of email. So you'd probably need support staff too.

Well, all of this might be worthwhile if it's a big, rich market. But I doubt it is. How many people actually buy premade WP themes? I would have thought the number is miniscule. Same with plugins. I didn't even realise you could buy WP plugins, actually, until I read that. The idea sounds like a joke. You'd have to be nuts to try and build a business on that.

Anyway I'm sure Automattic thought about it for a while, then realised what a distracting, unremunerative hassle it would be and rightfully canned the idea.

There is a market for premium WP themes and plugins. And, now that people are using WP as a CMS more and more and not just blog software it will grow even faster. Take a look at themeforest.net or go to elance.com and see how many people are hiring plugin developers.

We considered doing a marketplace on WordPress.COM, not .org, which is a big distinction.

I don't think a market on .org makes much sense, unless you decide to ignore the GPL.

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