Beware of Careless Paid Theme Authors
- Filed under: WordPress
Do you know exactly what you’re buying? Where does everything within that paid WordPress theme come from? Of course, you don’t have those answers.
Theme authors (people you’re buying from) are responsible for answering those questions and making sure everything you’re buying was licensed for commercial use and redistribution. Unfortunately, some theme authors simply don’t care enough to provide those answers and do it the right way.
While I’m trying to make my themes more unique and referencing everything that I use and redistribute within my products so you can rest assure that what you’re using is actually LEGAL, some theme authors’ method of creating “premium” themes is jamming other people’s stuff together and resell it to you without prior written permission for the rights to resell (sell first, ask later).
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve written about this topic before. At this point, I’m not mad at the fact that those careless people are giving paid theme authors like myself a bad name. No, I’m just disappointed because I was naive enough (the first time around) to believe those careless people simply didn’t know better and that they would improve.
Obviously, having to write about this again proves that those theme authors simply don’t give a damn. And, it’s sad because they’re putting theme users at risk. In the WordPress community, if you’re experiencing some form of success, it’s likely because people are buying your stuff so they could thank you for all the free work you’ve contributed prior to becoming a paid theme author. To the best of your knowledge, the least you can do is everything you can to make sure you’re not putting those people at risk.
And no, I’m not going to name names. I didn’t write this to smear anyone (if I want to, I’d do it later 
). I wanted to remind you to be careful and I wanted to vent a little. If you know who I’m writing about, please DON’T point them out in the comments. Thank you.
Fantastic point, SP.
As you pointed out a while back with DOMTabs, things like this are going to go on indefinitely, I’m afraid.
I don’t think people quite understand that amount of work it takes to put out a quality paid theme. Lots of planning and developing is necessary. Thanks for keeping everyone, including me, honest.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could list commonly used “scripts” e.g. domTabs that careless premium theme designers use so everyone is aware of them? That seems like the next step in this direction.
I totally agree with you SP. I have written on this subject several times. I think you’re one of the few paid WP theme developers I respect: your coding standards are top notch and your pricing is incredibly reasonable.
I was wondering if those are the same guys that had a more than 100 comments thread sponsered at wpdesigner a few months back.
Still I know you probably won’t answer this. :thumbsup: I like your honest and carefree attituted, you are as sensible as an emotional jack-hammer 
Re: AndrewE
Really, you think $5 per year for (probably) 12 themes is reasonable? Haha. Just kidding.
Actually, regarding the actual post, I think there is an incredible lack of knowledge out there regarding different open source license. Maybe not in whatever specific case WPD is talking about, but generally speaking developers (particularly part-time/hobbyists types) are not very clear on what they can mix and match, what is fair use, ect, much less end user Joe Bob. Hell, I am about to be a lawyer and probably know more about WordPress, its components, open source software (ect) than 99% of other attorneys and I still think don’t think these different licenses are very clear what is allowed and what is not. Of course ignorance is rarely a defense , and letting people know is a good idea. I am sure the developers of the scripts are appreciative.
Nic – Very true. Even developers of certain scripts aren’t clear about their licenses. The WordPress GPL debate regarding paid themes and plugins is a good example.
Until there’s a straight answer, I think it’s best to check with the original authors of the scripts/images/etc. and make sure what you’re using have been licensed for commercial use.
Just to clarify it for everyone else, my post was about the same careless theme authors making the same mistakes. It was not about whether they understood the licenses of the files or scripts they’re using.
Just out of interest, could I ask how you know people are stealing other peoples work and not asking for permission?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it’s really not hard to contact code authors and ask their permission.
I am currently working on a premium theme and wanted to use DomTab so I emailed Christian Heilman asking and within 10 minutes had a response saying it was fine.
Personally I always ask people before distributing their code (including in my free theme), and have so far not had a single person say I couldn’t use it.
Exactly. It’s not hard to do it so why not?
I’ve actually asked those “careless” people before. It turned out that they didn’t even know about Christian Heilman’s license. But, that could’ve been an honest mistake.
Currently, the same group/person continues to put out products that are somewhat fishy. By this, I mean there’s no disclaimer. You do not know what you’re buying and where everything came from until you’ve bought it.
There are images and scripts here and there that I recognize as not have been licensed for redistribution / commercial use. (Whether they’ve asked for permission, I do not know. Based on my personal experience with this group/person, I doubt it.)
Second, my own work showed on this group’s/person’s products line. I know I’ve licensed my stuff for personal use and client projects, but absolutely no reselling (in whole or in part). However, the piece of my own work that showed up in this group’s/person’s theme was so small that I ignored it. It would be petty to point out what it is exactly.
Third, I received an email this morning linking to a clarification by the author of a script, saying it was not licensed for redistribution with a paid product. The same script is found in one of the themes belonging to the group/person I’ve written about.
Interesting post and great conversation. As a WordPress hacker, I always try to stay aware of who owns what, and I definitely ask permission before using anything that isn’t mine.
When I began my adventure of making WP themes, I’ll admit, I tried to shortcut my way by asking other theme designers for permission to hack away at their themes and then release them. I’d like to apologize for my naitivity to all of those designers (you know who you are).
Although some did give me express permission, others did not, and now that I’ve been building my own, I know why. As we all know, there are no shortcuts that are worth the knowledge of knowing that what you’ve created isn’t completely you’re own. It’s just more satisfying knowing that what I’m making is coming from me and the many hours spent reading, experimenting, and learning.
Thanks to all of you who share your knowledge with the rest of us.
So, check this out…I took one of wpdesigner’s themes and hacked it to create my own theme with a whole new design. There are bits in the CSS that I didn’t want to change because I liked it and it fit within my themes design. Are you saying that I cannot sell my work?
No. That’s not what I’m saying.
If you created an icon for free and clearly stated that you would not allow anyone to resell it by default and I resold that without your permission not knowing that I couldn’t resell it because I didn’t check which license you’ve released that icon under, would you get ticked off?
And by doing that, I’d put the users or customers at risk because they’d be buying something that was not meant to be sold and couldn’t be sold in the first place.
Well, I am glad to hear that I can sell my work and I do see your point. But besides it being unethical, is there actually any action that can be taken against you for reselling my icon? And is there any action that can be taken against the person who bought my icon from you?
I did a good bit of research, trial and error in order to get the theme options to work in my ElegantBlue theme a while back (released back on Oct 1, 2007).
Soon afterwards, I started noticing a sweeping trend in free and paid themes to include theme options as well. What was frustrating to me was that many (not all) authors essentially took my code … line for line … and put it in their themes without attribution to me. (one exception was Ian Steward and his LaunchPad theme … he contacted me before hand, and gave me attribution for the code).
I’m not saying I’m the first to ever do theme options … in fact, I attributed theundersigned.net for the tutorial that helped me get theme options integrated.
It’s very frustrating for developers who love giving stuff away, but hate being ripped off.
I really appreciate you taking the time to point this stuff out, SP. It really helps.
I have no legal experience, but of course you can sue if you own something and someone sells it or resells it without your permission. As for action against the customers, I don’t know.
Nathan – Copycat is definitely a huge trend in the theme development circle
. Because this particular circle is quite small, new trends tend to spread very fast.
After I wrote about the DomTab script that Darren uses on Problogger.net, it started showing up in almost every “premium” theme.
As for theme options, I also learned that from theundersigned.net. Sadly for ElegantBlue, the Greed theme beat it to the punch on May 27. But then, K2, which has theme options, was published way before any of us learned how to integrate theme options
To a certain extent, I don’t mind the copycat trend at all. Rather, I think it’s a good thing. We’re all moving toward a set of features and standards that are very similar. This makes community support for WordPress themes easier as time goes by.
However, a little attribution or even link love (crosses my finger) never hurt.
A valid point SP and nathan. But then again, for example instead of using DOM tabs.. there are other options available which allows using the code for reselling.
In Paid themes, the developer easily gets lured to use copyrighted images, icons and scripts. But one forgets they are ‘selling’ it! As far as free themes are there, this maybe ok but using the same for paid themes would certainly place the customer at risk.
The recent posts from you are really rocking.. the SP in his real form!
R.B. – True. I guess that’s where carelessness comes into play. They don’t bother to search for the legal alternatives. They simply use the first found option.
As far as scripts go, I think learning jQuery would solve a LOT of these problems. It’s GPL licensed which means you can do whatever you want with it. Plus, it has a million and one plugins. WordPress even includes it in the core.
SP,
Hope you don’t think I did. And yes, K2 has had options for a long time now, as have most of Sadish’s themes.
Wow, I had no idea that you did the theme options in Greed! I can certainly say that I didn’t copy you
Ian,
I was in the midst of redesigning http://www.nathanrice.net and I was using prototype/scriptaculous for a couple of features on the homepage. But after banging my head up against the wall for too long, I switched to jQuery. You’re right … it’s a great library and it has some sick plugins.
I’m all jQuery now.
I was looking into jQuery too, but some of the jQuery plugin authors aren’t clear about licenses either. What I mean is they think GPL can only be packaged with free products.
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Have you done a post on what you can do with a theme? If I use a theme off of wp.org and change the header can I throw my link in the footer if I leave the original link there? At what point with a cc 3.0 license can you remove the footer link? Should you still credit the person in the css with verbage like “based on blank by blandesigner”?
I know this is an older post and you are selling this blog but if someone could shoot me a common sense description I would sure appreciate it.
Again, I am talking about free distribution of a theme you have modded.
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hai
GOOD
Or they could just be unaware of the legal status of things… if they’re not ripping, but rather using images and/or fonts and are unaware of the use restrictions, or they just never thought about the whole “legal” end of being “creative” it could also just be a simple case of being naive.