Claiming A TF theme as own work?

I found several websites out there that “tell” e.g.:

“Developed by Company” ... but the truth is that they were all bought at TF.

Is that allowed?

After buy the template you free to change text and other things this is allowed

Actually, it may be allowed in terms of GPL , but in the end it’s a lie. There are many many “developers” who ask big money for their “work” which is: Buy a themeforest theme that comes closest to your clients’ desires, let the real developer customize it (for free of course) and charge your client $$$ for your “work”.

I’ve seen this hundreds of times now. Really annoying, and I stopped supporting people who claim my design for theirs.

I think is all about “ethic”. If you are a web designer & developer and you claim a template as own work you are not being very professional.

Personally, from an author point of view, i don’t care at all. If you are a web stock market producer, this is something you must have in mind even before starting.

@karma – The behaviour you described (except the part of free customize) is the 70% of the current sales on TF. So, keep on supporting them, even if not agree, or you will be loosing money like a closed club.

As a professional frontend developer I would go wild when someone would act like that. It is not fair, a lie and not a professional behaviour.

I know several “webdesigner” working exaclty that way. Selling a premium theme for lots of money.

It is all a matter of the license, if you ask me. In my case I always add a “Do not remove the xxx line”. If they do it is a violation.

Would be the same as if you buy a Porsche, you change some colors and other stuff and you resell it as your own “creation”...

The point is that people here are not buying Porches, but pieces of cars that can be after rearrenged and sold as a porsche. There is an important difference in it. Is like if you build car lights components, unbranded, and you sell them to many other companies, that put their brand and sell to their shiny clients incrementing in huge % your original price.

1. If you want to claim for kind of ‘i made this, and i’m proud of it’ don’t do stock marketing.

2. Brand your template and require to keep a line with your name in it, and you won’t sell anything here.

Just my two cents.

Between ‘design’ and ‘develop’ is the difference. If you buy theme and don’t change anything in design – in my opinion you can’t add text: ‘design by xxx’, but if you change some in code, customized template you can add text ‘develop by xxx’.

No they shouldn’t claim the theme is theirs, but no one can do anything about it. They don’t even need to claim it as theirs, they are complicating it for no reason. All they need to say is we outsource some of the work/design.

Finding a client to pay “big money” for web design is no easy task. If it was, the original designers would be doing that (or hiring people to do that for them).

I love it when they do that and more they as me how to remove the admin panel branding