WordPress.org bans Themeforest members from participating in official WordCamp gatherings

Caldazar said
But I get the feeling this guy’s about something else anyways: Envato not letting the authors and copyright holders choose their licence as they see fit. I think the term he used was that being ‘evil’. And he mentioned that Envato at least allowing authors to go full GPL might be the compromise he was willing to settle the dispute. (As some may know, this happens to be the deal-breaker for me also.)

This seems to be the actual reason while looking matt’s comments on various blogs. Even as an author benefiting a lot from here, personally I am pleased to see this mild+harmless restriction happens to Envato (even as largest WP theme marketplace). The reason is we always go in-depth practices and finding ways to expand commercial aspects but without caring much about freedom/choice of usage/users.

For example (forget about GPL, WP), we don’t have Opt-in out option for both Regular and Extended License for individual items or category or even marketplace – this basically ties hands of author for no particular reason – while this choice has no harm for anyone on certain marketplaces. Another example is certain useful license types (Developer License or anything equivalent on CC) not considered as valuable for buyers. I don’t mean adding these choices will make everything perfect (commercially) but by not having these kind of choices we obviously need to expect reduced stability with future developments.

Typps said
If i had seemed contrary, it is because I got carried away with the points I was trying to make,

For example (forget about GPL, WP), we don’t have Opt-in out option for both Regular and Extended License for individual items or category or even marketplace – this basically ties hands of author for no particular reason – while this choice has no harm for anyone on certain marketplaces.

For this reason I find it quite important that the copyright holder is the master of the licence decision – whatever he chooses in the end.

Japh said
The CSS and artwork of a theme are also not subject to the GPL, but apparently applying a different license to them violates the spirit of the GPL. I believe people here are trying to say that by WordPress.com not distributing their themes as 100% GPL (or at all), they are violating the same “spirit” of the GPL. The “chain of innovation”, as Caldazar puts it, is stopped.

+1 if we were arguing about the GPL itself that would make things a lot easier. But instead, somehow the semantics of one situation violates the “spirit” yet the other does not. And Envato is criticized for being greedy and only looking out for themselves while coincidentally the same exact protection applies to the other side as well.

CodingJack said

Japh said
The CSS and artwork of a theme are also not subject to the GPL, but apparently applying a different license to them violates the spirit of the GPL. I believe people here are trying to say that by WordPress.com not distributing their themes as 100% GPL (or at all), they are violating the same “spirit” of the GPL. The “chain of innovation”, as Caldazar puts it, is stopped.

+1 if we were arguing about the GPL itself that would make things a lot easier. But instead, somehow the semantics of one situation violates the “spirit” yet the other does not. And Envato is criticized for being greedy and only looking out for themselves while coincidentally the same exact protection applies to the other side as well.

I see this in the following way. Obviously this example can’t match many aspects but can reflect the idea:

A man X has 10000 packs of chocoloate each pack having 100 small packs. The small packs have 100 individual chocolates. He is interested in sharing this to neighbors with primary intention of giving them the benefit of chocolate freely (free means mixing the chocolate with other stuff according to own taste, also allowing the receiver to distribute to more people if interested).

Before starting to distribute the packs, man X knows that some people do not have the habit of allowing others to distribute but only interested in distributing through own hands. To avoid this to happen, decides to add a terms of condition on each pack to “allow others to distribute if they receive through your distribution”. So the process of distribution started.

Someday, man X watches some people distributing more than one pack, one from Man X while obeying the terms and another pack that doesn’t inherit Man X’s terms. Man X is ok to continue this but keeps in mind that they are different kind of people than his way of approach. So avoids to say “hello” to those people while walking on street!

The twist happens here. The man X not only distributes packs but he is interested in feeding individual chocolate directly into the mouth of some kids with own mix of flavors. Now someone from the neighbors questions him “you do the same thing we do but you avoid saying hello to us”. Decide where is the problem!

^ It’s a good analogy, but what happens if the kid wants to save the chocolate for later? Or better yet, maybe the kid has a poor family and wants to share the chocolate with his brothers and sisters at home. Man X says, “No, if you don’t eat the chocolate now, you can’t have it”. But why? Doesn’t he want the kids to have the chocolate?

^ According to man X, packs (distributing code) requires inheriting certain terms, but feeding individual chocolate (service) doesn’t need certain terms (even for user benifits). Just an observed fact observation!

^ It actually isn’t at all analogous to the situation we’re discussing. It was a lovely story though

man, now I just want chocolate

Japh said
^ It actually isn’t at all analogous to the situation we’re discussing. It was a lovely story though

Obviously the example can’t match most parts. Just wanted to highlight the part where it differentiates service (consciously prepared towards end user) and distribution. And why it would be hard to compare both like apple to apple.

OrganicBeeMedia said
man, now I just want chocolate

hahaha me too!