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

Caldazar said
I want to rephrase that. I shut up the moment you can answer me my simple question:

unfortunately it looks like the only thing you do is to provoke and insult people.

you accuse us of saying something that we never did and then you demand an answer and an explanation.

is pointless to discuss with you in this thread but for those who don’t see the mechanism you are using I will just point out that:

no one is against GPL and no one said GPL sucks.

no one said is unfair to represent 100% GPL

in this specific case of wordpress my personal opinion is that they try to enforce some rules that they don’t respect themselves in the first place. this has nothing to do with GPL beeing awesome or bad or the freedom to release your work 100% free.

You keep insisting on 10000000% GPL when we already do comply with GPL.

I just don’t get why you want to represent 10000000% GPL and rant about not being allowed to?

in this specific case of wordpress my personal opinion is that they try to enforce some rules that they don’t respect themselves in the first place.

If they ask you not to do something, you don’t want to do anyways, I don’t see any enforcement.

Yes, they are pissed. As far as they see it, you liked GPL a lot more when it was about using it for your business model. But that’s all. They don’t sue you or something. They just say that not using 100% GPL and representing 100% GPL doesn’t fit together. That shouldn’t be any problem for you, yet the whole thread is about it and the unfairness of it.

looks like you keep saying we hate gpl. we hate no gpl.

@Caldazar:

Envato has a very high respect for open source software and the GPL. We contribute back in quite a number of ways.

WordPress is distributed under a GPL license, and certain portions of a theme inherit that license. We respect this in our split licensing structure.

To use your veganism analogy, the situation is actually more like this:

A group of people called “A” have released a vegetarian diet. Another group of people called “B” believe this vegetarian diet is fantastic, and release a recipe book of vegetarian recipes based around the diet. The “A” people hold events where anyone can come and teach and discuss about the vegetarian diet. While their diet is technically vegetarian, they really prefer veganism. So one day they decide that people who are only vegetarian, not vegan, cannot participate in their events. The recipe book by group “B” includes some recipes with non-vegan products, so everyone who has contributed recipes to the book is banned from the events.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but hopefully it illustrates the point.

Honestly, why give a sh** on that? I mean I’m not sure how many authors actually WANT to speak on such camps but c’mon. When I read through the threads it is more like some teenagers who want’s to go to a party but the ones who organize this party bans you away. I’m perfectly fine with that.

They think that we haven’t contributed anything valueable to the WP Community? OK. They think we insult any license? Alright – really why does this matter. Lets keep the business rolling and thats it – even if the .com version already offers some themes for sale on their platform.

The only People who does affect all this are those who wants to participate to those camps – and exactly THOSE have to make their decision – that’s it.

“You shouldn’t have a girlfriend beside your wife”

So calm down, Bro’s and don’t make your head in…

Japh said
Envato has a very high respect for open source software and the GPL. We contribute back in quite a number of ways.

I am not even familiar with WordPress and regarding license related stuff, I have nothing more than general knowledge. So I may be off-topic to the main thread. But your particular statement raised me a question:

How we contribute back to anything as a marketplace? Is that happen through the authors as individual or as a marketplace system that keeps licensing benefits etc? Just as an individual author, what I can grasp is we (authors & Envato) utilizing a lot of benefits of open source but as a community – our system isn’t conscious about giving back anything to “any community or any industry”. It is safe to say that our buyers utilize us – we utilize them (our scope ends within this short – vision so far). This is not a complaint or something but an observed fact.

VF said
I am not even familiar with WordPress and regarding license related stuff, I have nothing more than general knowledge. So I may be off-topic to the main thread. But your particular statement raised me a question: How we contribute back to anything as a marketplace? Is that happen through the authors as individual or as a marketplace system that keeps licensing benefits etc? Just as an individual author, what I can grasp is we (authors & Envato) utilizing a lot of benefits of open source but as a community – our system isn’t conscious about giving back anything to “any community or any industry”. This is not a complaint or something but an observed fact.

I’m referring to Envato, as the creator of the marketplace, contributing back to open source and the WordPress community.

We contribute by giving code back, both to the Ruby on Rails community, the WordPress community (including contributions to WordPress core), and others. We also sponsored WordCamps, until we were no longer allowed to, and WordPress meet ups. We sponsor some community events, etc. And even more.

Also, I think you mean “observation”, it’s not an “observed fact” if it’s not a fact

Japh said
Also, I think you mean “observation”, it’s not an “observed fact” if it’s not a fact

haha, agreed!

Japh said
I’m referring to Envato, as the creator of the marketplace, contributing back to open source and the WordPress community. We contribute by giving code back, both to the Ruby on Rails community, the WordPress community (including contributions to WordPress core), and others. We also sponsored WordCamps, until we were no longer allowed to, and WordPress meet ups. We sponsor some community events, etc. And even more.

Regarding the contribution of code back to WordPress as well as Ruby on Rails communities – do you believe as a marketplace, what we gain justifies what we give?

VF said
Regarding the contribution of code back to WordPress as well as Ruby on Rails communities – do you believe as a marketplace, what we gain justifies what we give?

There’s another thing that all of us, Envato and authors together, give: the largest commercial WordPress theme marketplace on the internet