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by moxiemk1 5815 days ago
Though I'm not familiar with Wordpress and it's theming system, this argument has indeed puzzled me. This article is spot on: why would a theme be beholden to the software's license?

That said, maybe Wordpress themes are much different than normal themes, and are much more tightly coupled? That WP would pursue this if not puzzles me.
3 comments
mattdawson 5815 days ago
maybe Wordpress themes are much different than normal themes, and are much more tightly coupled?

They can be made to be tightly coupled, but they're not necessarily intended to be. A lot of themes override core WordPress functions via a functions.php in the theme root directory. You don't have to include any core WP code in your theme, but WP provides an easy way to do it if you need to.

That WP would pursue this if not puzzles me.

IMHO, Mullenweg comes off looking like a brat in this whole mess. Regardless of the legality of the whole thing, this seems to be a straddling-the-line kind of situation, which makes it feel like there's some kind of ulterior motive at play.

Edit: This link from elsewhere in the thread totally changed my opinion. http://drewblas.com/2010/07/15/an-analysis-of-gpled-code-in-... Seems like Thesis should pretty clearly be GPL.

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moxiemk1 5814 days ago
I was unconvinced by that one, if only because I don't really agree that just because it calls your functions, it's a derivative work.

I feel like interpreted code is pretty hard to make derivatives of, honestly, though it seems like a fairly large number of people agree with you on this one.

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sigzero 5814 days ago
> Why would a theme be beholden to the software's license?

Well, because there is WP PHP code in it. Once you do that you become a "derivative" and you take the license.

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jasonlotito 5815 days ago
> why would a theme be beholden to the software's license?

A theme is not beholden to the software's license. However, Thesis is more than just a theme.

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