[dangrossman]

I'm not convinced WordPress themes are derivative works of WordPress, which is what you need to believe to make the GPL stick when you're not distributing WP itself.

But it really doesn't matter. Release your "app theme" under the GPL and don't worry about it. You're already meeting its requirements -- you have to give the source (the theme) to each person that purchases it. You're not required to give it to anyone else.

You're not required to license your other assets -- images, stylesheets, javascripts -- under the same license. So even though your customers can redistribute the PHP code, it's pretty worthless.

Still, I would put that all under the GPL anyway. It's not going to lose you a single person that would've otherwise bought your theme. WooThemes makes millions a year selling premium WP themes -- they're all GPL licensed.

I used to sell a WordPress plugin and theme set. It was pirated all over the place, on all the file sharing sites and black hat forums. If someone wanted it for free, they could get it. Didn't matter. Still made a quarter million dollars from people that wanted the latest version, from a trustworthy site, with support.

[volomike]

Dan, some solid advice there, and with a track record of experience. Thank you so much for the great advice. Now to convince my wife that I need to go 100% GPL or do the mixed license thing with CSS, images, Javascript files as proprietary.