Agenda for 2018 March 27

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We are a group of volunteers who review and approve themes submitted to be included in the official WordPress Theme directory.

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Meetings:

Twice monthly at Tuesday @ 17:00 UTC Second Tuesday in the month is open floor and the fourth Tuesday is with a fixed agenda.

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#agenda, #themereview

The Theme Review Team holds a fortnightly meeting and we encourage all members to attend.

Channel: #themereview | Time: Tuesday, March 27, 2018 at 17:00 UTC 17:00 UTC

The following will be discussed during the meeting:

100% GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples. themes (Clarification on licensing)
Giving Theme Reviewer badge automatically rather than waiting for 6 months.
Method for selection for new Leads

The meetings typically last 30 minutes, however may last up to 60 minutes. If time permits, additional topics may be discussed.

If you would like to discuss additional topics to those mentioned above, then please reply to this post and include the topic, along with a brief description of what you would like to discuss.

#agenda

kevinhaig 5:15 am on March 27, 2018

The first item on the Agenda is about authors/theme houses selling non GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples. themes and the interpretation of the requirement:

If you are a theme shop you should be selling under GPL to be in the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ repo.

This is being interpreted different ways:
1) Authors who sell Non GPL WordPress products can not have a theme in the .org repo.
2) Authors who sell non GPL WordPress themes (plugins are OK) can not have a theme in the .org repo.
3) If no Upsell, it is OK. Authors can sell non GPL themes as long as they do not upsell to there sites in the theme in the .org repo. This means Author or Theme URI’ s must not reference sites that sell non GPL themes. Presumably this also includes any form of upsell including Upsell tabs or text urls (unlinked?).

In my opinion the intent of the requirement should have nothing to do with upsell, and everything to do with the intent and spirit of the GPL license. Themes and arguably plugins are derivative works of WordPress, and as such we really should not allow themes in the repo where authors are selling WordPress products that are not licensed 100% GPL.

In any event, reviewers are interpreting this requirement differently and Authors are NOT being consistently treated.

I would propose the language for the requirement be changed to the following:

Authors who wish to have their theme in the .org repo must not sell WordPress Products that are not GPL licensed or 100% GPL Compatible.

The above change is essentially the same as the original requirement, but a bit more descriptive, without any un-written exceptions.

If adopted TRT needs to consider what would happen to existing themes that are live in the .org repo, that have authors who are not following the GPL Requirement. I’m not sure what we do if the esisting requirement is not met.

I see two options here:
1) Suspend the theme immediately until the problem is rectified.
2) Leave the theme live, but not allow any other themes to be submitted by the author.

Note that in some cases authors are selling non GPL themes that contain non GPL plugins (at ThemeForest for example), so re-licensing is a difficult if not imposible option.

How do reviewers handle this?
Start by checking theme, author and up sell links. If you don’t find any problems there, then I wouldn’t pursue it any further. However if you know the author is selling non GPL products, then don’t promote the activity by telling the author to remove the links.

It all comes down to: “Do we at TRT feel it is fine to support or even help authors who are not conforming with GPL license principles?”

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