Author: Richard Best

Selling themes yourself and on ThemeForest but with inconsistent licensing

Published by Richard Best

With apologies for the radio silence for the last 5-6 months (for a while there life was just too hectic), I’m finally getting around to revving up WP and Legal Stuff again. This post will be pretty brief but addresses a phenomenon I’ve seen from time to time across the WordPress theme shop community. Here’s the scenario: you find a WordPress theme you really like on a theme shop’s website but, when you look at the licensing for the theme, it either limits what you can do with the theme or it’s a confusing conglomeration of terms that appear to have been plucked from an array of different sites and mashed together in the hope it’ll fly. Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I’ve deliberately not bought themes from theme shops like this because the lack of attention to clear licensing doesn’t give me much confidence in the overall soundness of the business,  its attention to detail and its customer centricity (or lack of it). But lo and behold, later you discover that this very …

Discouraging public redistribution of commercial themes and plugins – poll results

Published by Richard Best

Background Back on 4 August of this year, I published a post called Theme and plugin shops – Discouraging public redistribution – User poll.  The poll that was included in the post sought people’s views on the reselling of commercial themes and plugins. It did this because people’s views on this issue are relevant to the inclusion of a contractual mechanism I’d proposed for theme/plugin shop terms of use. The contractual mechanism I’d proposed would seek to discourage purchasers of a commercial theme or plugin from making the theme or plugin available on a website for download by others (whether for free or a charge), even when the theme or plugin is 100% GPL-licensed. The proposed term would say that, if a customer decides to make your commercial theme or plugin available on a website for download by others, you may exercise a right to deactivate their access keys (if that’s how you’ve set things up) and to terminate their access to support and updates. I explained why, in my view, this sort of clause …

Step-by-step guide to attributing Creative Commons-licensed images

Published by Richard Best

BobWP reader seeks step-by-step guide A while back I wrote a piece that first appeared on BobWP called Using Creative Commons images on your site with confidence (I republished it here too). Recently a reader of BobWP asked a question about the detailed mechanics of finding a Creative Commons-licensed image and applying an attribution statement to one’s use of it. He was trying to use images found through Google image and Flickr searches but wasn’t sure exactly how to go about attributing the image and was looking for a step-by-step guide. In response, I wrote a brief step-by-step guide in the comments on Bob’s site. Because that guide might come in useful for others, I thought I’d post it here on WP and Legal Stuff too. Key steps 1. Search an image repository that has Creative Commons-licensed images Find an image and ensure it is licensed under a Creative Commons licence. Flickr is a good source and I’ll use that as an example from now on. Do an initial search for the topic or subject …

A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL – now available – 30% introductory discount

Published by Richard Best

Finally… I’m pleased to be able to say that A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL is now out in the wild. You can find it right here. Outline Here’s a quick outline of the chapters: 1. Introduction: conception, birth and forking 2. Understanding the GPL licensing of WordPress 3. Common GPL-related questions 4. WordPress themes, the GPL and the conundrum of derivative works 5. The GPL and assumptions of automatic inheritance 6. Theme reviews, CC0, model releases and GPL-compatibility 7. Selling ThemeForest themes outside of ThemeForest 8. Reselling commercial plugins 9. The GPL and trademarks 10. Theme and plugin shop terms of use versus GPL freedoms Packages Three different packages, or editions, are on offer: 1. The business package If you’re into the business of developing WordPress themes or plugins (or both), you might want this package. You’ll get: the ebook (PDF) of A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL; a professionally narrated audio book, enabling you to listen to the book when you’re on the go (narrated by Steve Chase); and …

A human readable summary of the GPL?

Published by Richard Best

In my ebook (A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL) which will be out within the next 6-8 hours, I’ve included a one page summary of the GPL which I hope will make it easy for people to understand the core concepts of the GPL. That summary outlines the position in relation to copying and distribution, fees, modifications/derivative works, distributing non-source forms, termination, and downstream licensing: This particular summary follows the flow of the clauses in the GPL and that’s why it flows through the subject headings I’ve just mentioned. One consequence of this common approach to summarising legal documents is that the discussion of a single topic may contain a summary of both a person’s rights and a person’s obligations. For example, the discussion of modifications / derivative works says: “You may modify the Program or any part of it and distribute the modifications or new work as long as modified files contain notices regarding the existence and date of changes and any work that you distribute or publish that contains or is …

Theme and plugin shops – Discouraging public redistribution – User poll

Published by Richard Best

Context Last week I sent an email to subscribers on my email list. I hadn’t proposed to publish the content of that email but, given some questions I’ve received in response, I thought it might help to publish it. I also thought it would be helpful and interesting to take a quick poll of people’s views on the reselling of commercial themes and plugins because people’s views on this issue are relevant to the inclusion of the contractual mechanism in theme/plugin shop terms of use that I discuss below. I’ll set out the email then take the poll. (Please retweet as the more that take this super quick poll the better.) So, the email This is what I said: “I’m in the process of finalising my 10 chapter ebook called A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL. The ebook will be offered in a range of packages, from just the ebook through to a package that will offer the ebook, an audio book and a terms of use builder for WordPress theme and plugin …

Automattic, WordPress.com, Jetpack, European cookie laws and transparency

Published by Richard Best

Setting the scene In Legal checks when building a content-driven WordPress website, I discussed cookies — not the edible variety but the small text files that are stored on your computer or mobile device when you visit or undertake certain activity on certain websites (for further information about cookies, see https://www.allaboutcookies.org.) I observed that, whilst many countries don’t have laws that require disclosure of cookies, in Europe there are specific (and controversial) cookie laws. Website owners in European Member States are required to: provide clear and comprehensive information about the cookies they are using; and obtain consent to store a cookie on a user or subscriber’s device. There are some narrow exceptions but I don’t think I need to mention them again. Questions The questions I want to explore in this post are these: What are the implications of the European cookie laws for European users of WordPress.com and Jetpack? Are users of WordPress.com and Jetpack able to obtain sufficient information as to the cookies that these services set? If not, do the cookie laws …

Theme and plugin shop terms of use versus GPL freedoms

Published by Richard Best

Introduction For a while now I’ve wanted to address an issue that niggles away at me every time I see it. I touched on the subject slightly at the end of Readers ask: About reselling commercial plugins (updated) but I wanted to explore it a bit more in its own post. There are so many theme and plugin shops out there now that you probably couldn’t count them all with even 20 hands. Perhaps not surprisingly, this multiplicity of WordPress businesses has resulted in a wide range of terms of use and licensing statements in relation to the themes and plugins they sell. Of course, what these businesses say in their terms is constrained – or should be constrained – by the requirements of the GPL, at least in situations where they’ve created derivative works of WordPress or other GPL’d code or where they’ve otherwise chosen to apply the GPL to their themes or plugins. In this post, I’m going to focus on theme and plugin shops that have expressly applied – or purport to …

Pearson v Automattic: Did Automattic succeed by the skin of its teeth?

Published by Richard Best

Focus of this post As many in the WordPress community will know by now thanks to Jeff Chandler’s helpful post on the case, recently Chris Pearson was unsuccessful in his complaint against Automattic regarding its purchase of the thesis.com domain name. Pearson had sought to have the domain transferred to him. I want to say a few things about this case but I’m not going to get emotional about it nor will I publish any comments that come across as hostile, abusive or potentially defamatory. My interest is to point out a few things that do not seem prominent in the discussions I’ve seen to date and to do so from a hopefully dispassionate legal perspective. Facts The key facts seem to be these: Many years ago, Chris Pearson developed a theme for WordPress called Thesis. When released, Pearson did not license Thesis under the GPL. In due course, there was heated if not acrimonious debate between Matt Mullenweg and Pearson as to the licensing of Thesis. Mullenweg argued that Thesis should be licensed under …

How not to source images for your client’s websites

Published by Richard Best

If you’re a designer who source images for a client’s website, do you ensure you and your client have the right to use them? An interesting wee tale A UK case from 2012 provides a number of important reminders for those who design and own websites, including public sector agencies (Hoffman v Drug Abuse Resistance Education (UK) Ltd [2012] EWPCC 2 (19 January 2012)). It’s an interesting tale about a website owner who copied photos from another website in the mistaken belief that they were Crown copyright photos that could be re-used without permission when, in fact, they could not. There’s a photographer, a charity, a web developer, a government-sponsored website, the photos and … a copyright infringement claim. This isn’t a WordPress-specific story, but one that may be of interest to some WordPress users. Briefly, the main facts appearing from the judgment are these: Mr Hoffman was the copyright owner of a range of photos of drugs; the defendant charity published copies of those photos on its website; the defendant had used a web …