I can see both sides of the disagreement, but I have to say, I think Matt’s line of reasoning is the better informed, the most public spirited and the one which has already and would continue to benefit the online community the most.

Chris way over-estimates the importance of Thesis to the WordPress community, and his position in that community. Somewhat speciously, he uses this inflated estimate of its worth to argue he should not be subject to a license that was in place long before he built Thesis and upon which he was entitled, in fact as a businessman, obliged, to read and understand before so doing .

I am also astonished at how rude, boorish and over-bearing Chris was in trying to dominate the debate, and had I known his views and understood the issues a little sooner, I would never have bought Thesis.

I wish I could keep my temper in check, as Matt did, but I know myself better than that. So I tried to think what I could do to help, instead of just getting mad, and this is what I decided.

Because of the overriding benefit to the online community, even though he will surely prevail; I don’t think Matt should have to put up his own money to fight a law case to prove the validity of the GPL which is, in effect, on our behalf.

Therefore, I think the GPL should be tested another way. If you have bought a version of Thesis from DIY Themes (Chris Pearson’s company), or from any other website, you can click this link now and join the “Thesis Class Action Suit” list at http://virtualcrowds.org/thesis-class-action, and let’s see just how many people agree with Chris, and how many with Matt and the GPL.

If a theme author called function_exists() before every usage of a WordPress method, sure, maybe the fatal errors would disappear, but instead of a WordPress theme you now have a generic Web template.

This crash happens because themers fail to include checks like function_exists(), method_exists(), file_exists(), isset(), etc, etc.
It would still have to be GPL’ed, but the empty them would still show up. Without WordPress.

max_num_pages > 1 ) : ?>

Makes it a derivative?

What if I write a different software, say “ThemeShow”, which uses 0 WordPress code but is able to interpret and handle the WordPress themes including above function call.

This would make the theme useful without WordPress. It then is no longer derivative?

Just curious.

It seems to me the real issue here is that WordPress wants to enforce this part of the GPL to prevent folks from selling proprietary licensed (or non-copyleft OS licensed) add-ons to their platform, despite the fact that it was designed to be extended via a plugin system with original work. What motive do they have to want to enforce this? It has to be something. If no one who was a stakeholder in the copyright wanted to enforce this silly part of the GPL, that IMO actually tries to rob developers of their own original work for the greater good, then there is no issue.

That said, I’m confused now over whether this legal action being threatened is actually because WordPress doesn’t want to allow any non-GPL themes or plugins or because Thesis copied actual GPL code or extended a particular class. BIG difference, and only the former is really a controversy.

Or is it all just because Chris is such an egomaniac he was a great platform for using FUD to encourage compliance without having to take legal action?

In regards to the dependency question, I don’t really mind how a court interprets the GPL in regards to it.

» If a court rules that the GPL does apply to things like themes which have dependencies on WordPress, then it’s great because Thesis will have to be GPL, which is good to the community and to open source.

» If a court rules that dependency != derivation, then it will have a lot of implications for open source & commercial software development in general, one of which will be that my Apache License projects will be able to use GPL libraries without having to adopt the GPL, as long as I don’t bundle the libraries.