Well i am a confused person in this..they do hold a point you know...building wordpress since years ..with sweating and tears when loosing data..thwy have gone thorugh a lot to keep wordpress free for us all..all the plugins.but nowdays the thems which are released are very basic woudnt take more than 2 hours and a thread a DP wth a auction data of 1 week to make into $200 you know..i kinda am on WP side but i love the idea of so many backlinks..
I sponsored my first theme lately, I am still waiting for the author to submit it tough So I don't want them to ban sponsorship at least for now, but sometimes it can get ridiculous: http://www.amsterdamn.org/2007/04/14/wordpress/wordpress-xgreen/ 24 links to adult related websites This one should not be listed at all.
Voted 1 star. This idea is stupid. People sell templates for other open source projects all the time. If someone is taking the time to make a really nice theme for free, they have the right to make a profit by selling one or two sponsored links IMHO. It's their work, they control the licensing, and they can make money off of it. Open source is great, but some of its followers don't understand the real world. If everything were free with strings attached, life as we know it would not exist. If sponsorship is banned, then I agree with those who have said free themes will suffer. There will be a decline in the number of quality themes. If someone doesn't want sponsored links in their theme, then they are free either go pay for it or find another free theme.
I actually would not be put off if they discontinued sponsoring sponsored links...as wp.org does seem sponsor free itself. Though I would certainly be put off if they added such a term to the license agreement or otherwise forced the issue across the board. According to the GPL if I am not mistaken on is allowed to solicit sponsorships (well, it's not forbidden) though one must keep in mind that it's also perfectly within the license to not host sponsored themes on WP's part as well. I am currently using three themes (on three blogs) and all of them are sponsored by 3rd parties. One of the themes I blended the text better but I do proudly display that I'm a cheap bastard that lets other people pay for my pleasure. So I thank all the semi-hard work it takes to build a free theme, and I thank all you fine webmasters willing to pay some bloke to make MY site look better. This links for you
Those links are on my own website. That has nothing to do with the theme. If you would have taken the time to check the theme itself then you would have seen that it only has 2 outgoing links to sponsors. Thanks for proving to the world that you are an *well fill it in for yourself*
What i always say is that you wont always get everything free, theres a catch. Im happy to take that catch, i mean like come on, i dont think anyone would make a free template with no backlinks. Everyone wants something in return...
You've got my vote, and a blog entry, naturally. This is annoying me, I have friends in the sponsored themes 'industry' and there's nothing unethical about any of it. It's designers delivering quality free themes (which Wordpress lacks) to users, in return for displaying a single link in most cases. Pete
They aren't banning them, they just don't want to be the ones hosting them. They are all for it if you are hosting it on your own site
Unless they are going to go through every submitted template, line by line to check for links, how do they (from a resources standpoint) plan to eliminate sponsored themes? This will eliminate the themes with a simple link in the footer and encourage people to encrypt and sneak links in harder to find places, and we all know what sort of crowd (and links) that attracts. If it was built for free, they shoudn't be linking to monetized blogs in the dashboard.
Well i just added my rating and yes it is 1 star. People there want to remove the attribution of the theme creators too, which is against the GNU in ways. The theme creators need to be contributed one way or the other. I think if this goes through we may see a sharp decline in free wordpress themes (frankly It does not matter to me, I make 'em at a cost) but there are quote on that thread saying things like "They have paid for hosting and not for the theme creator", someone needs to get it into their heads that that is the exact reason why they need to keep those links in the footer. And I think is sponsored links are made opt-in or removed, so should the default blogroll as in the basic logic they are both the same. Just, my thoughts....
this is so bad news. and google is also looking at sites buying links, degrading them. lots of bad news today.
So why wouldn't it be ok to have backlinks in the themes? Wordpress does it in their software. Gaming the search engines is one way to put it, but another way is providing an economic engine for progress and getting respect back for your generosity. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html --- Moreover, as a free market economist, what would we gain from regulation? It would just be limiting supply when demand stays constant. There would be loss in utility for everyone, and the user would most likely feel it in the long run.
This is the stupidest thing i have ever heard. this is like telling TV channels to stop putting on commercials, or tell sporting teams to stop getting sponsers. it is how they make money. if you arent paying for it you shouldnt complain.
It IS a stupid argument, I agree. I've been making WordPress themes for about 3 years under various websites (all my own) and now I've just started to offer some for sponsorship in the past month or so. I find it disgusting that some people call me a scumbag now when they've been using -- and sometimes removing my creator links -- for years now! I still, even now, release free themes without sponsorship links, but I DO want to have the opportunity to make a few bucks with sponsored themes as well. Why the hell not? If some people are going to remove my creator link -- giving me no benefit whatsoever -- then I may as well make some money from it. Most people leave the links though, which is great, and the linkbacks from them have been phenomenal -- about 80,000 across all of my sites. And the weird thing is that there's often no rhyme or reason as to which themes work the best, though probably simple, straight-forward themes have the edge. For me the only real thing that should be considered is whether or not the theme LOOKS good! Who cares that there may be one or two links down the bottom if the theme is exactly the right look for you. Plus, with such a huge growth in the available themes nowadays there's just so much to choose from. How can THAT be bad for users? It's just an idiotic argument coming from a person who tried to scam his way by selling 100,000 blackhat links and making his own pals incredibly popular by having them appear on every WordPress installation in history. Sure, I know they should be rewarded for working on the program in some way but, by the same token, shouldn't I be for creating the themes themselves? Sponsorship allows me to spend more time on making them and they are FREE for anybody to download as well. If people have a problem with sponsored themes then simply don't download and use them. Why all the drama and personal attacks? Sorry, but it is somewhat annoying to me. I apologize for ranting.