Sometimes legal issues can get complicated, especially when the internet brings new and inventive ways to copyright (or copyleft) your work. The web development world saw that complication with a recent WordPress theme. The theme and the information about it’s existence, as well as the heated discussion that followed can be found at the following url.

The follow-up discussion was started by myself as an attempt to resolve an issue that definitely needs resolving.

The main argument stems from the information that WordPress is licensed under the GPL, which states the following:

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

So the main argument is this; should WordPress themes use this license (the GPL) because the theme as a whole contains a part of the program. This would mean that any theme, anywhere, whether it’s for sale or not could be downloaded and resold as you saw fit. Not a very cool prospect for theme developers that put a lot of hard work and energy into a theme.