14 DAY TRIAL // WordPress, the most used blogging platform used in the world, represented by the voice of its creator Matt Mullenweg, has made it clear once again that any work derived or using its platform must be licensed using a GPL (known also as GNU General Public License) license. This fact was brought to the media attention after Thesis WordPress theme creator Chris Pearson (DYI Themes) absolutely refused to license his work under GPL.
The conflict started at the beginning of July 2010 when Matt Mullenweg tweeted several times regarding Pearson's position about WordPress theme licensing. This went back and forward between the two, until a few days ago, when pressured by public opinion and the blogosphere's negative reaction to his position, Mr. Pearson announced via Twitter that he'd changed Thesis' license to a split GPL.
This split licensing model would allow Thesis, a private developed premium WordPress theme, to be sold as a product and comply with the terms imposed by WordPress' open-source nature. Basically all the theme PHP code is now open-source, while the CSS and JavaScript remain proprietary to Mr. Pearson.
But this was not the core of the problem itself. There are thousands of other themes on the web being commercialized under a split commercial and GPL license. This is common knowledge in theme marketplaces like Envato's ThemeForest where developers are well-instructed into including the GPL license in every theme they put up for sale.
The debate became of public interest when during their heated argument, Matt Mullenweg let the impression that Automattic Inc., the company that administers WordPress' development might not shy away from legal action against the Thesis theme developer if he'd fail to comply with its licensing model. This sounded an alarm bell for all theme developers around the Globe to rectify their licensing model or else.
Via TheNextWeb we offer the debate between the two implied parties, Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenweg, mediated by Mixergy owner Andrew Warner.
Download the atest version of WordPress from Softpedia Webscripts Index here.
UPDATE: In a recent tweets (1 and 2), Chris Pearson led to believe that the change in licensing has nothing to do with his or the company's view regarding the proper WP theme licensing, but rather more of a business decision taken for its customer's stability and business reputation.