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It has become increasingly annoying to see some of my WordPress colleagues’ works being sold for $5 on places like Fiverr. Here is a quick search access on Fiverr to see if any WordPress themes are being redistributed.

The site does have its uses – that is, as long as people are not abusing the system. This extends to even some of the premium landing and squeeze pages being offered.

One example of redistributing on Fiverr is:

While GPL allows a user to use and alter a theme, and even redistribute it as long as it is under the same license. Software under this license can ALSO be redistributed for free or for money, regardless if the original product was free.

I do know for a fact there are plenty of plugins and landing page packages out there that do not embrace the GPL license. And while, I believe that having free software out there like WordPress is great – and the millions of users out there on self-hosted WordPress powered sites alone that make money through their own business or advertising, is this redistribution/ reselling of premium paid themes acceptable to those developers out there? Do they turn a blind eye?

It is funny, around 2005, in the blog community, I remember a whole uproar and “witch hunt” over webmasters who were being accused of copying other site’s code and design. This is about the time celebrity designs and copyrighted graphics were being blended together and put up on personal sites. Since then the community has changed to accept GPL. I mean- how did everyone learn how to web design…ANSWER: from viewing the source code from the cool code and design ninjas they regularly visited. Well, not everyone, but I am sure some of you reading this may have taken a more than a handful of peeks in the past few years.

Like I said earlier, I do support the concepts of GPL, and understand much of both sides of this coin. I wanted to know from some of the theme designers and developers who have premium themes out there in the online market to share their thoughts on sites like Fiverr re-distributing premium paid themes for a couple dollars.

Your thoughts?

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