Premium Theme Licensing?

Cansili

Hello all,

I'll be making some custom, premium theme for Vanilla.

And I would just like to ask what will be the licensing model for this premium themes?

Thanks in advance

Linc

WordPress has a policy of chasing after folks who don't use GNU GPL2 for themes. We do not have any such policy. We simply say that anything uploaded to the directory on this site must be GPL2-compatible (which does include licenses like MIT & BSD because they are more permissive and don't conflict).

Free advice on theming, based on pitfalls I've recently observed:

• Avoid customizing tons of views. Internally, we almost never change more than 4-8 views in a theme.
• Never overwrite entire helper_functions.php files. You can selectively overwrite a function or two in your themehooks file if you must.
• Don't overwrite WriteDiscussion() or WriteComment().
• Do not rewrite the CSS from scratch. Apply your CSS changes over top of ours with a custom.css file.

R_J

If you create it on your own it is your property and as such you are free to give it whatever license you like.

If you duplicate an existing theme, you would have to look at the license of the theme in order to decide what you are allowed to do.

Cansili

@R_J Thanks for the response.

Yes, I'll be creating my own, probably rewrite most of the CSS and markup where possible.

However, I'm confused because Vanilla is GPLv2. So Vanilla themes are not like WordPress where its themes has to be GPL too?

x00

You just can't bundle it with Vanilla. You can't use the addon directory. You have to host it yourself. Any resources you use must be compatible with the licence.

Cansili

@x00 said:
You just can't bundle it with Vanilla. You can't use the addon directory. You have to host it yourself. Any resources you use must be compatible with the licence.

Does it mean that I can't bundle MIT-licensed stuff such as jQuery plugins in my theme?

x00

MIT is a permissive licence so yes you can use it.

hgtonight

Yay, more premium themes!

Feel free to ask questions if you get stuck trying to implement something.

Linc

WordPress has a policy of chasing after folks who don't use GNU GPL2 for themes. We do not have any such policy. We simply say that anything uploaded to the directory on this site must be GPL2-compatible (which does include licenses like MIT & BSD because they are more permissive and don't conflict).

Free advice on theming, based on pitfalls I've recently observed:

• Avoid customizing tons of views. Internally, we almost never change more than 4-8 views in a theme.
• Never overwrite entire helper_functions.php files. You can selectively overwrite a function or two in your themehooks file if you must.
• Don't overwrite WriteDiscussion() or WriteComment().
• Do not rewrite the CSS from scratch. Apply your CSS changes over top of ours with a custom.css file.