[wp-forums] Using non-GPL licensed WordPress.org themes

[Amy Hendrix]

Licensing only really exists for distribution. I can say that the
thing on my own site is under the "my cat will shoot laser eye-beams
at you" license and it doesn't mean a damn thing until I try to sell
it to someone else.

Note, that doesn't mean that I condone changing the license on a theme
that you don't actually own the rights for. Aside from being utterly
meaningless (and 100% NEVER going to stand up in any kind of legal
challenge), it's, let's just say, kind of jerky. But the reasons for
our policy on non-support come down to 1) wanting to support a theming
community that reflects WP philosophy (where what he's doing sucks on
philosophy, but it has absolutely no impact on the rest of the
community) and 2) practical reasons to do with access to their code
(which is freely available in the repo anyway)

Disclaimers: I don't make these policies. And my cat doesn't actually
have lasers THAT I KNOW OF.

On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 10:01 AM, andrew nevins
<andrew.nevins.misc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you feel like that for non-GPL themes in general?
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Amy Hendrix <sabreuse at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Legally speaking, no, they can't change the license -- only the actual
>> copyright owner (that is, the theme author) can do that. However, it's
>> a silly thing they did in their own copy of the theme for their own
>> site, so it's not like they're trying to distribute a relicensed copy.
>> I don't see that it should make one bit of difference to whether they
>> can get support or not, any more than we'd refuse support because
>> someone had changed the color of their left sidebar.
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 9:24 AM, andrew nevins
>> <andrew.nevins.misc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Someone took the 'Cleanr' theme and changed the license on it to "All
>> > rights reserved", and then created a support thread on the forums for
>> help
>> > with their theme.
>> >
>> > Is it right for me to say that we don't support their theme because it's
>> > non-GPL? Or can they not actually change the license of the theme, even
>> if
>> > they state it in the stylesheet?
>> >
>> >
>> http://wordpress.org/support/topic/theme-cleanr-h2-css-being-overruled?replies=4&view=all
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