Premium Mod launches
Posted on 04. Nov, 2009 by admin in Announcement | 25 responses
Finally.
We initially wanted to launch back in September. Then, we got side-tracked by Ruby on Rails (yeah, we know, really late adopters). But now, we are back to the good ol’ WordPress scene again. Let me present you…
Premium Mod and our first release – Coffee Lite theme (based on WooThemes’ Coffee Break).
Premium WHAT?
Premium Mod(as in Modification). We modify commercial WordPress premium themes and release it to public for free.
The modification we made are usually for our own purpose. It could be adding/removing features, or simply changing the whole nature of the theme.
Is this even legitimate?
Totally. Because the commercial themes we modded are released in GPL license: in short, anyone are allowed to make changes to the code and redistribute it.
For more clarification, check out this post by Ian Stewart.
Then how are you making any money out of this?
We don’t. Instead, our aim is to create a movement.
A movement for more people to produce high quality WordPress themes based on commercial GPL themes and make it available to public (in GPL license, of course) for free.
If you want to become part of the movement, stay tuned.
Update #1: @elpie kindly pointed out to us that we do need to include the original author’s copyright notice in the source file. We are currently updating the theme. Please check back later.
Update #2: We’ve updated our Coffee Lite theme to keep the copyright notice intact in the source file. The theme download is resumed.
Update #3: We’ve also highlighted the changes we made from the original theme in our theme release page.
Update #4: We’ve once again updated the copyright notice in Coffee Lite source file to further comply to GPL. A huge thanks again to Elpie for the help.
Update #5: @andrew_rickmann suggested we should credit the original author in the footer. Though it’s not a requirement for GPL, we agreed with Andrew. All themes now are updated with the original author (and the original theme) credit in the footer.
Update #6: You probably don’t want to miss the interview with ThemeLab and all the discussions that goes with it.
25 Responses to “Premium Mod launches”
Trackbacks:
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Premium Mod wants to start a movement but the movement they will start is called dual licensed themes – http://tinyurl.com/ygcjkfy
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Premium Mod wants to start a movement but the movement they will start is called dual licensed themes – http://tinyurl.com/ygcjkfy
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'We modify PREMIUM WordPress Themes & release them for FREE' http://bit.ly/fz0SM
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? [from Heather_Rasley] Premium Mod launches | Premium Mod http://bit.ly/3j06Ga
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Keep it up guys!
I encourage the initiative, but we’ll se how you work!
Anyway, good job!
Is it legitimate? Yes, sure..
But is it a right thing to do? If you’re good enough make your own themes and release them for free.
My question here is are you really contributing anything to the community? Sure, you’re giving away stuff that wouldn’t normally be free, but does that make it OK?
I’m pretty sure most premium theme authors argue that you’re paying for their support, not the theme itself. If people get their themes from you, who’s gonna provide the support?
Furthermore, if you drive business away from the original theme authors, many of whom rely on their theme development for their livelihood, you’re not only not helping the community, but hurting it. Why should they continue developing their wonderful themes if they can’t make any money from them.
If you really want to contribute to the community, why don’t you create new “premium” themes and release them for free?
@paul: Thanks.
@chris and @will: In case you haven’t notice already, there are a flock of theme authors that modded off the original theme authors, doesn’t give credit and even selling it. But it’s completely legitimate, since the original theme authors decided to release them in GPL (they sure don’t do it for PR, right?)
What we are doing is completely different. First, we give complete credit and second, we release the theme for free. And third, we encourage those who weren’t capable of developing their own theme to mod from the premium themes. In any case that you doubt we might drive away business from the original theme author, we actually drive business TO them (which is part of our purpose, too).
CentoOS has been doing this against Red Hat Enterprise for quite a while – Red Hat managed to become a Fortune 500 company still. I don’t see what’s going on here as all that different from what CentOS has done.
Hi, just wanted to say that I like what you are doing here. I like GPL, I like WordPress and I have never tried out a premium theme due to their price tags. I look forward to downloading from your site and thanks for pushing the envelope a bit… i don’t see it happening all that often.
Interesting idea however I have one question that I would like you to clarify.
As far as I am aware the PHP code is released under GPL and is freely distributable and that’s fine. However with most Wordpress theme’s are the images, CSS and Javascripts not still under copyright?
@Gilbert: All of the commercial theme providers listed here are 100% GPL – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/ , which includes both artwork and CSS (mentioned at the bottom of the page).
We only mod from them.
@admin Ah ok fair enough.
Greetz from Germany,
What I don’t understand is why do you not pick some of the themes that actually NEED improvement from this list? http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/
WooThemes already have very good looking themes, and from what I can see, you aren’t improving them at all… stripping them down and releasing them is not contributing to the WP community…
I’m worried that if you keep releasing themes from premium authors, then you will dilute the pool, and spread bad light on the original themes.
Hope you don’t take my comment to seriously, it’s only my opinion, but I think you should stop releasing themes that others used a lot of time to build, and instead focus on designing your own themes. Use their code, but try to be a bit more innovative with regards to the images and CSS used in the themes.
Just my two cents.
@Gustav: Thanks for your 2 cents. WooThemes have the best theme in the market – hands down. And I don’t think if anyone can really ‘improve’ them, literally. What we are doing is change the direction of the theme. For example:
- Coffee Lite changes the corporate theme (Coffee Break) into a minimalist blogging theme.
- Photo Edition changes the news/magazine theme (Daily Edition) into a photo blog theme.
And don’t get us wrong, we do respect the original theme author that put in a lot of effort and that’s why we give credit to them in every possible way (which most don’t do).
Greetz,
I hear what you say, but at the end of the day you are are not going to make it easy for the original author of the themes. I think the GPL is good, but just because it allows for redistribution, that doesn’t mean it is good license for theme authors.
I think that the theme authors will move away from GPL because of people like you who don’t follow the “spirit” of GPL license. The theme authors only want their code to be used without restriction, but they don’t want you to take their theme and redistribute for a so called “movement”. Theme authors hoped that they could do without people like you, and was hoping that people would take their code and learn from it instead of using it to exploit their business.
It will not be long before they change their license to protect themselves from people like you.
@gustav: We don’t redistribute themes. We make the changes we wanted to make (mod) and we release it to the public for free.
If the original theme author do not like the theme being mod, then why release in GPL in first place?
You deserve medals for the fabulous work you have done. If I were 40 years younger I would be sending kisses, but instead I send my sincere thanks.
Thannks Canny Granny!
Claps…. well played sir(s)
Thanks Chuck