My themes are now 100% GPL.

I assume my “Matt and Collis Present: The OMGPL BBQ” invitation is in the mail.

It’s been just over a month since the Automatically Blackballed post, and today Envato announced that they are going to have an option for authors to sell their items under a 100% GPL license. This isn’t only good for me and other ThemeForest authors, it’s good for the WordPress community as a whole.

And yes, I’ve been invited to participate in WordCamps again.

On Friday, January 18, I was told that I may no longer participate in WordCamps.

More specifically, I was contacted by Andrea Middleton (Dot Organizer for Automattic). She said according to the WordCamp guidelines, I may not speak or volunteer at WordCamps while I sell my themes on ThemeForest with their split license as is.

This post is not to argue about GPL (although I’m sure it’ll come up in the comments). But, the GPL is the reason why I am not able to participate in WordCamps. This post is to talk about those of us stuck in the middle. So while I don’t want to talk about the GPL…

Let’s Talk About The GPL

The Software Freedom Law Center explains that when it comes to themes, the GPL covers the PHP but may or may not include the CSS, JavaScript, and images. So legally, this is the bar that has been set.

The WordCamp guidelines state that volunteers must:

Embrace the WordPress license. If distributing WordPress-derivative works (themes, plugins, WP distros), any person or business should give their users the same freedoms that WordPress itself provides. Note: this is one step above simple compliance, which requires PHP code to be GPL/compatible but allows proprietary licenses for JavaScript, CSS, and images. 100% GPL or compatible is required for promotion at WordCamps when WordPress-derivative works are involved, the same guidelines we follow on WordPress.org.

As a themer, that means everything in my themes including the images, CSS, and JavaScript must be covered under the GPL. No big deal, right? I’d have to include things under the GPL that aren’t legally required to be under the GPL, but I have no problem with this.

Welcome To ThemeForest

In March 2012 I made the move to selling themes full time. I chose to do so on ThemeForest, mainly because of their reach. At the time of writing, they have 2,310,790 members. That’s a lot of people. I make a very comfortable living by selling my themes on ThemeForest, and it accounts for nearly 100% of my income.

Now let’s talk about licenses. The only license available to authors on ThemeForest is a split license. The PHP in our themes is covered under the GPL, but the images, CSS, and JavaScript are not. There’s nothing wrong with this, and I also have no problem with this; But it doesn’t meet those guidelines for WordCamps that I mentioned earlier.

I Am A Casualty In A War Between Giants

At this point, I have one option that I personally can do; Remove my themes from ThemeForest. Doing so would mean my income would drop to $0 and I would have to lay off my one employee. This is not reasonable. Even if I moved my themes to another marketplace I’d take a hit of thousands of dollars a month.

And this isn’t just about me. Any Envato-er is not allowed to contribute to WordCamps. There are brilliant people who sell their items on the Envato network including contributors to WordPress Core, WordPress.org plugin reviewers, highly respected members of the WordPress community, and even some of the biggest theme shops and frameworks out there (I won’t name names unless those people want to be named). The reach of this issue is much bigger than anyone may have initially thought.

While I may not be the most important casualty, I’m merely one of the first.

So What’s The Answer?

I’m not going to take sides. I won’t say that WordPress.org should bend their rules, and I won’t say that Envato should change their licensing. But we’re talking about two very heavy hitters here; Surely something can be figured out, right? Well, no. Not yet.

After I received my ‘notice’ I was invited to chat with Matt Mullenweg about the situation via Skype. His answer:

That sucks.

Matt explained why things are the way they are and why he/they won’t budge on principles. In the end, the conversation had no answers.

Jake: So in my shoes, what would you do?

Matt: as I said earlier, it’s a sucky situation

Jake: But in the short term, the answer is that I just don’t participate and hope for the best?

Matt: I have forgone profit for principles many times and been lucky pretty much every time, but not everyone always is and I can’t speak to other people’s backgrounds or obligations

While I couldn’t get a straight answer out of Matt, it seems like he thinks it’s worth bringing in no money in order to participate at WordCamp.

We spoke with Japh Thomson (WordPress Evangelist at Envato) on Please Advise Episode 08 and he explained Envato’s side of things.

So the idea behind the split license is to protect authors in terms of their designs and things like that. The parts that have to be GPL are GPL, the parts that don’t have to be, we’re happy to provide that license to help you protect them. The other thing is that on the [Envato] marketplaces there are smaller component style items, so you could buy the extended license on the marketplace, and use that in your WordPress theme. And if you then make your WordPress theme 100% GPL, you just disregarded the license of the item you put into the theme.

So as you can see, nobody can give a straight answer and nobody is willing to compromise. And really, this does not effect WordPress.org (WordPress Foundation, WordCamps, etc.) or Envato as much as it effect’s the WordPress community. As I said before, there are over 2.3 million users on the Envato marketplaces. Simply by being a member there you are promoting ThemeForest, by promoting ThemeForest you are promoting the split-license, and this is against the WordCamp guidelines. Note that it isn’t “promote at a WordCamp” but rather just promote period.

Do not promote others who fail to respect the WordPress license or trademark. If a person or business does not distribute WordPress-derivative code, but promotes those who do, those they are promoting should meet the guidelines above. [The guidelines above in this post.]

Something needs to be fixed here and I’m not sure how, nor have the power, to fix it. Over 2.3 million people are hanging in the balance. People who can’t speak, share their ideas, or share their expertise, at a WordCamp. Simply by Being part of the largest WordPress theme marketplace, we’re automatically blackballed.

Edit: It’s been pointed out that this has nothing to do with Automattic, but rather WordPress.org.

Update 1-24-13: Matt has responded in and to the comments on this post as well as many others that have popped up around the net. Collis (CEO of Envato) responded in a post at wpdaily.co, but he has not yet joined the community and replied to any comments, included some Matt left on his post. For now, it sounds like no change is coming.

Many have tried to point out ways that I could still volunteer at a WordCamp, but that’s not the point. This isn’t about me; It’s about the community.

And to be clear, I wasn’t “singled out” and Matt didn’t do anything personally. I simply showed up on the radar and the WordCamp Foundation did it’s job by informing me I can’t volunteer while I sell on ThemeForest. ThemeForest breaks the guidelines, so by selling there I break the guidelines. It’s as simple as that.

Update 1-29-13: Collis has posted a plan to survey the authors of WP products on the Envato Marketplaces. You can read about that over at wpdaily.co.

Update 2-28-13: Things have been cleared up. See Un-Blackballed..

A lot of things happened to me and Design Crumbs in 2012. The funny thing is that they were so gradual and so I didn’t really notice. Anywho, let’s dive in.

No More Clients. Ever. Okay, Maybe Not Ever.

This is a pretty simple one. I’m no longer doing client work. I took my last client job back around February and completed the job in April. Of course, this isn’t to say I won’t do client work again; I just have the luxury of being picky. This goes right into my next accomplishment.

Elite Author and Full Time WordPress Themer

My WordPress themes, sold mainly on ThemeForest, have proven lucrative enough to focus nearly 100% of my time on them. A few months after making the move to WordPress themes full time I reached the status of Elite on ThemeForest. I love creating themes and hope to be able to continue doing this for a long time. I added 9 themes and templates to the marketplace last year, and hope to continue with just as many this year.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also hired Bryan Farris (@bryanfarris) to handle my theme support. He’s an all around awesome guy who likes Star Wars and zombies and has a dog named Shorty.

PleaseAdvise.fm

Mike McAlister, Chris Molitor, and I started a live podcast last year called Please Advise. We just kind of talk about whatever we want but it usually relates to WordPress, Apple, Sci-Fi, or the Envato marketplaces since those things are generally what we’re all interested in. Our live listeners can tweet the show to join the discussion or even call in on Skype (our username is PleaseAdvise.fm) and join us on air. As of the time of writing, we have 8 shows under our collective belt. Although we have no schedule, we typically do the shows on random Thursday afternoons. So pop on over and give the shows a listen or signup for our newsletter to be alerted of upcoming shows.

ThemeThrift

I launched ThemeThrift.com towards the middle of 2012. It’s a site that lets you choose what you want to pay (from a few choices) for a WordPress Theme. WPCandy had a few good articles about it here and here.

A few months after launch, Hurricane Sandy hit the US. I scrambled and collected a group of WP guys (Pippin Williamson of pippinsplugins.com, Jason Schuller of press75.com, Adam Pickering of mintthemes.com, Mike McAlister of okaythemes.com, Brian Richards of wpstartbox.com, and myself) to submit themes and plugins to a bundle which we sold on ThemeThrift and gave 100% of the money to the American Red Cross.

From ThemeThrift:

Over the course of seven days, we the WordPress community came together and raised $2,095 for The American Red Cross and victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Take My Money, HBO!

On a whim and in a few hours one evening, I kicked out a little site called TakeMyMoneyHBO.com. The idea was to generate tweets telling @HBO how much money people would be willing to pay for a standalone HBOGO service, rather than needing to subscribe to cable or satellite and then pay more money to subscribe to HBO. The site went viral almost instantly and I started receiving emails and phone calls from the worlds biggest news outlets. Within the first 48 hours, the site had 163,673 visits. Not bad for two hours of work, eh? The morning after the site launched, @HBO tweeted a single tweet that shot us down. But in the end at least we know we were heard.

Love the love for HBO. Keep it up. For now, @ryanlawler @techcrunch has it right: itsh.bo/JLtSFE #takemymoneyHBO

— HBO (@HBO) June 6, 2012

WordCamps

I attended three WordCamps this year; San Francisco, Chicago, and Grand Rapids. I spoke at both Chicago and Grand Rapids. My presentation was called “No, I Didn’t Read The Instructions. Just Do It For Me.” Supposedly, there will be a video up sooner than later of the talk in Chicago, but until then you can find the slides here.

I also got a sweet hoodie from Grand Rapids:

I don’t know if this is fashionably legal or not, but either way I blame @rzen twitter.com/jakecaputo/sta…

— Jake Caputo (@jakecaputo) October 12, 2012

CareBooker

CareBooker.com is a startup of which I am the designer, front-end developer, and founding member. We soft launched in November and, as of time of writing, have about 800 profiles created. Think of it as the Expedia of the care sectors. We help pet care providers, tutors, babysitters, etc. fill their vacant time slots. We’re currently in our first round of fundraising. Check out CareBooker.com or our AngelList profile to learn more.

So What’s Next?

I have a few things up my sleeve, starting with more WordPress themes. 2013 is already looking pretty exciting. I may be joining another startup (shhhhhh), designing some things for WordCamp Chicago, launching a few more website ideas that I have on the ole’ back burner, and hopefully within the next few months my wife and I will buy and move-in to our dream house. Stay tuned.