For those following WordPress and Thesis on Twitter you’ve probably noticed that the fragile stand off between Thesis (DIYThemes) and Automattic ended with a verbal assault from Matt Mullenweg today (see here and here)

If you’re just being introduced to the situation basically Automattic (the company behind WordPress) doesn’t like the fact that the Thesis theme is not released with a GPL licence like WordPress. Automattic believes everything related to WordPress should be GPL’d while DIYThemes believes there is no legal reason why they have to fall in line with that theory.

I’m not going to get into choosing a GPL winner because my Law 101 course doesn’t near qualify me to chime in (hint yours doesn’t either)

However, what I will state is how this public mud flinging is only hurting the WordPress community, not strengthening it.

GPL is about Freedom

A corner stone of any great society is freedom – the freedom to do and say what you want as long as you don’t harm others. The best thing going for WordPress is it’s amazing secondary development community that releases free and paid themes / plugins on a regular basis and one of those products is Thesis.

Automattic from it’s actions has turned this debate into a religious crusade against Thesis. Where if you dare speak up for Thesis you are exiled from the WordPress world and may never return. This exiling has increased in recent months and innocent, good people are gunned down in the cross fire.

There in lies the hypocrisy – Automattic via it’s actions is no longer supporting freedom of choice. They are trying to control WordPress users by implementing punishments for those that don’t believe the same thing they do.

Be a good little sheep or find another flock.

Let the FREE Market Decide

Not free as in zero cost, free as in uncontrolled and unregulated. In a free market the best products rise to the top and crap will fade away. If users decided that GPL is important to them then they will pick products that are GPL, if GPL is not on their requirements list then that won’t matter to them (98% of users fall in this bracket)

Do these non-GPL products mean the end of the WordPress development community? Not at all, there will always be people that will develop for both groups, if it makes sense to do so – that’s how the free market works.

Is that so wrong? Should all non-GPL’ers be prosecuted and threatened to fall in line with a particular ideology?

Why I Personally Support Thesis

I first found Thesis about a year and half ago and decided to give it a go. Before that when I wanted to start a new project I’d search the repository and various theme sites for something that fit my vision and go from there. However, in the early days I had to wade through a ton of poorly coded, out-dated themes to find ones that worked reliably.

I just wanted one solid, flexible theme that I knew I could count on to be consistently supported and would grow with me.

Now a year and half later we’ve been able to do great things with Thesis. We’ve designed some great looking Thesis sites for happy clients, we’ve released many free and paid child-skins enjoyed by thousands and we’ve had a great time doing it.

Could this all of been done with another GPL compliant framework? Probably, but I freely choose Thesis because it fit my requirements just like I freely choose WordPress. If Automattic has a problem they shouldn’t resort to publicly splitting the community but rather handle it behind the scenes and resolve it for good or get over it.

DIYThemes believes that being non-GPL is right and good for business and they should have that freedom, until the courts say different they have every legal authority to do so. They’ve built a great product and they’ve picked a license that they feel better protects their investment and makes sense for their business.

I make no apologies for supporting Thesis, if you feel the need to attack my choice because it doesn’t fit your ideology, then I’m saddened. I hate that this has grown to the point where I feel I can’t publicly support a software I love without the threat of being shunned from the WordPress community.

Thesis is great and WordPress is great, don’t base your decision on politics, choose a software that works for you and feel comfortable in knowing you made you’re choice based on your real-world needs.

At the core we are all just WordPress users trying to do what’s best for us and our clients, I wish we could all just get along.