WordPress is licenced under a GNU General Public Licence. That means it is free and as a general rule you are free to copy, modify, make derivatives works and share it…freely.
And that’s all generally good. I like free; especially when you can get a top quality, extremely flexible and versatile product like WordPress.
But what I am distressed about is the recent controversial battle between the author of the Thesis Theme Chris Pearson and the original author of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg.
It’s complicated but the argument goes something like this: the Thesis Theme is a derivative work…a derivative of WordPress…and it must also be free. Chris is accused of breaching the WordPress licence by charging people for the Thesis Theme.
As with most legal disputes there are grey areas. It isn’t black and white.
Ok! I like free especially when you get software like WordPress. It really is top notch. And with my geek hat on, the versatility and extensibility of WordPress is one of its strengths. But with my consultant/user hat on, I just want to get it installed and get things working. I also want something that is well documented and facilitates productivity both for me but also for my clients.
Herein lies the problem with free!
There are tons of free themes and plugins and precisely because they are free they are a problem. Clever (and some not so clever) people write plugins because they want some functionality that is missing. Then they decide to release it to the public but there is no motivation or incentive to maintain or support the plugins.
For example…
Today I wanted to install a social bookmarking plugin. A common desire. There should be a ton of plugins to choose from because it is a popular feature. I thought I would spend twenty minutes tops to find one or two plugins and get them installed. So I googled social bookmarking wordpress plugin to find a quick review or recommendation. This article 5 Best Social Bookmarking Plugins for WordPress looked good and from there I choose 3 plugins to try.
A strike on the first plugin: too many comments on the download page about problems with it.
A strike on the second plugin: not a valid header error when I tried to activiate it.
A strike on the third plugin: it installed okay but screwed up any posts with an embedded object (like video).
See this is the problem with free plugins: poor quality, lousy documentation (usually) and no support.
Same problem with themes. There are some great free themes. But you don’t want to get too dependent on a theme that isn’t maintained and supported because sooner or later they break. There you are with a 100 pages of content. You decide to upgrade your WordPress because…well there are new features and functions that you want to take advantage of. If you’re like me, you test your themes and your plugins on new versions of WordPress on a test site before you upgrade a live site.
But many people don’t. I’ve had more than one call from a panicked client. Help! I upgraded and now it’s broken!
I use the Thesis Theme and I recommend it to all my clients. I was willing to pay for it precisely because I got burned by free themes. Thesis gets developed, maintained and supported. And I’m quite happy to pay for that.