Sgt_Kickaxe - 6:08 am on Jul 22, 2010 (gmt 0)

My city owns its roads and allows us all to drive on them for free, thus all cars must be free to be allowed to drive on them!

Silliness aside, I can think of dozens of applications being run in wordpress that, although they do "hook" into wordpress sites, the code is entirely separate from wordpress itself and could be run on ANY site. Themes are also essentially php code that could easily do the same. THEREFORE, as per GPL terms, since they are stored in a SEPARATE forlder they can be sold for profit. End of story(and i've yet to see a plugin or template NOT in its own folder).

I think someone needs to stop counting the dollars they WISH they could have earned from wordpress by charging for the product from day 1 because it took an army of people to make it successful.

Matt should worry about angering that army of people instead. Didn't Matt remove any theme that had the a "sponsored by" section from his official wordpress directory back in 2007? Matt, Wordpress isn't yours, that boat has sailed. You can start charging for 3.0 but I can give it away for free or you could start chargine for 3.1 when you (and an army) build it but someone else could release "wordpress extreme 1.0" using their own upgrades(for free!). 200 million website owners have distribution rights.

The bottom line - anyone can make a wordpress compatible theme or plugin and distribute it on their own websites because, as GPL is inherently, it's free for everyone. I just don't see ANY good coming from annoying people. Wordpress succeeded by letting people mold it into what they wanted and will continue to succeed if left UNRULED BY AN IRON FIST.

Get your wordpress compatible themes here! They're free but I charge a $20.00 download fee! see what I mean ?