Not long ago, I blogged about the merits of Thesis Theme for WordPress. I praised it for its configurability, ease of use, and search engine friendliness. At $164 for the Developer option (which I bought), it didn’t come cheap, and updates and additional features for it have been coming thick and fast. However, nothing could have prepared me for the shit storm that has been brewing for a while, and has finally unleashed itself on the WordPress community. As it turns out, the developer of Thesis, Chris Pearson, has been building a business on the back of a GPL licensed piece of software, but the theme he profits from (Thesis) isn’t released under the same GPL licence – something which is not made super apparent on the Diythemes website. Hey, if WordPress is GPL, why expect anything built on it to be anything different?
Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress) and Chris Pearson (Diythemes) have been trading blows for a while, and I was hoping some happy ending would happen, until I heard this exchange between the two.
All I know is, i’m moving away from Thesis to something else.
Update – 24th July 2010
Hurrah! The whole fiasco has been sorted out – Thesis is now on a split GPL licence. Looking forward to trucking on with a GPL Thesis, but hopefully the whole thing has been a great big lesson for everyone in the WordPress community.
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Woothemes is a much better alternative to Thesis, and their SEO and configurability is fantastic. I use their Canvas theme, which is amazing and the equal (or better) of Thesis.