Comments on: Me Pontificating Against the Powerful

By: Why Lorelle and the rest of the WP community are getting duped | College-Startup

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:28:00 +0000

[...] the comment section of Me Pontificating Against the Powerful Lorelle insults my intelligence when she makes the following [...]

By: Why Lorelle and the rest of the WP community is getting duped | College-Startup

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:04:08 +0000

[...] the comment section of Me Pontificating Against the Powerful Lorelle insults my intelligence when she makes the following [...]

By: David Krug

David Krug — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:58:57 +0000

Good points Ryan. My big issue is Matt continues to ignore the underlying issue of Hi, we make money on your theme but we won’t link to you approach.

This is what irks me.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:49:02 +0000

What needs to be done instead is this:

1. Discernment needs to be at the level of quality, not at the level of sponsorship

2. Matt Mullenweg needs to get out of bed with Matt Cutts (it’s becoming more and more obvious)

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:47:15 +0000

Sensible arguments? I presented one. The argument is this (it’s what logicians refer to as a counterexample):

Do you think that the Coppyblogger theme or the Cutline theme or the Pressrow theme are good themes?

Do you think they have benefited the WordPress community?

Good. That’s my point. A blanket approach is not rational because it excludes some of the best WordPress themes in existence.

By: Lorelle

Lorelle — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 05:36:03 +0000

I do not “think” the deal is done. I reported what Matt said.

You also are missing a lot of history. This issue has come up a lot over the last two years. It has been thoroughly debated and quite a while ago, Matt Mullenweg (what does Matt Cutts has to do with WordPress and this issue, I have no idea) put it on the Idea forum and said that while he had his opinion, he wanted to hear from the WordPress Community. They spoke. LOUDLY.

Designers are unhappy with this issue. But not all. Some get it that donating their work for WordPress is a way to give back and create some public portfolio work, then they get down to business building your web design business, they are happy. It’s the ones that put all their energy into the negative side of this and take advantage that really honk off WordPress users.

WordPress users made it very clear that they don’t like the underbelly of what is known as sponsored WordPress Themes. This is not the ones that have been paid for and then released to the public after use. This is about the abusive techniques that make WordPress users so angry and resentful when they find these links, especially the ad links, they remove them, and get screamed at and threated with legal action.

That leads to a lot of mess. From all perspectives.

If you want to release paid, sponsored, ad-filled WordPress Themes, do so. There is nothing stopping you. Start your own business! Many have, in fact. You’d have a lot of competition. You can buy WordPress Themes or “rent them” with ads in them all over the place in many languages.

What Matt, and many of us associated with WordPress, did was ask for a show of voices on how the WordPress Community wanted to move forward on this issue. The users spoke very loudly. And the decision was based upon the democracy, not the single handed power monger you are talking about.

If sensible and intelligent arguments can be brought to the table again to change this new policy, then I’m sure we’d all listen. So far, in two years, I’m still waiting.