Thesis developer Chris Pearson and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg got into a bit of a debate yesterday. In short, Matt believes that Thesis should use the GPL license that WordPress uses but Chris disagrees.

Andrew Warner was in a unique position of having interviewed both Chris and Matt recently on Mixergy so was able to hook them up for an interview.

You can download the interview via an mp3 file or you can listen to it with a video introduction on Andrews website.

Quick Summary:

  • Matt thinks it’s disrespectful that Thesis isn’t GPL since it relies on a GPL product. He also points out it’s a violation of the GPL license.
  • Chris believes that he should be allowed to put any license he wants on his products.
  • Chris believes that the GPL license is at odds against what he believes.
  • Matt points to top theme stores like WooThemes and StudioPress adopting a GPL license and states that they haven’t lost any income because of it.
  • Matt hinted he may sue Chris over this issue.
  • Chris says that Matt should back up his idle threats with real action.

I looked into the GPL license extensively a year or so ago when launching BlogThemesClub and was initially concerned that some people would distribute my premium themes for free. In the end I decided to go with GPL though many customers were still unsure about what GPL meant and assumed that they could pass on the themes for free (though I tend to agree with the thought that people who do this would do this regardless of the license a theme has).

I do not have a really strong view about this whole debate though. I am not sure if Matt is correct in saying that WordPress related products which don’t adopt a GPL license are violating the WordPress GPL license. If he is then I can fully understand why he is so vocal about this subject.

That being said, I still don’t think he should dictate how others run their businesses. Surely those who spend all their time working on a product should be able to dicate the license for it, even products for GPL platforms.

If you want to read more into this debate please check out the following articles:

What’s your view on this whole GPL license debate?

Kevin