Wordpress Theme Designer Switches CC to GPL Licenses

WPDesigner has decided to switch all their free wordpress themes from the Creative Commons ShareALike Attribution license to the GPL license. This is an interesting move, since GPL allows exceptional freedom to modify and distribute.

He had opted for Creative Commons and required a link-back to discourage people who ripped-off his themes, repackaged them, and put them up for downloading on their own sites and tried to get exposure on places like the Theme Viewer. Now he has switched to GPL -

“In conclusion, I decided that CC and requiring a link back, just to protect myself from rip-off designers, isn’t the way to solve things. And whatever I do to discourage rip-offs should NOT affect the rest of my theme users.”

This supports the free spirit of Wordpress community that benefits everyone. However, most wordpress theme designers require you to keep a “Designed by ABCD” linkback at the footer bottom to credit their work (which is very fair). While more options are being explored for sponsored wordpress themes, with paid text links at the bottom, it has raised some issues. Will more WP designers switch from CC to GPL is uncertain.

You can download some beautiful free WordPress themes by WPdesigner, now under GPL!