Carmen saidHi guys,
Just letting you know I’ve passed this thread on to the relevant staff members so we can look into the most recent feedback. As always, thank you.
Glad to see staff willing to reply.
This thread was started over 8 months ago, and still we do not have any clarification. I know you guys said that these kinda things take time, but how much time. Seems that there are many people sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for a clarification/decision. Or just an update would be good.
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like much has happened since Carmen passed this on to the “relevant” staff. Nobody really wants to touch this! How hard can it be to come with some kind of official stand on this? 
I think we just have to face it, by the time anything happens with this I will have the 16 Core Macbook Air with 3D retina screen, 64 GBs of RAM and the iPhone 16.
Hey guys. Sorry to take so long to respond to this. I just wanted to pop in to let you know our plans for the licenses. There’s quite a bit to do and we plan to do it all in phases.
We get a lot of buyers emailing us because they don’t understand what they can and can’t do with a file. That’s why our first phase is to make them more clear. In fact, the majority of the changes so far have been wording and making sure there’s an associated knowledgebase article that includes examples. By making them more clear, it gives us a lot of freedom to build on them later.
Once they’ve been adequately clarified, we’ll move to phase 2 where we want to make sure the licenses fit well with each item type. For example, we expect buyers to use WP themes on their website, but a sound effect could be used in a game, a movie, or online. We need to determine if all of these cases can be served with a single license or if we need multiple.
Phase 3 is to look into how our licenses are for the buyer. That includes user experience as well as the license types we need.
I’m really sorry if we gave the wrong impression at some point, but we don’t currently have developer licenses in the immediate development pipeline. In fact, it’s something we used to have, but we eventually took them down. Yes, there were some people who bought them, but the demand was pretty low. That said, the sites have changed quite a bit since then so it’s definitely worth a second look. That’s not to say we’ll definitely offer them, but we will see if there’s more buyer demand than before.
Keep in mind that anything involving legals can take time. We’re currently still in phase 1 and we most likely won’t look into potential new license types until phase 3. Thanks for your patience.
On a related note, when it comes to “tools”, you actually don’t need to get a new license for each project. For example, brushes, Photoshop actions, fonts, and extensions can all be used on multiple projects, but by just one user. That’s currently not the case with WP addons, but it’s something we could definitely look into.
LanceSnider saidI’m really sorry if we gave the wrong impression at some point, but we don’t currently have developer licenses in the immediate development pipeline. In fact, it’s something we used to have, but we eventually took them down. Yes, there were some people who bought them, but the demand was pretty low. That said, the sites have changed quite a bit since then so it’s definitely worth a second look. That’s not to say we’ll definitely offer them, but we will see if there’s more buyer demand than before.
As a buyer I am disappointed about this. I have purchased several extended licenses thinking they were developer licenses and I suspect many other people have also.
I will not be buying any more extended licenses until this is cleaned up. Some developers are treating the extended licenses as developer licenses and others are making “developer” licenses available elsewhere. This is a mess for all concerned.
http://www.jacquidervan.com/2012/07/09/codecanyon-dont-fall-into-the-extended-license-trap/
LanceSnider saidWe get a lot of buyers emailing us because they don’t understand what they can and can’t do with a file. That’s why our first phase is to make them more clear. In fact, the majority of the changes so far have been wording and making sure there’s an associated knowledgebase article that includes examples. By making them more clear, it gives us a lot of freedom to build on them later.
Yeah, the clarification about current license schemes should come first before improvements. Just curious if phase 1 will cover the following. Currently, the problem with License page is buyers struggling to grasp the wordings that takes example cases of other marketplace item/application than the intended purchase. For example, here is an extract from EL:
d. You may reproduce the Work: 1. in a printed format or; 2. on a website or; 3. in an electronic document such as a PowerPoint presentation or an eBook or; 4. as part of software you create or; 5. in a video production or; 6. for sound effects only, in a stand-alone music track.
While reading the above, for a ThemeForest Buyer, only the point 2 going to be applicable and vice verse. The same is true for each and every buyer of different marketplaces. But what currently happens is a GraphicRiver buyer may just miss the point 3 and confuse about why the license page says about sound effects on point 6. In fact the section d. should convey the obvious usage but manages to create confusion (even as a Regular license section e. )
So if each marketplace has its own license page, that itself going to be more helpful for buyers for quick read and example scenarios mentioned on that page would be more legible.
LanceSnider saidOn a related note, when it comes to “tools”, you actually don’t need to get a new license for each project. For example, brushes, Photoshop actions, fonts, and extensions can all be used on multiple projects, but by just one user. That’s currently not the case with WP addons, but it’s something we could definitely look into.
This needs to be better clarified also in the item page itself. Currently for all the tool based items, the license has a plain title of “Regular” which going to give the impression of “per project limit”. The better place to convey the difference is below the purchase button itself (after the regular licence hint). Note that as of now even for add-ons, the Regular license hint starts with " a brouchure…", while it supposed to be like “on brouchures…”
Also any buyer who doesn’t knows that the tool can be used for unlimited projects has chance to expect an extended license option also. Since the absence of extended license button on tools doest’ going to raise question (as it is understood as author’s choice) better clarify these “not obvious” things near the purchase button itself. May be the item pages lose design consistency (between categories / marketplaces) but it would serve better.
LanceSnider saidI’m really sorry if we gave the wrong impression at some point, but we don’t currently have developer licenses in the immediate development pipeline. In fact, it’s something we used to have, but we eventually took them down. Yes, there were some people who bought them, but the demand was pretty low. That said, the sites have changed quite a bit since then so it’s definitely worth a second look. That’s not to say we’ll definitely offer them, but we will see if there’s more buyer demand than before.
Thank you for getting back to us with an answer! 
I can only speak for Codecanyon as that is the only place where we sell our stuff. However I have purchased many WordPress themes on Themeforest and never purchased an Extended License. It is very rarely that we have customers that want the same design.
However when it comes to WordPress Plugins it is NOT unusual that a cutomer use the same plugin for multiple customers. We know for a fact that some of our customers have installed some of our plugins on multiple websites.
Every week we have customers enquiring about discounts on multiple purchases or developer licenses … and all we can do is tell them that Codecanyon doesn’t offer discount on multiple purchases or a developer license. We clearly loose out on sales due to this fact. And I know that several authors have just started saying that the customer should by the Extended License.
Almost every other marketplace outside Envato offers a developer license. What is the problem?
Look into the top selling Authors of scripts and plugins on Codecanyon and analyze their sales - you guys have access to all the data behind the scene.
I’m sure you are busy with other stuff that have much higher priority, but coming back after 8+ months and saying that there is no plans in the immediate future is definitely disappointing.
Besides that we do love the dynamic of the marketplaces, but we have to evolve otherwise we will eventually die.
Thanks so much for this feedback, guys. This definitely helps moving forward.
Any update? I am looking to purchase a developer license from sevenspark and am not able too. Would really make it more affordable for me to use your developers products if I didn’t have to manually purchase one license every time.
If you do move forward, perhaps those of us who have purchased several individual licenses could be given some credit toward a developer license.
Thanks for the consideration.
skstarkiller saidAny update? I am looking to purchase a developer license from sevenspark and am not able too. Would really make it more affordable for me to use your developers products if I didn’t have to manually purchase one license every time.
If you do move forward, perhaps those of us who have purchased several individual licenses could be given some credit toward a developer license.
Thanks for the consideration.
Unfortunately not, Its a shame because I’m sure it would be a good move for envato, especially for themes.
Bumping this for justice. Just had to turn down an extended sale because it wouldn’t allow multi-site use. 
It seems you guys have it backwards. You should take care of what the buyer wants first, no?
There is a clear demand for developer licensing, especially on things such as WordPress plugins. You said you even used to offer this option but then took it down. So why not just put it back up if it already exists?
As a consumer, I’ve monitored this situation and am really, really frustrated by it.
If this never happens, the question becomes, what are the benefits of not offering multi-use licensing? The only one I can think of is:
5 sales at no discount > 5 sales with multi-use discount.
But this is a big assumption, and it’s also flawed logic. Because point of sale add-on revenue would far outweigh any losses accrued through multi-use discounts.
Wonder what the latest news on this matter is?
Unfortunately it doesn’t seam like we will ever get a solution on this issue!
I have some interesting stats on one of our popular plugins, which a lot of customers use for their clients websites. As we are not allowed to do self promoting I won’t mention the name of the plugin, but it is a plugin that lets you customize the wp-admin in WordPress. This is something that is very useful when you create websites for clients.
The plugin has been sold 2,010 times, but we know for a fact that there is currently 13,096 copies of the plugin installed.
My question is could this have been avoided that for every copy of this plugin sold it is on average installed on 6.5 websites? Could the number have been lower if we were able to offer discount on multiple purchases or offer a developer license that would fairly priced?
RightHere saidThe plugin has been sold 2,010 times, but we know for a fact that there is currently 13,096 copies of the plugin installed.
are these for valid item-purchase-code verified installations? maybe there is a set of item purchase codes that make up the majority of these installations? could be someone sharing their item purchase code along with the package. we’ve found a few leaked codes when installation numbers spike and we disable new installations/updates for those particular codes.
RightHere saidThe plugin has been sold 2,010 times, but we know for a fact that there is currently 13,096 copies of the plugin installed.
84% of unknown installations is a huge number. If I remember correctly the multiple license used to be 10 usages for 3x the price. Seems like it would have worked out great for a plugin like yours.