Hey guys!
@Pixelbuffet - great question, I need to look into what our current policy is on plugin bundling. Off the cuff, it doesn’t make sense for authors to just start bundling more and more plugins. There’s already plenty of free ones aside from whether or not CC plugins are GPL, so I assume we don’t allow bundling, or at least advertising of bundled plugins like its a service. But will ask the team for confirmation.
Also great idea about DesignCrumbs being the featured author for EnvatoMail, a nice closing of the loop so to speak!
@klasikweb - I totally understand where you’re coming from. I look at WooThemes as being the top of a certain group of theme developers and designers who I think will be a valuable addition to the community here at TF. But I take your points!
@sanisoft - I must admit not to being a lawyer, but I’m fairly certain that the GPL allows reselling as well as redistribution. If you do decide to use the full GPL license, it’s really worth reading all about it and what it means.
@ChapterThemes - I think one major reason would be if its in line with your philosophy about the world and open source. WordPress is all GPL, and using a 100% GPL license is arguably more in line with WordPress’ core principles. The ThemeForest regular license is 100% legally compliant however, so its completely up to you what path you take.
@VF - Totally agree, we didn’t do a good job with the reviewing, and I’m not sure why to be honest. But it’s something we’re going to get to the bottom of, and improve. Not just because of this current situation, but also because its important that our reviewing is consistent across the board - regardless of the name of the author!
@mad_dog - I totally agree. I’m not sure how it happened, because it really shouldn’t have. As I mentioned Jarel is investigating and starting a rereview. I think the short answer is, we made some mistakes.
@Anps - Good question, I haven’t looked through the themes myself, but am going to spend some more time with the review team to better understand and make sure we address anything which isn’t in line with our regular standards.
@FinalDestiny - thanks for the comments, I think you make some fair and justified points. Definitely I was (and still am) excited about WooThemes joining, but I didn’t want that to come across like it was at the expense of our own community. And I think we could have done a better job of an even handed promotion.
@Bitfade - I think with GPL theme copycats, if it was on a major marketplace we’d look to speak to the operators of the marketplace and make the case that its a bit unsavoury - even if it is legal. However if its just a random site onselling GPL themes, I think any author who chooses that license needs to understand they are accepting that this is a completely legal thing to do.
@Robvenom - Those are probably fair assumptions, I just don’t want to say categorically that was where the mistake was, until I’m sure and we’ve spoken to the review team and looked at the situation properly. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid saying we made a mistake - I’m very proud that as a company we have a history of owning up to mistakes - I just want to make sure I’ve got my facts right before I assign any blame internally on a public forum. Hope that makes sense!
@doru - We don’t mean to treat anyone like an idiot. I’m really sorry if you feel that way. We do our best to have a fair setup. It’s more complicated than everyone is treated the same though. Whenever we get criticism about something being unfair though, we do treat it seriously.
@VF - You asked about hidden/special incentives for some vendors in search and sorting systems. We’ve got a fairly straightforward listing which doesn’t have much in the way of weightings. I agree placing items in so they are spread a bit more unevenly could be viewed as a sort of manipulation, but as you say its one intended to make things better for other authors. We used to upload in blocks and it was a real source of frustration to community members who felt like one author was taking up all the listings. I guess its always a fine balance. I will speak to the team to ensure we are as transparent as possible about how we weight search results. We’ve got some major search projects this year, so it’s a good idea to make sure everyone is on the same page on this important topic - thanks for raising it.