You seem to be making the point about branding here, and afaik branding isn’t GPL’d so again the argument seems specious here.

Put another way: if someone were to redistribute under another brand name that would be ok? If yes, than fair enough, if no, than you need to consider moving to a different licence.

A specific use case: If I hypothetically were to port your front end designs onto my code base (designs only, not php or css) would you consider that unethical?

I agree with you on two out of three.

When it comes to misusing your branding and deliberately misleading, I absolutely agree with you. While the GPL gives users the right to redistribute (even to sell) verbatim copies of your themes, it certainly does not give them the right to imply that they represent you, or StudioPress. The GPL is not a license for trademark infringement, and I fully support using every available means to go after trademark infringement.

I think the commercial world already supports full exercise of GPL rights simultaneously with full enforcement of trademark. Firefox is the most obvious example (and Ubuntu, for the more geeky among us).

Just as Debian must re-brand Firefox as Iceweasel and Ubuntu-derivative distros must re-brand, so should those who re-distribute your themes re-brand them.

So, I agree with you on those points. It is just that they are not GPL issues; the GPL is silent on them, because it involves copyright, not trademark.

Ultimately for me, it comes to MY view of ethics. When someone deliberately uses my branding, undercuts my pricing and misleads users that is what I call sad. It waters down the community, pisses people off and overall causes a bad experience.

To me, I consider that a sad use of the license.

He has his opinion on the matter, but other than stating that opinion, I’ve not seen him try to intimidate or otherwise coerce users against exercising their GPL rights.

I just don’t buy the “ethical” (so-called “spirit” of the GPL) argument. The GPL is a copyright (or, as GNU calls it, a “copyleft” license), which means it is simply a legal tool to define rights granted by a copyright holder to those to whom he has released/distributed his work.

Now, certainly, there are ethics surrounding the free-software movement and its attendant philosophy. One of those ethics involves free sharing of, and contribution back to, code.

However, if the GPL is intended to impose the ethics of the free-software philosophy vis-a-vis not re-selling verbatim copies of code (i.e. profiting from GPL code without contributing back into it), then the GPL is poorly written toward that end.

In truth, the GPL is not, nor was it ever, intended to enforce or impose such ethics, apart from the ethic of user freedom with respect to use, modification, and distribution of code. Thus, the ethical argument against re-selling verbatim code is specious.

The ethical question I am a bit more hesitant to agree with you on. I can certainly see a valid argument about the ethics of redistributing someone else’s work without any value added etc.

However, there is no doubt that the behavior is explicitly allowed under the GPL which is what Brian and several other theme developers have released their themes under.

Where I start getting agitated is when developers try to intimidate users out of excercising the rights granted by the GPL. I’ve not seen Brian do that but Adii of WooThemes has been very confrontational at times in this regards and that definitely does strike me as hypocritical.

Yes, I truly am dissappointed.

While I fully knew what the possibilities were – I didn’t think I’d see as many folks using the GPL as a loophole for their own monetary gain. I’m not saying I regret the move, nor am I complaining here – merely stating that it’s sad to see folks misuse the GPL.

I fully “get” that what they are doing is allowed, for me it becomes an ethical issue. In my opinion, and clearly inferred with that license, the real intent is to make the code available for people to build upon, and to come out with derivative works.

[Instead], people are using it to build sites that drive traffic, get them exposure, and ultimately water down the community. To be honest, at least with our themes, I’ve seen maybe one (if that) good use of the GPL license and our work.

Explicit wording of the GPL is not a “loophole”:

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program’s source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

As for inferring the intent of the developer in releasing code under GPL, the license is equally explicit that the only intent that matters is the user’s intent, not the developer’s intent.

It is not unethical. It is not exploitation of a “loophole”.

Distributing code under a license that includes very clear, very explicit freedoms, and then calling the exercise of those freedoms “unethical”, is hypocritical.