I posted on Pro Blog Design in May to say that I just wasn’t that interested in licenses. My logic was that the product needs to be ace, and if it is, then how much does the license matter to you?
Well, there was a flaw in that logic. The flaw is that I had massively underestimated how important the license is to some people. And understandably too, there’s no doubt that without the GPL, WordPress wouldn’t be what it is today.
So with that in mind, all of our themes are now fully GPL compliant.
What Does That Mean For You?
The change is that you can now legally modify the themes yourself.
So let’s say you’re a developer and bought a Plus+ membership. Now a client gets in touch and says they’d like a clean magazine theme; then you could take Oracle, modify it, and then set it up on their site for them.
Of course, if you’d like to save yourself on support issues down the line by passing them on to us, and allowing them continuous free access to upgrades, then you might want them to set up their own account here anyway, but that’s your call now!
Aside from that, there isn’t a massive difference. Most of what the GPL allows you (e.g. one purchase means you can use the theme on as many sites as you like) was already allowed by us!
Why Now?
If you’ve been following the #thesiswp drama in the WordPress world today, you’ll know that this timing is no coincidence.
I’ve been considering this since I wrote the Pro Blog Design post back in May, and a lot of you gave good arguments for going GPL. Today’s video between Chris Pearson of Thesis and Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, was what finally made it happen though.
PliablePress is about doing the best for everyone, giving you an incredible product and helping you do anything you want with it.
It is nothing like the sort of business Chris is running, and if being non-GPL was going to put us under that umbrella, then it’s an association we want nothing to do with. Hence, we’re now GPL and fully in support of the WordPress devs and community.
Possible End of 30 Day Refunds
There is one downside to the new change though, we may have to end our 30 day refund policy. The freedom of the GPL, combined with this generous offer leaves us a little too open to abuse sadly.
We haven’t ended it just yet though (And might still end up keeping it, we’ll see how things go!), but if you want to be sure of trying us out risk-free, now is a good time to do it because it may not be around too much longer.
Another reason I’m considering removing this is for the sake of affiliates. If we end the refund period, then affiliates will be paid a full 30 days sooner, and can be guaranteed of all commissions they earn.
That said, I’m happy to report that hardly anyone has made use of our refund offer so far anyway!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this though. Was the 30 day refund part of why you decided to purchase from us? Or would you have done it regardless?
Matt said:
Congrats on the switch! From a business point of view, I would stick with refund offer for now as they usually increase conversions. You should chat with Brian Gardner as they’ve had a lot of experience with how to balance the license with your business.
17th July 2010
Michael Martin said:
Thanks Matt! I think you could be right about the conversions too, when I’m purchasing something at least, a refund period is always a good thing to see. Going to see how things go with both GPL and the refund together, hopefully it will all work out well!
17th July 2010
Joshua said:
I think a refund period for most things is good, but I wouldn’t make it a big selling point.
I think if you had a usable demo it would help people see the coolness of your control panel!
18th July 2010
Michael Martin said:
That’s an interesting idea Joshua. You mean like setting up a live demo that they can log into and work with?
Really liking that idea. I know the videos I’ve made so far are poor (And the fact I had to split the cp demo into 3 just doesn’t help at all!)
19th July 2010
Boba said:
Just got an idea about that and i think it might work pretty well and it’s not hard to be done.
The only way to do it is that the user that makes changes will be the only one that sees them so other users won’t have problems with his changes (for example 3 people are checking out the panel in the same time and make changes, only the last changes made would be visible, so that would be a huge prob).
So the idea i have is that simply by appending the username variable to the option field names will make sure that different users won’t affect each other’s options. Then you would also append the username variable when you are calling the options.
What do you think Michael
20th July 2010
Michael Martin said:
Hey,
Thanks for the thoughts, it’s great to hear you like the idea as well!
Your idea could work well there, but if I set it up using WPMU itself, it would already take care of that for us. The only complication there might be filling out the default content for users so they can play with the demo quickly.
Another option might be to set up a regular WordPress blog, but run a query every 15 minutes or so that resets all settings (and the user password). That would minimalize the likelihood of issues.
I definitely like the sound of this though. This week will be pure MyBiz development so I can release our next theme next week, but after that, I’ll definitely get this online! Thanks guys!
20th July 2010
Boba said:
Thanks, the idea is awesome, i never thought about it since noone allows users to test out options panel for their themes, so i guessed it’s not possible. And now when i thought about it for a few sec it hit me. The same way we are making the theme options not conflict with other plugins and themes using a prefix we can do the same to make different users changes not conflict with each other by adding another prefix or suffix which is equal to their username. Got to write a little blog post about this idea
20th July 2010
Michael Martin said:
Sounds cool! Share the link here when you publish it, I’ll definitely be curious to see what you come up with!
20th July 2010