Today I came across this post (nofollowed) by an individual who uses Bogart for the theme of their site. In his post, the author shares how to add a single line of code in two pages of the theme which will make the new tagging feature of the soon to be released WordPress 2.3 available.
While I applaud the author for taking the time to provide his tutorial to the WP community, I’m a bit disturbed by the fact that this person feels he now has the right to (a) re-brand the theme as “Bogart 0.6 Taged” [sic], (b) redistribute the theme from his own forums (which require registration), and (c) place a credit link back to his site in the footer of the re-distributed theme essentially giving himself credit as a “co-author” of Bogart. All without making any attempt to contact me.
Yes, I’m aware I released Bogart under a GPL (General Public License) — perhaps a mistake on my part — and that the license essentially allows this individual to modify and redistribute the theme as he likes with minimal restrictions. But I have to wonder — does this person ethically have the right to claim contribution (authorship) by simply reading how to do something on another blog (as his post claims), and then adding (perhaps copying and pasting?) one line of code into two different files of the theme? Does that really seem right? Does the GPL honestly allow for those kind of derivations?
Not only that, but since this individual made his changes without any kind of error checking, the theme will break should it be used with a WordPress install prior to 2.3. Could his actions potentially taint my reputation as the original author? Should I be responsible for helping someone who has issues with the modified theme?
I wrote Bogart from from scratch starting at line one. I’ve put many hours into making the design what it is. Josh Cook was kind enough to offer to widgetize the theme at a time when my schedule wouldn’t allow for it. As a thank you, I chose to list him as a co-author. He made a solid contribution to the project and earned credit for it. Now someone comes along, adds two lines of code (well, one line really), and says “Look — I’m part of this too!” Should I honor the GPL license and allow him to take credit for the “change” he made or not?
I think there are bigger questions that need to be addressed here as well; Where should the line be drawn on derivitave works under the GPL? What honestly constitues genuine change or contribution to a GPL’d project? Should the originating author be informed of changes before or after they’re made to a GPL project? Should they be informed at all? Am I just being a whiny sissy and overreacting to the whole thing? To me, it just doesn’t feel right. I’d love to hear what others think about the limitations — or freedoms — of the GPL, and whether the actions of this individual seem appropriate to them.
About Jim Mitchell
Is it allowable under the the GPL? Yes, unfortunately. Was it right of him to do that without contacting you? No, he should have notified you before taking your hard work into his own hands. Was it right of him to declare himself a “co-author” of Bogart? No, the right to decide who deserves credit should be yours as you are the original author.
Ultimately, the worst thing about this is that he never made an attempt to contact you. He simply assumed that he would fix the issue himself and effectively take over development.
You did the right thing by immediately releasing your own updated version of Bogart with additional fixes, effectively trumping his victory parade.
The best thing to do now would be to post a comment on the blog post that you linked to, calmly expressing your displeasure with his actions, and add a disclaimer to your forum stating that you will not support redistributed versions of your themes.
not attempting to contact you is plain wrong. period. not buts about it.
Let’s see…
I’ve tried adding a comment on the post itself — which has remained unmoderated for a couple of days now.
I’ve tried sending a message via the contact form of the site — which errors out and doesn’t send the message.
Finally, I had to register on the guys forum so I could post what I wanted to say there. As of yet, no acknowledgment or action on his part.
Fortunately, no one else has downloaded the theme from his forum (it has a d/l counter on it) apart from me — so the support issue isn’t an issue.
Still, it’s the whole principal of the thing that chaps my hide.
I am sorry for all the troubles I brought. I didn’t think too much, while I’m writing the post. I just did that as a practice for learning wordpress theme, I gave out the download just want the others to check it out.
It’s all my fault. I’m new to wordpress theme designing. I’ve removed the download and everything you mentioned.
I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to this thing to you.