WordPress themes’ license has been a debating issue among the WordPress community. Due to the fact that WordPress is an open source program and releases under a GPL license, many assume that all WordPress themes should also be GPL-licensed.
Indeed, a lot of free downloadable themes are released under GPL license. But the problem with those themes is that majority of them can’t match the quality of other themes that are released under a different license.
I have researched major players who design WordPress themes and none of them released the themes under GPL license with one exception from Studiopress.com. This site releases professional magazine style WordPress themes. Their themes’ license is GPL but still, you have to purchase to use it.
All my themes are free to download. To sustain the site, I have to get advertisers to sponsor my themes so I can use the proceeds to continue releasing more high quality themes. Therefore, I can’t afford making my themes available for free under GPL license.
My themes have been using Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported license and it will continue to stay that way. In addition to the current license, there is one amendment that I’d like to include as follows:
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.templatelite.com/terms-of-use/
The reason behind this change is that the current CC license doesn’t specifically mention about the footer links and script of my themes. Now I make it clear that removing the footer links and script of my themes is against the terms!
In short, the license allows you to share and remix the work of my themes but you have to make sure that
1) you keep the footer link and a footer script intact
2) you can’t use my themes on your commercial sites
Those found in violation of my terms and conditions will be ordered to remove my themes from the affected sites.