Premium Theme Piracy Solutions

The only thing that www.ads-software.com asks from theme or plugin authors is that they keep all of their themes under GPL, regardless of where they are distributed.

Part of GPL is that you can distribute things.

If you put some “protector” code in your theme, I would wonder what else you have put in it.

OK, so let me phrase that differently.

How do WordPress developers keep their premium themes from being pirated and distributed for free?

The only solution I have come across is using licensing keys and was wondering if there are better solutions.
Thanks.

Hey,

I work for ThemeIsle and I also have a premium theme. GPL allows your users to do whatever they want with the theme, without any restrictions. They can edit any code in any way, or re-use it.

And honestly, no one distributes premium themes on their website for free. There are some pirated theme sites which do that but they do that with all the premium themes, regardless if GPL or not.

Let’s say you have a paid theme business which fall under a commercial license. I bought one domain license from you and started using on two domains. What are you going to do? Surely you won’t sue me for a $30-40 theme. Soon the theme will be outdated and I’ll have to purchase a license to get latest updates.

You should read this: https://chrislema.com/gpl-themes-plugins/

And let’s say if someone releases your premium theme for free, what do you lose? A lot more people will download your theme and your product will be more famous than ever.

If they got stuck at something or they need support, guess will be the one to sell updates? It will be you. It’s basically free promotion. We have converted a lot of customers who downloaded our themes from such websites.

Let me know your thoughts. ??

Regards,
Hardeep

How do WordPress developers keep their premium themes from being pirated and distributed for free?

You don’t and you can’t. Honest.

*Takes a deep breath and thinks “this will probably get this topic closed, possibly by me personally.”*

Here’s the thing and this was settled long ago in 2009 (it really and truly was), the PHP code in WordPress themes is GPL licensed. The CSS and js could be GPL’ed too, but that’s really dependent on a few things.

Themes are GPL, too

What that means is that you, the developer, cannot restrict users from sharing GPL’ed code. The license explicitly forbids that. That does not mean that you can’t sell your themes, it does mean that you can’t stop users from sharing that code.

The concept of “Software Piracy” does not exist with GPL’ed code. It’s not “piracy” or “stealing” when someone takes that code and distributes it. That’s how it is with GPL’ed code. It’s not wrong or even unethical to distribute GPL’ed code. Themes fall into that category because they inherit the GPL from WordPress.

The only solution I have come across is using licensing keys and was wondering if there are better solutions.

There are developers who obfuscate and “protect” their code with license keys, and that conversation isn’t for these forums. That’s against the whole philosophy of WordPress.

https://www.ads-software.com/about/philosophy/

Scroll down to the bottom, it’s the part labeled “Our Bill of Rights”.

Theme shops do make money and are often successful. It’s not easy, but they are able to pull it off by getting customers who rely on them for a steady stream of good product and good support. That’s worth paying for and has been demonstrated to be a working business model.

Hardeep, thank you for putting that into perspective.
Especially with pointing out that users may need support and converting them into customers. That’s something I never thought of and makes a lot of sense.

Jan, thank you for that perspective as well and the explanation behind GPL code and WordPress. The philosophy was something I hadn’t read, but should have.

Its the helpful community and the ability to have effective conversations like this that help make WordPress awesome.
I now have a lot of work to do.
Again, thank you both ??

Glad to be of help. ??