Inbound Links On Sponsored Themes Is A Promotion Technique?
Its been around the web forever and it isn’t anything new. But “installing” them on a sponsored theme that is being downloaded at large for free is a relatively recent twist. [A “sponsored” theme is a theme with embedded advertising, hence the inbound links.]
Since Matt decided to remove sponsored themes from WordPress.net this last week you would have thought it would be a topic of a somewhat different nature but apparently there is someone who believes that now is the time to go to the Sitepoint forum and begin a promotion for inbound links in sponsored themes! Incredibly (dripping with sarcasm), for this moment, there appears to be a design outfit behind what is currently a low-level campaign.
This person begins their promotion with this: “There is a way to get inbound links to your [Blog, I suppose] for little or nothing. I first read about this on a random blog. The idea is to find a web designer that is selling footer sponsorship links at the bottom of open source themes that they have designed for Wordpress/joomla/drupal or other Opensource software. These links are generally about 35.00 to 65.00 each and there are about 3 links at the bottom of each theme.”
This is followed with a story about sites where these themes are warehoused and downloaded. Besides the bs that they first read about it on a random blog they have added this small ditty;
“Because your link is at the bottom of the theme and because of GPL rules anyone downloading the theme should not remove the links, because the site was designed with the links.”
Oh… Really??? So, from the preamble for the GPL;
“The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software–to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation’s software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors’ reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not licensed at all.”
Tags: General-Public-License, GPL, inbound-links, opensource-software, sponsored-themes, wordpress
2 opinions for Inbound Links On Sponsored Themes Is A Promotion Technique?
J David
Jul 21, 2007 at 9:34 pm
You definitely should be able to remove sponsored links if you really want to. People often don’t respect the designer who did all the work; why should the “sponsor” be any different. But I do think that sponsored themes should be allowed to exist. Taking them off of WordPress.net is fine, but calling the designer who offered a sponsored theme essentially a hack isn’t cool in my book. I have never made a sponsored theme, but I certainly don’t respect those who have any less.
mark
Jul 22, 2007 at 7:01 am
Agreed… thanks for dropping by and good luck at Wisdump.
Folks - please drop by Wisdump and offer these fellows some support, okay?
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