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So I have some thoughts after reading up on the Thesis/WordPress situation and watching the debate between Chris and Matt. If you need to catch up I found this summary quite good mainly because of the debate video is found there.

What’s up?

So the problem is that Chris Pearson creator of the premium WordPress theme Thesis and Matt Mullenweg, founder/creator of WordPress disagrees about if the themes and plugins for WordPress also needs to be GPL licensed. And theny are lot alone many developers follows this debate and have their roots for the different sides. It all basically boils down to different interpretations of the GPL license (in regards to if a theme needs to inherit the GPL license) and as I understand there is not a certain definition of this yet. For now there is just the opinion of each individual or organisation. And this is why this is so interesting. The outcome of this situation could have a big consequence for CMS that uses GPL license or the theme creators. I say could because it may not be this situation that triggers the final legal definition.

Comments on the debate

I understand both Chirs and Matts side of the situation. Chis is defending his work and livelihood, being completely convinced that he can have his own license on Thesis. And Matt on the other side can not let what he believes is a violation of the license just pass by for other to follow. These sides are not crazy. They are reasonable if you look at their respective views. The one thing I don’t understand is how reluctant Chris is to use GPL even if it would not compromise his work and income. Matt points to that almost all other themes is using GPL and pointing to examples that uses and actually change to GPL and doing very well. Matt even said he would point people to Chris and Thesis if it was changed to GPL. He still would not consider it. Only if he by himself found out that GPL could be used, would he would change. I just didn’t get the extreme reluctance. But I understand that he wants to fight for his opinion and not give in. If that is the best thing I can not say. Maybe in the end he should have or maybe he will go out with his flag up high. We will have to see how it ends.

What to think?

I am not sure what to think about this situation. For now it is just one opinion against the other, backed up by different lawyer or organisations. That being said I find these articles interesting:

http://perpetualbeta.com/release/2009/11/why-the-gpl-does-not-apply-to-premium-wordpress-themes/
http://perpetualbeta.com/release/2009/12/why-the-gplderivative-work-debate-doesnt-matter-for-wordpress-themes/

http://apeatling.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/thesis-and-the-gpl/ http://jane.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/thesiswp/

What do you think? Don’t be shy, feel free to express it in the comments.

So now what?

I could only guess what would happen next and I do not what to speculate too much about it. It could go to curt and be settled there. The outcome will in that case certainly be interesting. Until then we can not much more than speculate, make summaries and express our opinion on twitter and blogs;)

written by harri \\ tags: #thesiswp, Chris Pearson, GPL, Matt Mullenweg, Thesis, wordpress

For now I wil be using this basic theme until I find something else. The blog was very slow and I could not find out what caused it. I actually messed up my server trying to fix it. Thank god for AMIs! It turns out that the problem is the plugins and theme so now I use this basic theme and just the necessary plugins. Twitter tools was the one that most clearly made the site slow. It could just be because I use suPHP but I never had any speed problems when I hosted on domeneshop.no, which also runs suPHP.

EDIT: Edited the theme a little and removed some stuff. Now the theme is a little faster and usable.

EDIT2: And then a beautiful word popped into my head. Cache. So installed some cache plugins. I also disabled Twitter tools again . It very clearly slows the page down.

written by harri \\ tags: load time, plugins, themes, wordpress

Earlier i wrote that I had problems using jquery in wordpress. I found this problem when I tried to integrate a registration system (will probably make it a WP plugin when I have the time) I have made with wordpress. I use the jquery form plugin to do the ajax stuff.

The problem was solved by changing the $() with jQuery(). I changed alle the $() to jQuery() and added jQuery.noConflict() in top of my jquery code. It didn’t fix it to just do it with my own code, i had to change it in the jquery form plugin as well (note that I didn’t put the ´jQuery.noConflict()´ in the form plugin so it may not be necessary in my own code). I don’t know much about it other than that it works now. I will probably read some more on it when I have time.

written by harri \\ tags: fixed, jquery, problems, wordpress

Nå er endelig mjf.nu oppe å kjører. Sida har i flere uker ligget nede og alt du har møtt på mjf.nu er en feilmelding. Men nå har jeg fått systemet til å fungere.

På sida kjøres det et system som heter Geeklog. Tidligere har vi brukt Joomla og WordPress uten noen særlig suksess. Kort sagt ble Joomla for avansert og WordPress for simpelt. Geeklog har vist seg å være akkurat det vi var på utkikk etter til mjf.nu. Den har funksjonene til Joomla og enkelheten til WordPress. Jeg vet ikke om jeg tørr å si at det er det ultimate weblog systemet, for som de sier: Alt til sitt bruk. Men til mjf.nu har geeklog vist seg å være det som passer best. Nå er altså sida oppe og vi håper på å få stor aktivitet. Etterhvert kommer nok påmelding til turer og andre events til å skje på webben. Det skal bli så greit!:D

written by harri \\ tags: cms, geeklog, joomla, mjf.nu, wordpress

Akkurat nå sitter jeg med den holdningen at alt som kan installeres med svn er genialt. Har nå satt opp Easy Living sin WordPress, wordpress themen og phpMyAdmin med svn. Når da noe skal oppdateres så er det bare å skrive noen få ord i commandolinjen og, vips, så er det oppdatert. Kunne ikke fått det lettere. Så nå er jeg på leting etter alt jeg installere med svn.:P

Det som er en forutsettelse for å bruke svn er at man må ha en server som har shell tilgang. Til nå så vet jeg ikke om noen andre hostingtjenerster som har det enn domeneshop.no. Så jeg kommer til å bruke domeneshop til jeg finner noe norsk som er betraktelig mye billigere eller har shell tilgang eller til jeg får server hos Comunic.

written by harri \\ tags: domeneshop.no, svn, wordpress