The damaging dispute between Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenweg has abated as Chris has decided to change his terms of service and put Thesis PHP code under the GNU Public License Version 2 to bring it in line with other WordPress themes.
The Intellectual Property License section now reads:
Thesis General PHP License
The PHP code portions of Thesis are subject to the GNU General Public License, version 2. All images, cascading style sheets, and JavaScript elements are released under the Thesis Proprietary Use License below.
Thesis Proprietary Use License
The Thesis Proprietary Use License is a GPL compatible license that applies only to the images, cascading style sheets, and JavaScript files contained in Thesis. These elements are the copyrighted intellectual property of DIYthemes and cannot be redistributed or used in any fashion other than as provided in this Agreement.
Chris announced the news on Thursday with some style:
Friends and lovers: Thesis now sports a split GPL license. Huzzah for harmony! #thesiswp
The impact of the relicensing exercise should stem the flood of users that decided to quit Thesis in response to the recent controversy and the threat of a potential court case. The outcome of any court case would have been uncertain as there are good arguments on both sides regarding the enforcability of the GPL. An expensive court case would have been damaging for Matt and potentially ruinous for Chris.
Thankfully, the GPLv2 licensing will allow Chris and his team to get their focus back on making his theme even better.
Version 1.8 will be out soon: new features are:
- Support for WordPress 3.0 Navigation Menu
- Moving functions of the Page Options settings and onto the WordPress category and tag admin pages
- A new skin interface – I will be doing some tutorials on this later
- Better performance due to recoding of the theme architecture
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