The Ethics Involved With Selling Premium WordPress Themes

A little over a month ago, Brian Gardner of Revolution Themes made a bold and brave move when he decided to convert his business model to something closer in line with the spirit of open source.   With this change came a lot of questions, with the primary question being what would happen to people who purchased these themes?  Were they screwed?

After his initial announcement, Brian quickly addressed the concerns of his “clients” by explaining that all existing themes would never be made available for free and would be retired.  The new open source business model will instead contain only 100% new themes.   Brian held true to his word and the 8 themes available at the launch of Revolution Two were all completely new.  The old site was taken down and the old themes are now gone for good.

In a different, yet similar situation, Woo Themes recently celebrated their first birthday (birthday includes 8 months under the name of Premium News Theme).   In what turned out to be a controversial move, they actually released a copy of their original premium theme for free to the public.   Unfortunately, this is the exact same theme that a large number of people paid $79.95 or $99.95 for (the original price for the first 8 months).   Is this fair to those people?  Should others who bought themes from Woo Themes also be concerned that a theme they had paid for may also later be released for free?

According to the Blog Herald, here is the official response from Adii of Woo Themes:

We don’t believe that releasing a year old theme for free infringes on our users’ rights, as they have not only bought a theme from us, but also all the goodies that goes along with that purchase (in terms of support, tutorials, theme-specific customization help etc.). We have also been in touch with all of our users and worked out an acceptable situation internally.

Now, I have no idea what the workout was (I’d guess buyers got to pick another theme of their choice for free?).  For the sake of this discussion, it doesn’t really matter, as this post is not about Woo Themes or Revolution Two.   It was just inspired by the situations described above.  What I want to know from our readers is what rights should someone have if they purchase a premium WordPress theme?  

The niche as a whole appears to have taken a significant hit with the launch of Revolution Two, and other theme designers have been stepping up and releasing premium-quality themes for free as well.   I think for the premium WordPress themes market to survive over the long haul, theme authors need to come together and some standards need to be put into place and followed.   If not, there is a good chance that buyers will lose trust in some designers and the niche will suffer as a whole or disappear completely as a result.   That, or it will continue its shift to more of a theme club setup.

What do you think?  If you pay money for a WordPress theme, what priviledges are you entitled to as a buyer?   Should there be a guarantee that it won’t eventually be free?  Should you get lifetime code updates?    Share your take in the comments below!