As far as themes go, I can't say for sure, but I do know that there was a major problem some time back with sponsored themes (company X designs a theme for company Y then company Y offers it for free in order to have their site linked to all over the place).

I don't think it's Stalin-esque, because we still have the freedom to go elsewhere. WP is given freely, and if the core project isn't run in a way that we're unhappy with then the GPL actually gives us the freedom to walk away with all the code and do what we like with it. Its beauty is that although a radical desire to protect the GPL can drive people away from a project, the GPL still protects our rights and ability to continue using the software.

It'd be much worse in a closed environment – try being an iPhone developer. But even then, you can just switch to Android, or WinMob, or Symbian… or any other, really.

As far as I'm concerned it doesn't actually matter nearly as much as I thought it did, so if I were you I'd not stress too much about it. So long as WP continues to be popular, we can live with it.

I disagree with the stance taken, the attitude and politics in some elements of the core project and so on. But it doesn't matter – I don't, today, have the power to change it – all I can do is express my opinion, as here, that it could be done better and that in the long run it could lead to forks taking place that will be direct competition for WP.

* The developer cannot be *using* a non-100% GPL theme on his own, personal site.

This is Stalin-esque.

BUT…this has tinges of extremist behaviour. That is you're not pure, you can be included. It's a common issue that psychologists observe in all sorts of organisations, in particular those based on ideology. Members want to show that they're better than others, that they're more 'pure' than their comrades.

Moderates end up exasperated, and slowly leave, leaving the group to become distilled into ever more extreme behaviour. Eventually it all blows apart.

WordPress the codebase is bigger than WordPress the project – the simple long-term consequence is that someone may opt to fork the project.

I don't have much time for Chris Pearson and his Thesis Theme, to be fair, but why marginalise him? What WordPress is doing there is creating a community of clever and well funded people who aren't included any more and who may well end up having the motivation to fork WP if the project continues to treat them like a bad sibling.

And where does this stop? It appears to be a little arbitrary. I often post up information on getting things working in Windows – for example, a recent post on getting XAMPP in Win 7 and mySQL WorkBench to play well together. That's me showing support for both GPL *and* non-GPL code. Is that playing with fire?

It isn't healthy – WordPress needs to mature now, or it'll split… and that's damaging for all of us.

That's from the e-mail I received when I questioned. So yeah, you have to pledge allegiance to the GPL.

However, it is patently wrong (and totalitarian) for the repository to dictate what the theme developer hosts, writes about, promotes, or advertises on his own web site.

As it is, if a theme developer cannot so much as writes a positive review of a non-100% GPL theme, his theme will get rejected from the repository.

Wash, rinse, repeat for every theme submitted.

As you said: wp.org are free to set whatever guidelines they desire for their hosted repository. However, I don't want to hear about the theme repository moderator being over-worked, when 75% of that overwork comes from an asinine and draconian guideline that goes far beyond mere adherence to 100% GPL for all hosted themes, to unreasonably and unjustifiably draconian adherence of the theme developer to wordpress.org's (i.e. Matt Mullenweg's) interpretation of the free software/GPL philosophy.

Actively stifling dissent and freedom of thought and expression cannot possibly be congruent with a movement that purports to extol the virtues of *freedom*.

Wash, rinse, repeat for every theme submitted.

As you said: wp.org are free to set whatever guidelines they desire for their hosted repository. However, I don't want to hear about the theme repository moderator being over-worked, when 75% of that overwork comes from an asinine and draconian guideline that goes far beyond mere adherence to 100% GPL for all hosted themes, to unreasonably and unjustifiably draconian adherence of the theme developer to wordpress.org's (i.e. Matt Mullenweg's) interpretation of the free software/GPL philosophy.

Actively stifling dissent and freedom of thought and expression cannot possibly be congruent with a movement that purports to extol the virtues of *freedom*.