Wordpress.com copies Drupal theme

Sorry about the credit thing, I believe all the links I could find to Stefan Nagtegaal's website were down, so I wasn't sure what to link to. Drop me an email with how you ideally want him to be linked and I'll make it happen. Also about saying "Steve" instead of "Steven" somewhere, that wasn't an American-centric bastardization of your name meant to insult you, but just a typo. I'll fix it now.

Do you have any idea when Drupal 5.0 is going to be released? If you guys want we could prevent new people from signing up for the theme until 5.0 is out, if you really feel that strongly about it.

WordPress has done a lot for putting hundreds and hundreds of themes out there under the GPL, and I've always encouraged folks to port them for other systems as it raises the quality of Open Source design throughout the ecosystem. I'm sorry that the first time something flowed the other direction that it bothered you.

nice deflection.

It's our new signature. We'd have liked to release it as ours before everyone takes it for their own.

I worry about the phrase, "a direct hit to our goals". I'm half a world away, so I don't know if it's a common phrase in your dialect of English, but a direct hit to one's goals sounds like a good thing to me. It sounds like it's about something that helps you to achieve your goals rather than hinders them. After all, if you hit a nail on the head then you are helping it to go into the wood.

In fact, I had to read the quoted email excerpt at least twice before I realised that you were saying that you'd prefer Wordpress not to copy the theme. I didn't realise this at all when I skimmed it quickly instead of reading it properly.

I hope you don't see this comment as argumentatively pedantic; it's just meant to be a potentially useful point. :-)

for the record, here's the thread where matt asked someone to port the theme, and his fellow wordpress developers told him it was a bad idea:
http://www.nabble.com/New-Drupal-Theme---Garland-tf2576025.html#a7181253
since no one would do it for free, looks like he fired bryan for not porting it, and then got another employee to do it.

totally agree with Matt.

@Steven - What exactly are Open Source and GPL meant for ?

I think Matt is being earnest enough, giving you the option to keep the theme held back until Drupal 5.0 is out.

Sure, it's just a little too late. I think there's just some disappointment about getting our thunder stolen for the shiny new release of Drupal 5 which was supposed to present this theme to the world. It's absolutely "allowed" to re-use the theme/code as desired.

I don't think removing it from WP.com is really needed, but it would be nice to get the description / footer links properly credited and maybe the default color scheme not be "Drupal Blue".

I pinged Matt and the other fine folks I know at Automattic, and it's all good I'm sure.

Adam et al -- let's not go into speculation about WP.com inner workings. There was no "warning" it was a short discussion and I didn't read much into it other than some long time talks about the reflection of code and design.

Open Source is not only about licensing, Open Source is also about a positive attitude towards the other OS contributors. I think it shows a certain lack of respect if you ask somebody to port a theme, knowing that it hadn't yet been released, as is evident from the mailing list archive linked to by Steven.

Also, as has been pointed out, a theme isn't simply a piece of code. In the case of Drupal it is intended to be the new face of Drupal 5.

I think Matt was aiming for the commercial wellbeing of wordpress.com rather than a good working relationship to other Open Source contributors.

Gerhard, your point about attitude is well taken.

I've sent an email to Matt. Let's cool it on the speculation on aims for now until we hear back tomorrow.

I know it's getting to be morning for Europeans, but there won't likely be anything else until daylight hours in PST.

It seems like you should have kept this new theme closed-source until a couple of weeks before the 5.0 launch... (don't know if that was possible at all?) However, I definitely feel it's not drupal that made a mistake here, but the wordpress team.

Odd, usually I am the one with the stong opinions on these kind of matters. But here I couldnt care less. If wp.com wants that theme, make it blue, call is "WP rocks!", I couldnt care less. True, it wasnt me spending dozen of hours to make and test the theme so there is one factor for our difference in opinion.

The only way to make sure you will get a Big Bang when releasing a new version with a new default them, would be to do it in the dark.

Otherwise, having an open kitchen has its drawbacks. You can see /in/ the kitchen, hear the chef shouting and smell the burned meat. But when the chef is cool, the kitchen clean and meat just right it adds to the overall experience. And sure, the "frietkot" next door can copy some ingredients or steal some ideas, but that doenst make it a 5 star restaurant with Chef Steve(n) serving and baking quality stuff.

People who like fat-bloated mass-produced non-flavor fries should eat at the MickeyDee everyday. After all you are what you eat (but then canibals are the only true humans :-)

holy crap guys... I thought you Open Source guys were the non-confrontational surfers, then reading this I realized from my own surfing experiences that there's no such thing as a non-confrontational surfer when it comes to turf. Guys, who Dealt it gets to Smell it first. It's courtesy.
Now... I don't know how you all got loose, but get yourselves chained back up to your damn computers and make us some more freaking themes, we're all hungry over here.

WordPress has done a lot for putting hundreds and hundreds of themes out there under the GPL, and I've always encouraged folks to port them for other systems as it raises the quality of Open Source design throughout the ecosystem. I'm sorry that the first time something flowed the other direction that it bothered you.

The thing is, this isn't just one of "hundreds and hundreds of themes" as Matt describes it, it's THE theme (and branding) of Drupal. And they know it.

Holding back and changing default color would be the least they could do. It's all about sharing in the end, but it doesn't hurt to play it nicely as well.

I totally understand the emotions involved with this type of thing. Then again, that's all they are - emotions. I don't think there is much of a rational case against Matt or Wordpress for porting an open source theme.

Adrian just said:

The thing is, this isn't just one of "hundreds and hundreds of themes" as Matt describes it, it's THE theme (and branding) of Drupal. And they know it.

I'm sorry, but if you as a designer intend for something to be the face of your product (i.e.- "branding"), then releasing it as open source makes absolutely no sense.

I feel for you, and I definitely think the move by Matt despite your clear feelings was a tad tacky. However, this all seems to be a moot point given that it is, in fact, open source. You don't see the WSJ journal calling all the wise-but-slightly-selfish business moves out there "tacky."

I think we are doomed to go trough life as being the ugliest and most unnapealing CMS out there, forever. Lets just shrug our shoulders and make that fact our marketing: we don't care about how it looks by default: we give you a very good CMS, one that you can make beautiful yourself :) (and for the hell of it: Drupal is still the most design/look friendly system out there, if you are into hardcore styling)

I mean to say: The linux kernel looks ugly too. Bash is not a beauty for eyecandy lovers, and apache will not win any Beach Babe of the year award. Yet they are fabulous tools. And at the same time, websites (running on apache) look gorgeous, bash is available on every new Mac, and the Linux kernel powers very good looking Gnome and KDE systems.

We may have lost this battle of being the most beautiful of all, we can still prove to be the best option. Also for designers and themers.

Good Design is what attracts people. Take for example Wordpress and Joomla. I really do think that most people use these because of the availability of great themes and because LOOKS DO MATTER..

What most don't see is how clean and powerful Drupal is. I have examined nearly every CMS and have come to appreciate Drupal for it's backend. The drupal sites I saw were very bland in design and that represented the community. But things are changing and we are seeing wonderul themes. And the new Garland theme is stunning.

I think the fact that WP has copied Garland shows us that Drupal 5.0 on the next level.... the stage of good design and usability. The structure and layout of the new Admin menu in Drupal 5.0 is fabulous. Drupal is on route to C&C. (Command and conquer that it...)
;-)

All things get sorted out in the end with friendly & respectful discussion.

There is obviously no point in arguing about the fact that the theme was meant to represent a drupal era and that porting it to WordPress could be an issue if it was done before the drupal 5 release.

Now that we are passed that point, there is no sense in taking a defensive attitude. Drupal should be proud about the fact that WordPress is reaching up to them, - and even prouder when it concerns style and theming.

The first step has been to announce it in drupal.org, now it should be spread through the drupal community that the drupal 5 default garland theme has been copied (give it the name you want) by WordPress for its greatness.

Cheers,
Phil

ya this is kinda pathetic.

Drupal is GOD!

Out of respect for open source, and what we do, the people at WordPress should have respected Drupal and waited till 5.0 was released to release the port.

On top of this, they should of been more informative with Steven as to what was going on and showing him the port before it was released.

So I take this as WordPress just disrespected Drupal..

all those comments about it being open source and it should have been hidden.. well how the hell can this big ass community vote on a new identity? No, I'm not even going to get into that.. this shouldn't be the arguing point.. It's still comes down to respect damnit and you disrespected Drupal!

now after reading more info from googling... i see some clarification was made. thanks matt at wordpress for understanding this situation.

As a user of Drupal and Wordpress.com, I appreciate the hard work and effort that went into the new Garland default theme. From an end user perspective Garland is Drupal 5, so Wordpress is stealing a lot publicity from end users. Wordpress.com has tons of non-technical (never installed either) users blogging away and when they see a Drupal 5 website in the future, they'll say "that looks just like my blog." Then again more savvy Drupal sites will not have the default Drupal theme just because it is the default (at least that is my logic).

I think wordpress/automattic could do more to credit Gardland, the license, and that is the default theme of software that "competes" (even though people will argue they don't compete, but you can't argue they do overlap a LOT). The blog post announcing this theme didn't do much more than say "this theme is part of Drupal" which seems to selectively leave out the part about "Oh by the way, this is one of (THE?) biggest visual changes in a HUGE milestone release of COMPETING software"...

Plus the Garland theme on initial launch on Wordpress.com is off. I too emailed Wordpress with a couple of issues (but used their feedback form for it). That being said, if Wordpress.com folks fix some bugs with the Garland theme and contribute them back for the benefit of Wordpress AND Drupal users, then everyone wins right? I'm impressed that I get pretty quick and accurate responses from Wordpress.com folks, Barry, Andy Skelton, etc. etc.

This is clearly controversial though, not black and white.

Whether it's legally allowed by GPL or not, this whole affair leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of those whose life is Drupal.

Type wordpress hot nacho into Google and you will get another look on who this guy is.

Just judging from the raised hackles. This is less a technical issue and more of a human one. Seems there's a really easy-to-spot path that would have made everyone happy: WordPress waiting until the 5.0 release and providing proper credit. No big deal, not something that's going to have any impact whatsoever on wordpress.com's bottom line success.

What bugs me the most is the callous "I'm sorry that the first time something flowed the other direction that it bothered you" line. Matt declares a high value for "rais[ing] the quality of Open Source design throughout the ecosystem." But this quality relies above all upon the people making these great creations happen. Respect and courtesy for those people should be high on the list of strategies to use toward that end. Ignoring the context here - the central role of this design in the advancement of Drupal's goals, and the investment of the designers in Drupal's success - was a demonstration of disrespect and lack of courtesy that seems to have sown a bit of distrust at the very least.

I'm glad that wordpress.com will be taking Garland off the shelf for the time being until Drupal's 5.0 release. After all this, thanks to Matt and the WP crew for being willing to be flexible.

Thank you "Anonymous" for suggesting creative search terms to fill out my background. Before I understood web spam I seriously screwed up by allowing some links/content on WordPress.org. Since then I've learned a lot, to find out more about "who this guy is" now I'd recommend Googling for [akismet].

I don't see what that has to do with porting a publicly available, heavily promoted, and GPL-licensed web design to another GPL platform. As the founder of one of the very few Open Source companies (now employing 12 people full-time) that doesn't dual-license, encourage GPL FUD, or attempt in any way to restrict how people use our code I take the freedoms of the GPL very seriously and wouldn't trade them for any perceived competitive protection.

Also please don't conflate an email sent to one of the people formerly working for Automattic with me being hell-bent on "disrespecting" a product that has no overlap with our target audience. This is just 1 of 51 themes WordPress.com offers, if I had known it would insult people like this I obviously wouldn't have launched it.

I think this was a little over the top. But thankfully it resulted in pure common sense on WP's behalf.

1) Even if WP released this theme, the official Drupal theme on Drupal.org will still be unique to the site and not available for download. Some posts here claimed that it will hurt Drupal's identity, image and marketing which is unfounded. Who would want their site to look like a standard garland theme? Good webmasters strive for individualism and uniqueness. Garland, because of its characteristics may be a big hit which means more webmasters will exercise caution rolling it out on this site.

2) Why is a personal attack being launched on Matt? The only people who benefit in the end is the user community at Drupal and WordPress and GPL for that matter. Trying to slander (or expose) someone over a free product is negative.

3) I wouldnt expect WP to have a "This is a Drupal theme" statement as suggested by some posts. It's unrealistic to give publicity to the competition, the proper credit was given and the Steven's requests have been met for the time being.

In the words of Picasso: good artists copy, great artists steal!

In light of WP's actions to stop the theme until Drupal 5 is released, I feel this is a good time to lock this article?

So whats the final decision? i used the drupal theme from the day it was released, i mean it was like love at first "site". So can i continue using the theme or should i take it down? am lost

@filip_tc: At no time this was an issue between the Drupal and WP communities. This was (and maybe still is) an issue between the Drupal developers and wordpress.com or rather automattic, Inc.

@munak: We'd appreciate if you would not use the theme for now.

Well. I see a definite parallel behind that issue where you not understood web spam (in 2005? I have doubts) and now when you khm... not understood what this can cause... Curiously, both "not understandings" leads to... eventually... more money in your pockets. Tsk, tsk.

@BioALIEN: Apparently, WP.com has not yet taken any further action (ie removed the theme from WP.com) and I cannot see any common sense in any of their actions.

I didn't see any copyright information of your blogware ( wordpress ) on your site.

as a support for you guys, i have taken down the drupal theme from my wordpress but let me know if you guys come up with a solution, i really love the theme and would def like to use it in better times.

i find it utterly disgusting that wordpress took another project's theme and called it their own.

at the time of this post, the drupal 5 theme is still there on the wordpress site with no explicit mention of "we heisted this theme from a drupal 5 beta".

with this heist and the way it has been mishandled, the people at wordpress have shown themselves to be utterly classless and without character. in a word, immoral.

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s."

the actions of the wordpress team and company is the same as jumping the fence and stealing unfinished work from a project your neighbor is working on. there is no possible integrity in this kind of theft.

this quote from matt is the sign of a content thief, not someone with good intentions:

"Sorry about the credit thing..."

well, buddy, sorry 'bout your missing hand, too. it seems matt was too busy stealing and taking credit for this theft to put a clear notice that he lifted the theme from drupal.

as a response to this theft, i have taken my wordpress blog down and will be recommending to others to no longer use wordpress.

"i find it utterly disgusting that wordpress took another project's theme and called it their own."

At no point did we claim we created the theme, or call it our own. In the theme description and announcement there are mentions and links to Drupal.

"the actions of the wordpress team and company is the same as jumping the fence and stealing unfinished work from a project your neighbor is working on."

Both WordPress and Drupal are Free/Libre Open Source Software, which means our licenses specifically allow and encourage the code to be taken, adapted, mangled, massaged, as long as it follows the terms of the license. Dozens of WordPress themes have been adapted for other systems. If creators and authors are uncomfortable with that, they should choose a different license.

"Sorry about the credit thing" was about a misspelling in a screenshot, not even in the actual code or source, which has since been corrected. Also we had linked to Steven but not Stefan because the link to Stefan's site all appeared to be down.

"at no point did we...."
yeah, right.

IIRC, as it was originally uploaded, even the footer link was wrong.

"Free/Libre Open Source Software"

and that means that in order to beta test the forthcoming release, they have to license the beta under a GPL compatible license. Alternatively, they could not beta test the theme, and wind up with something about as lousy as the half-a**ed port you put up on wordpress.com.

Matt,
you dont get the point here. These guys are not trying to defame you or deny you anything, all they request is put away the theme for a while until they release it. I mean its straight forward. You dont have to go in defensive mode. I love wordpress, i mean you guys have done a wonderful job but i would suggest, do not compromise you relation just for some ego/pride. I love this theme, i want to use it but am refraining from using it because i do feel these guys have every right to get the spotlight first before you. It reminds me of a story abt napster, it was originally coded by another guy but his roommate stole the idea while he was napping and called it napster (yeah its from the movie Italian Job :p)

IANAL but..

In some way this seems to be the reverse of the recent Wordpress Trademark discussion.

The Drupal guys (collective term for those involved in development) probably do have some legal grounds.

The developers could well look on "Garland" as a trademark, and the Drupal 5.0 look and feel could probably be protected in some way as well, even if the code is GPL.

Correct attribution might be "XYZOtherThemeName" which is based upon and inspired by the Drupal™ theme Garland™ by Steven Wittens and Stefan Nagtegaal..

The original authors might for instance want to create their own Wordpress theme using the name "Garland"

Some theme designers take attribution very seriously. I noticed that with the Anaconda theme for Wordpress (which I thought was based on K2), if you want to remove the attribution they ask for $30 per blog. (though not sure how if K2 was GPL)

It is interesting to note that the thread on Drupal.org says that everything is cleared up more than a week ago, but from what I can see here in the comments, it isn't.

I am well aware of Akismet and recently just installed the Drupal module for it on draftobama.org. One question for you, though: why am I required to get a Wordpress API key in order to fully use Akismet? Couldn't you have made it so users register with Akismet directly rather than Wordpress (and then just automate that part in Wordpress if you want to make it easier for your users). While I went ahead and did that, I generally find that kind of bundling to be extremely annoying. If you really meant Akismet to be a truly altruistic contribution, you wouldn't be using it to drive people to the Wordpress site.

The theme, even if popular, mostly turns heads for one reason. It has a complex color picker that other themes don't have(unless you fork over money for CSS editing).
Solution? Stick those color editors in some other, popular themes, and the impact will be lessened. Or, just hold them back. I use the theme, but for the same reasons. Color customizing. I like the Ambiru theme more, but it doesn't have widgets (or a color picker, for that matter).
The issue with the solution? More free customizing means less people will fork over for CSS editing. But then again, people with knowledge of CSS and a desire to customize their blog probably have enough money to host their own stuff.

"At no point did we claim we created the theme, or call it our own."

On their theme picker the heading still says "Garland by Matt Mullenweg" (linking back to Matt's own blog).

Seems out of character with Matt - so guess it must have just been a slip-up which has gone uncorrected.

i think all ur line rider videos r amazing

****____*****

If you don't want other people to use it, don't release it under the GPL until you're ready. It's that simple.

Wordpress has done a very good job at opening things up and giving them to the community - the way that open source is supposed to work. They're by far the best example of an open source ecosystem creating something efficient and democratic in the generic web application space. I note that some of the items on the Drupal theme page originally came from Wordpress.

I also have to question how much thunder the introduction of a theme is actually going to get you. I wouldn't stress; if Drupal fits a user's needs, and the theme is what's going to make the difference, then it'll do it no matter who introduced that theme first. Personally, I think any issues will run far deeper than a coat of paint - and on the strength of this thread, possibly to the community itself.

where can I download Garland for WordPress myself?

Somebody stole it from their SVN and put it up for download here, though I imagine that's not the answer you were looking for.

Oh, and Matt's still credited as the author in the zip's style.css. Classy.

Somebody stole it from their SVN and put it up for download here, though I imagine that's not the answer you were looking for.

How can you "steal" something that's freely available? I didn't "steal" it, I just checked it out of the freely available and publicly accessible WordPress.com themes SVN repo and zipped it up so those without SVN knowledge / access can easily obtain it (just like Matt did from the freely available and publicly accessible Drupal SVN repo).

Oh, and Matt's still credited as the author in the zip's style.css. Classy.

Perhaps because he's the one that created the Wordpress theme, and that's the way it was uploaded to the WP.com SVN? There is no "design author" tag for Wordpress themes, just the "Theme Author". As I said, all I did was check it out and zip it up. Am I supposed to go in and "fix" the author? What about any bugs that are found? Am I now responsible for those as well, simply because I created a zip file of the SVN's contents? Come on...

Really, can we stop being so negative now? No one has "stolen" anything through this entire process, and regardless of how you feel about the original incident (that being WP.com porting it before the Drupal release), it was two months ago. Can we please move along?

It's free, open source, software. We're all in this together for the betterment of the overall technological society. Can't we stop fighting amongst ourselves and just focus on making the best damn software we can?

This needs to remembered for ever, and rest assured it will be, and there can't be a we.

It's as simple as this:

If you release something under GPL, you can't complain when people use your work within the terms of the licence.

If you really wanted to release it for testing, you could have released it under a "testing only" licence/specified that it can't be ported, then only released it under GPL after go-live...

Haha, this is so stupid.

Disregarding the whole idea of OPEN source, and the fact that they can use it as long as the licenses match up, why would you want to make your product look exactly like another product in the web design area.

I hate all these blogs and websites now that look the same, it's true that it's the content that matters the most, but if appearances didn't count, then books wouldn't have fancy covers, just plain white dust jackets.

The defaults for both wordpress and drupal look like link farm sites, and as much as i know its a bad thing to judge the book by the cover, I just expect that if people have put no effort into making their site look individual, they probably won't have made much effort to make the content individual.

At the moment if i see a site with the default theme, I can be pretty sure its safe to close the window, as it's just going to be some idiot talking about how the bus was late and how much they love their cat.

Thanks for the great Post, fist and: this needs to remembered for ever, and rest assured it will be, and there can't be a we.

Jürgen

Hey Steven, thanks for sharing the information. Jeff