Themes: fair price

Not that I'm against someone offering commercial services/products for Drupal (though i hope there is always give back), but why would the GPL only cover the PHP code? I would think the GPL would cover all aspects of the drupal code including javascript, css and html. However, as long as there are no modifications to drupal code (core or contrib) and you host them on your own servers (which make it a seperate "product"), I think you can license them however you want (as long as you aren't distributing drupal with your theme).

--Ryan

For a totally unique and quality theme, custom designed from the ground up for your needs (templates and everything) I would not consider $300~$600 as being too much. I probably wouldn't pay $600 myself as an individual, but I could see a business justifying that quite easily.

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Dominic Ryan
www.it-hq.org

Good points Dub, I totally agree the community point of view. In my comment above I just took some business approach of the strategy and possible pricing based on some experience in the past.

However, as I'm coming from Mambo -world, I did not see there any big conflicts even a lot of designers are actually selling their themes or unique designs for Mambo / Joomla... I feel that also the project itself will benefit, if more high quality themes are available (for free or fee). As far as I saw during the past, a lot of people were actually choosing Mambo/Joomla just because of the wide availability of "good looking" themes.

Licencing is also, of course, an important part of any Open Source Project.

My 2 cents...

Hi Dub,

I see the point you're making, but I don't agree. Drupal developers, just like you and me need to earn a crust in order to survive, and take it from me unless your project(s) reach a certain critical mass the donation method does not work. I am not a developer but I spearheaded the development of an article module for another CMS I've been using for the past 4 years which I tried releasing under a donation model asking for just $10. Over two versions the module cost me $1200USD, and in all I got around $650USD worth of donations. This donation shortfall wasn't through a lack of interest either as the module has been downloaded nearly 20,000 times, and that is just from the sources I know about. Sure there were some very generous people that do donate, but the simple fact is that most people don't pay under a donation model because they don't have to. Doesn't make them crooks, just means that unless your projects have massive appeal, or you aren't dependent on that money for an income the donation model is not a wise model to be banking your financial future on as a developer.

Even in a "pay for service" environment there is still incentive for developers to release some projects free of charge, especially when there is fierce competition. This is a marketing tool and helps get you as a developer get noticed in your field. Again as a company sponsoring a custom project it just makes sense to release it back to the community, as you simply cannot buy the sort of QA power that doing this brings to your project. It's a very much lets sratch each others backs so it works for all of us, rather than just expecting the developers to scratch all our backs as users. As qpqp said, it is all about balance, and an environment where a full time developer is expected to provide their skills and time free of charge is not balanced. Actually one of the biggest reasons I have deceided to come to Drupal is because of this balance which makes for a very healthy community overall. As you pointed out, look at 4.7. It had 338 developers contributing to the core. That is unheard of in any other PHP based open source CMS.

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Dominic Ryan
www.it-hq.org

Dublin Drupaller, the OP asked a legitimate question. Open source is not incompatible with selling products and services. Some quick examples are MySQL, PHP, JBoss, Eclipse, Eclipse plugins and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. People and companies do need to generate revenue.

Newsflash, developers do earn money from making custom modules or customizing existing modules for their clients. Some of this work does get contributed back, some do not. One size does not fit all and not all client needs can be met with existing modules. Either way, as long as the developers do not violate GPL, it is OK.

One of the reasons why there has been a huge jump in Drupal developers is because there are people and companies that are making money off of Drupal and contributing back to the community. There are plenty of cases where companies have sponsored the development of modules. There are also a lot of situations where Drupal service providers have gotten their clients to sponser the development of modules that added functionality needed for the project and then have the modules contributed to the Drupal community. A win-win for all parties involved. If people and companies were not able to do such things, they would not have an incentive to contribute back to the community, whether it is new modules, code fixes, themes, or support by answering questions on the forums.

You seem to have a problem whenever someone is making money from Drupal, as evidenced by your infamous post last year. Or do you not earn money from Drupal yourself? Do you contribute 100% of your work to the Drupal community?

If you do, then I have egg on my face for the above comments. If you do not, then please let people earn a living from Drupal without being molested by your prejudices.

BTW, I do agree with you that contributing back to Drupal is a good thing. I just don't agree that people selling their own work is a bad thing.

Have you checked out all the other custom template sites that are available? You could get a good feel for what they charge people. I currently use Joomla but am looking to switch to Drupal, but I can't seem to find a theme to match my needs. Joomla has dozens of commercial sites that handle themes, and they typically range from $30 to $50, but the theme isn't just allocated to you. To make the theme yours only, meaning others could not download it from the site, is about $1200. But there are also other sites that offer memberships, which are usually around $30-$50 for a 6-month subscription and you get to download the themes unlimited during that time period. It's been my experience that for people who aren't good with programming or CSS, the commercial themes are more professional than the ones offered for free, because I don't have the time or knowledge to customize them. For a couple of examples, check out templatemonster.com or templateplazza.com.