The decision was a good one. I think it very sad to see developers blame their failed business models onto Matt because they can no longer get free traffic to their sites…

If you create a product of value, you will get business. Quality speaks for itself… The market will dictate the value, whether you agree with that or not is irrelevant.

If folks want to pimp their for-pay themes, they should purchase ad space, or find another way to lead customers to their sites—not expect WP.org to build their businesses for them.

Taking your scenario, my first thought is “so what!?” Let’s say thousands of themes are on WordPress.org’s theme repository, and only a few hundred are any good. That is where ratings, download numbers, tags and other search criteria help filter the crud from what you are looking for.

What if I enjoy the design of a decorative theme? Also, what is a “limited functionality version?” If I can use it as a fully functional WordPress theme, then it isn’t really limited.

Also, these businesses have to spend time, money and resources creating and managing their themes, and I believe they deserve something for their time. If they want to have you upgrade to a version that has an options panel to more easily control the design, then it is your choice as a consumer to decide if those features are worth the money or not.

Brian Gardner’s business model only works because he was able to build a huge brand for himself, and how did he do that? Selling themes! You can’t tell me that he didn’t make some money that was then set aside to help market his current Revolution 2 themes.

Also, what percentage of his buyers are buying support packages? I bet it hovers around one percent of the total people downloading and using Revolution 2.

Part of the allure of premium themes is that not everyone will have the same theme as you because of the cost acts as a barrier to entry, meaning that you’ll have a “more unique” theme on your blog than if you had chosen a free theme.

Thesis is one of the best themes I have ever used, and it was $165 for me to buy the developers license. It will never be part of the WordPress.org theme repository, meaning that I will not get theme update notifications from within WordPress, unless he builds it into the theme package himself like Tarski ended up doing.

Theme developers and plugin developers only believe in open source when they can make a business from it. Otherwise, why waste the time creating advanced themes and plugins? I think without the capitalism side of this whole thing, we would never see the technically advanced themes we have today. I think that Revolution 2 wouldn’t have happened without Revolution.

Free software, and open source software aren’t the same thing. People have to stop comparing the two. Also, I hate paying for software. I will always take the free version if it is even 90% as good as the paid version. So it isn’t like I want to see every theme cost money. I just believe that Automattic is taking steps that the community at large would not.

Also, your statement about the type of work that companies release for free into the repository is generally false. Companies will want to put their best foot forward and get tens of thousands of people to download an amazing theme, in order to be able to up sell to them later.

Lastly, I think that IF the only way amazingly talented design companies are going to release beautiful and feature filled themes is to have some way of monetizing their other works, then Automattic should be supporting their endeavours rather than trying to shut them down.