Recently Pligg have semi released an edited open source WordPress template titled Lemon Twist for Pligg, the reason we say semi released is due to pligg asking that You “Do Not Redistribute” the template unless asking YankiDank permission first?. This along with a few other naive errors breaks the original GNU General Public License which the template was released under originally by it’s creator Chris Murphy of farfromfearless.com.

Now i know what your thinking this isn’t a big deal and your right it isn’t, but it’s once again unmoral and shows pligg’s lack of consideration for any other open source participant other than themselves.

Chris only asks two things for releasing Lemon Twist for free on his blog.

I would appreciate it if you could keep my credits in the stylesheet and a link in the footer.

Unfortunately pligg seen fit to do neither then also asked that an open source template not be redistributed, pligg did however manage to find the time to add a chipin donation funding badge to the release post from which they have managed to raise $2?

Pligg initially had no link to farfromfearless.com in the footer of the template until they were notified by a member this broke the templates GPL license. This was later added to the SVN after pligg were notified.

There is no reference anywhere in the lemon twist templates stylesheets to Chris or farfromfearless.com.

Finally the bright red important looking “Please Do Not Redistribute” part of the template released over at pligg seems to be a vialed attempt to keep users visiting the pligg site to download and hopefully the chipin button caught there eye. This is just pure speculation for the Please Do Not Redistribution phrase and my own personal opinion, but it’s certainly a tactic i and many of you will have seen done before (Not Necessarily On Pligg) to gain traffic and try to get donations. Sure a lot of work was placed into the template by Yanki but $1000 worth, seriously?

We have added Chris’s information to the style sheets and feel free to redistribute how you like. The template is for the upcoming version 9.9.6 of pligg but will work on v9.9.5 by removing the code below from the sidebar.tpl.

{if $user_authenticated eq true}
{assign var=sidebar_module value="sidebar_saved"}{include file=$the_template_sidebar_modules."/wrapper.tpl"}
{/if}

Visit: “Lemon Twist” v2.0 – Updated WordPress Theme