ThemeForest Adds Multi-Project Licensing

May 18, 2009 by Matt | Posted in Design 4 Comments

Envato’s ThemeForest marketplace has added multi-project licensing for their products.

Buy a 10 Project License for just 3 x the cost of a Single Use License.
A 10 project license means you can use the same file over and over – up to ten times – without having to buy it again and again.

They also offer a Web Service Licence, which costs 50x the cost of a Single Use License. The license could be used on a site such as WordPress.com, if Automattic had the inclination to purchase a theme from ThemeForest. A site where the design might be in use by multiple clients, but hosted by yourself.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to upgrade a license you already purchased, but you can simply buy another instance, as people have done in the past when they wanted to use a theme on another site.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/photomatt photomatt

    Why would we do that? It's not even legal and it'd be supporting someone actively violating the GPL which is at the heart of WordPress.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

      First of all, not all of the themes are WordPress themes. A good deal are just straight HTML and CSS.

      Second, I still fail to see how you can argue that themes are derivative works. A derivative work, as defined by Wikipedia is "an expressive creation that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work." A theme starts out as an image in Photoshop, and then is built up with CSS and HTML, and then lastly has a few function calls from WordPress added in. The vast majority of the end product is purely original. It's like arguing that a software package like Firefox, GIMP, or Blender must be licensed under the GPL because it runs on the Linux kernel, which is licensed under the GPL. An application may run on Linux, but the majority of the code is its own.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

      Oh, and I wasn't necessarily trying to imply that Automattic would do that. You guys seem to be perfectly capable of amassing themes in other ways. I was just trying to give an example of a site that would have a large amount of clients using a particular theme, whether it be a WPMU-based site or not.

  • http://ineeddiscipline.com/2008/07/04/19-blog-review-networks/ Dean Saliba

    Sounds like a good deal to me. I might check these guys out sometime this week. :)