Premium WordPress themes & plugins packs offered on Facebook?

[bopeep]

I see a lot of sponsored posts on Facebook offering premium WordPress themes and plugins pack.

What's the deal?
Also are they allowed by Facebook?
Are these allowed by the theme owners.

I don't get it?



Are they buying enterprise versions and reselling?

Just curious because some of them are spending a lot of money and getting really good reach

Ps :how do i attach image screenshot here?

 

[secretagentdad]

There is virtually no cost per unit for digital products.

Publishers are willing to give packagers really good deals as a results.

 

[Potatoe]

Cowardly disclaimer: I could be off here, this is just my understanding of it when I dug into this a couple years ago. It's entirely possible that I'm parroting pirate-propaganda. Dig into it yourself, grain of salt, etc... Ok...

Plugins and themes for WordPress are considered "derivative works" (source) so they have to be released under the same license as WordPress.org's software itself which I think is pretty open-ended and "do whatever you want with it", so it's my understanding that theme and plugin creators are free to charge what they want for the "open source" (maybe not the correct phrase here, the "GNU public") software, but so is anybody else that comes across that code. So the same way that the plugin and theme creators can use the WordPress-derivative code and sell it, so can anybody else with their code.

So, essentially what they're really selling when you buy directly from the developers are the updates and the support. When you buy from these bundles, you aren't getting the updates nor the support nor license keys. Also, it's entirely possible that the code has been tampered with and you end up with selling niche edits without even realizing it.

I doubt that the people who created the stuff featured in the bundle above are on-board with this, I think it's just the 'cost of doing business' under the WordPress.org license. I think anyone can just buy up a bunch of WordPress software and the license allows them to do this, if not flat-out then it's kind of a grey area I believe.

I think there are some exceptions where the PHP of the theme is under the open source-y license, but the extra "demo" files like images etc are not a part of that - so that's probably where these bundles are a bit more of a grey area.

I want to link the FAQ from a site that sells themes and plugins for pennies on the dollar because they explain it, but I don't want to send them traffic nor do I want to take their word for it, but here's the license they cite for why it's okay: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

 

[Darth]

@Potatoe Very interesting with respect to themeforest. They sell per URL WP theme licences

 

[bopeep]

So this is not illegal what they are doing? They do mention that they provide all updates lifetime. So, ither than code vulnerability , there is no harm buying this?

Is this same as some guy selling elementor for way less than what elementor is charging?
I am all for supporting the developers by principle, I just didn't understand how they could sell somebody else's softweare for cheaper without getting DMCA notice, but I guess that derivative thing could be a loophole

 

[Potatoe]

I don't know if it's been tested in court or what type of precident there could be, I'm not super familiar with the folks advertising on FB either, could be a different beast. I think they're free to send you updated versions of the theme, but auto-updates from within your WP install itself probably won't work since you won't be hooked in with the original author.

 

[ToffeeLa]

Actually, if you take a look on Reddit, it would have been a pretty good traffic leak by the guy from the 'South Asian Express' website who comments on every thread with his 'expose' of the scam... (or am I just too cynical these days?)