An open law book and a judges gavel on an Amer...

You probably heard about the dispute between creator of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, and Thesis framework creator Chris Pearson. The real issue is that the creator of WordPress have a point against Premium WordPress Themes.

Free is better. You like free stuff. You like when you go to KFC and you get a free garlic sauce for every menu you order. The truth is that it is not free, it’s price is included.

It will be better if all WordPress Themes are free ? Hell yes, on short term. If the creators will be forced to give themes away for free they will, maybe they will try some other monetize methods that will never reach the amount of money that they used to generate when they sold themes.

In the long run, more and more theme creators will stop creating top themes. And if you try to search, you already know that it is hard to find free good themes.

The lack of good free themes at this moment can have 2 possible causes:

  1. All good theme creators jump in the opportunity to get some cash for their themes.
  2. To create a good theme you need to invest a lot of time, and time is money.

These are 2 theories that can lead to the effects of having all themes available for free. If the real case is the one in the first scenario, we will have a lot of good free themes, but if it is the second, the free themes will be the same but we will no longer have premium themes.

My hope is that some premium theme creators will find a way to survive and to generate a good income and they will provide few premium themes that a lot of people will use. If it is used by masses they can generate good income. So my prediction is: Less good themes, but free.