http://www.OSWD.org/ - “Open Source Web Design” led by Francis J. Skettino. Free web design templates.
Unfortunately, I like open source in my open source.
As a person who’s blog is in bad need of some design — any design — I noticed with interest Derek K. Miller’s article “Free open source web designs“:
OSWD is a bunch of open-source web designs, most of a bloggy style. There are more than 2000 of them so far, and you can contribute your own—at least if you have better web design skills than I do.
Looks like it has been around 5 years, and Francis suggests it “has grown to be the premier site on the internet for the sharing of web designs.” Of course, for my own evil purposes I want http://themes.wordpress.net/ to be the premier site for open source web designs, but I’m happy to find more great resources.
I was disappointed by what I found.
Immediately, I was struck by the irony of “using the OSWD design itself [...] is not allowed without written consent from OSWD”.
That page starts with “you can download any …”, but never talks about the real freedoms of open source:
- Free Redistribution
- Source Code
- Derived Works
and so on, which are derive from the The Free Software Definition:
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
“The designs distributed at OSWD each carry their own separate open source license which is chosen by the designer when it is submitted to the site.” Turns out I have to download a theme to find out the license. OK, that is a lacking experience (design), but I will give it a go.
I downloaded the top five most downloaded designs: RedTie by alexisc22, andreas01 by Andreas, Delicious Fruit by Dieter, Rounded_2 by jedignork, and FunkyCoolBlue by VirtualFunction. Not one of them including licensing information. The famous WordPress theme designer comes the closest with Andreas Viklund with at the top of andreas01.css:
andreas01 - an open source xhtml/css website layout by Andreas Viklund (http://andreasviklund.com). Made for OSWD.org, free to use as-is for any purpose as long as the proper credits are given for the original design work. For design assistance and support, contact me through my website or through http://oswd.org/email.phtml?user=Andreas
The other ones pretty much had nothing.1
Lets look at another site, http://www.opensourcedesign.com - “Open Source Design”. That also sounds promising. Hmm, no way to add a theme. I flipped through quite a few and they all are Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 by FreeCSSTemplates.org. Creative Commons Attribution is a great license, but it will never be an open source license, because “you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor” (emphasis mine). By requiring attribution as the author specifies, you might affect the experience (the interface) of the resulting site. So no open source design in sight there either.
Now do you see why we are such a moody bunch? 
I better go see if I can help get http://themes.wordpress.net/ accepting submissions again.
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6 Comments
RE: If you are reading this wondering what license to use, you can’t go wrong with GPL v2
Just give it away in the public domain - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/. If it’s good they will come. If they don’t you probably don’t want them anyway.
there are a few on deviant art, although most wordpress templates get submitted under Skins & Themes > Blog Skins, which has no results for GPL.
I don’t agree with your objection to CC licenses, though (or specifically CC-by-sa) - the GPL doesn’t grant you the freedom to remove attribution either. Specifically, if a copyright notice is included in the theme, you can’t remove it (GPL section 2(c))
zorger, putting things in the public domain is a fantastic contribution to the commons! I just have never found it generally pragmatic.
adam, to be clear, I didn’t say that CC licenses couldn’t be acceptable as open source, it is completely dependent on how attribution is required. If it is required in a particular way in the experience, it is inappropriate for open source.
Based on my last paragraph I hope you appreciate that I also did not suggest removing attribution.
Because all the CC licenses are incompatible with the most popular open source licenses, they are not generally a good choice though.
It’s funny but I feel the same way about the GPL.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand what’s so terrible about giving credit where it’s due. Having said that, I’ve pretty much given up on CC-Attribution. The kind of ungrateful jerks who want to pass your work off as their own are not going to take any notice of your terms of use (and in extreme cases will run around claiming your licence is wrong and they’re entitled to disregard it, as if legal obligations were the same as ethical ones). And decent people don’t need to be ordered to keep your credit in place.
I can see, though, that not all theme designers have reached that level of cynicism yet and still believe that their licencing terms will be respected by end users.
Thanks for investigating that. I’ve updated my original post.