Revolution Themes Became Paid Themes with GPL License!
After going open source for nearly two months, Revolution Theme now is not available for download anymore. All the download links on the Revolution Two site have been removed, and the themes are now being sold as premium GPL themes. I guess not many people are aware of that change because there was no announcement on the Revolution Two official site. Actually, he did mention this *small* change in one of his posts:
As of January 1, 2009, the Revolution Two themes will become paid themes that will carry the GPL license.
As also mentioned in Brian Gardner’s blog, this change will not affect anyone who has purchased a theme / package so far, as you will still be able to access the theme download and will receive support for the themes you signed up for. Those who have purchased the Pro Plus All Theme package will still be entitled to receive all Revolution Two themes and support, so there won’t be any changes to that as well.
If you are joined the forum, you might receive an email from Brian already. In it, he said about the change as well as where you can download the themes. I got one two days ago 
So what do you think? Is it true spirit of open source and the GPL? Is Brian Gardner on his right way?
Twitter
Bad news for free theme lovers like me
Ya even I do like blogger templates as free, but if any template is really worth purchasing, then i think OCCASIONAL release of premium themes may not be a bad idea !
I agree with you.. If it is worth then I am too interested to buy them..
Hey ,
I am currently using the revulution style theme.Do I want to change it ???
Can I Use it ? Will there be any problems…
You can use it as you want but I’m afraid you can grab their upcoming themes
Thanks nhc,
btw I am using the blogger template which was changed from this template.I contacted with my frnd who done this and he told me this.I think there won’t be any problem as they had only selled the word press template
that is sad to hear. Probably that business model wasn’t going to well for them…
I think he’s one of the great designer who once contributed his great themes to the world for free, but he might experiencing financial crisis as well.
I respect his decision, thanks for his contribution.
I am currently using this theme.
What will happen to my site?
I didn’t quite understand your response “You can use it as you want but I’m afraid you can grab their upcoming themes”
Your answer doesn’t really makes sense. Typo maybe?
That means nothing happen to your themes. You can use it as you like, OK? But when they release new themes, you cannot download them. Is it right?
Btw, Revolution Two team has released new theme: Streamline
I never heard they were free…
I see they say open sourced, but never seen freely available.
nhc posted this news almost a month back.I think you should subscribe to his feeds
Dude,
That means my theme is a premium theme now.
I wonder why the revolutin two guys are actually doing this. There themes are already out there. Like I can give it to anyone I like.. right..?
Will miss the updates, but I already have Rev Church 2.0
This is the first time I am seeing two posts a day here. Congrats
cheers.
wah! bad news!
People who downloaded it were lucky…:}
Yup, nothing in life is free (forever) it seems! However, there must be a considerable amount of people using Revolution from opensource downloads, and maybe the volumes of downloads generated prompted them to jazz up their offering and start charging again.
Thanks for the update. I wasted a few hours trying to find the the Code Grey / Code Blue themes. Does someone have them. If you do, can you share them please ?
if someone has Code Grey / Code Blue, please email me lawinindia@gmail.com.
Anyone know where I can download the beta of Streamline? It was free to download a week ago, but now has been pulled. I never got around to downloading it.
Hello Doolie and the rest of the world.
I have a Revolution two gallery up on my blog. You can download all themes here:
http://www.millionclues.com/blogosphere/wordpress-blogosphere/wordpress-themes/revolution-two-premium-wordpress-themes-free-download
Hope that helps you all.
Cheers
Arun
Heheheheh….does that effectively make this a free theme again?
I love Revolution 2. Brian Gardner has done an excellent job with his themes.
Although, I’m not a fan of paying for themes, Brian Gardner’s work is superb. I finally caved in and bought one.
I’m in favor for them getting paid for the themes they do, and especially the support. I’ve learned so far that free themes take WAY too much time to correct even the CSS they have to be valid. Then again, I could have just missed some good free downloads.
I’m fine with purchasing and had already purchased the pro plus from the beginning with Revolution2 just ’cause I need assistance.
I appreciate their work.
I’m glad you did a write up on this.
Monica
I am lucky to win a contest giving away a Rev. Theme and I was also able to download other ones. It is kinda difficult to customize though.
I love free themes and definitely this is bad news for me.
I don’t really understand how a theme can be “open source” if it is not freely available for download. Go to any open source software site and tell me if you see anything you have to pay for to download…
I give it a best of stupid award.
A boring news. I think Revolution are the best free themes. I’ve used and love it. Fortunately now we can get many many other cool themes.
I’m really confused about Brian’s decision on this. I’ve downloaded one free revolution 2 theme before Jan 1,2009. Does it mean that I can’t use it any longer? In my mind, it’s still free to use but you’ll never get any support how to use it optimally, or when something didn’t work well
I’m ashamed about this. It seems to be GPL just to comply with WordPress and get promotion in WordPress.org. Really…
GPL protects your rights to distribute copy, includeing modifying and then distributing it of the code. So, for people who have downloaded it, distribution is LEGALLY allowed.
What customers pay for the theme is support. Period. And this is what should be transparent. Customers are free to distribute it.
And one of the fundamental spirit of Open Source is to encourage community involvement and development, which in this case is “prevented” by Revolution, so I don’t think it is “true” GPL – compliant, may be, but definitely not in the spirit of open source.
I agree, I have older copies of the themes when they were first released. If someone has a new copy, that would be great. I guess I will upload them to mediafire so that people can release them.
It would be totally cool to have someone put together the latest package of themes and make them available for download.
In fact, maybe I will update them all, brand them myself and release them….the gpl allows that.
Just to add to my previous comment, Rev2 themes that I had on my hard drive, including Office, Lifestyle, Church, Code Blue and Elements are available for download here at this Mediafire link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e299a372dd22971c6e7203eb87368129e04e75f6e8ebb871
I will go through and see what needs to be updated in them in the next couple of weeks and will put a new link on my personal site to download them.
Jack, that mediafire folder is empty. Can you please release it again?
These are excellent paid themese really. I am so very grateful.
Still it is available for download in many blogs .So I guess people can use the old versions .
Not a pretty good news for a free theme lover like me
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