Andre Yoskowitz
23 Aug 2008 19:32
The British government has apparently been caught breaching the copyrights of a WordPress theme used on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own website although it appears the issue has been laid to rest at the present time.
The owner of antbag.com currently makes WordPress themes and gives them away for free under the Creative Commons 3.0 license which allows for others to use the theme as long as there is some sort of link and credit back to the creator. Anthony, the owner, places a link in the footer of every theme he creates that points back to antbag.
A couple days ago Anthony posted that his "NetWorker" theme for WordPress was being used by the British Government, but in total violation of the Creative Commons license. The theme had been modified and all links back to the creator had been stripped.
So not only had they stolen the theme, but were claiming it as their own and were not sharing it under a Creative Commons license.
After sending an email to the company who developed the site he learned that they "did some testing on the NetWorker theme but then rebuilt it from scratch." Unfortunately, says Anthony, “they failed to remove the credits in the CSS file that named the theme ‘NetWorker’ or to change the theme folder which is named ‘NetWorker-10′ (Networker version 1.0).”
However, it appears the whole event has been put to bed by both Anthony and New Media Maze (the creators of the site) and I would encourage everyone to check the facts on the entire matter in case you are ever in such a dispute.