WordPress MU

I'm looking through the theme viewer and noticed many wonderful themes. Please help me understand what can or can't be removed from the footer under GPL and creative commons license.

Depends on what you're looking at.

I leave in the author's link. I consider that to be part of the license. If there's a sponsered link, I add in a rel="noindex,nofollow" bit to the link. If there's one hidden elsewhere within the theme in some way, that gets removed. If the author states that he or she require them, I usually just drop the theme.

I add in a link back to whatever WPMu install the theme is on. That's just credit and PR.

wordpress.org links get left in. That I consider to be apart of the GPL as well even though Matt and crew say they don't require it.

In the presentation tab, the links are already pointing to the theme designer. It's also shown in the css file in comment form. Isn't that enough?

Theme designers are adding several other links to the footer (ie: design by, hosting, sponsor, etc.) which adds clutter along with our own footer message.

Doesn't look professional at all.

Here are some examples:
http://themes.wordpress.net/testrun/?wptheme=1793
http://themes.wordpress.net/testrun/?wptheme=1763
http://themes.wordpress.net/testrun/?wptheme=1750
http://themes.wordpress.net/testrun/?wptheme=1749

Um, did you read my post?

design by - keep
hosting (which is you) - keep
sponsor - ditch or at least nofollow. Ditch theme if required.

GPL says that credit must be given in any output. To me, that's the link in teh footer. The CSS isn't generated where a visitor can see it. That's why i keep it.

This is a pretty touchy subject, and you'll find many different opinions on it.

Under the GPL, strictly interpreted, all copyright notices must remain intact if the code is re-distributed after you receive it. You are free, however, to modify it for your own use. Where it gets "tricky", is what is determined as distribution and your own use. Of course you can't just claim it as yours, either.

For me personally, if a theme links to all the garbage such as sponsor, host, best friend, or whatever, I take it all out. Including the footer link to the theme. In my eyes it's all spam. Mainly because they anticipate people are just going to pop the theme in and activate it, and increase their exposure for whatever it is their trying to promote. To me, it seems that's their reason for creating the theme at all. To spam their links. In those cases, I leave the author link in the css, so end users know where it came from. To me, that's good enough.

Another case where I'll take links out is if I spend a lot of time fixing a broken theme. If it doesn't validate, isn't cross browser compliant, is just plain broken in some areas, or poorly coded. Still keeping the links in the css, so it shows up in the themes area though. 99.9% of the time I don't modify those at all.

The final case is if the link to wherever is broken. If that's the case, I take it out, or link back to where I found the theme.

Of course, this is just me. If I were re-distributing these themes, like in a theme pack, the original author link would remain.

One question that's always brought up, is what defines a "copyright" notice.

Is just a single link to a site a copyright? Not by definition, and it's not enforceable. Is it a nice thing to do to leave a link in there, to an author that gave their time and made something for your personal use? Sure it is.

Now, if that link said "My Theme: © 2007 Author Name", it would be a different case. Would it still be a "required" link? Maybe, maybe not, but the text would be.

It's a vicious circle, that's for sure, and depends on the theme and the conditions under which it is released. Some are GPL, some are a private license, and some don't come with a license at all.

Yeah, it is a touchy issue here.

I am a bit more conservative, so I think it is better not to use those themes with annoying sponsor links in the footer.

If there's a sponser link, out it goes. It's tacky, plus what Luna said.
i leave a link to wp somewhere, a link to the site it's hosted on and a link to the theme designer.

Personally, from the other side, if I were releasing a theme for FREE I would just want my credit somewhere, even if it's "only" in the CSS. If I want any more stringent rules for that, then I'd charge people.