Do you know exactly what you’re buying? Where does everything within that paid WordPress theme come from? Of course, you don’t have those answers.
Theme authors (people you’re buying from) are responsible for answering those questions and making sure everything you’re buying was licensed for commercial use and redistribution. Unfortunately, some theme authors simply don’t care enough to provide those answers and do it the right way.
While I’m trying to make my themes more unique and referencing everything that I use and redistribute within my products so you can rest assure that what you’re using is actually LEGAL, some theme authors’ method of creating “premium” themes is jamming other people’s stuff together and resell it to you without prior written permission for the rights to resell(sell first, ask later).
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve written about this topic before. At this point, I’m not mad at the fact that those careless people are giving paid theme authors like myself a bad name. No, I’m just disappointed because I was naive enough (the first time around) to believe those careless people simply didn’t know better and that they would improve.
Obviously, having to write about this again proves that those theme authors simply don’t give a damn. And, it’s sad because they’re putting theme users at risk. In the WordPress community, if you’re experiencing some form of success, it’s likely because people are buying your stuff so they could thank you for all the free work you’ve contributed prior to becoming a paid theme author. To the best of your knowledge, the least you can do is everything you can to make sure you’re not putting those people at risk.
And no, I’m not going to name names. I didn’t write this to smear anyone (if I want to, I’d do it later 🙂 . I wanted to remind you to be careful and I wanted to vent a little. If you know who I’m writing about, please DON’T point them out in the comments. Thank you.