Do most "Pro" designers allow use of their themes in other formats?

[Kim]

... professional designers... ok. Source ?

Here is a really unprofessional website with unprofessional designers:
http://themeforest.net/licenses/regular


I invite you to read the thread and see the link.

Seeings you are insisting on continuing this discussion I have split it out so as not to take the other thread off topic any more than it already is.

Themeforest predominately sell WORDPRESS and CMS themes, I specifically said "forum theme world"

Designers are forced to submit to Theme Forest's licensing agreement when uploading to that site, most weigh up potential sales against their copyright and designer rights and come down in the favour of potential sales. That does not however mean that such a model is right, or the only way to do business.

Most forum theme designers are not under any such pressure to conform to a 3rd party site's will as they sell directly, and thus do not allow you to do whatever you want with a theme design.

If I was required to give up the rights to my designs by uploading them to a 3rd party site, I would personally choose not to, as would the majority of professional designers I know. Which is why you do not see any "theme forest" business models in the forum theme world, the potential sales are just not there to warrant handing over all your rights to a design.

 

[Adam Howard]

• Do most designers provide support for their styles on 3rd party products in which their theme were not originally designed for?

NO, they will not offer support for something out of the scope of their support & what the design was intended for.

• Do most designers allow people to convert their works for their own personal usage?

YES, the vast majority of both free and paid do allow this. But with the understanding that it is to be used only for your own personal usage & no support will be provided.

 

[EQnoble]

Now what do you do when a person pays you to design a style for xenforo, but they have like a cms or basic publishing system that they want to match so it looks seamless from forums to articles...

In your opinion , is it a problem for a person to match the theme for the rest of their site so the design conforms to some sort of uniformity standard.

Is it a problem if the end client wants to match their site all the way around?

 

[Kim]

Now what do you do when a person pays you to design a style for xenforo, but they have like a cms or basic publishing system that they want to match so it looks seamless from forums to articles...

In your opinion , is it a problem for a person to match the theme for the rest of their site so the design conforms to some sort of uniformity standard.

Is it a problem if the end client wants to match their site all the way around?

In my opinion, not a problem, our (xenique) licensing allows for someone to integrate their whole site using our forum theme design, be that WordPress, Drupal, pages whatever. But we wouldn't support them doing so, they would have to know how to do it themselves, we only support the Xenforo theme.

It does not however allow you porting it to any other FORUM software at all.

 

[EQnoble]

It does not however allow you porting it to any other FORUM software at all.

I would hope this would be obvious to people...I wouldn't want anything I make to help support certain sites/software at all so I can totally agree with that.

 

[Shelley]

I would hope this would be obvious to people...I wouldn't want anything I make to help support certain sites/software at all so I can totally agree with that.

It's really down to the fundamentals in the art of using common sense that <insert person> will know it's not okay to port <insert software style> to <insert other product style>, it's really standard not to do type of thing (unless you asked the author) and generally the people that break this are mainly rippers, or people that don't care enough to respect peoples work or the time they put into such projects. It's a convenience head turner for those that want something badly enough to do what it takes by any means possible.

 

[Luxus]

It seems there is a misunderstanding here. Are we really arguing about whether a theme designer should provide support for a theme of his own that was ported to another platform? I mean, of course not.

I thought the issue here was whether theme designers grant their users the freedom to re-use their purchased themes on different platforms. I thought the initiator was Forsaken's quote:

"most designers do not allow their work to be re-used on different platforms"

 

[jmurrayhead]

what if a person pays for a custom style that was made for software 1, but then they choose to use software 2 because of certain issues? I can understand not supporting it, but they paid for a custom look to their site and I think should be allowed to port it over if they decide software 1 is just not for them.

 

[Forsaken]

what if a person pays for a custom style that was made for software 1, but then they choose to use software 2 because of certain issues? I can understand not supporting it, but they paid for a custom look to their site and I think should be allowed to port it over if they decide software 1 is just not for them.

Custom styles are a whole different matter, because the buyer already owns rights to their product other than the right to resale (Unless negotiated).

 

[John]

I don't care what people do with the style they purchase from me as long as they don't re-sell/distribute it or break the copyrights. If they want to pay someone to port it to another platform, more power to them...as long as they abide by the original terms and conditions of the sale.

 

[Adam Howard]

I don't care what people do with the style they purchase from me as long as they don't re-sell/distribute it or break the copyrights. If they want to pay someone to port it to another platform, more power to them...as long as they abide by the original terms and conditions of the sale.

Your view is the well respected majority view of most designers

 

[Kim]

It seems there is a misunderstanding here. Are we really arguing about whether a theme designer should provide support for a theme of his own that was ported to another platform? I mean, of course not.

I thought the issue here was whether theme designers grant their users the freedom to re-use their purchased themes on different platforms. I thought the initiator was Forsaken's quote:

I thought we were discussing if most, as in the majority, not one person singular, do allow their designs to be used on other platforms.

John is the only one I know who apparently allows this, there may be others, but certainly not the majority. The majority of professional forum theme designers I know do NOT allow this at all, in fact many sell the theme for multiple platforms, which would preclude one creating a version themselves. ( I am not talking about the kids who throw together the odd theme for funskis, but people who do this for a living)

Custom themes are a different matter, as are free themes.

There is a lot of wishful thinking by people who equate "I bought that" to "I own that" you don't own the rights, worth checking with your theme designer if you have any doubts.

 

[Sheldon]

funskis

ROFL!!!!!!!!

Hahahahaha.

Sorry.

/carry on

 

[Forsaken]

It seems there is a misunderstanding here. Are we really arguing about whether a theme designer should provide support for a theme of his own that was ported to another platform? I mean, of course not.

I thought the issue here was whether theme designers grant their users the freedom to re-use their purchased themes on different platforms. I thought the initiator was Forsaken's quote:

Most people think they would still get support; I had one person here ask if they could have my style ported to IPB, and if I would still support the product. Which is why I brought up that point, because I've had others ask similar questions.

The issue with allowing porting to different platforms is you cannot be assured of quality, nor whether or not it'll be released as their own work (This has already happened to me, just look up Se7enSin v6). If it is a low quality port, it is my name that is on the copyright (Unless it was removed, which is a whole different issue), and will reflect badly on my service.

I'm not against people using my work on other platforms, if they own a license. I however will only grant permission if asked, and if I can be sure it won't look badly on me. I put quite a bit of work into my products, making them as easy as possible for people to do changes, and try to offer great support. Most of that is lost when it is ported to a different platform (Our styles will not work without a lot of extra work on IPB due to just how much we make use of style properties), and quality will be much different than what I offer in the original.

Custom styles are an entirely different issue, and depending on the custom style, or client, I might even help with the porting (For something like my http://adeptgamer.com style, I wouldn't want to port it do to how many changes there are, and there are a ton more planned). For free themes, it's really on a permission basis as well, and it would only be available for personal use.

With my comment that the majority do not allow it, it is completely true. Most designers are very anal about how their work is used, because poor ports will look extremely bad if someone researches you. Designers that are mainly Wordpress, Drupal, or Joomla are bad examples, because by nature of the platform are meant to be used in conjunction with multiple platforms.

 

[cclaerhout]

http://themeforest.net/category/forums
http://vanillaforums.org/addon/browse/themes
http://www.themesnap.com/terms-of-service.html
http://www.templatemonster.com/terms.php

This thread is crazy.

 

[John]

Most designers are very anal

You should have left it right there, then it would be 'nuff said.

 

[Forsaken]

You should have left it right there, then it would be 'nuff said.

Clearly I have to be more clear!

I've only had to say the same damn thing about 10 times now in different ways .

 

[Shelley]

Note to self: Never get into the styling business.

Like I stated above generally people don't care about the conditions of use and will break them regardless whatever you set. Forsaken touched on a good point, often than not people porting <said product> will normally port it without it going through some kind of quality assurance which in turns reflects badly on the designer/styler (original author). I agree with kim on this one, if said author introduces their own terms then it should be followed and respected.

Last thing you want to see is your quality style ported to wtfbb and see some scrolling marquee or wrongly matted images because the person that basically ripped it or in some cases (got permission) and ported it over will have to re-adjust the slices in the design to compensate for the product they are porting to making a mess of a job, hence your asking yourself this "why has my style time travelled back to 1999" "this reflects badly on me" "why did I see a scrolling marquee swooooosh accross the screen" "is that image slice upside down?".


It comes down to the fact people don't care, they want something and will generally go about it by any means possible. Respect the terms of use or create that resource yourself. Simple.