WordPress Commercial GPL Themes? Really?

EDIT: I received a reply from wordpress.tv explaining that the post wasn't censored, but was caught in the SPAM filter, probably due to the number of links included. They have approved the comment on the video. Kudos to wordpress.tv for the follow-up. So, if you want to provide input on this issue, the best place to do it would be via comments on the video at wordpress.tv
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The following comment was posted to this video http://wordpress.tv/2009/10/13/matt-mullenweg-wordpress-gpl/ on wordpress.tv twice.



The mods at WordPress.tv have failed to approve the comment twice, while approving comments posted after this one, leaving me to conclude that they are censoring this comment for some reason. I am reposting here where it can't be censored. If you arrived here from another WordPress related site, this may be worth a read if you are interested in what seems to be a disconnect between the GPL vision being espoused in this video and the commercial practice being allowed on wordpress.org. 
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Text of comment censored at wordpress.tv

I watched this video with interest and I think Matt has a very good grasp of not only the "letter" of GPL, but also the "intent" and "integrity" of GPL. I agree 100% with everything he said in the video and applaud this outlook and vision.

So, having watched the video, I did a little research on the commercial GPL themes linked on the wordpress.org site here: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/

The first thing I noticed is that on most sites you can't get the GPL themes unless you pay for them or pay a subscription fee -- perfectly within the GPL licenses since GPL doesn't prohibit a person from selling a GPL product and, contrary to popular belief, the license does not require a person to freely distribute a GPL product. However, as Matt pointed out in the video, once a person does acquire one of these themes, then they are free to redistribute it under GPL.

Therefore, I was quite surprised to see WooThemes listed on the wordpress.org site. Here is a link to their licenses: http://www.woothemes.com/terms-conditions/
 
This does not seem to me to be GPL. As you can see, they are granting a "non-exclusive limited license" and here are a couple of the limitations:

Under point 1 they state: "Our themes may be used by our customers on as many websites as they like."

However, under GPL, their themes may be used by anyone, not just their customers...(and not only may they be used, they may be redistributed to anyone, by anyone).

Under Point 2 they state: "The photoshop design files for our themes come packaged separately and are not GPL licensed. They are licensed and copyrighted under WooThemes.com."

This is a clear violation, if not of GPL itself, of the intent of GPL and, listening to Matt's video, it is clearly counter to the intent of what I understand his vision for Commercial GPL themes being promoted on wordpress.org.

There are a couple other suspicious statements in their 11 point licenses, but the two above seem to be the most problematic.

WooThemes is not alone in what seems to be an attempt to "play the system". While I found very detailed copyright information on the Theme Wars site, this is all I found about GPL:

GPL-Compatible Themes

All themes will be licensed under the WordPress GPL, which means that even with the basic theme license, customers will be able to use the themes on as many sites as they like.

GPL clearly means a lot more than that.

BlogThemesClub, advertises a "Single Use Theme Purchase"...completely contrary to GPL.

I could give more examples, but you can check them out for yourself if your interested.

I applaud Matt for this initiative, but unless these commercial companies are held to the letter and intent of GPL and to the intent of the wordpress/commercial theme initiative as espoused so clearly in this video, then this is really nothing more than a Trojan Horse carrying commercial practices into the GPL world. WooThemes, and most other commercial companies on the wordpress.org list are clearly attempting to "work" the system.

In my view, these companies should be removed from the Commercial GPL Themes list on wordpress.org or they should change their licenses to be fully GPL compliant.

As Matt said in the video, "If you build something on top of GPL, then it must also be GPL". And WordPress at least seems to carry that same message on the commercial themes page with the following requirement:

To be included, you should:

• Distribute 100% GPL themes, including artwork and CSS.

WordPress really needs to get a handle on this from the start and make sure these commercial providers know that "100% GPL", that really means 100%. If not, then this "nice speech" about WordPress and GPL really doesn't mean much.

The censorship of his comment on wordpress.tv is another matter entirely...