Is this true? Can we sell on premium themes?

Here's a long (4 year) discussion:

I'll let you form your own opinion.

Brent

I've done extensive research about this, and the conclusion I've come to is that you can take and alter, sell, etc, any plugin or theme in the WordPress repository.

Those are the plugins and themes that are "open source." The programmers and designers have given up copyright once they submit the theme or plugin to the repository.

So what this means is that you can take a plugin from the repository, work on it, rebrand it, sell it, etc.

However, if a programmer has created a plugin and it is not in the repository, it remains their property and they retain copyright.

If the plugin or theme was solely created by the developer and is being sold by them and them alone and has not been submitted to the repository, then it is definitely not OK to take it and just start selling it. I would imagine you would treat that product as any other type of software or digital product. You wouldn't just swipe another marketer's eBook or video course and start reselling it without their expressed consent, right? Well, you could, but you would be in legal trouble if you got caught.

Actually, most of the info that I got on this subject was from a product I bought that was created by E. Brian Rose (founder of JVZoo) roughly 7 years ago and it was an eBook that described how you could take plugins and themes from the repository and what you were and were not allowed to do with them.

It's on my hard drive somewhere. I'll have to dig it up and maybe I can shed a little more light on the situation after I read through it again.