Just a random statement

You may, or you may not. It depends on the situation. Would you please care to elaborate?

Well………

I made the mistake of showing my brother and a couple of friends a site that customized one of my themes (they did a really nice job of it, too). But I also made the mistake of pointing out that the “design by” credit showed their name, but they forgot to change the url linking back to me (that’s how I found out about the site…heh…the miracle technorati features in the dashboard).

Long story short, my brother made a big deal of it on his blog, and next thing I know, a bunch of people are going over there and spamming their comments.

Last I checked, they took down the theme and deleted all the comments.

So…I feel bad…but all I can keep saying to myself (to make myself feel better) is “I have no control over what other people post…”

What you have just described is the classic text-book example of community support. Michael Heilemann (Kubrick) used to post about blogs that barely altered Kubrick and then replaced his name in the credits with theirs. The result was a rapid wave of 200+ hate comments sent to the offending site. Michael continues to post of his frustrations with blogs like that, but he no longer links to them for this very reason.

Probably the best thing to do now would be to send an email to the offending blog’s webmaster half scolding and half apologizing to him or her. Also, it might be good to make a long and comprehensive blog post about the ethics involved when using one of your themes.

Well, I wouldn’t feel too bad about it, myself. If the worst thing that happens to that person today is they receive 100 delete-able comments telling them to give credit where credit is due… well, it could be worse.

Do you include a clear license with your theme distribution? i.e. the requirements for downloading and using your theme? Maybe that would help solve the problem in the future.