The Core of the GPL and a Cleaner Home

August 12th, 2009

Free software has played an important role in my life. Simple. One of the strongest enablers of free software is the General Public License (GPL). The GPL is more than a simple license agreement for most software developers–it’s more like an ideology. Although we can’t always conform to the GPL with every line of code we write, the credos of the GPL remain very powerful:

Nobody should be restricted by the software they use. There are four freedoms that every user should have:

• the freedom to use the software for any purpose,
• the freedom to change the software to suit your needs,
• the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, and
• the freedom to share the changes you make.

In this context, “free” has a much deeper meaning that just “zero dollars.” In fact, price isn’t even a component of free. The concept of free can be distilled into four freedoms:

Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.

As the GPL encourages, I’d like to help my neighbor by contributing a piece of free software: this blog theme. The very kind designers over at Missouri Web Design created this original blog design and licensed it under the GPL. Due to their generosity and support of free software, I was able to customize their theme and re-release a new version. I’ve already talked at length about the customizations when I discussed an open design earlier this week.

Without further ado, you can download the Cleaner Home theme here: cleaner-home.zip.

A Few Details About Cleaner Home

Cleaner Home is a Wordpress theme built directly on top of MidMo’s Clean Home theme. In short, Cleaner Home is a bare-bones implementation without the following features: sidebar, search bar, tags, and author.

Installing Cleaner Home

To install Cleaner Home, just unzip the file and drop the entire folder into the “wp-content/themes” folder on your server. You will also need to customize the header.php file to use your RSS feed and your Twitter account instead of mine. : )

Tipping Your Cap

Customizing a theme is much easier than creating one from scratch. All credit should go to MidMo. If you like this theme and you’re looking for even more flexibility, I’d recommend checking out the Pro Package offered by MidMo for $29 over at Gazelle Themes. If you like Cleaner Home, drop me a comment and I can answer any questions you have about installing it and getting it running. Enjoy!!

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