Open Source on Tumblr (Themes)

There is a theme community on tumblr. A group of young, often female, coders who make free blog themes for other tumblr users.

Perhaps because this community focuses on HTML, CSS, and only sometimes JavaScript, theme creators different from the usual programming circles. I guess you could say that creating tumblr themes isn’t real programming. But that is a discussion for another time.

Most of these coders use Windows and sometimes, macOS. I have yet to see a fellow theme-maker use any kind of Linux. Instead of hosting codes on GitHub, most themes are uploaded to PasteBin.

More specific to web development, many theme makers don’t think about webdev memes like accessibility, responsiveness, compression…

This isn’t necessarily a criticism. You don’t get a great ability to customize tumblr themes, and tumblr blogs are by default very slow and bloated¹ so why should theme makers care?

Theme creation, being so limited, does not invite theme creators to join the rest of the programming or web development community on the wide internet. Theme-makers don’t have much to learn from other web developers as they need only care about things pertaining to tumblr themes specifically. Add in the fact that many themes are purely written in CSS (which is relatively much easier than JS), and you get creators that have no interest in participating in other programming communities.

This is, of course, not to say that theme creators never try to do anything unusual with their blog themes. Many theme-makers create wonderful and innovative themes, but most themes have no reason to stray away from the tried and true tumblr blog format.

FOSS Aspects and Non-Aspects

As a result, there is little talk on the idea of “Free and Open Source” in the tumblr theme community. Of course, the way that tumblr themes are distributed (by uploading the HTML somewhere and having users copy and paste it into their own account), means that themes cannot be closed-source. The source files are always right there, for you to see…

What about freedom? The theme community largely offers themes for free². Some themes are paid or commissioned, but they are by far the rarities. So at the very least, the “Free as in Free Beer” part is satisfied.

However, many aspects of the theme community are not free.

No theme maker allows re-distribution of their themes. This is reasonable, as it would lead to many users having outdated themes. It would not be easy to constantly check PasteBin for code changes.

Although most theme makers allow full customisation of themes, this is not a truly free deal as one cannot modify a theme and re-distribute it (i.e. there is no “forking” of themes).

Credit is another big problem. Most theme makers are huge sticklers about having visible credit, oftentimes twice in a theme. Removing the theme creator’s credit is incredibly offensive. Some go out of their way to obfuscate the credit in the HTML. While credit is required out of courtesy in most Open Source projects, it’s usually enough to put attribution in an “About” section. But for the tumblr theme community, credit must be visible at all times. It can’t be hidden away in another page.

While I think it’s preferable and intuitive to follow a FOSS approach as tumblr themes are codes, I can see why theme creators are so adamant in their rules. Unfortunately, theme plagiarism is rampant on tumblr. Theme creators made these rules to protect themselves from assholes.

Malicious Users

Theme theft can range from relatively benign to clear plagiarism. The extreme side is someone blatantly copying another’s code and distributing it as their own work. That’s straight-up plagiarism, and I don’t think many would approve of it.

On the lighter side is individual blogs simply removing the theme maker’s credit. One might even ask if this really “theft”. I say that it is, but only because of the status quo.

I don’t know any theme maker that doesn’t put a credit on the front page, clear and visible for all to see. So when I go onto a blog that doesn’t have any sort of credit, my natural assumption is that this person made their own theme by themselves. I imagine that many people would think the same way. Therefore, due to the structure of the theme community, removing someone’s credit inadvertently becomes plagiarism.

Yes, one budding new theme creator can write their rules to be more FOSS, but it is evident that other people can (and will) take advantage of the fact that this new theme creator is a bit more lax. People on tumblr aren’t really supporters of FOSS. Many probably don’t know what it is, and won’t respect it. For example, if one allows users to move the credit to an “About” page, I wouldn’t put it past tumblr users to hide that page behind four other pages.

What should I do?

I wanted to make my themes free and open source, but I just didn’t think it would work with the current userbase. Yet, I also didn’t want to stop good-hearted people from using my themes however they wish.

I compromised.

I kept the visible credit because it seemed like the right thing to do. However, I allowed users to modify everything else, as well as use parts of my themes in other themes (so long as there’s a credit in the source code).

I make my credits unobtrusive, usually just a link in the navigation so it fits the style of the theme. No logo nonsense, because I know it can affect the blog’s “aesthetic”.

I couldn’t have modified redistribution happen if I wanted to keep the credit (otherwise it would be contradictory), so I disallowed it.

In the end, my tumblr themes aren’t really “free”. And that’s quite unfortunate. But after all this thinking, I just don’t think the tumblr ecosystem takes to the free and open source philosophy well.