The Dev Went Down to Georgia

(Sung to the tune of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” originally by The Charlie Daniels Band)

The dev went down to Georgia

He was looking for some code to steal

He was in a bind ’cause his mortgage was behind

He thinks rippin’ open source is the deal

When he came across this young man

Working his GPL theme and makin’ it hot

And the dev jumped upon his desk

And said: “Boy let me tell you what”

“I guess you didn’t know it

But I’m a WordPress coder too

And if you’d care to take a dare

I’ll make a bet with you”

“Now you build a pretty good theme, boy

But give this developer his due

I’ll bet a sack of theme club gold against your code

‘Cause I think I’m better than you”

The boy said: “My name’s Johnny

I know you think you’ll win

But I’ll take your bet, your gonna regret

‘Cause I’m the best damn coder that’s ever been”

Johnny fire up your Mac

And work your theme code hard

Cause hells broke loose in Georgia

And the dev needs to pay his Visa card

And if you win

You’ll get his sack of gold

But if you lose

The developer gets your code.

The dev opened up his Dell

And he said: “I’ll start this show.”

And fire flew from his fingertips

As his screen began to glow

As he struck his keyboard’s keys

They made an evil hiss

Then his team joined in

Marking up code with ignorant bliss

When the dev finished, Johnny said:

“Well you’re pretty good ol’ son

“But if you’ll sit down in that chair, right there

I’ll show how codin’ is done.”

Fire on the mountain, run boys, run

The dev has skills but I won’t be outdone

Buildin’ a framework, makin’ my plug-in go.

Johnny, get your style sheet right

No errors no

The developer bowed his head

Because he knew that he’d been beat

He laid that sack of theme club gold

On the ground at Johnny’s feet

Johnny said: “Dev, just come on back

If you ever want to try again

I told you once, you son of a bitch

I’m the best damn coder that’s ever been.”

Fire on the mountain, run boys, run

The dev has skills but I won’t be outdone

Buildin’ a framework, makin’ my plug-in go.

Johnny, get your style sheet right

No errors no

I have a lot of respect for WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, his team, and the Open Source community. At the same time, I admire many of the talented premium theme and plug-in developers, some of which choose alternate license methods. I am a member of numerous well known theme clubs, I occasionally buy individual premium themes and I use GPL licensed themes as well. When I first began learning WordPress I was totally ignorant of the GPL. I still don’t fully understand it.

Can’t we all just get along?