Someone above mentioned Wordpress is free and people shouldn't profit from it. I don't agree with that. People are profiting from Premium themes and plugins. People are profiting from custom theme designs.

Another thing is that sponsored themes are a great way for a theme designer to make a little money on the side. Web design is an incredibly competitive industry, and many designers simply don't make enough to live on for quite a while. Offering sponsored themes is a way for these designers to help pay the bills for a while.

One last comment. Sponsored themes can absolutely be used for people trying to build links to porn sites or spam sites or other "bad neighborhoods", but should we completely overlook the good that can come from sponsored themes simply because some people abuse them? Ultimately, people are free to make their own choices...to use a sponsored theme or not, or to leave the link in the footer or remove it...should we start making decisions for these people? I think we should leave it up to them.

What many users don't realise is that that tiny link at the bottom of there page gets spidered by Google and other search engines, which mark the links as SPAM as they have recognised the same code on so many sites, Google way of dealing with this is to devalue your site within the search engine, loosing you traffic and viewers.

If these themes were a piece of software they would be categorised as adware & spyware, they automatically display advertisements without the users consent and track the links when clicked.

I'm sure this can not be legal under GPL Licensing Laws, I vote that all links are made obvious and optional.

webmaster: happy for being paid for your hard work
wp user: happy for getting a new free theme
sponsors: happy for getting baclinks..
everybody wins with this..
and 50% of the WP users simply ignore the footer links because they are tiny links.

i think that only should have some restrictions,like link quantity,niche..things like that..whatever..

This is like spam... there are always those who will defeat the system until the only option is to just not allow theme uploads.

I always build my own. Harder, but better control.

To kyle

To the individual who objected to the default blogroll... why on earth should the people who created and who have put soo much into Wordpress NOT be permitted to have their links there? geez!! Delete them if they don't fit your site... but don't complain about that, for heavens sake

Very well said, i can't do anything but agree with you. But i would still want to ask you a question. To those that designed the themes, let them be download by users for free, drive traffic to themes.wordpress.net (where you got google ads placed there) why should not be permitted to get a monetary recompense for their work by sponsors?

I say they can get those themes anywhere, let the creators host their own themes. If people want to have them (if they are good enough), they can, but why should Matt and co host them, pay for the space, and let others make money off of them, which is effectively what they are doing.

Yet another good comment, which forces me to ask a question? What makes WordPress to be famous among the bloggers (apart the functionality)? I believe the answer is the huge amount of FREE themes that bloggers can download, and thats why i think matt should host these themes.

Lets resume, lots of themes lots of visitors and probably a good amount of earnings through Google AdSense, now lets count the second part, lots of themes, lots of visitors, lots of popularity for the WordPress blog.

I would completely agree with you that sponsored themes should not be made or published, if, there would be no sponsored ads by the part of Wordpress (on themes.wordpress.net). Now you might ask, why in the earth should wordpress remove the themes which help the hosting costs etc, which keep wordpress to be free and blla blla blla, for the same reasons maybe why sponsored themes should be ok?

I would think as smarter way to put a LIMIT of links on the sponsored themes, such as 1 sponsor per theme or 2 sponsors per theme, but not to wipe the whole list. Wiping the whole list will direct the theme creators (because it won't stop) to another resource, blogflux themebot etc, you will realize this within few months, not today, and you will better notice this not just in the traffic, but also in the revenue from Google Adsense.

This is just my personal thought, i am not attacking anyone or reopening this discussion, i just felt like i should comment.