phrase from the footer of their obviously WordPress-powered sites?  They even remove it from the default template in the very likely case that they don't bother to create their own or even install a prefab alternate theme.

Sometimes they just change the header graphic, and then remove the "WordPress" branding.

Do they think that people will believe they build it from scratch themselves, and it just happens to be identical in form and function to WordPress?  Are they embarrassed to be using a "shrinkwrap" CMS rather than writing their own?

I don't get it.  It's just an asshole maneuver.

One such asshole:

http://bigmixup.com/

*build it from scratch - builT it from scratch

d'oh

Maybe because they find it ugly
Maybe because they don't feel like including a WordPress add on their site

Are these people claiming they designed the site themselves? If not, then so what.

Security through obscurity?

I'm sure there's something in the WordPress license that says you've got to leave the branding intact, although I may be confusing it with something else.  Not sure why people do it -- I can perhaps understand it if you do a lot of work to get it looking different and don't want the visuals to be sullied with extraneous text, but even then it's a bit cheeky.

My CMS started life as an off-the-shelf deal and I left the branding on it, but as I've now rewritten huge chunks of it and it only bears a passing resemblance to the original (pretty much the only thing unaltered is the underlying database) I felt bold enough to remove the "Powered by" bit, but I occasionally get feelings of guilt and an urge to put it back. :)

"I don't get it."

They probably just don't having the ad on their site. It distracts from the message, and if their content isn't about CMS', who gives a sheeite? You're a pretty odd reader if you actually care what they're using.

My newspapers don't have "typeset using Xeropress 9000" or "Printed by a Streamprint 7201" or "transmitted using SureMove" in the footers. It's irrelevant technical details.

As an aside, I use, and pay a yearly fee to use, Radio Userland. One of the first things I did was to remove the Radio Userland ads in the templates -- I'm not paying them for the right to put up ads for their product, and given that it's largely a commodity space, it offers no grand advantage that merits special mention.

I realize that Wordpress is a bit of a different moral choice given that it's GPLd, but the GPLd philosophy doesn't demand payment in advertising.

"Maybe because they find it ugly

Maybe because they don't feel like including a WordPress add on their site "

"Maybe it distracts from the message."


This is all crap.  It's one line of text at the very bottom of the page, not even in the content portion.  They're getting the appliction for free.  Give me a fucking break.

Why are you all obsessed by this?
Nobody is breaking any laws or rules.
Nobody is claiming anything that isn't true.

did a bit of modelling when I was at varsity.

I remember being in a shoot for an oil company. Cars driving onto the petrol station forecourt and all that.

You could so easily identify the make of the cars, but all the badgles were stickered over!! Go figure.

I'm not obsessed, I just happen to think that it's childish.  A post expressing an opinion equates with obsession?  Please.  We're all obsessed with everything, then.

So your morality checklist goes like this:

1) is it illegal?
2) is it against the license?
3) is it overtly lying?

If 'no' to all 3, it's just fine then?

How about:

4) is it in good faith?
5) is it the right thing to do?

WordPress is an incredible piece of software with a huge feature set.  It is incredibly robust, incredibly stable, and they seem to have thought of pretty damned near everything.  And they give you the software and extensive documentation for free.

Then you take the time and trouble to remove a 3 word blurb buried at the end of the template that says "Powered by WordPress"?

In my book, that makes you a prick.

"You could so easily identify the make of the cars, but all the badgles were stickered over!! Go figure."

Well there are a number of legal issues surrounding this, I think.  I may be wrong as IANAL.  But to leave the badges in view might imply an endorsement of the advertised company by the companies whose products appear in the ad.

Or it might just be about not providing advertising without receiving payment, which is why I suspect they blur out all the logos on MTV programs.

I find the blurring on those shows insanely humorous, as it just highlights the fact that every single person on every single one of those shows is a sad, misguided, consumer whore.  :-)  But then, that's what pop culture is all about.

"that makes you a prick"
the website owner I presume? ;)

"4) is it in good faith? "
Yes, it's about looks/taste

"5) is it the right thing to do?"
Arguably I admit but why should anybody (you) care?

Because I'm a developer, too.  I happen to believe in FOSS (though I've yet to complete a project I felt was 'done' enough to release to the world).  I think it's pretty crap to take someone's work and not give them even the tiny courtesy of a small credit at the bottom of the material, out of site, where it's unobtrusive.

Obviously, this is subjective.  Either you're playing devil's advocate or you're a prick, too.  :-)

Just out of curiosity: are there any WordPress developers upset about this or have posted something somewhere stating that they'd appreciate people leaving the "powered by" message intact?
  -tim

Tim -

That's irrelevant.  The OP is regarding my opinion.  Even if the WP developers have said "Hey, go ahead, take it off!" I'd still think it was a crap thing to do.  It's a respect thing.

To be fair though, if you look at the source the dude left this in.

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.0" /> <!-- leave this for stats -->

Woo.

"Either you're playing devil's advocate or you're a prick, too.  :-)"

I would probably leave it in if it was my site but don't feel as strongly about it being the "right thing".

Love the righteous outrage over the dumbest things.

Classic muppet, +1.

which is a meta tag and won't show up in the rendered HTML.

showing that the developers recognize that people don't want to advertise wordpress even if they use it.

"Love the righteous outrage over the dumbest things. "

The devil is in the details.  It's the small stuff that has to be fixed, first.

"showing that the developers recognize that people don't want to advertise wordpress even if they use it."

Really?  How do you feel it demonstrates that?

http://www.stripgenerator.com/view.php?id=114205

:)

Even if the world could be fixed, I don't know that calling people jerks is the way to go.

HA HA HA. Herpes.

You don't believe frank honesty is the way to go?

Frank, yes; brutal, no.

What is dishonest about it then?

Pansy.

18.

"What is dishonest about it then?"

What are you talking about?

He misunderstood and thought you were talking about frank honesty being to leave the wordpress blurb.

what's good for the gander is good for the goose

"what's good for the gander is good for the goose"

Childish.  'Eye for an eye' is, has, and will always be bullshit.

As an aside, the dude who owns the above linked website seems to delete all of the non-flattering comments, since he only has like, 4 comments on each story and they are all telling him how awesome he is.  I think maybe he wrote them.  And his site has been linked from fark, so I'm sure it's gotten traffic.

Double wanker.

Muppet you're just jealous because he's a better writer than  you.


[g,d,r]

muppet,

"As an aside, the dude who owns the above linked website seems to delete all of the non-flattering comments, since he only has like, 4 comments on each story and they are all telling him how awesome he is."

I delete negative comments on mine, and I fully and openly admit it. Haters and jealous asswipes, while a minority, can use the space on their own unread blogs to complain about how something I've written gets "no Digg!", or how I'm a "loser" or need to "get a life!".

If, in contrast, someone has a material complaint about layout, content, conclusions, methodology, or anything else legitimate, I leave it because it has actual value (and I usually reply to it), however I have no patience or tolerance for the haters of the world.

To address your original complaint, an argument that you think you've won, Wordpress makes zero demands that they are attributed in rendered content (and in fact that would be demanding a form of payment, of sorts, which sort of goes against the tradition. They already have all the pagerank they need, and there are much better ways to look at all of the different blogging tools), and I think most people would find nothing repugnant about the individual removing it. You can wear your gang colours all you want, but it doesn't mean everyone else does as well.

On top of that, the stack of code that Wordpress is usually running on dwarfs Wordpress in complexity. So really if one wants to talk attribution, there should be Wordpress, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux, and so on.

So ... isn't this situaion like plagiarism?

Face it, getting credits is one reason why so many people write code for free.

"So ... isn't this situaion like plagiarism?"

No, it isn't plagiarism at all.

Coders like to get their name out about their involvement with certain projects of course, and it is copyright infringement to remove attributions from actual source code. Displayed and rendered attributions, on top of someone else's content, are seldom mandated, and completely go against the spirit of open source (which is why Wordpress doesn't mandate them. Personally I think it was a bit pushy of them to put them in the templates by default). Imagine if every webpage served on Apache had to display a big "Served on Apache", and every documented modified in Emacs had to maintain the visible footer "This document modified in Emacs". That's ridiculous because it is ridiculous, and it's the same thing.

Watermarks on every image - "Modified in Photoshop". 3 second audio clip ahead of each MP3, "Ripped by LAME"....

Try as hard as you can, but you can't hide your sponteneous disdain of "muppet".

`Try as hard as you can, but you can't hide your sponteneous disdain of "muppet".'

WTF are you talking about, Rickbot?

It's not about whether they demand it or not, Dennis, which I've addressed and you've ignored.  And crediting someone in written medium is a lot less obtrusive than doing so in an audio or video medium.  It can be hidden quite effectively on the "packaging" where it's noticable but not in your face.

Those were decent strawmen, though.

"It's not about whether they demand it or not, Dennis, which I've addressed and you've ignored."

That's a subjective moral call, though. I, and others, don't really see it as being jerkish to remove that sort of tag advertisement, and obviously the Wordpress don't either given what others have indicated about their use of Mediawiki.

"And crediting someone in written medium is a lot less obtrusive than doing so in an audio or video medium.  It can be hidden quite effectively on the "packaging" where it's noticable but not in your face."

Fair enough, but in that case what they're really looking for is Google-spam links.

Lots of shady businesses rely upon that model now, where they promote free counters/stats/linkbacks/whatever, and then they insert links to themselves for the purposes of boosting their Google ranking (sort of like the "home page" on these posts, though they have nofollow on them). Not really much of a noble quest there. In fact that makes them Google spammers of a sort.

Oh fucking please.  While that's a side effect, it's perfectly reasonable to put a link back to the project page on a piece of software they're giving away, and you know it.  Granted, it can be misused, but your argument is like saying kids shouldn't be given jump ropes because people have hung themselves with jump ropes.

"While that's a side effect, it's perfectly reasonable to put a link back to the project page on a piece of software they're giving away, and you know it."

I was going to point out the big hoopla that happened a while back where a blog site used their bloated pagerank for nefarious purposes, thinking that it'd be an interesting case study. But what do you know -- it was Wordpress themselves!

http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2005/03/31/wordpressorg-hosting-spam/

So every blog author that bravely kept the PageRank boosting footers in there -- footers that you're claiming is unnoticed/unobtrusive, yet you're also saying isn't to boost PageRank -- helped these benevolent folks host a monster Google spamming site, all on the backs of artificially boosted PageRank. Good stuff.

What's honest & frank about the subjective experience of calling someone a jerk? I guess "being honest about your what you think of others" is a start, but don't you think it would be more helpful to think better things about people?

OK Dennis.  So the WordPress guys are total pricks.  Does that mean that it's now OK to take their stuff and not credit them for it?  Apparently your answer is "yes".

Your argument now basically boils down to "They were bad first, teacher!" which is obviously ridiculous.

"Does that mean that it's now OK to take their stuff and not credit them for it?"

For all you know, the guy in question has commented dozens of times about the fact that he uses Wordpress, perhaps giving it lots of love. Nice, if he thinks it's worth it, but any moral obligation of the same is against the spirit of FOSS software.

You are demanding, however, that he acknowledge Wordpress on every single rendered page, eternally. That is ridiculous, and it is no different from GIMP sticking a corner watermark saying GIMP, or every single Wordpress site (along with many others) including links and acknowledgements for PHP, mySQL, Linux, Apache, and so on. All of those are vastly greater, vastly more complex necessities for Wordpress to function, yet strangely you feel no need to acknowledge them on your page.

Seems like one company is really bogarting the credits.

"Your argument now basically boils down to "They were bad first, teacher!" which is obviously ridiculous."

That isn't my argument at all. My argument is that such default acknowledgements are not only unnecessary, often they pollute the net.

You have a point, Dennis.  There should be some text love for Linux, Apache, and PHP as well.  Maybe for the PEAR library too, if they're using it.