In October 2008, Brian Gardner made a phone call that would alter the trajectory of WordPress forever.
On the other end was Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress. The topic: whether Gardner should take his wildly successful premium theme, Revolution, and release it under the GPL license, making it open source.
At the time, Gardner had already sold thousands of licenses. The premium WordPress theme industry, which he had essentially invented, was thriving.
Walking away from a proven revenue model to embrace something as philosophically loaded as “open source” seemed, on the surface, like a terrible business decision.
But Gardner made the call anyway. And what happened next didn’t just change his business.
It changed the entire culture of how WordPress themes are created, sold, and shared.
What the Revolution theme represented
To understand why Gardner’s decision mattered, you have to understand what Revolution was.
In 2006, WordPress was still widely perceived as blogging software. Gardner, then moonlighting as a freelance designer while working a day job at an architectural firm, had been customizing themes and offering his services. When a real estate agent in Boston rejected a custom design Gardner had created for him, Gardner decided to repurpose it.
He wrote a blog post asking his audience if they’d pay for a premium WordPress theme. The response was overwhelming. Within the first month, Revolution generated $10,000 in sales.
That blog post is widely credited with starting the premium WordPress theme movement. Gardner had proven that people would pay for quality design, and that WordPress could be a platform for serious websites, not just blogs.
But there was a complication. WordPress itself was licensed under the GPL, a free software license that requires derivative works to inherit the same open-source terms. Gardner, like other early theme developers, had been selling Revolution as proprietary software. Whether that was legally or ethically aligned with WordPress’s licensing was a growing point of tension.
The interview: why Gardner chose open source
When we spoke with Gardner in 2008, shortly after his announcement, he was candid about the complexity of the decision.
“I’m not a lawyer and never will be one,” he said. “What I do know is that right or wrong, black or white, I wanted to make sure that what Jason and I were doing was in line with WordPress and the GPL license. It’s probably a gray area, to be honest, but we’ve chosen not to take our chances with the legality of it all.”
The “Jason” he mentioned was Jason Schuller, who would partner with Gardner on the new venture. Together, they planned to release a new suite of themes called Revolution Two, completely free under the GPL, with revenue coming from premium support packages rather than theme sales.
This wasn’t capitulation. It was strategy.
“This is absolutely not true,” Gardner said when asked if declining sales had motivated the shift. “In fact, sales have been as steady as ever. My theory is that the amount of people who were purchasing premium themes grew, so the market in general was increasing.”
He wasn’t running from a failing business. He was running toward something he believed in.
The ripple effects across WordPress
Matt Mullenweg praised the move publicly. “Brian Gardner’s Revolution theme, widely regarded as the most successful in the ‘premium’ theme space, has seen the light and is going 100% open source under the GPL,” he wrote. “Definitely a forward-thinking and strategic move.”
The WordPress community responded with enthusiasm. Other theme shops began to follow. The shift created a new standard: if you wanted to be taken seriously in the WordPress ecosystem, GPL compliance was the expectation.
Not everyone went willingly. The most famous holdout was Chris Pearson, creator of the Thesis theme, whose refusal to adopt GPL licensing led to a very public confrontation with Mullenweg in 2010. That debate became legendary in WordPress history, one that reinforced how central the open-source ethos had become.
But Gardner had already settled the question for himself two years earlier. And his willingness to move first gave others permission to follow.
What happened to Brian Gardner
Gardner didn’t fade into obscurity after Revolution went open source. He doubled down.
In 2009, he rebranded Revolution as StudioPress and launched the Genesis Framework, which became one of the most influential WordPress products of its era. Genesis powered countless websites and spawned an ecosystem of child themes and developers.
In 2018, WP Engine acquired StudioPress. Gardner stepped away from his role in 2019, uncertain about WordPress’s direction with the then-nascent Gutenberg block editor.
But he came back.
By 2021, Gardner had developed Frost, a new theme built around WordPress’s Full Site Editing capabilities. WP Engine acquired Frost shortly after Gardner rejoined the company, and true to form, he made the theme freely available under the GPL.
“When I joined WP Engine in late September, it was evident to me they saw the value in building relationships with designers, developers, and creators,” Gardner said at the time. “In alignment with WP Engine’s core value of ‘Committed to Give Back,’ Frost is transitioning from a paid product to a free one.”
As of January 2025, Gardner serves as Head of Community at WP Engine, continuing to bridge the gap between the company and the WordPress ecosystem. He’s also released additional free themes, including Powder and Thoreau, and contributes regularly to WordPress core development.
What creators can learn from Gardner’s decision
It’s tempting to frame Gardner’s story as a simple morality tale: embrace open source, and good things will follow. But that misses the nuance.
Gardner’s success didn’t come from giving things away. It came from understanding what he was actually selling.
“Most people are inherently honest,” as one analysis of WordPress and GPL licensing noted. “For every person who is happy to ‘steal’ products, there are plenty more who are happy to pay for something that’s for sale, even if they can get it for free.”
Gardner built trust. He built community. He built a reputation for quality and reliability. The themes were the vehicle, but the relationship was the product.
This is the part that gets lost in debates about licensing and business models. The question isn’t whether to charge for code or give it away. The question is whether you’re building something people want to be part of.
Gardner addressed this directly in later interviews. “When sales continued, that was just affirmation that I was doing the right thing,” he recalled. “I took the risk and obviously there was a lot of reward.”
The enduring lesson
The premium theme market looks different now than it did in 2008. Block themes have changed what’s possible. Full Site Editing has shifted what users expect. The economics of selling WordPress products have evolved.
But the core insight from Gardner’s decision remains relevant.
Building a sustainable creative business isn’t about hoarding what you make. It’s about finding the intersection between what you can offer and what a community needs. Sometimes that means charging for access. Sometimes it means charging for support, or customization, or the peace of mind that comes from working with someone who knows what they’re doing.
Gardner bet that if he aligned himself with the values of the WordPress community (openness, collaboration, shared improvement) the business would follow. He was right.
Seventeen years after Revolution launched, Gardner is still here, still building, still contributing. That longevity isn’t an accident. It’s what happens when you stop thinking of your audience as customers to extract value from and start thinking of them as a community to serve.
The phone call to Mullenweg was a risk. But it was also a declaration of what kind of creator Gardner wanted to be.
For anyone building in the digital space today, that’s the question worth sitting with: not just how to make money, but what kind of relationship you want to have with the people who use what you make.
