I’ve been selling child themes on my own website for years, but until recently, I have never been required to dig deeply into crafting the perfect license.txt file. Further, I didn’t know that Unsplash, Pexel and Pixabay (where I get 99% of my photos from) were not compatible with the GPLv2 license. That is until I applied and was accepted to sell my child themes on Elegant Theme’s Marketplace.

For some reason, after downloading a copy of the license.txt file, I found it quite baffling and left it in my to-do pile. My biggest question was, “Where was I supposed to find the information they were asking for?”

After taking a breath and a step back, I started digging around the Plugin Editor to see how others were filling the bloody thing out. Finally, that gave me my “lightbulb” moment and suddenly I realized there was nothing to it.

Let’s break it down:

Main Product License

====================

Product Name = The name of your child theme
————
– Copyright: 2020 Company Name  = Your company name and year of the copyright
– License: GPL
– License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301 USA.

Third-Party Code Credits

========================

This section applies to all the plugins, code snippets, CSS files, JS files, photos, illustrations, and anything else that you downloaded from an external source, that is included in your child theme. For your plugins, you will find the information in the Plugin Editor under the individual plugin. Look for either a “readme.txt” or “license.txt” file.

All you do is copy and paste the information.

Animate CSS
———–
– File Location: /product-name/css/animate.css
– License: MIT
– License URI: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Smooth Scroll
————-
– File Location: /product-name/js/smoothscroll.js
– License: MIT
– License URI: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

WP Color Picker
—————
– File Location: /product-name/js/color-picker.js
– License: GPLv2
– License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html

Third-Party Media Credits

=========================

If you are going to sell your child themes on Elegant Themes Marketplace, you are only allowed to include images from:

stocksnap.io
skitterphoto.com
mystock.photos
pickupimage.com
pxhere.com
foodiesfeed.com

Cityscape Photo – Name of the photo from the website you downloaded it from.
—————
– Source: https://stocksnap.io/photo/GX1SSPLWUS
– License: CC0
– License URI: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/

Sunset Photo
————
– Source: https://skitterphoto.com/photos/1035/golden-eye
– License: CC0 – License URI: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/

Unzip the file you downloaded through the SitePresser plugin and save your newly created license.txt file there.

Zipped the file back up and you are finished.