Spectacu.la and Justin Tadlock have reported that 200 free WordPress themes were removed from the official theme directory at WordPress.org, despite being complient with the GPL. As it turns out, there’s a more specific qualification to the list.

Thord Daniel Hedengren of The Blog Herald contacted Matt Mullenweg for clarification on the matter:

I emailed Matt Mullenweg, and he explained that the reason for the massive theme purge was that there was a lot of spammy SEO links as well as various violations of the GPL that is required to be hosted in the directory. He also said this, to address the people who are worried about what is really going on with the theme directory:

There were also a few that violated WP community guidelines, like the domain policy. So since Monday we’ve been clearing stuff out en mass. If you’re kosher with the GPL and don’t claim or promote otherwise on your site and your theme was removed, it was probably a mistake. Give us a week to catch up with the bad stuff and then drop a note.

Aside from having to submit a GPL-compliant, sponsored link-free WordPress theme, you have to make sure that your homepage, as theme author, should be the same way. That is, your theme should not be a gateway to get people to buy premium WordPress themes or download ones with sponsored links.

Be sure to review the guidelines for submitting a free WordPress theme to WordPress Extend.

You also might want to read this article by Alister Cameron on the “right” way to make money from WordPress themes. He cites Brian Gardner’s recent move to provide Revolution themes for free, but require payment for theme support.