On November 1st, Brian Gardner, the author of the incrediblly popular Revolution Theme for WordPress, will be going to an Open Source release system for his future themes. He”ll be releasing his future themes for free and then charging people for tech support and modifications. All of the themes on his new site will be released under the GPL license that the people behind-the-scenes of WordPress are so incredibly fond of. You can read more about Brian’s move to Open Source over at this blog.

What impact will this move have on the theme community at large? My guess is not too much, at least in the early goings. With the global economy in a bit of a meltdown right now, my hunch is that lots of Premium Theme developers are going to be very gun shy about changing the way they are currently doing business. Especially since many Premium Theme developers appear to be doing quite well selling theme licenses for their works. A switch to Open Source and making 100% of your income on tech support and modifications might seem to risky for the other established theme developers out there.