In reply to Dave Warfel.

@Dave,
Yes, 1000s would be an exaggeration, but I think Charlie's point, phrased differently was merely, "Many people violate rules. It is just that the one that got caught is very high profile".

I cannot provide you with information about how many other themes do it, because while I have on occasion downloaded a theme from .org, the only theme that I have used which wasn't coded by me was TwentySixteen.

There was a time when I used to go through every piece of news related to themes, and I always kept an eye on the TRT guidelines, but that was before I myself stopped having a theme on .org. The fact is, with a large pool of volunteers of varying skill, and with some theme contributors being more enterprising than others about seeking exceptions, you will always find themes that have slipped through the cracks for some guideline. This used to be the case when the TRT used a mailing list for communication (other theme authors used to complain about such misses) before switching to Slack, and I don't see why things would change.

This is not to say that the TRT is grossly negligent or severely incompetent - it is just that something that slips through the cracks once may get grandfathered and stay in the system for a long time. The TRT doesn't necessarily go back to retroactively check if a theme they approved previously is still adhering to guidelines.

You might as well find 50 themes doing this, considering that some themes might have done this 3 years ago and gotten approved somehow, after which they were on an "auto-approval" (assuming that the TRT still has tickets that are automatically approved). Alternatively they might not have had any updates for a long time, and the last live update had something that didn't meet the rules. There is also a possibility that some developers don't keep monitoring the guidelines for changes.

I have lived through this scenario when all developers were forced to use the customizer, and I missed the 6 month deadline for compliance (not just because it would be back-breaking for me to change to it, but also because at that point I had stopped staying abreast of guidelines, and the rest of the theme was really fine). One fine day I was notified that the theme was suspended - it had apparently lived in the repository for several months while violating a guideline.