In reply to J K Hoffman.

"The redistribution under the GPL is clearly allowed. However, I was referring to *the theft of the time and effort* which, theoretically, is what one has paid for, not the source code."

What theft of "time and effort" has taken place? Since we are discussing the legal context, what actual loss of time and effort can the copyright holder prove in court?

"Legally, it is well within the copyright holder's rights, even under the GPL,* to deny their customers support for violating an agreement not to resell work they purchased*, even if said customers have the legal right under the GPL to freely redistribute the code purchased."

Here's where I think there are legitimate grounds for the customer to claim breach of contract: the copyright holder sold the customer a copyrighted work, licensed under the terms of the GPL, but then, in the same contract, breached the terms of that license, by threatening to withhold services (i.e. updates,user support) if the customer exercised actions authorized under the terms of that license.

If that threat is made good, and the copyright holder terminates the agreed-upon services without refund, then the contract has been breached, and the customer can prove a material loss.

Perhaps a copyright holder who wishes to go this route should sell the code separately from the services: i.e. one transaction for the code, and a separate transaction for the support services. Even then, if I were the customer, I would challenge the severance-for-abuse clause as unenforceable, since the activity that the copyright holder claims to be "abusive" is the very same activity that the copyright holder explicitly licenses the customer to perform. Such a clause is clearly offered in bad faith. Courts will do as they wish, of course; but I have a hard time seeing any court that would decide otherwise.

(But then, I believe that a sane court would hold that Themes and Plugins, absent actual, incorporated code from core WordPress, are not derivative works. So I'm already in the minority with respect to opinions about how courts would rule.)