There’s been some ruckus about the sudden departure of some 200 themes from the WordPress.org theme directory. Justin Tadlock and Spectacu.la both had a lot of things to say about this.

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.

So there you have it. Mystery solved, hopefully. The whole thing is, however, a reminder that a theme marketplace is needed, although I would say that it might be a better idea to offer links to the ones that have already established themselves, given how late to the game a WordPress hosted one would be.

WordCamp SF 2008 was held yesterday – here’s a brief look at sites covering the goings-on.

Matt Mullenweg himself calls the WordCamp coverage by ZDNet “the best ongoing coverage”.

CNet’s Webware has coverage by Dan Farber.

Aaron Brazell covers his talk on Search and Findability

TechCrunch has a strong roundup of coverage as well.

Patrick Havens offers detailed coverage at WordCamp Report.

Post your Wordcamp links in the comments and we’ll update this post later today.

This is actually pretty cool. It appears that you’ll get your Gravatar printed on your WordCamp San Francisco 2008 badge if you’re attending, according to Andy Peatling, who urges you to have a Gravatar with as high resolution as possible (being 512×512 pixels) ready by August 14. WordCamp San Francisco 2008 is scheduled for August 16, with speakers like Matt Mullenweg, Aaron Brazell, and our very own Lorelle VanFossen.

Hat tip: Matt Mullenweg’s blog

Automattic is releasing an open source application for the iPhone, called WordPress for iPhone. Matt Mullenweg reckons it is the first open source application being made available in the iTunes App Store. The application is due soon, and supports both self-hosted blogs (version 2.5.1 and higher), and WordPress.com blogs.