I would like to point out that I did NOT say that ALL free themes are bad. Most of them are, that does not mean that they are badly coded.

Also it seems that another thing has been misunderstood (my fault): by a “free theme” I mean the ones you just unpack and activate. If you customize a couple of things on it – that is a different thing. The free theme becomes an unique free theme, which I salute.

I did not intend to insult my fellow WP’ers whom I respect very much. So if somebody felt insulted – have mercy :)

I have a free theme, but took quite a bit of time to customize the look so that it is uniquely my own. Customizing free themes is not terribly hard to do. Just replacing the graphics with ones sized the same as the ones in the theme can do most of the trick. Tweaking the html and php a bit can further customize the theme for a unique look and feel.

People who offer free themes also provide some support in varying degrees. The author of the theme I’m using has provided some support and I know Lyndi at nice2all.com provides extensive support on her themes all of which are free.

Just because someone offers a free theme, doesn’t automatically mean they produce shoddy or poorly coded products. To even hint that this is a fact is a slap in the face to those who believe in open source (which by the way, WordPress is — free that is — slipshod coding there??)

Surely you can find other reasons for supporting premium themes than to resort to insulting those who code and/or use themes offered freely.