most (most) themes are kind enough to allow a credit removal if you ‘click here.’

That’s not my impression. Most themes don’t even have an option page, let alone a “show credits” option.

All that said … if I was running a ‘I need to look 100% professional’ site and the person for whom I was designing said ‘And no link backs!’ I would probably write my own plugin.

… or pay me to make you a custom version

But seriously, there is so many commercial projects that benefit from free software and don’t give a damn to ever donate or do anything else in return. I know my plugins are used in a vast number of commercial projects, but I never saw any benefit from it, monetary or else. :/

Indeed, it’s hard times for the ‘good stewards’.

They don’t prohibit the insertion of links in themes

No, but most (most) themes are kind enough to allow a credit removal if you ‘click here.’

In WP’s defense (and I think they have a lot of problems), this all grew organically from people who felt ‘common sense’ was good enough. Like they shouldn’t HAVE to say ‘Don’t put in encoded links!’ and ‘No viruses.’ And yet. They’re at the point where they have to put more and more rules in. In my mind, the more rules, the more people find wiggle room to be assholes, which causes the ‘good’ people (i.e. you and me) to get screwed.

Hate.

I removed the link-backs to WordPress from my site, NOT because of anything other than it doesn’t look ‘right’ on my theme. That’s it.

Be that as it may, my personal view is that users, if they are informed about the fact, are declaring their permission by installing and using the plugin. So I might just clarify that point instead.

I happen to agree there, but I can see someone being an absolute git about it and arguing semantics. I would probably put a bit on the settings page ‘SEO TOC puts a link back to the plugin site. Blah blah suck it up.’

All that said … if I was running a ‘I need to look 100% professional’ site and the person for whom I was designing said ‘And no link backs!’ I would probably write my own plugin. But thankfully I don’t I DO run a list of every plugin I have on my WP site on the about page, because I feel it’s important. It also lists all the plugins for every app on the site, from MediaWiki to ZenPhoto and bbPress.

Wish you could trust everyone to be a good steward :/

That’s sad. It clearly reflects that WP is further selectively repressing plugin developper’s branding in favor of their own. They don’t prohibit the insertion of links in themes, and they don’t mention they intend to require theme authors to remove their links, or provide an adequate option, especially because most themes include a link to the WP site. This is the more hypocritical given WP’s own history of hidden agendas and black-hat malpractices.

The sad thing is they have gained their popularity and pagerank exactly because of such backlinks, and because of the myriads of plugins. (WP by itself would have been almost useless for most sites – that’s why there is virtually no WP blog without at least a dozen of plugins installed.)

Be that as it may, my personal view is that users, if they are informed about the fact, are declaring their permission by installing and using the plugin. So I might just clarify that point instead.

Again, thanks for pointing these things out to me, and for sticking to the plugin.

Cheers

Out of the discussion of various WP plugins that were pulled from the repository, one of the points made was that there’s an expectation that all forward facing links (that is, the branding you have on, say, SEO TOC, which I love) should all come with a disable option, so sites don’t HAVE to brand. This is the comment that caught my attention.

As it happens, that’s actually right here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/

4) The plugin must not embed external links on the public site (like a “powered by” link) without explicitly asking the user’s permission.

It doesn’t say you have to have a disable option, but I think it’s fairly clear that was the intention.