Creating advertising supported themes is a legitimate business model, and trying to stop someone removing the advertising by obfuscating code isn't really any w

Creating advertising supported themes is a legitimate business model, and trying to stop someone removing the advertising by obfuscating code isn't really any worse than, say, distributing binaries to software which have been compiled to make it harder to change the source code. I personally don't like to use software projects which aren't Free / Open Source (meaning that the full, unobfuscated source code is available and you are free to do what you like with it) - but I think it would be a stretch to say that distributing binaries or obfuscated code is automatically shady. You have to trust the person that makes the site, but asking someone to trust you is not synonymous with shady unless you then violate that trust. Of course, if the sites are plagiarising other people's work without a license, including malicious code, or misleading people about what the code does or doesn't do, then there is a legitimate concern.