u can use the free ones!! just edit code :)

Daniel, theme developers should have made them compatible with the 1.7 version. We do the e-mail notifications and forum posts that all developers and designer should make their plugins and theme compatible with 1.7. Which is why we had beta 1.7. As soon as they do that, you can use those free themes. 

I think it's a tad rude of oxwall to supply us with something and then say they don't support it anymore.
Why bother to begin with.

Abbey it's not our fault that some developers or designers are not willing or do not have time to update their plugins/themes. As I noted in my other post, we notified all of them when we had our beta released to do so. Probably just a matter of time. 

I completely understand the decision behind the discontinuation of the official themes. Oxwall is a small team and a non-profit foundation, they don't have unlimited funds. I support their decision to focus their resources on developing the backend rather than spend it on keeping a large number of themes up-to-date – something which communities are usually very good at, and many site owners will do their own version of anyway.

The reason I asked is that I thought that there were free and officially supported themes that haven't been discontinued, which then should've already been updated to 1.7. Apparently though this is down to the third-party theme supporters now. I didn't want to criticise this change, only make sure that I didn't just overlook something somewhere.

So far I have kept my site running on the Grunge theme, and haven't noticed any issues on v1.7 yet (although I also don't use all 1.7 features on my site). As I'm a web developer myself, I might also decide to just stick to Grunge and do any necessary adjustments myself.

Thanks for your replies!

I use Darklets and is free (Im in 1.7)
as a matter of fact I have updated another 3
free theme I have installed in my Server.

Thank you for your understanding, guys. I'm going to mark this post as Answered. 

And it seems I was mistaken too. I actually wasn't using Grunge, but Macabre, which is free and not discontinued. I only just got the update notification today. So what irritated me is only that the store page for the Macabre theme (and possibly other official free themes) does not state that they are 1.7 compatible, when in fact they've been updated.

most of the free themes oxwall have,have been updated so I don't understand what every body is going on about

Considering the importance of one's site and the time invested I do not resent paying for the theme at http://www.oxwall.org/store/item/443

The Roxwall support is prompt and the TLC and hand holding is truly amazing considering I only paid about $10

Steve