CMS
Happy Fourth Birthday, WordPress!
How appropriate that the world’s leading blog software started out as a blog post four years ago today.
What to do? Well, Textpattern looks like everything I could ever want, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be licensed under something politically I could agree with. Fortunately, b2/cafelog is GPL, which means that I could use the existing codebase to create a fork, integrating all the cool stuff that Michel would be working on right now if only he was around. The work would never be lost, as if I fell of the face of the planet a year from now, whatever code I made would be free to the world, and if someone else wanted to pick it up they could. I’ve decided that this the course of action I’d like to go in, now all I need is a name. What should it do? Well, it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right?
Textpattern adopted a GPL in mid-2004, but it was too little, too late. Had it given itself to the world earlier, its code would’ve lived on in WordPress instead of fading into irrelevance. In a remix culture, generosity is the key to longevity.
(Via Mike Little.)
Wired Cites WordPress as Acquisition Bait
WordPress, the insanely extensible and customizable open-source content management system that powers this blog, has been tagged by Wired magazine as acquisition bait in its January 2007 isssue.
The new de rigueur blog-management software, WordPress is favored by the majority of high-traffic posters. One caveat: It’s open source and unlikely to accept a corporate come-on.
Personally, I don’t think WordPress needs some big corporate owner to slow it down. It has long risen to the top of the blog software heap on its own, powered by its incredibly active developer community. With the rise of problogging, WordPress doesn’t need a centralized business model to drive its development — developers tweak it to make better blogs that can make more money, and those who package and release those tweaks gain fame and could make even more money. Mammals don’t need to be chained to dinosaurs.
(Via Dave Jackson.)
