Displaying 31 To 40 Of 40 Comments When Will Automattic Be Acquired? @Jeffro - Morning Jeffro, While I appreciate the write up, there are a few inaccuracies. 1) WordPress Foundation In fact, no one can acquire WordPress the open source project as it’s owned by no one. No company would take over a platform, they would only be taking over a service Yeah that’s wrong. WordPress Project and trademark is owned by the WordPress Foundation. The “WordPress Foundation” is a company. Matt personally owns WordPress.org name. All of this could be acquired. WordPress.org which is also known as self-hosted software is an open source project that is owned by no one. WordPress is a trademark that is controlled by the WordPress Foundation. Therefore, the open-source project can never be acquired while WordPress.com and or Automattic could be. The idea, indeed the tone of the article, that nothing can ever get inbetween us and our beloved software is nonsence, and simply wrong. Any company, charitable foundation or otherwise, can be acquired. On a side note, and something I raised last year, if the WordPress Foundation is separate from Automattic and it’s WordPress.com service, why isn’t it being sued over trademark infingement? 2) VC funding The 2nd round of VC funding had some buy out for Matt (well deserved) as well as taking some of the decisions regarding acquisition of AutoMattic out of Matt’s hands. Toni Schneider, left Yahoo in 2006 to join venture Capital firm True Venture Partners. Long and the short of it is this: AutoMattic will be aquired one day, and it won’t be up to Matt (though I’ve no doubt he’ll have a lot of say on the matter). » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On September 28, 2011 @ 5:42 AM Reasons Not To Upgrade WordPress Because sometimes, I forget to link in my comment (D’oh) http://kevinjohngallagher.com/2011/09/omg-wtf-y-u-no-upgrade-kktnx/ » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On October 3, 2011 @ 11:45 AM WordPress Has A Smaller Community Than Either Drupal Or Joomla Chip, While I respect the heck out of you, can I play devil’s advocate? - Is the WP website on StackExchange one popular because the support on WordPress.org/.com is so poor? Couldn’t that be just as likely a reading from those stats? The reality is there is no good long-term measurement for quality, quantity nor responsiveness of a community for an Open Source Project. We have to go with our gut, and our own experiences. Obviously we’re all WordPress fan’s (I believe you’re now on the Theme review team Chip – congrats), but in my experience this community more than any other has a tendency to only want to hear the good about itself. In my experience, finding out answers to simple WP questions is very quick; but rises at an exponential rate as you move from simple to moderate to advanced. In large part due to the input/output of it’s community. » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On September 26, 2011 @ 12:47 PM While completely agreeing with the premise of that the article is purely to drum up traffic, there’s also some truth in it. Ultimate Caveat: In my experience… I’ve rarely been able to put my hand on my heart and recommend/use WordPress for larger projects; in part due to it’s reliance on a small “core” community (there are of course many other issues). While WordPress has an exceptionally large userbase, my experience is that number is almost always skewed by “WordPress.com”. Which is not to say it’s not a huge number, it’s just to say that it’s not as big as people make out. The opposite of that though is the central/trusted community (I’m trying to avoid the word core). WordPress has a greater number of fanboys ready to “drink the kool aid”, and it’s current release cycle is difficult for casual contributors (theme, plug-in, core, forum support) to keep up with. Drupal and Joomla on the other hand have a very different type of community, that on the outside appears to be lacking in some of the basic processes and metrics that the WP community has gotten used to. But when dealing with sites larger than “Blogs with some static pages” or with large amounts of data-utilisation/complexity actually getting answers to in-depth technical questions is considerably easier with both Drupal and Joomla communities. Much like your plug-in post, it’s less about the numbers and more about the quality/responsiveness of the community. Personally, I find the quality/responsiveness of the WordPress community very high in the centre, but drops very quickly. Drupal and Joomla have a slightly better curve on their community. » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On September 26, 2011 @ 12:14 PM bbPress 2.0 Stable Now Available From first commit to release, bbPress took: 436 days or 1 year, 2 months, 9 days or 62 weeks (pick a format you like) 436 days for a WordPress plug-in that already had it’s functionality defined, and had a paid for full-time developer? Just to give us the same functionality that we already had, but slightly less scalability?! I like the new plug-in for my smaller sites I’ll probably flip them over the the plug-in over the original forum in the next few months, and JJJ has done some truly great work on it, but I’m still somewhat amazed by how much Kool-Aid drinking went on in regard to this project. » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On September 23, 2011 @ 9:38 AM I think one of the issues that’s not directly affecting this, but certainly sitting in the back of people’s minds, is the growing disparage between those “in the circle” and those “outside the circle”. Capital_P_Dangit(), bbpress2.0, admin bar not being opt-in, WordCamp Name/Sponsor issues… and a great many more have created this small divide between the people in the know and the rest of us. It’s not that I don’t trust what’s said, it’s more than I no longer think that any changes to the “rules” are automatically in my interest. Not a bad thing I suppose, but the previous high regard that I held many in just 2 years ago has disappeared to be replaced with a significant level of mistrust. I mean, for a company big on Openness, where are the “rules” for running a WordCamp on the Wordcamp central website? I can’t find them (again, might just be me, it’s late here) » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On September 26, 2011 @ 12:37 PM @Ipstenu - I can understand the confusion, but I don’t get why people don’t just ask. Been asking for at least 2 years mate :) Who knows, maybe you could persuade them to allow smaller nations to use regional names We asked, We Can’t. If I may stress, Jane has been supportive as she could be with rather inflexible rules :) @Tony Scott - the question of the name of the event, which that year was WordCamp UK 2010, nor of future UK WP events, was not raised by the organisers, since we did not know at the time there was any issues relating to the name of such events. The name issue was raised by Jane during the last open session That may well be Tony, but it was raised by others. We raised it with WordCampCentral almost 20 months ago after feeling a little fragmented/separated due to the “UK” event not exactly catering for those out-with England. Surely this year’s exceptionally low attendance even WITH moving the “UK” event to the South East of England to attempt to attract more Londoners ( but 200 miles further SE than the previous year – away from Ireland, Scotland and Wales); has proved that simply calling something by a catch-all name does not mean that it caters to the needs of the many. The effort the organisers of WordCampUK put in has never been in doubt; but 4 English guys from England, living in England, organising an event with no direct flights/trains/buses to any city outside of England does not “UK” make. If WordCampUK is in Scotland in July2012, I’ll personally pay for the top sponsorship; because it’s not going to happen. The Turkeys are not going to vote for Christmas. With multiple WordUps, and Open Source Scotland (featuring: Andrew Nacin, Joost De Valk, Rasmus Leerdorf to name 3) I personally don’t think that the current set up of WordCampUK actually meets our needs any more (if ever). I know @Martin and @Taryn are huge fans of the WordCampUK organisers, and have felt no slight with this years fiasco (my small dealings with them have proven them to be lovely people) – but the last 3 years of oval peg being assimilated into a round hole simply to comply with a naming convention designed to meet an external model is too much for this WordPress fan. » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On September 23, 2011 @ 10:32 AM There are a great number of things at play here, many of which I was hoping wouldn’t have to be raised. 1) WordUp Edinburgh Although I wont be attending, it’s a wonderful little event with a great backing. 2) A “WordCamp” fork. I don’t agree with this I’m afraid. 3) “WordUp Scotland” While I’m quietly convinced that the good folks at WordUp Edinburgh were simply wanting to be accurate in their naming, there are a good number of reasons to call it WordUp Edinburgh. 4) WordCamp + Name With no disrespect to Jane (who works wonders) and the person who has since taken over from her the naming rules of WordCamp are simply not flexible enough – again, working for a very specific set of rules that really doesn’t map well outside of large countries. As Donnacha has said a “WordCampUSA” would be ridiculous, but the idea that I could stop there being a WordCampUK by hosting my own WordCampShetland (only 12 hours by boat from the north of Scotland, a mere 16 hours travel from Edinburgh or 28 hours by train from London) is mental. These 2 *hypothetical* events are clearly not aiming for the same catchment of people, but somehow each have an impact on the naming conventions used with the other. The reality is, while I do hate the WordCampUK moniker (it’s in England, lets just call it WordCampEngland), an event 28 hours away by conventional transport should not impact it’s name. In my opinion, the Country rule should be changed to be one of catchment. In the US you can have a WordCampNewYorkCity, while WordCampBarcelona might not have enough people but WordCampSpain would preclude people from Malaga (a mere 9 hours by train) from doing their own. In this instance, WordCampCatalonia would work for the event in Barcelona while still allowing the WordCampSpain event to be held in the south west of the country. The reality is though, that WordCamp+City causes a huge number of problem for organisers in smaller countries than the US, or when there is a growing community that neither matches the Country/City model. Sometimes the name catches too wide an area and sometimes it catches too small an area, simply to fit a model that rarely works outside of the US. 5) WordCampUK I’ve spoken before ( here, here, here ) about WordCampUK, and how very un-inclusive it is (a whole 4 people made it from Scotland this year out of 200+tickets) with it’s late ticket sales and moving of this year’s conference 200miles further away from Ireland/Scotland/Wales to appease the “London based people” who struggled with the 2 hours travel to Manchester. Purely as an aside, the journey from London to Portsmouth is still 1.5 hours; but pushed my journey time from 4 hours @ Manchester (2010) to 16 hours @ Portsmouth (2011). In reality if WordCampUK was named WordCampEngland many of the issues people had would have gone. It would have removed the perception that people in Scotland were in anyway thought of or catered for, AND would have enabled a WordCampScotland to be set up along side WordCampEngland. Again, it falls into the issue I raised above, that the WordCamp naming convention causes problems. Conclusion… We all love WordPress, and of course we’re all going ti have different opinions. But after 4 years of being involved in this community, I very strongly feel that the WordCamp model has a great number of holes in it to the point that it doesn’t map well to different locations in the world. The “UK” is simply one of those. In the best possible way, the WordUp Edinburgh folks have made their own model for supporting their community. I can’t praise them enough for this. » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On September 19, 2011 @ 7:03 AM WooThemes Has And Will Continue To Get Credit Was the menu system in WordPress 3.0 inspired by WooNav? Of course. Everybody knows that. There’s a couple of things here. First is the above quote. Seriosuly, if you happen to miss a week or two in WordPress land you can miss things like this. Second of all, I think some continued credit should go to WooThemes because in the past 18 months, theme developers and re-sellers have had quite a bit of stick from the “high and mighty” people that contribute to WordPress. WooThemes, Thesis et all have been villified by a great number of people who made a choicce to give up their work for free. Here they are giving back and when they do and talk about it, they’re smacked down as they’ve “already had their credit”. But Thirdly, Whats wrong with someone making a bit of noise to make sure they’re getting some credit as WP3 goes to RC. If you don’t want to mention it, then don’t mention it – simple :) Lastly, I think they should get a bit more credit for the IDEA. We’re quick to praise Jane and Matt when someone else does the code – why not WooThemes too? Code is a large part of any project, so is the IA and UX and testing and…. etc. @Dan The link you point to has two real issues: 2) Matt summarises by saying Even though graphics and CSS aren’t required to be GPL legally, the lack thereof is pretty limiting Except the letter from the lawyer states that all graphics, javascript, stylesheets, HTML, static content, comments etc. that isn’t “processed” (i.e. can be called and loaded and included etc – but not actually processed) by WordPress’s PHP code isn’t hit by the GPL. it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright Something Matt didn’t touch upon, but that just because it’s a WordPress theme doesn’t mean it automatically being hit upon by the GPL. Far too many people read the letter withotu asking what the initial question was, and then absolutely accepted Matt’s summary as fact. Really only code that instrinsically interacts with WordPress functions to produce data would do so. Something like WooTheme’s menu didn’t neccessarily need to – though it probably did in practice. » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On June 3, 2010 @ 1:03 PM bbPress Website Gets A Fresh Coat Of Paint I’m really confused folks, and hopefully you can help me out here. A quickly rushed out, and totally untested, broken theme update; and suddenly everything bbPress is coming up smelling of roses? really?? » Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher On May 5, 2010 @ 4:39 AMComments Posted By Kevinjohn Gallagher
Like any other company it too can be acquired. That company owns the rights to the WordPress name/trademark. It also owns all WordPress.org, information (such as the information on trac). It also owns the licence for the WordPress code.
He has yet to transfer it to the WordPress Foundation, but I’m confident that is in the works based on some rumbling last year.
Though in honesty it won’t, we really should not be saying things like:
Has Matt made real efforts to ensure that it doesn’t, sure, but the ideas that something could “never be aquired” is crazily off the mark.
You’re not allowed to call this website WordPressTaven as it’s trademark infringement, but WordPress.com isn’t? Don’t you love it when the “inner circle” treat everyone else differently than themselves.
(that’s a joke folks, but food for thought)
That VC firm bought a large chunk of Automattic, then installed Toni as the CEO to protect their investment and ensure that Automattic grew to the point that it would be aquired and all the VC firms would get their money back.
- Or is it so popular because people are asking such small/simple to answer questions that it’s easy to answer them?
- Or is it because there is a higher number of “hobbyists” that use WP over say Drupal?
And in fairness, been getting answers for years too :)
Country then City.
Thems the rules.
And Automattic think that UK is a country.
The WordPress community in Scotland, specifically Martin and Taryn, should be praised for their efforts to get it off the ground in difficult circumstances. I can’t wait for their second one.
The reality is that the WordCamp model maps itself to certain communities better than others. That’s not a negative statement at all; we can’t expect every model to map to every system. The existing WordCamp model, and indeed it’s implementation in the last few years as WordCampUK, is really poorly suited to the Scottish community. It’s the nature of the beast, and the WordUp folks are just organising an event that matches their community’s needs. It’s a wonderful idea, but not a fork of an existing one – especially with the negative connotations that word brings in the IT world.
It’s accurate
Events in Scotland, with the name Scotland in the title receive fewer attendees from England.
With the shambles of WordCampUK in the last few years, I think getting away from Country names inside the “British Isles” landmass is a really good thing.
How very “UK”.
Not “everybody” knew that. I didn’t. Who is this “everybody”??
1) It contains an answer to a question we never get to see. Lawyers answer specific questions, and while the answers seem quite complete and well rounded, without knowing both sides of the conversation, it’s very easy for someone/anyone to make assumptions about the specifics entailed.
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3 days ago, on this very website, there was an article stating that Matt was telling people not to use bbPress and that he himself wsan’t coming back to the project anytime soon.
