Thoughts on the WordPress, Automattic, and WPEngine
For those following the recent developments within the WordPress community, I was shocked to learn that WordPress also faced the common shortfall faced with the Open-source community. Though in hindsight not sure why, I was surprised.
The typical process for open source projects involves a founder creating something that quickly gains popularity, followed by community contributions to its development. At that point, these projects evolve in a few ways.
- Project gets too large and time consuming for the creator to maintain both the software and the community and abandon the project
- The founder creates a supporting entity, either for-profit or nonprofit, to help foster a community and shepherd core development.
In my line of work, two ecosystems that come to mind are WordPress, and Drupal.
- WordPress, via the WordPress Foundation and Automattic
- Drupal, via the Drupal Association and Acquia
And in all three cases, there appears to be a unique relationship. The founder creates a non-profit foundation with exclusive trademark rights, a for-profit entity responsible for commercial development and scale, and a volunteer community, contributes for the sake of hobby. What I jokingly call the open source trinity.
If you look at these communities naturally for groups of these sizes, issues will arise. The most common stems from disagreements between the creator and prominent active members and contributors. Such instances include:
- WordPress and the adoption of Gutenberg
- Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 and the fork of BackDrop
In both cases, the founders (or core group of people) of the project moved in a direction that many members in the community did not agree with. Highlighting a never ending tug of war. In one case perhaps the community that sustains the project is just as equal as the founder who should have an equal say on how things are done, or that it’s the founder that spreads the vision to the community and should be able to make big decisions without collaborating with the community.
Is there a right answer? Probably not. In a way, you could say that open source projects are simply a working manifestation of the chaos theory and it just works.
Another common issue is the role of commercial implementers of open-source software. In addition to the major companies founded to support these platforms, many other businesses act as commercial stewards. This is especially true for CMS-based platforms like Drupal and WordPress, where development agencies and hosting companies frequently promote their services using these systems. The ongoing WordPress controversy centers around the argument that these companies often exploit the work of the open-source community without giving much back.
I realized I am in a similar situation using WordPress and Drupal in my web development work. However, I haven’t been acknowledging or appreciating the communities behind these platforms. And when I can not contribute, I should donate more.
People often think open-source means free, but that’s not entirely true. While there’s no upfront cost, open-source projects rely on people volunteering their time and resources. So, there is a cost, and it should be repaid through donations or contributing time to the project.
Therefore, moving forward, I’ve decided that for every new project I plan to do either for WordPress and Drupal, I will include a nominal donation back to the project. Because I think we need to stop thinking as open source = free. It’s not, it’s the byproduct of hundreds of hours put in by regular people who care and while you may not always be able to volunteer as developers.
Moving forward, I’ve decided that for every new project I do with WordPress or Drupal, I will include a small donation to support the project. We need to stop thinking of open source as “free” because it’s not. It’s the result of hundreds of hours contributed by dedicated individuals. Even if you can’t always volunteer as a developer, it’s important to give back in some way.