A few months ago I had the opportunity to chat with Jesse Friedman (WP.cloud) and Ronnie Burt (Automattic) about hosting WordPress on the Impressive Hosting podcast. The conversation quickly turned into a romantic reflection on the long history of our work with WordPress in higher ed. We were all early advocates for WordPress Multisite, and the opportunity to reflect on that work was refreshing. Jesse was a most gracious host, and it sounds like Ronnie and I lived parallel lives for years as WordPress Multisite admins for higher ed.
The endless possibility that abounded in the future past of the world of WordPress has been a bit dampened lately by erratic leadership. That said, I have to imagine trying to juggle such an extensive for-profit organization alongside the open source project, while keeping the lights on for both, can’t be easy. Unfortunately the world of speculative finance is often at odds with the principles of open source, and I’m wondering if the financial chickens have come home to roost.
Regardless, it’s worth remembering all the projects that still depend upon WordPress and all the great work still happening. Feeding too much into the cycle of drama doesn’t benefit anyone, least of all those on the ground trying to get the work done that billions of users have come to depend on. Open source isn’t free, but it’s also not a business in the ways touted over the last 15-20 years. Open source needs to be a sense of commitment, not unlike democracy, but what we’ve seen is the erosion of these principles as scale-driven capital moves in. This is pretty basic, I know, but I’m trying to move beyond the mud-flinging details of any given drama to understand how we re-think the cancerous ideas of growth and commodification that tend to ruin most of the spaces we inhabit online.
I think that often institutions don’t understand what Open Source is, either. Why would we give it away for free, they ask? Not sure what to do about that.
Yeah, I can’t imagine the overhead of trying to reconcile the two-heads of open source in our moment. One based on a certain amount of altruism and community-driven value and the other about extracting that value. I just don’t think the two play as nicely as we want to hope for the sustainability for any of these programs. Scale is a killer.