WordPress is the swiss army knife content-management software that most of the world's media websites run on, this one included. Though open-source, the software and its ecosystem are marshalled by founding creator Matt Mullenweg, and this oversight has become controversial due to his dramatic battles with a WordPress hosting company and some contributors to the project. The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel asks him why he went to war.
Mullenweg: I think where WordPress has had the greatest success is when we can get everyone around the table — the commercial folks, the agencies, the developers, the geeks, and the anarchists. We get us all around the table and say, "Well, what are our shared goals and how will we achieve them?" Even the most rampant capitalist knows that you can over-squeeze that lemon.
You don't have to look far to find other open-source projects where the commercial interests sucked the life out of the project
and later…
Patel: But you had a commercial dispute, and because you were just in control of this, you were able to cut off their access. And I think a lot of people-
Mullenweg: We had a moral dispute, actually. It's a moral dispute, as well as a commercial dispute. It's an ethics dispute.
My understanding of the GPL, as WordPress uses, is that you can do pretty much whatever you like with the software, as long as you comply with its attribution and distribution requirements. It seems misaligned with this view of the relationship between commercial interests and WordPress. Obviously Mullenweg is limited in what he can say given the ongoing legal battles, but imposing abstract ethical fitness requirements on free riders via litigation after building a $1.8bn business around the Free software rather speaks for itself.
All the same, saving tumblr and giving it a very expensive pasture to live out its days in will always be a feather in his cap. And he is dead right when he says "the failure mode of internet idealists is protocol-first thinking."
I would say Tumblr has a passionate, "never going to give you up" cohort of users, and it still acquires users at the young end. I'll also say that the elements of how it works, I think, are very confusing if you're new to it. So, one thing we're thinking about is how we can make it a bit more accessible. And also, the constant thing you deal with at any social network is how to keep it friendly. So we want it to be someplace where you can go on the internet and leave refreshed, interact with art and artists, and your friends. On these networks, you have to do a lot of work to keep out the spam and the bullies.
Previously: Can Tumblr 'be a better Twitter'?
