DISQUS

Open source is actually far more resilient than proprietary software. If I decided to open a bar, the numerous companies and individuals reliant on WordPress could continue the development. This isn't theoretical, this is actually how WordPress itself started, as a fork of an existing blogging system whose development had stopped (b2). WordPress code and community will outlive me.

On WordPress.com you can have your own URL without being a VIP, it's one of the standard upgrades available for 10-15 dollars per year.

Wow videos look great, glad that our video solution worked out for you.

Neat -- are you coming to WordCamp India on Saturday?

Database abstraction, template system, fully OO, MVC enforced, 100% modular -- you just described half a dozen platforms that got started about the same time as WordPress, and countless hundreds that have started since.

I don't know the exact reasons why WP has done as well as it has (though timing and luck is definitely part of it) but I think there's something to be said about accessibility vs "what's right" from a stereotypical Reddit/Slashdot/Digg coder's point of view. Worse is better.

Also many times bad code means bad scalability, but WP's simple approach has been shown to scale. We're currently tracking over 2 billion WP-powered pageviews per month, and that's just from people using the stats plugin.

Yes we're getting Intense Debate running fully on Automattic infrastructure, so it'll be fast and reliable just like Akismet, Gravatar, and WordPress.com.

Hey, welcome to the family. Given all you've done over the years I'm honored to have you on WP.

Aw shucks and thank you very much!

The comment voting plugin was by Andrew Ozz and is available for any WordPress.org blog here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/top-comments/

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Thank you for the clarification, Matt!

-Tim

The theme directory (and plugin directory) are about providing a GPL-licensed free resources for a GPL-licensed and free product. You're still welcome to use a theme or plugin that isn't in the directory.

I'm still not clear on why WordPress.org should be required to promote and link things that violate its license, which seems to be what you and Duncan are suggesting.

There were actually closer to 300 themes removed, and it seems like less than 2% may have been a mistake. These are themes that never complied with the guidelines in the first place, they had just gotten in due to some lax review and we were correcting that. "Link crime" themes were maybe 5 of the 300 that were removed.

What does "with the same loss of custom for theme creators" mean?

All we're doing is choosing to host and promote things that follow the license that WordPress itself is under, namely the GPL. It is not ambiguous that the GPL gives you certain freedoms and when plugin or theme developers try to take these freedoms away from users we just don't want to promote them on our site. They can do whatever the heck they like, but they're not entitled to be promoted on WordPress.org. Users get confused when WP is completely open source and then they start using a theme they downloaded that requires they link to a refinancing or SEO site.

It's easy to share user tables across multiple WP blogs, you don't even need MU. There is some functionality in wp-config:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php

Thanks for the shout-out. :)

Thanks for the coverage, we're really excited about where PollDaddy is going.

The GPL is the most popular Open Source license in the world:

http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss

It's about 1771% more popular than the Apache license. Open Source seems to be doing okay.

In my opinion, the GPL is the most moral license available as well, which is why I'm such a strong advocate of it.

Thanks for the mention! Hope to see you there. :)

This is by far the best headline of anyone covering this story.

I'm not sure if I agree with your assessment that making something with fewer features will make it more popular. I like Twitter but I think it's popular for reasons that have nothing to do with factors you mention in your article.

Your argument vis-à-vis "Add a couple of features to Twitter and it's Wordpress. Why is a Wordpress minus a couple of features so popular?" Seems to assume that Twitter is more popular than WordPress, which I don't think is true.

There are no hard rules about simplicity and complexity -- both are needed at different times.

This is why pingbacks are much more compelling than trackbacks.

Thanks for helping to spread the word!

Doc Pop, it's a Tuesday so it should be fairly chill.

I'm afraid something is wrong with your diff function, a lot more than that changed between 2.5 and 2.5.1. Check out this link:

http://trac.wordpress.org/changeset?old_path=ta...

If you just change the wp-login.php file you're missing most of the fixes.

This looks really good.

Please, please, please don't use that. There's an AI version of the WordPress logo on our buttons page, if you look at the one you're using the W is all out of proportion, it's squished. The real one is taller and more elegant.

Fred, thanks for starting a great conversation here! I agree with you that there is a ton of value yet to be created in blogging, but it's a slow burn and under the radar of most folks. WordPress.com is monetized partially through advertising but I think that's not the ultimate scalable model for us or blogging.

WayneMulligan is right that while our uniques are similar to Facebook, they do a bajillion more pageviews. However we're two vastly different companies, 20ish employees vs hundreds for example, and I think we're heading in very different directions, for them I think it's more about communication (messaging, chat) and connections and for us it's more about content, publishing, and platforms. I personally think Facebook is going to continue to kick butt and I don't see that at the expense of Automattic in any way, shape, or form.

Some people have noticed that there is not a ton of lock-in with WordPress.com and that is very deliberate. Blogging is about you, it belongs to you, and if you want to take what you've created elsewhere we're happy to give you all your data in an easily parsed format and have for years. You can use the same platform you used before (WordPress.org) and have complete control and freedom to use or modify it however you like.

All bugs aren't equal. The "significant" bug I mention will probably not be noticed by most users of WordPress, but if you use one specific part a few clicks down it displays a filter incorrectly, but the fix for it will touch probably 2-4 different files and change some core APIs. If we put the fix in I'd want at least 5-10 days of testing to make sure the core changes didn't break anything else, and it didn't seem like worth delaying the whole release for.

30 days after 2.1 we offered an upgrade; 35 days after 2.2; 31 days after 2.3. I think we're right at the low end of your 4-6 weeks schedule. In 2007 there were 3 major releases and 12 minor releases, one of the minor releases was an emergency one.