As I look through the Five For the Future pledges (and the Contribution Health Dashboards), I wonder: Has there been any effort to quantify whether or not companies are fulfilling their pledge promises?

For example, has anyone tried to quantify the hours delivered vs. pledged hours in terms of activity on wp.org/svn/some other metrics? If we’re going to say “This is a good contributor. This is a bad contributor.” it would be good to reference some actual data.

It’s always flummoxed me that WordPress the project, relies on a begging bowl system to keep it all going. Imagine, all the pressure for Automattic and a few other companies of supporting the project being taken away. Such freedom, right?

Like that idea of a badge. Only the group that comes to WordCamps/Meetups and read (english) WordPress post is a tiny fraction of the WP user base. The wild idea i had was to bring that deserved attention to a place where “every” WP user will see it; that’s the dashboard. (in a subtle way) Think of a credit system that companies can use to target countries. I know, too wild of an idea. Anyway, impactful contributors must be more proud on their work and shout if out on their website. If that’s with an “official” badge; even better.

This area will start to help break down those granular details.

https://make.wordpress.org/project/2024/09/12/wordpress-contribution-health-dashboards-an-experiment/

There are also a slew of details that we hope later to credit but are not yet able to be parsed. For example, GoDaddy empowered me to work on WCUS Contributor Day. I have spent months of work time on leading up to yesterday. The data here shows nothing of that, yet.

I hope to get a roadmap of the milestones organized in a few weeks, highlighting would be needed to expand upon this.

I do worry about the commons and sometimes a lack of deeper hive thinking about not just what an open source project needs but also its norms, etiquettes and culture.

For me an open knowledge systems (open web) is more important than open-source, and similarly open source more important than WordPress.

At this point of time in my life, WordPress just feels like a large enough canvass and really powerful vehicle for spreading the influence of not just using the commons but also producing it.

I came across this book a couple of months ago called “Knowledge as Commons” by Prabir Purkayasta – (https://www.google.com/search?q=Knowlege+as+Commons+Prabir+Purkayasta) and it resonated a lot with me as a person from the global south. While a lot of the writing is more along the lines of open licensing around medicines, GM agriculture tech, vaccines, hardware and of course software.

The main thread that came across was that the only way to safeguard against the “Tragedy of Commons” or insurance against only extraction based entities would be to not just increase the users of a technology / commons but also increase and encourage them to be the producers of technology / commons.

The systems within our systems that encourage this user to producer will be a great achievement.

Thanks for writing this, it is reassuring (not that I had concerns) to hear your thoughts on the WordPress ecosystem and especially the FernGully example.

I think we need to make it a lot more prominent, like a badge like TrustPilot, and then educate consumers through WordCamps and our press to look for those companies. Basically community marketing. It’s easier than normal marketing because it’s appealing to a higher ideal.

I appreciate your leadership and encouragement for everyone to participate in contributing. This is critical for a healthy ecosystem. Also really liked how clearly you outlined the 4 parts.

Looking forward to seeing you at WCUS.

Even the mentioned companies in your blog post are not mentioning their contributions very open on their websites. Only 10up. And Bluehost mentioned it on their homepage (“recommended by”). I like that. The thing is: WP doesn’t offer any (well known) program or label that those contributors can use to create that attention. If that was the case, maybe the “others” will move.