I haven’t heard that in a while — Facebook, WordPress.com, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and many more of the top sites in the world rely heavily on PHP, so I think most people now feel if it’s good enough for those, it’s good enough for them.

There’s nothing to say that coders can’t enjoy the fruits of their labor, in fact in open source the projects often grow far beyond what it ever would have if it was just the efforts of a single developer or company.

I don’t see any reason why not.

Thats the Version I started with too. I guess thats the point: WP reached the necessary UserBase very very early and due to its awesomeness it stayed there since then. I really enjoyed reading this short bio.
Thanks for sharing 🙂

With WordPress, we found a chance to express ourself in web to the tons of people.

I first created my WordPress blog in 2009 @WordPress.com, after that I realized the power of it and moved to a host with my content.

Since that day, I enjoyed writing and expressing my skills at my blog and customizing it with free plugins and themes in a huge freedom.

Many thanks to you, to every contributor and every free software people for this.

Also we are surely thankful to RMS for the FSF movement.

You both are heroes for me.

1. The freedom to create business contracts, for any purpose.
2. The freedom to study how the business contract works, and change it so it applies to your business as you wish.
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions, giving the community a chance to benefit from your changes.

Our legal world is still fundamentally inefficient, the way software was before Open Source allowed us to reuse code. Contracts live in the hell of Microsoft docs wiith colored tracking and many revisions sent back and forth to the point where you get lost.

But there is one guy somewhere who came up with a brilliant way to render legal docs from other legal docs that can be shared and I really hope that the WordPress story you share will repeat itself in the legal world. Law is code, and it should be managed as such.

If you want to know more check out https://github.com/HazardJ/Cmacc-Mediawiki

I would like to extend your remarks here in a few ways, or at least to make the attempt. Actually, it turned into a very lengthy reply that will need to see the hand of an editor and posted over on my own blog, but let me try to summarize a little here since your post really inspired me.

Your respect for the tens of thousands of people and organizations who make up (and extend) the WordPress ecosystem, who make their living from this ecosystem, can not be under appreciated in an analysis of its success. While it’s not my day to day reality as it once was when I installed and managed several WP blogs every month, WordPress remains a large part of my life, so I have direct knowledge of its power, and of the power that the community imbues in it. What I see as the true power beyond the free software philosophy is only hinted at above, but I believe should be more directly acknowledged.

The success should be as much attributed to the system and governance you put in place that supports and reinforces a set of shared values that aligns people together in a way that melds self interest with collective interests. Of course this is inherent in Stallman’s freedom’s. In particular his use of these words/phrases:

“change it”
“as you wish”
“help your neighbor”
“giving the community a chance to benefit”

These principles, and the success of the WordPress ecosystem, are based on the fundamental principal that people are respected for their contributions, however small or large. That everyone, even a commenter, has something of value to contribute. Further, that everyone is unique and has a unique view or needs in how they communicate. More importantly, the system of governance and the structures for collaboration enable others to extend and expand the ecosystem, intrinsically increasing the value available to everyone else. This in essence is the core of the principles that form the basis of our imperfect union here in the United States, that all men (and women) are created equal, and equally deserve these freedoms, so long as they do not harm or unlawfully impinge on the freedoms and rights of others. WordPress, in its spirit, in its strategic goals and its day to day operations is an exemplar of how things could be in direct opposition to traditional command and control hierarchical models in such a way that people are empowered and trusted to do the right thing, and as a result, the vast majority do. We give others our trust, and the vast majority prove they are worthy and give us their trust in return.

While I am not currently building an open source core as you have done here with my new startup, one day it may be, or at least parts of it will be for sure as embrace the open Web and ensure we easily integrate into everything. The ability for any organization to do so is dependent on the nature of the market need and many other factors, which may enable the specific approach to be successful here and not successful when applied to other contexts and markets. Regardless, the success is demonstrative of the future of work, and indeed the future of society in which I soon hope more of us will live. Where we are all aligned with each other instead of in opposition with each other. Where companies sit on the same side of the proverbial table as their customers and partners. In fact, I see it as a world where the tables do not have different sides, but instead are round with only one side, just as we gather around watering holes to drink up life and around the camp fire for warmth as peers, as colleagues and as human members of the same team.

With the advent of the BarCamp movement, and then the rise of social media as a mainstream phenomenon and now the rise of the collaborative/sharing economy, we’ve born witness to and helped shape the birthing of a new world order. As Mary Meeker and others have pointed out, this is the time to re-imagine everything. I do mean everything, including the nature of work, the structures of organizations and especially how we think about value creation. I hope that all organizations, large and small, new and old, for profit and non-profit are able to wake up and seize the opportunity presented by the emerging reality you are showing to be not only possible, but profitable as well.

It is in this way that WordPress is a prime example of what Michael Porter means when he talks about creating shared value, in the process capturing profits that are more then just numbers in a financial audit, but accrue to the benefit of the community. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out his TED talk and you will see how business is not innately evil as some might want you to believe, but that profits can actually be magic.

Please allow me a critical remark: if you want to defend ideals of free software, you shouldn’t attack the term “user”. Because the user’s existence and respect to the role of user is half the battle for free software.

You are wrong in assuming that this term comes from proprietary software. “User” is widely and respectfully used in free software and means the one who is running the program. And originally “user” doesn’t connotes addiction. It means competence, knowing the thing you are using and what are you using it for. Comparing computer users with junkies is exactly the rhetoric of the proprietary software market, who needs “people” and “customers” to sell their obscure stuff.

You may want to read my Turing Complete User essay for more pro-user arguments. http://contemporary-home-computing.org/turing-complete-user/ also available as a 20 min talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxK-Djf1s5Y

That’s more of a terminology difference between Open Source and Free Software that’s explained on the linked FSF page, he prefers people use the term Free Software because of the additional connotations it brings.

P.S. I have a doubt though. I thought Stallman was against open source and says free software is different, from what I’ve read. Did he change his views later?

I thought he still had an office there, thanks for the info. What do you think would be the most accurate way to put that sentence?

Or if it were possible to run a diff between the two!

RMS quit MIT around Thanksgiving 83 to start GNU.

I’m very happy to be a GNU developer using PHP and making my living from WordPress thirty years later.