On Forking WordPress

stainless steel fork with black background

It’s been floated with the recent outburst between Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, that the community should fork (aka move the OSS) WordPress to a new project, with out the drama (or so it’s thought).

I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’s not going to be a small feat. When WordPress was forked from B2/cafeblog back on 2004 (correct me if that year is wrong). The Web was smaller, and WordPress didn’t power 40%+ of the Websites on the Web.

I think we need to separate WordPress.com/Automattic/Matt Mullenweg from the WordPress.org/WordPress Foundation.

I think WordPress.com needs to be 301-redirected to .org and Automattic needs to find a new name for their paid-service.

Matt complains about people being confused by WP Engine’s usage of WP, which I might add is not trademarked.

Matt has caused the LARGEST confusion of anyone with Automattic’s usage of WordPress.com!!!!

So to get back to the point. I don’t think forking WordPress.org is the answer. I think governance is the answer. And a clear delineation between DOT COM and DOT ORG needs to be made.

Comments

2 responses to “On Forking WordPress”

    1. @seth@socl.bz @seth@sethgoldstein.me @alexstandiford Couldn't resist the fork graphic, could I?