[wp-hackers] RE: [wp-pro] Credit Links - David Clark

[Christopher J. Hradil]

David Clark wrote:
<snip>
> Sorry Matt -- the rulmes  have changed. As soon as you 
> brought moeney into the equation, and decded to selectively 
> pick out favorites for renumeration the altruistic promotion 
> of the product has gone out the window.

That's a pretty sad and selfish statement, OK, so matt (and I'm not
particularly stickup of for him, nor do I think he needs it), happens to
have startup up and be the end point as far as responsibility goes for
Wordpress, why should you or anyone else for that matter question his
activities outside the WP community. He's entitled to make a living, and is
in a position to do quite well, if you're jealous or envious of that fact,
then maybe you need to work a little harder. The fact remains, that WP is
still free (both .com and .org) for users to either sign up a blog, or
download, hack, etc, for themselves and for paying clients. There's nothing
wrong with this, but I think all matt was trying to say, is that, if you're
out there using WP for profit, why not promote the community a bit as well.
If that's a problem for you specifically, or anyone else for that matter,
then you're just looking for something for nothing, in this case it happens
to be a robust and powerful platform which you can easily generate tons of
client/consulting revenue with -- and you don't have to pay for it. If you
can't at least provide a credit to the folks who put in countless hours and
have committed themselves to the open source project, shame on you, it's got
nothing to do with matt personally, or what he does or doesn't do outside of
the "open source" end of things. And from a practical standpoint, is matt
supposed to foot the bill for servers, marketing, etc personally ? So at
some point with any popular project "money" always needs to be a part of the
equation. 


David Clark wrote: <snip>
> In fact, we all know that this wp-pro list is an utter joke 
> because any project of any merit will already have been 
> skimmed off by automattic.

Again, this is a pretty short-sighted and negative statement, whether true
or not, the wp-pro list can be promoted better as I've proposed in the past,
with something like an easy email link and a web fillout form which sends an
email to the list, in logical places within the wp.org site, so that folks
who would be less inclined technically to do the work themselves, would have
easy access to a somewhat "official" community of professional users. We as
a community need to focus on positive things and promotion of the platform
and the community, not this type of personal 'dig' nor should we be doing
anything that creates "negative karma" within the community. What's wrong
with matt or anyone else for that matter going out and doing the best they
can to startup commercial ventures in addition to their open source efforts
? 

Personally, I've operated a for-profit consulting/development company for
over 10years, plus done a number of other 'commercial' type things, and have
been involved (and continue to be) with commercial/proprietary/venture
backed hi-tech startups for a long time, what's wrong with participating in
various open source communities as well ? Two of our current projects
include the launch of two separate open source communities/sites, one
related specifically to promotion and development around the proprietary
(and patented) technologies of a startup, but only from the angle that it
relates to the general use and promotion of some of the w3c standards
involved, and the other is a bit more general. 

All of these kinds of activities are good for all of us, they're good for
the community, and they're perfectly acceptable. Kudos -- matt, automattic,
akismet, wordpress... The more 'buzz' created by all of us in all of the
things we do, which includes when we develop a really great and popular site
for a client, the more we all benefit from the 'legitimization' of the
project. If you're (and I'm not just picking on David here, I mean anyone)
just downloading WP and then making a bunch of money via selling
solutions/sites to clients without giving something back to the community
(either in the form of a donation, as a percentage of what you're making, or
via participating in and promoting the product and the community) - shame on
you again...


~~
Christopher J. Hradil
http://hradil.us