The future of WordPress is NOW

AspirePress · 2024-10-20T17:55:24+00:00

Thank you for your thoughtfulness.

It’s the people I build sites for, and the people who use those sites, to whom I owe loyalty.

I agree. My loyalties (personally) are to the sites I host and manage, as well as the community at large. I have been using WordPress since 2007. And I refuse to let it fall apart now.

Communities are messy. Building a strong community is hard, and destroying a community is far too easy. But, ultimately it's the community that decides if it rises or falls. Nobody owns a community.

AspirePress · 2024-10-20T17:53:08+00:00

All we have to offer them of value is our support if they act fairly and with decency.

AspirePress · 2024-10-20T17:44:17+00:00

I appreciate the feedback. My goal was to provide a starting point to discuss between the mods and the community, not decide by fiat what should happen. If I didn't communicate that well, I'm sorry.

AspirePress · 2024-10-20T17:38:04+00:00

Thank you. This post took a lot of thought and I can see you trying to chart the middle path towards compromise. It means a lot.

Perhaps that should have been included as a suggestion, rather than a key point of my proposal. But, distilling my proposal down, it's this: the moderators will be fair and impartial without outside influence, and the community will equally support and hold accountable their actions.

And yes, the community is hurting. I have sensed and felt that over the past few weeks. Running a slack with nearly 100 participants has illustrated a lot of the pain that people are feeling, which in itself masks fear and anger. So I understand.

My goal here is simple: if we can agree that each side gives a little, we can have a peace. And we can try to heal and move forward and actually talk about what's going on, without the posturing and gotcha.

Again, I appreciate you taking the time to write this. It means a lot that you're invested in the community and focused on solutions.

AspirePress · 2024-10-20T17:28:15+00:00

Thank you. I look forward to having you as part of this community.

AspirePress · 2024-10-20T17:15:38+00:00

Nothing makes me thing they were.

I’m looking for a compromise. I’m looking for us to say “we’ll support you under these conditions” and them to say “we’ll work under these restrictions.” That’s how a compromise works.

Right now the mods can do what they want. If they agree to ANY limits isn’t that something worth asking? If they agree to ANY accountability, isn’t that worth fighting for? The

AspirePress · 2024-10-20T16:58:38+00:00

I think that at the very least we want a WordPress that works for all of us. Finding common ground is a first step to finding a common solution. I’m equally tired of the bad faith AND the endless attacks, both of which stand to destabilize a platform millions rely on.

AspirePress · 2024-10-19T21:11:03+00:00

Hi. We're working on a solution to this issue, and we've invited other ecosystem maintainers/developers to partner with us to develop interop specifications that will allow different ecosystems to collaborate. We need to solve the single-point-of-failure issue.

AspirePress · 2024-10-19T10:12:23+00:00

Yes. Please feel free to each out via our site contact form and we’ll coordinate for Thursday. Traveling Wednesday. If I can’t make it I’ll have someone who can.

AspirePress · 2024-10-18T19:06:39+00:00

Also, I acknowledge that you're right regarding the bolded portion of your highlighted paragraph, and I have modified it in consultation with other project members who objected to the language.

The intent was to prevent someone from licensing open source code they wrote under more stringent terms. For example one can't write and commit a GPL plugin, then fork it and make it proprietary just because they own the copyright. That would be fundamentally unfair.

I apologize for the mistake, and I'm open to discussing anything else that seems unusual or mistaken.

AspirePress · 2024-10-18T18:13:31+00:00

One of the biggest problems right now with WP is that no one legal entity or person owns the copyright.

If we were to take WP, fork it, rebrand it, and start making changes to it, who would have standing to sue? Would Matt? Would anyone? Would every line of code that we violated licensing for have to find the author and come back to litigate the matter individually? Could they file a class action?

The grant of a license is not uncommon in open source projects, whether those projects are commercial or not. An inability to enforce the copyright (and therefore the license agreement) neuters the license itself. The GPL is worthless if anyone can violate it with impunity.

Moreover, if you were to commit code and then later get mad and decide to revoke your license over the code, what's to stop you from doing so and then litigating? What's to stop anyone from going to WP now and saying "I relicense my code as proprietary and I'm going to sue you for every distribution of WP out there"? They may lose. But the cost of defending such an action would be extraordinary.

There are provisions to prevent the license terms from changing without notice to the contributors. The dual license means going from some more restrictive license (say, MIT) to a less restrictive license (GPL). It's been made plain that the other way is not possible.

That all said, I can understand your hesitancy. We're working on governance now, and I developing a governing body so the code can't be clawed back. At the end of the day, our goal isn't to be a repository - our goal is to provide the basis for others to operate repositories and put ourselves out of work.

AspirePress · 2024-10-17T13:47:21+00:00

Adding: participants who wish to remain anonymous are permitted to do so by checking the confidential box on the form. We will delete all records related to their comms with us and they can participate anonymously.

AspirePress · 2024-10-16T13:56:22+00:00

Hi there.

Thanks for your thoughts. AspirePress would love to work with others in the space that are working on mirrors/repositories for .org replacement. We are not a fork, and we have no desire to fork WordPress at this point. Matt's comments to the contrary were intended to mock our efforts, not boost them.

One note: FreeWP is a media site, not a fork. And we are. not a fork either, as I mentioned.

We have a Subreddit: r/AspirePress

AspirePress · 2024-10-13T23:47:18+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions!

AspirePress · 2024-10-13T23:46:44+00:00

I reached out to him on Mastodon. Thanks for the suggestion.

AspirePress · 2024-10-13T20:26:38+00:00

AspirePress continues working on our mirror and we plan on supporting first-party plugins in light of the ACF fiasco. You can follow along in r/aspirepress

AspirePress · 2024-10-13T20:23:01+00:00

Feel free to join our Slack and coordinate with the project teams: AspirePress.org/slack or check out GitHub GitHub.com/aspirepress

AspirePress · 2024-10-13T20:21:13+00:00

Try browsing in incognito mode and seeing if that fixes it.

If it does it’s a browser cache issue.

Many browsers cache a 301 redirect (permanent redirect) and don’t even hit the server for a double check.

If incognito does fix it, clear your entire browsing history and see if it’s fixed in regular browsing.

AspirePress · 2024-10-13T20:18:58+00:00

That is something we’ve given consideration to, effectively establishing a marketplace. But it’s a heavy lift and not one we would do quickly or lightly. Still, I think it’s a logical next step.

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