Tag Archives: Automattic

You Do Not Scale

Posted on by
1

“Most developers are itching to be a part of their favorite projects. You do not scale, but by giving developers tools and getting out of their way, your project can. So please remember that when issues are reported on your open source project, you should not fix them. I hope this serves you well and would love to hear about your experiences and help any way I can.”
By Wesley Beary in “Less is More published Nov 27, 2011. Hat tip Jake Dahn.

A leader will always lead by being prepared to do the work themselves, but I’m really feeling what @geemus wrote.

It is in the ethos of the WordPress community, and the company, my former employer, Matt Mullenweg formed to support it. Here is my favorite part of the Automattic Creed:

“I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything.”

I’m excited by the help I’m receiving from my new colleagues at Piston Cloud and the OpenStack community.

Pistoneers are kindred spirits of Automatticians. Before joining the Piston Cloud team I noted automation being a regular theme on “Our Team“.

Free and Open Source from the Roots Up

Posted on by
5

“Free and open source from the roots up. “Open source” can be much more than a development methodology. For me, it also constitutes a world view that upends institutionalized notions of competitive advantage that saw their apex in the twentieth century.”

Excerpt from Paul Kim‘s “Why I Joined Automattic” published September 9, 2009.

Freedom by Abnel Gonzalez, Hosted on Flickr, CC by

Freedom by Abnel Gonzalez, CC by, Flickr Hosted

I’ve come to think of the people who build open source and free culture into their businesses as not only having the creativity and resolve to put their values at the core of their businesses, but also the foresight and humility to know that the future is always built on the past, that the future is outside of their control, but possibly not their contribution.

This is one of the main reasons I so enjoy working with Matt Mullenweg, Toni Schneider, the rest of the Automattic crew, and the WordPress.com VIPs and WordPress businesses I get to so regularly interact with. I’m ecstatic that Paul has joined us!

Interested in Freeing Yourself from the TypePad Trap?

Posted on by
Reply

My co-worker Noel Jackson, tired of hearing me whine about the Six Apart TypePad Trap, has created a WordPress importer mashing together the MT formatted export file (missing permalinks) and the broken TypePad AtomPub (missing comments and trackbacks). We are currently testing this on WordPress.com before polishing the code up and sharing it. We are looking for some TypePad customers to help us test it — it’s completely harmless, read-only.

If you are interested, let me know and we can set up a private blog on WordPress.com for you to import into. Bonus is that you will have a backup of your blog ready to go live if anything ever befalls TypePad.

Continue reading →

Movable Type Pro, Setting Social Networking Free, Vaporware, WordPress, BuddyPress

Posted on by
7

Six Apart VP Anil’s response today on the official Six Apart blog to my Movable Type Pro Introduction video parody doesn’t surprise me, but where is the link love?

Continue reading →

WordPress for iPhone + Source Code Available!

Posted on by
3

Earlier this week my Automattic colleagues and Effigent released WordPress for iPhone and iPod Touch. Now, the source is also available and Trac is set up for reporting bugs and participating in development!

I’ve tried it on my iPod Touch. They’ve done a great job! And are urgently working on fixing the worse bugs.

It’s already in the top 50 free apps.

Continue reading →

Not Invited to the Open Web

Posted on by
8

Some friends have asked if WordPress and Automattic will be participating in the Open Web Foundation. It does look like a brilliant initiative, but as far as I know we weren’t invited. That’s really unfortunate, because I don’t think there could have been a greater gesture of co-operation in the blogging industry than David Recordon of Six Apart inviting us to be founding members.

Don’t worry, it won’t stop us doing everything we can to support the open web.

Read the Prologue, Looking to Twitter to Continue the Dialogue

Posted on by
9

Everyday it seems I get an email saying that someone is following me on Twitter. I’ve resisted using any of Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, and Facebook status tools… much.

Now, I’m taking another look. Why? Because of the WordPress Prologue Theme.

Continue reading →

I’m Biased, But Try Movable Type and Drupal

Posted on by
10

Anil Dash has written an article titled “A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide” on the official movabletype.com blog. It is full of misdirection, and, thankfully, overall it hasn’t been well received. What excites me is it has sparked some excellent discussions, and it’s a great launching point for more conversations.

I whole heartily recommend you try the open source flavor of Movable Type. It is clearly a great product created by fantastic people.

If you are thinking you only have time to try one other blogging software than WordPress, my time and money is on Drupal. People bringing Drupal into the conversation as an alternative has been one of my favorite parts of the discussions. Built on the same PHP stack that powers WordPress and much of the rest of the high performance web. Drupal is the full featured CMS with the heart and minds of the open source communities (I hang out with). Its blogging experience isn’t as polished out of the box as WP or MT, but it’s getting there — and we’re working hard at staying focused and one step ahead of them ;-)

If you have time please do share what you love about these other personal publishing environment, particularly if it relates to something that annoys you about WordPress. This way WordPress participants can respond by letting our code do the talking.

If you are currently using WordPress then your highest priority will likely be to plan to take a look at WordPress 2.5 as a release candidate will be coming very soon — watch the WordPress Development blog for the news.

Continue reading →