General Motors Embraces Open Source for New Community Site. “GM has introduced a new website called GMnext. The site utilizes WordPress and launching in spring a Wiki allowing General Motors to get better feedback on topics such as energy, design and technology from the community.”
I’m not really a big fan of the theme they chose to use. And gee, they are already a version behind. Interesting though that they are using WP-PostRatins and WP-Email plugins. I guess this is some more great news for mainstream WordPress use, but I think they could of done a better job with the design and look of the content.
/. that’s great, more people is choosing wordpress as blogging software.
A vindication of WordPress’ work on the hybid CMS-Blog idea. CMS alone can get pedantic. Pure bloggness may become insubstantial. The proposal of Matt Mullenweg & WP-Team to combine them is very sharp … and I’d say a major Transcorporate just stood up to issue an historic “Second!”.
I read Matt’s Slashdot reference. If you’re due for a refresher on sour grapes, have a scan. Moderate voices have to become a bit immoderate, to compete with the carping & dirt-kicking. Interesting.
I’m a good one to check out a site like GM’s http://www.GMnext.com … I’ve been shopping for a new pickup (and an ATV and snowmobile..), and have a creaky old system on one of the poorest dialups anywhere. Such websites strongly tend to crush my platform. GM’s new show is flashy, snazzy, has all the drooling-consumer goins’ on … but it actually runs on my depracated system rather nicely. … And after all, we didn’t really expect Plaintxt on GMnext, did we?
Though the home page is a tad wild, their Blog link is given pride-of-position, and it comes up smartly (on very modest resources), looking quite ‘WordPress’. Classy of them, to tip the hat like that. Perfectly useable on my almost-museum-piece machine. That’s cool, and probably not by accident.
Congratulations to Matt Mullenweg, the WordPress Team, and the CMS-Blog Strategy!
Ted Clayton
Another reason I love Chevies and GMC’s, XD. They smart 🙂
I like the design 🙂 It’s very customised imho!
WordPress – Taking over business, one database at a time.
Wow, yeah, Ted, there were a lot of sour grapes there on Slashdot. I guess that’s why I almost never moderate or meta-moderate anymore. I’m not quite dedicated enough to being angry, cynical and bitter anymore to comment on Slashdot. I just read it for the articles. 😉
I think it’s great that a major corporation is using WordPress, whatever the reason. And, I like their theme, too. Of course, you couldn’t pay me to use another blogging system anymore, so, maybe I’m biased.
Seems like WordPress is really picking up a lot of big names to use their system. Glad to see that!
I do, weirdly, feel a little nervous about this massive surge into the big time. I don’t now why … maybe a lot of good codes and places that hit the ‘big time’ end up getting a deal they can’t refuse and sell the code – which ends up going from ‘free open source’ to ‘pay to use’ … not that I have that fear for WordPress … yet … but it’s always something in the back of my mind.
The license of WordPress (GPL) ensures that that freedom can never be taken away from you.
Matt: So that means that if, say – Google, throws a few billion toward purchasing WordPress they can’t change the license? If they actually own it, it HAS to stay with the GPL already in place? Obviously I don’t know much about that stuff .. which is why I ask.
Good to know 🙂 Thanks for the insight. I love WordPress and I’m really starting to get into it (working on a WordPress MU site right now) and have been talkin to a few of my developer friends about it – and they’re getting hooked. So it would be ‘teh suck’ if something happened to the open source and freeness of WordPress.
Viva la WordPress!
I didn’t see “Powered by WordPress” anywhere on the GM Blog page. Did I miss it somewhere?
Correct, they couldn’t change the license. (And they couldn’t buy WordPress.org anyway, there’s nothing to sell.)
The Ron Paul presidential campaign is using WordPress MU.
I’m the lead developer for the blog.gmnext.com. When we looked to select the best blogging system out there we went through several both closed-source (cheap to fairly expensive) blogging tools to all the open source variety. We ended up choosing WordPress not because of the cost but simply because it was the best tool for blogging out on the market. The project is just the beginning, we’re in the process now of localizing the blog into a variety of languages. Well done on one of the best designed systems I’ve seen in a long time.