Mark Jaquith wrote an excellent technical analysis of why WordPress themes inherit the GPL. This is why even if Thesis hadn’t copy and pasted large swathes of code from WordPress (and GPL plugins) its PHP would still need to be under the GPL. (Which apparently is Marxist. You learn something new everyday!)
10 Most Important
The 10 most important people in WordPress. Nice list, but you can’t include just ten, that’s why with every release announcement we list out every single person who has contributed to core code, which was 218 fine folks for 3.0.
Syn-thesis 1 and Chris Pearson
I ended up in an impromptu conversation with Chris Pearson and Andrew Warner earlier today regarding the issue of Thesis violating WordPress’ license. For entertainment purposes you can read some choice quotes on Hacker News (here’s another) but the whole thing is worth a listen even though I did not articulate the issues as well I could have. Ultimately the legal, community, and pure business arguments fell on deaf ears, so no minds were changed but yours might be after listening to it. Unfortunately it ends with Mr Pearson basically saying “sue me.” See also: Jane’s post.
Squarespace 38
Squarespace has raised $38.5 million dollars to compete with WordPress and Six Apart. I used to chat with Anthony on AIM forever ago, and they’ve come after our VIP program before when they made a screencast showing how they could recreate Scoble’s blog in 15 minutes using their design tool. That’s quite a chunk of change, so it will be interesting to see what they apply it to.
10 Million
Earlier today this blog passed 10 million pageviews since the WP.com Stats plugin started tracking it in May 2007. I would like to take this opportunity to express a special thanks to each of my readers, old and new, especially those that take their time to leave comments. Over the years this blog has begotten numerous features such as clean permalinks, galleries, and asides that have driven core WP development, and I hope that it can continue to serve as a testbed and playground for what WordPress can do.
VP Logo / Ads
I wrote a bit today on the VaultPress blog about its new logo and ad campaign.
Football to Themes
Drew Strojny tells his story of his journey from professional football player to small business owner to full-time WordPress theme developer, all in three years. (And GPL, natch.)
At the Pier
Hanging around the pier post-WordCamp.
Post by Voice
The voice feature is now live on WordPress.com, using Twilio and implemented by Nick. Check it out: Phone Your Blog.
Dessa
While walking home at the jazz festival earlier we stumbled across a hip-hop show by a female artist named Dessa who has a new CD out called A Badly Broken Code. It’s not often you see hip-hop at a jazz festival, and it was an excellent show. Also, her blog is WordPress-powered!
Job / Career / Calling
Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis:
Most people approach their work in one of three ways: as a job, a career, or a calling.
- If you see your work as a job, you do it only for the money, you look at the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably pursue hobbies, which satisfy your effectance needs more thoroughly than does your work.
- If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of advancement, promotion, and prestige.
- If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling you are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and you neither look forward to “quitting time” nor feel the desire to shout, “Thank God it’s Friday!” You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay, if you suddenly became very wealthy.
Hat tip: Derek Sivers books page.
Bezos Interview
JP Mangalindan interviews Jeff Bezos for Fortune. (WP.com-hosted article.)
Not Just for Blogs
WordPress is NOT Just for Blogs says Bronson Quick.
New Summer Design
As has become the tradition around here, today I’m launching a new design to celebrate the new year. (See also 2006, 2008, 2009.)
As you can tell, it is very inspired by the pop art of Roy Lichtenstein, an idea that came to me while visiting the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. last year, and again at SFMOMA in November. The idea was beautifully executed by designer Nicolò Volpato (who has now done 3 of the past 4 designs for Ma.tt) and coded up by Otto.
The header is a lot smaller, the graphics should load much faster since they’re simpler, and there have also been a few tweaks throughout the site to make it feel a bit speedier. Instead of image hacks like I’ve used in my past few designs I’m now using Typekit for pretty much everything, which feels nice.
Please take a look around, stroll through some of the recent photo albums, and generally make yourself at home. Let me know what you think in the comments. On to the next one…
Plinky
Overcome Writer’s Block With Plinky Prompts — Automattic has bought Plinky and is promoting it from WordPress.com. See also: Thing Labs (makers of Plinky and Brizzly), TechCrunch, The Next Web.
Million in a Week
WordPress 3.0, released last Thursday, has already passed one million downloads. 🙂
Montreal Quake
I never expected I would leave San Francisco and experience a quake in Montreal. It was pretty slight here, but I definitely noticed something.
Web Services as Governments
Brad Burnham did a cool post on Web Services as Governments which I mostly agree with. In my talks I often refer to the GPL as software’s Bill of Rights. If you think of web services as governments, the need for a Bill of Rights fits right in.
Wrong Number Flirt
So this morning I started got a SMS from a number I didn’t recognize and the conversation that ensued was interesting:
Linux Try #12
Spent a hour or two tonight trying to get Ubuntu running on my laptop, unfortunately I ran into all the problems described here. The blank-screen experience was a little overly minimalist even for me. Tomorrow I’ll try going full-screen with VirtualBox, like some people in that thread had luck with, as a baby step to a full Linux switch.