Building Community, Building Software

John Eckman • @jeckman • #wcme14

B U I L D I N G S O F T WA R E & B U I L D I N G C O M M U N I T Y: T H E P O W E R O F W O R D P R E S S

W O R D C A M P M A I N E 2 0 1 4

A B O U T M E

• 1998: PhD in American Literature and Culture

• 1999-Present: Design and Build of Digital Experiences for Clients, at Agencies: Developer, User Experience Designer, Project Manager, Strategist, Director

• Currently CEO at 10up

• (Why yes, we are hiring)

– A R C H I M E D E S

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

– S I R T I M B E R N E R S - L E E

“I have always imagined the information space as something to which everyone

has immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse but to create.”

John Eckman • @jeckman • #wcme14

T H E F U LC R U M - C O M M U N I T Y

– J E R E M I A H O W YA N G

“Communities are bodies of people loosely joined together by a common interest that exchange information using web tools.”

“There’s really only one rule for community as far as I’m concerned . . . in order to call some gathering of people a ‘community’, it is a requirement that if you’re a member of the community, and one day you stop showing up, people will

come looking for you . . .”

– A D A M F I E L D S

M A K E W O R D P R E S S

Whether you’re a budding developer, a pixel-perfect designer, or just like helping out, we’re always looking for people to help make WordPress even better.

If you want to get involved in WordPress, this is the place to be. We’ve got blogs for each contributor group, general news, and upcoming events.

– J O H N N Y A P P L E S E E D

“Type a quote here.”

John Eckman • @jeckman • #wcme14

T H E L E V E R - C O D E

W O R D P R E S S R E L E A S E S

WordPress powers ~19% of the web.

Running the spectrum from individual hobby blogs to major commercial media outlets

John Eckman • @jeckman • #wcme14

T H E F O U R F R E E D O M S

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

F R E E A S I N W H AT ?

Free / Open Source Software is:

A. Free as in Beer

B. Free as in Speech (or Free as in Freedom)

C. Free as in Puppies

D. All of the above

The “free as in puppies” meme captures accurately that open source software still requires “care and feeding” – but so do proprietary platforms!

“Type a quote here.”

John Eckman • @jeckman • #wcme14

P O S T- L I C E N S E W O R L D ?

John Eckman • @jeckman • #wcme14

T H E O P P O R T U N I T Y F O R W O R D P R E S S I S T H AT I T I S B O T H A C O M M U N I T Y A N D A C O D E B A S E

http://teleogistic.net/2014/08/free-software-free-labor-and-the-freelancer-wordcamp-nyc-2014-keynote/

“Tux, the Linux Penguin, is beginning to nibble away at the

grim view of humanity that

breathed life into Thomas Hobbes’s

Leviathan.” – Y O C H A I B E N K L E R

John Eckman • @jeckman • #wcme14