What if someone buys WordPress

[Abhi]

It is open source, I know. But behind every successful product, there need to be a solid organisation. What if someone offers a very huge amount for WordPress, will the team which owns the trademark and related assets deny it ?

 

[phenomlab]

@Abhi WordPress is owned by Automattic - a $1bn turnover company. See below

>Matt Mullenweg built a company worth more than a billion dollars on software he started coding when he was a 19-year-old student at the University of Houston, but you’ll never see the WordPress name atop an office building.

>That’s because Mullenweg’s Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, has no physical headquarters. Its 850-plus employees are scattered in 69 countries around the globe in what’s known as a distributed business. Mullenweg, who graduated from Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, has become an evangelist for this way of working, and is developing a podcast and writing a book on the topic.

Source -https://www.houstonchronicle.com/bu...-s-virtual-company-Automattic-is-13708522.php

Given the success of this product (and let's not deny it, the product is a brand literally everyone has heard of, like Nike, Adidas, etc), it's unlikely it'll ever be sold in my view. The real revenue comes from the .com iteration of the software, whilst the .org self-hosted side is free. WordPress will simply never "disappear" either - it is by far one of the largest ecosystems on the web, and given the impressive array of plugins, themes, and the like - for example, WooCommerce, it is the defacto standard in most cases because of it's extensibility.

Given the estimated value of Automattic and it's 100% disparate employee ratio, I very much doubt it's founder will have any intention of selling it on. Perhaps in years to come, but for now, he's only 36, so there's still a lot of mileage in him yet.

 

[Abhi]

Even though I am a bit of experienced WordPress user, I had no idea about their background. Especially financial might.

> @phenomlab The real revenue comes from the .com iteration of the software,

I guessed that. It has many free features years ago which are now paid.

> @phenomlab WordPress will simply never "disappear" either

 

[Jason]

$1 billion turn over wow. Google's Blogspot stays so WordPress will surely stay as well without being bought.

 

[Abhi]

What if someone forks WordPress ? Will they succeed ?

 

[admin]

@Abhi Why not ? There is a good chance that they get enough money and fame.

> @Jason Google's Blogspot stays so WordPress will surely stay as well

WordPress can rely simply on donations if they choose to.

> @phenomlab it is by far one of the largest ecosystems on the web,

The real strength of WordPress

 

[Abhi]

I haven't heard of anyone forking WordPress yet. Could it be because of the license WordPress use ?

 

[phenomlab]

@Abhi It's been forked 8,500 times " -https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress

Just think - 8,500 different versions of WordPress - "FrankenBlogs"

 

[Abhi]

Could be for pull requests ?

 

[phenomlab]

@Abhi that's an excessive amount of pull requests....

 

[Abhi]

So they are really forks ? Possible some of those not so known CMS are WordPress forks actually. In the core WordPress and custom code over the top of it.

I am not sure why they never talk about having WordPress in the core. Another possibility is that most of the forks never took off.

 

[phenomlab]

@Abhi I think the forks went through the roof when they announced Gutenberg

 

[Abhi]

A lot of people don't like Gutenberg. When we think that way, forks might do well.

Why do you think forks never made much noise ?

 

[admin]

A USD 1 billion company will surely try to shoot down competitors. That is in every business. It is a case of survival. You take someone's code and use it against them, there is a good chance they will crush you on the floor.

 

[Abhi]

The best answer so far. If you grow too much, even giants try to buy you out or take you down.