Imagine if Wix invested in opensource.
Imagine if Wix gained on WordPress.
Imagine if Wix conquered our beloved CMS.
Imagine if Wix focused on one area in WordPress.
Data liberation.
I don't think the closed source CMS will supplant tens of thousands
of WordPress professionals.
One-click installing WordPress for their clients anytime soon, even with their
aggressive marketing tactics, with a whole section devoted to their open source
initiatives, documented@wix.engineering, including a behind the scenes, look
at how they scale their platform for hundreds of thousands of users.
It's obvious they know the importance of connecting with developers.
So why not call the bluff?
Matt Mullenweg just mentioned in his summer update at WordCamp Europe,
that the data liberation initiative isn't moving as fast as he'd hoped.
He wants to unlock customer website, content and other data proprietary.
CMS is like Wix hold hostage from their users.
If they decide to migrate away what an amazing opportunity for
Wix and others to take part in for the greater good of WordPress open
source and all users of the web.
I agree with one of the Kevin Geary's points.
I don't believe there's a master plan coming from the sidelines at Wix, they
are a product and profit first company.
Their core product is an open source.
Automatic on the other hand, started with air quotes.
With an open source product and is now trying to build the profit
first part of their business.
Or have that in my last post, what would we do with the keys to the kingdom?
Open source winning doesn't mean that WordPress wins at every single front.
It shouldn't, it can't really we've lost the plot.
If we think that our goal is to build a defense against these other
CMS platforms, instead of devising a timeline where WordPress must win at
all costs, we should be advocating and demonstrating the WordPress way.
To these commercial entities.
Look, I don't think it's an easy task, but if anyone from Wix is listening,
spending a few hundred thousand in engineering time could create a plugin
that syncs data to and from a WordPress installed, it's probably money well spent
much more than sponsoring a YouTuber.
And the end of the day users win, which is the ultimate goal.
And the optimist in me hopes that the more proprietary brands see the value in
this type of portability data liberation.
The more, they might be enticed to go deeper investing in
other parts of open source.
Heck.
Imagine if you could install the gravity forms, plugin on your WordPress site and
a WIC site, what a world that would be.
But I'm not foolish.
I know these are epic challenges and largely not part of the
mainstream software's agenda or automatics for that matter.
I also know the idea of wanting other platforms to look more
attractive for developers means that WordPress could certainly look less
appealing through the same lens.
There's a model here that we've halfway on earth.
It's worked for 21 years instead of the goal to have
WordPress installed everywhere.
Maybe it's the impression of our community that should be spread first.
Don't laugh.
I can hear you.
Do we need to be more than 50% of the web.
Can Wix and others have their share so long as they become
good stewards of open source.
My fear isn't that the other platforms will conquer WordPress,
but that open source WordPress in collaboration with automatic can't
move fast enough to find its footing.
Loose terrain, not just built on the rough edges of UI and UX decisions,
but the lack of deep bonds threaded throughout the community, the stuff
that gets challenged every day.
More transparency from leadership, automatic, truly investing in partnerships
with us and community members, treating everyone with respect and integrity.
Across the board.
Finally a problem.
AI can't solve.
WordPress thriving because of humans.
In the battle for a dominant CMS, it's hard to pick a winner
or loser because the real fight.
Should be for more choice.
Everywhere.
So, as I spoke about at State of the Word, I'll reintroduce Data Deliberation.
This is the idea that one of the best things we could do as an open
source community is unlock all the proprietary platforms, all the
places where people have their data locked in to systems which might not
allow export or easy composability or transferability of their data.
Um, so we, we termed this data liberation and uh, if you scan
that QR code or go to wordpress.
org slash data dash liberation, you will see we have.
The start of what, uh, hopefully will be something that creates a ton
more freedom on the web and a ton more portability between platforms,
including in and out of WordPress.
WordPress could be maybe a middle ground between something else.
Um, however, this has had very, very little progress.
So if you go to that page, click on some of the links, you'll
see mostly empty GitHub repos.
So I just wanted to point this out.
As an amazing place, if you're interested in contributing to WordPress, uh, to adopt
something and have total ownership of it.
So if you wanted to, sort of, each of these projects is fairly self contained.
So if, uh, you wanted a chance to actually lead something within the
WordPress project, you could be in charge of the, say, Wix to WordPress
converter, or something like that.
Um, this, I think, is also going to be really important for us, as the
more and more marketing dollars, uh, hundreds of millions of dollars are
spent in marketing for proprietary platforms, the proprietary platforms.
have gotten tons of investment in the past few years, things like
Shopify, Squarespace, et cetera, and they are coming as sort of the
macroeconomic conditions have changed.
They've started to really target WordPress agencies, WordPress
users, WordPress sites, quite a bit.
And so they're coming and trying to snipe away our community.
So we have to keep an eye out for that and the problem as well is
when people go that way it's almost impossible to go back the other way.
It's like, uh, I don't know if you had this advertisement here,
but the Roche Motel, the Roches check in, they don't check out.
That's a lot of these proprietary CMSs.
They'll let you check in your data, but you can never check it out.
So, as part of our mission to democratize the web and increase freedom, I think
it's really, really important that we create portability, even when the
platforms themselves try not to allow it.