h0bbel.p0ggel.org

Techcrunch.com is running a story called Automattic Spurns $200 Million Acquisition Offer where it's revealed that Automattic has turned down a large acquisition offer from a yet unknown source. I made a rather long winded comment on it, but decided that this warranted a post of its own here on my site, so here it is in its whole glory:

As interesting as this might be, the speculation is regarding Automattic and Wordpress.com not the Wordpress codebase. There is, or at least should be, a difference there.

Claiming this as “A great confirmation to the open source business model.” as Tim does above doesn’t really hold water though, as wordpress.com isn’t open source. The service is based on open source software, but Wordpress.com isn’t open source in itself. Sure, some of the work being done by Automattic trickles back to the Wordpress code base but thats being done on a case-by-case basis.

Everyone could potentially set up a service like Wordpress.com, based on any given open source platform, and make a bundle on it. While I applaud entrepreneurs who are able pull it off like this, this doesn’t have much to do with open source as much as it has to do with timing and providing a service people want.

In many ways, Wordpress.com isn’t much more open source than Facebook is, the only real difference is that the core service on Wordpress.com is based on a open source platform.

In my view this even further highlights the problem with differentiating Wordpress.com/Automattic (the business side) and Wordpress.org (The open source project).

Why leave Wordpress behind?

I've received quite a few emails and questions on IRC regarding why I decided to leave Wordpress behind and migrate to Habari.

The reasons I'm about to cite are not to be regarded as absolute truths, they are purely my personal observations and should be treated as such.

First, a little history lesson. Wordpress came to life in 2003, when Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little created a fork of b2/cafelog.


Personally I started using Wordpress on October 26th 2004, then running the 1.2 version.

Migrating from Wordpress to Habari wasn't a decision based on any real issues with the Wordpress software itself, but rather as a personal reaction to what I feel is a flawed development process and a general feel that the project itself is heading in a direction I don't want to be a part of.

Note that I was never a card-carrying member of the Wordpress developer group, nor any substancial contributor to the project at all. My only involvement with Wordpress was hanging around in the #wordpress IRC channel and generally using the software. I also made a few cries for plugin developments, which seemed to spur at least some activity with regards to integration with Gallery 2.

Well, there are a number of reasons why I felt that Wordpress shouldn't be my tool of choice anymore;

• Lack of distinction/separation between .org and .com
  Now, I don't have a problem with people making money off open-source, thats not my problem with Automattic at all. In fact, I applaud Matt and his team for being bold enough and savvy enough to pull this off to the extent that they have done. After all, Wordpress.com provides a great service for a lot of people and they do a good job at it.
  My problem is that there doesn't seem to be a clear distinction between Wordpress.org (The Open Source Project) and wordpress.com (The Automattic business model) and to me it seems like the current Wordpress development process is geared mostly towards the hosted service.
  For me, Wordpress has evolved pretty much in spite the development process. By that I mean that community developers and theme makes has been a huge, if not monumental, part of pushing Wordpress to where it is today.
• Data gathering
  I don't feel comfortable using software that gathers all your comments, server variables and send it to a central server for processing. I've posted more details about that in an earlier, pre-Habari migration, post. One particlular thing to note is that the default Akismet Wordpress plugin sends the entire PHP $_server array back to the Akismet servers. $_server includes a lot of information, some more benign that others, but sending 'PHP_AUTH_USER' and 'PHP_AUTH_PW' can't be good. After all, if you use HTTP authentication for your site, your username and password is sent, in clear text, over the wire to the Akismet servers.
  Even other Wordpress developers question why some of the data is being transmitted at all.
  That, combined with the recent brulah with the new 2.3 update beacon and the fact that pingomatic is also run by Matt Mullenweg makes their data harvesting potential huge. Usually I'm not really paranoid, but I do try to maintain a healthy level of paranoia at all times.

And, Matt Mullenwegs posting to wp-hackers pretty much sum up my own take on this:

If you don't trust wordpress.org, I suggest you do one of the following:
1. Use different software.
2. Fork WordPress.
3. Install one of the aforementioned plugins.

I would have added wordpress.com to the not trusting part, but thats just me.

So, I took Matts advice and jumped ship. I decided to do so before that posting to wp-hackers, but it's very reaffirming to know that I have his "blessing" to do so.

Why did I choose Habari, and not Drupal or other more mature products?

Simple, really. It's a matter of personal preference. Drupal is to complex for my needs, and I don't really have any experience with other platforms out there, like Textpattern, Movable Type and Expression Engine. So, regardless of what system I chose to power my site, it would be a learning experience and probably a bumpy road.

In reality, the decision to leave Wordpress was taken well over a year ago, but when Chris J. Davis spilled the beans about Habari that did get the ball running somewhat. It did take me some months to get everything sorted and my new theme "finished", but that was mainly due to my own time restraints rather than any shortcomings in the Habari software itself.


Habari is developed by a group of people I trust, creating a new platform from scratch without having to maintain any backward compatibility with older software, and it's based on PHP5 and PDO which is a step in the right direction for any PHP application. Habari follows the meritocracy model advocated by the Apache Software Foundation.

Wrap Up

So, there it is. I've migrated, and I've explained why. I could have gone on and on about the shortcomings of the Wordpress development process and provided more examples of events that I think should have been handled differently, but I didn't really want this to become a "lets bash Wordpress post", but rather a somewhat level headed explanation as to why I decided to go another route.

Wordpress is still a great product that enables it's users an easy way to publish lots of great content and in many cases I would still recommend it to people. In fact, I still administer several Wordpress based sites, but it does no longer power my personal site. And thats just it, in my case choosing a platform is a matter of personal preference and that no longer involves Wordpress.

Habaristas: Do the Habalution

Whoa, what happened?

Well, for one thing the site is now powered by Habari and not Wordpress. So long WP, and thanks for all the fish. Wordpress has been running great on this site since October 2004 but its time for me to move on.

There are many reasons why I decided to leave Wordpress behind, and I might very well post something outlining my specific issues at a later date.

For now though, I just want to focus on Habari and on the new theme I managed to put together. The theme isn't 100% finished yet, but instead of procrastinating more I figured I just had to jump in and get my feet wet.

The biggest change is probably that I've decided to go for a more "magazine style" theme, and not your usual timeline based blog layout (Personally I've really not considered this site to be a blog, but thats just a question of definitions I guess). I have a couple of other features yet to implement and I'm sure there are lots of small errors I will spend time on tweaking as the site evolves from here. One of the features I expect to have ready very soon is an alternative front page view for those of the readers who prefer to view the site chronologically, like it used to be. Also, you could always use the site feed which now is Atom 1.0 based and always will be chronological.

Lastly I want to thank the Habari community for the support and continued development of the Habari Platform. As a community they have been very welcome to any input given and the development process seems to be one of enjoyment and a common interest in creating something new rather than any ulterior motives.

If you have any comments or questions regarding the site, theme or why I migrated over, please let me know by using the comment form below.

A while back, in June, I thought I would be migrating pretty quickly but it still hasn't happened. My "excuse" is the same as the last time, my own inability to finish the new theme in a way I'm happy with. I've decided to start over fresh, as the more I've worked on the theme the more I've grown tired of it even before it's seen the light of day.

I have done another theme for Habari though, one that I won't be using on this site, that I'm very happy with. I even did a Gallery 2 theme to go with it.

While it still needs a few finishing touches, this might very well end up being the first real theme I end up releasing as a download. Well, the first one besides the Opticalpork theme for Gallery 2, which basically was just a Lightbox modification of the Siriux theme.

Anyway, back to my Wordpress to Habari migration plans. I still plan on migrating, and the Habari project is moving forward at a very nice pace.

The development process is very easy going, and open discussions are encouraged. One of the very nice things about the Habari community is anyone can suggest a change, and you do get taken seriosuly if you propose something. You might not get your suggestion implemented, but I have yet to see that someone who suggests something don't get a reply and a well reasoned reply.

So, when will I do the actual migration? Well, that depends on how much time it will take for me to get my theme done and that depends on how much time I have available to actually work on it. I really hope it will be much quicker to start fresh this time around, as I'm getting somewhat familiar with the Habari structure and start to see which possibilities it really has.

For once, there was an interesting read on the Wordpress dashboard (one that doesn't involve Lorelle needing a parking space in SF, or some random site that has switched from something to Wordpress).

Matt Mullenweg, of Wordpress fame, has posted a reaction to the PHP 4 end of life announcement. Starting his posting with some general harassment of the php.net site (missing permalinks, rss1.0 feeds) he goes on to explain how PHP 4 still dominates the hosting field, and that PHP 5 adoptation has been slow.

So far so good, it's all correct. But, why has PHP 5 adoptation been slow? Has it been due to faults in PHP 5 simply because people haven't dared developing for PHP 5 only simply since the vast majority of PHP installs are still on the 4.x revisions? The people behind PHP wanted to push it to the next level by releasing the 5.x series, but to keep compatibility with most apps the 4.x series was continued until now. So, does that mean that PHP 5 is a flawed and failing product as Matt claims? NO, it means that the PHP team has had to keep focus on two separate branches of development while trying to bring PHP to the next level in the 5.x series.

Matt then goes on slamming the GoPHP5.org site as the "world’s ugliest advocacy site", and that it's being run by "some misguided app makers". I'm sorry Matt, but the last little bit of respect I had for you as a developer has now finally worn off. Not that you should care, but this really is one of the things that makes my urge to jump off the Wordpress bandwagon even stronger than before.

Now the PHP core team seems to have decided that the boost their failing product needs is to kill off their successful one instead of asking the hard questions: What was it that made PHP 4 so successful?

Ok, what made PHP 4 successful? Was it PHP 4 or the apps that runs on it? I wonder... The logic here is pretty darn simple, you can make the worlds best programming language, but if no-one uses it is it truly the best? It might be, in theory, but as long as it's not used by anyone no-one cares. So, yes, PHP 4 has been a great success mainly because people has made some great apps based on it. Wordpress would definitely be one of the most successful ones at that. Thats also why I'm very disappointed to see that an application that has greatly helped spur interest in PHP based solutions has developers that seems to be uninterested in helping the framework that enabled their success forward.

Can anyone say Chicken. Egg. Omelet?

It's not like PHP 5 requires you do to OOP, if you don't want to. Wordpress itself runs fine on PHP 5, so I don't really see how the EOL announcement for PHP 4.x is such a big blow?

For those of us who read the wordpress-hackers mailing list it comes as no surprise that Matt is not a big fan of PHP 5, and he is of course entitled to his opinion however misguided it might be at any give time.

Finally, I want to direct a big fat thank-you to "Johan Delinger", who's comment on Matts posting sounds like a voice of reason for once.

Added:

This trac ticket explains the Wordpress stance on the PHP5 issue. Basically they are saying that they are not interested in helping the PHP 5 adoption rate, but rather wants to wait until the rest of the world has migrated. I would have expected that the people behind Wordpress had a better self image than that, but I guess I'm misguided.