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Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder

By | November 10, 2011, 5:44pm PST

Summary: WordPress is one of the most popular CMS tools ever, but what elements of the open source world can be applied to your business model?

SAN FRANCISCO — Can relying on open source technology as the backbone for an entire company really be feasible? WordPress.com’s founder Matt Mullenweg certainly seems to think so.

“I believe morally and philosophically that not just software, but everything should be open source,” asserted Mullenweg, while speaking at the GigaOM RoadMap 2011 summit on Thursday evening.

It’s a bold statement, but it’s the ethos that Mullenweg admirably stuck to, pointing out that sites like Wikipedia replaced Encyclopedia Britannica, and how far Android has gone for mobile.

Although he later backtracked and admitted that Android is “not a great example from an open source point of view” because of things like patents, Mullenweg still noted that you can download the code and run it on almost anything.

See also: Airbnb CEO: More people value access over ownership now
Pandora CTO: Spotify is complimentary to Pandora
Square possibly reviving ‘artisan’ culture among small businesses

Describing himself as “an open source hippie,” Mullenweg explained that WordPress has been built up over the last eight and a half years of “doing right on the open source side.”

However, he acknowledged that there haven’t been many examples of big corporations with thousands of employees where the open source side is in concert with commercial side.

Hoping that it will be the case some day, Mullenweg cited that one of his big goals is to “democratize publishing,” and fundamentally, he wants to show through the WordPress community that this can be done right.

Right now, there are more than 65 million WordPress sites worldwide, and WordPress.com hosts about half of them. (Mullenweg added that the other half are spread out amongst cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, but also smaller hosts like GoDaddy, Bluehost and Dreamhost.)

“You can create a really fantastic business that changes the world, but still does the right thing along the way,” Mullenweg posited.

Mullenweg acknowledged that he gets inspirations from all areas — at least “selectively” — including from Apple and Google. But he argued that these two, “open source-wise, they’re the most kosher.”

Yet WordPress has had more interesting effects more than just publishing but the enterprise world too.

“One of the most interesting trends for me is that enterprise software has always sucked, but now people are complaining about it more,” Mullenweg said, explaining that so many employees are asking why does it take 10 seconds to publish here (presumably somewhere like WordPress), and 10 minutes elsewhere (probably with whatever outdated CMS system the company is still using).

Mullenweg theorized that the “infiltration of Apple” into the enterprise has had an effect somehow, continuing on to say that he is happy that employees are no longer acting satisfied with whatever the company’s CTO picks.

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Salesforce.com Inc., Cleantech, Dolphin Ltd., Wordpress, GigaOm, Mobile Browser, Energy Storage, Venture Capital, Sales Force Management, Investment, Finance, Financing Startups, Sales, Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

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Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

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Wrong!
Tim Acheson 11th Nov
The timing of this foolish "open" rhetoric from WordPress is comical.

WordPress is on the path to extinction, with the likes of Tumblr already approaching ten times more traffic.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tumblr_reels_in_big_traffic_now.php
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
AndyPagin 11th Nov
@Tim Acheson

Quoting from your link:

"Tumblr vs. Wordpress.com, in visits per month.

The two services offer different things, so this is somewhat of an apples and oranges comparison. Wordpress.com is a fully-fledged hosted blogging platform, while Tumblr is a light blogging and curation service. I myself use both products. However, both are blogging services and so it's worth comparing the statistics."

and

"What's the upshot of all this? Maybe just that Tumblr has scaled incredibly well and shows no signs of slowing down. Wordpress.com hasn't had the same exponential growth, but it's certainly been no slouch either. Both services are enormously popular and many people use them side by side"

So according to your corroborating evidence you're talking bull.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Psdie 11th Nov
@Tim Acheson - LOL at this comical attempt at logic. A social bookmarking site has more traffic than a fully fledged blogging + CMS platform .. therefore "OSS IS DEAD!!11!" plain
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
ScorpioBlue Updated - 13th Nov
@AndyPagin and @Psdie

+ 1 (thumbs up)

Not to mention based on that website, WordPress currently gets 100m more visits than Tumblr
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Matt Mullenweg - Nice but naive
doggStarr Updated - 11th Nov
Sorry, Matt but business doesn't work like that.
Many 'open source' vendors are adopting lock-in strategies because you need customer dependency to scale your business. You can't have customers calling the shots.
There are more important 'moral' issues to concern yourself with than the openness of code imho.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Natanael_L 11th Nov
@doggStarr: PHP, MySQL, Linux and Apache are all OSS. Those in combination are often called a LAMP stack. And it's not exactly hard to find hosts that let you just upload your PHP code as-is, and it's not exactly hard to just move the files to the next provider. Same for the database, you pretty much just have to fetch the database contents and reupload once configured. phpmyadmin is not an unusual tool to have access to.

So there ARE OSS service providers that don't lock you in.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Roque Mocan 11th Nov
What I don't like is people calling Open Source "morally superior" or something. Both have their places. I like Open Source but I don't like "hollier than thou" attitude...
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Natanael_L 11th Nov
@Roque Mocan: The idea is simply that it is Good to share information (or sometimes more specifically, tools), and since it's easy it should be done. You don't have to agree, but it's hard to argue against the benefits of Wordpress, Linux, the TCP/IP protocol, HTML, etc...
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
kc63092@... Updated - 11th Nov
@Natanael_L
well, let us troll on the idea that physics and the other sciences are as closed system as what most of the bloggers want the software industry should be. and imagine what could have happened if unix was not made available to the public, particularly the students of those days. well, to protect your investment/MONEY is very very important (that is why M$ is closely guarding its IP), but to bottle up creativity of the majority is more damaging to the economy. we must remember that the chinese and indians have more engineers and scientists, and it will not be long before they got their act together and gather the experiences needed to take the lead. my point is, OSS made the knowledge available to more people who are otherwise in the dark and not interested what is behind the seemingly magical software that is making their hardwares do magical things. if the young people are given an early chance to play with software development, they will be the force to reckon in the future, just like the unix geeks that powered the software boom of the 90s and are still in the forefront of software development to date. so lambasting the open source is something that we have to think twice or even seven times before even worth considering... so, i hope that your point is made more clear by my post.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Queuecumber 11th Nov
I have to agree with this completely. The world would be a better place if more things were open source (note that he explicitly said not just software). Open source in the software realm takes a project that is the vision of one person of company and makes it into what the users want. However, I would say it isn't feasible now, as many companies require commercial support, especially in the case of certain defense contractors where this is required by law.

@doggStarr -- please name an open source vendor who is locking people in, this is something ive never heard about, and quite frankly makes no sense under any of the common public licenses.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
step69 11th Nov
Open source is great for the end user but not so much for the company/programmer. Why would/should a company spend $ for software development & salary for programmers only to have another company just piggyback off of their hard work? Why would/should freelance programmers do the same thing? People on these forums hate on MS, but they are a business that has to make a profit. Microsoft is a software company,for them as well many other corporations, open source just wouldn't make sense.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
benched42 11th Nov
@step69

Yeah, Matt's in the poor house because his software and company have been completely open source. He's only worth $40 million. Open source didn't make any sense at all for him, did it?
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
CJArnola Updated - 11th Nov
@benched42

There is not just one business model. The wordpress model is not built on software sales while others are (MS).

It's a horrible idea to lock everyone into a business model of making their money off of advertising revenue and/or hosting and support services, etc.

I'm not against open source but I see nothing wrong with either model. Freedom of choice.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Ademeion 12th Nov
@ CJArnola:

"There is not just one business model."

Who has said or implied that there is just one business model? It would make no sense to say so. The article is about and we are actually talking about different business models here...

"The wordpress model is not built on software sales while others are (MS)."

Again, this is not actually news...

"It's a horrible idea to lock everyone into a business model of making their money off of advertising revenue and/or hosting and support services, etc. "

How is anyone (or would be) "locked into" making open source software? Customer/general demand or competition is not called "lock-in". The article is about benefits of the open source model, not about locking anyone into it. How would you lock some one into open source anyway? There's a reason for the word "open" in the name. ("Lock-in" is something makers of proprietary software are often accused of; did you wan't to confuse things by accusing open source about the same thing? A hint: most of the readers here weren't born yesterday.)

"I'm not against open source but I see nothing wrong with either model. Freedom of choice. "

Freedom of choise is something that open source (free software) aims to preserve. Companies making opensource think your data is your own; the same can not often be said about the makers of proprietary software. Companies making proprietary softare have been repeatedly trying to destroy open source model by unethical and even unlawful actions.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Xenia Onatopp 13th Nov
@benched42 Given how many users Wordpress has, why isn't Matt worth $400 million? Would it really be evil if Wordpress cost $10 a year for hosting, or $50 for the software? If you're worried about digital exclusion, or something, why would cheap not be cheap enough? Why free, exactly?
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Xenia Onatopp 13th Nov
@Ademeion "Freedom of choise is something that open source (free software) aims to preserve. "

No, freedom of choice is something that open source aims to destroy. If I'm a well-funded organization, and I want to destroy the choice in a given software market, then releasing an open source product will do it. Before OpenOffice, there were many minor players in the desktop office software market besides Microsoft. Now these minor players have all dropped out, because their cheap software cannot compete with free. Meanwhile, Microsoft still rules the desktop. A similar thing can be said of MySQL and Oracle. Ditto, Eclipse and Visual Studio. Only big capital can produce major software projects and sell them from $0.00. The little guy is killed off completely.
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Get a clue
ScorpioBlue 13th Nov
No, freedom of choice is something that open source aims to destroy. If I'm a well-funded organization, and I want to destroy the choice in a given software market, then releasing an open source product will do it.

Get a clue! Who's financially and legally in a better position to kill off the other side? Microsoft? Or open source?

Ask yourself that before you start whining...
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Xenia Onatopp 14th Nov
@ScorpioBlue

Get a clue yourself. Microsoft is in the stronger position, both financially and legally. Not only do they have assets of over $100 billion and revenues in the order of $70 billion, they also have a huge amount of IP. If a rival were to develop an open source product that competed directly with Microsoft's major products, they would almost certainly end up having to pay royalties to Microsoft. In fact, that's what's happening with Android right now.

Anyway, we can look to recent history to see how open source works when it tries to compete against commercial software. Sun Microsystems launched a strategy based on open source that was supposed to kill Microsoft, or at least dent it badly. Who got killed? Sun Microsystems. Meanwhile, Microsoft's reign on the desktop continues.

Sun's strategy was stupid. It killed off many small players, but did no real harm to Microsoft at all. Apart from that, the Microsoft-hatred itself was very stupid -- a childish case of sour grapes.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
ScorpioBlue Updated - 14th Nov
Get a clue yourself. Microsoft is in the stronger position, both financially and legally.

Well NO DOH. You just proved my point.

So, next step: Why do you feel so threatened by open source?
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Xenia Onatopp Updated - 15th Nov
@ScorpioBlue



"Well NO DOH. You just proved my point." -- I proved my point, not yours.

The big players in the software industry are not significantly harmed by open source. They can exploit it, one way or another; e.g., Oracle uses Apache servers, and controls MySQL and Java, and Microsoft earns royalties from Android. Hardware companies also profit from open source. Intel and IBM can use open source to sell their hardware, knowing that nobody can enter competition with them unless they have billions of dollars of capital behind them. The consumer doesn't give a damn about open source. When they download an app for $1.99, do you think they want to see the source code? Hell, no! They would spit at you if you tried to give them the source code. Nor is there anyone who owns a computer who is too poor to pay a few dollars for software. The ONLY group that is substantially affected by open source is the jobbing programmer, whether running a small or medium sized business or working for a salary. Their income is lower than it should be because of open source.



According to the economically naive idealism of open source fanatics, computer programmers are supposed to behave as if they lived in a giant monastery or Maoist commune, even though in fact they live in a capitalist society. I suppose the open source fanatics believe that by some magic this behaviour will undermine capitalism. No, it won't. All it means, fundamentally, is that the money that should have been paid to programmers for the work they did will be paid to someone else instead.



A further side effect of open source is that it tends towards stagnation. After driving out all the small players in a particular market segment, an open source product (whether it originated as open source, as Apache did, or as a commercial product, as OpenOffice and Eclipse did) becomes like a monopoly, and it's rate of futher improvement becomes glacially slow, but there are no new entrants to compete, because those new entrants would have to compete against "free", which is just not feasible.



"So, next step: Why do you feel so threatened by open source? " -- ALL programmers should feel threatened by open source. Skilled programmers should feel especially threatened, since it means that individuals with almost zero programming skill can undercut them in the market by merely chopping and pasting code. As I said at the start, programmers voting for open source is like American turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.
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@Xenia Onatopp
ScorpioBlue 16th Nov
I hear a lot of lame excuses but the bottom line is you are threatened by "1%" of the marketshare that's out there.

The biggest, most greatest "1%" in the whole wide western world.

A tiny widdle "1%" that will keep you up nights and all.

A "1%" that one would supposed to think is insignificant but really isn't.

Thanks for playing my game, 'o threatened one... wink
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Xenia Onatopp 13th Nov
@step69 Exactly. Software developers voting for open source is like American turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. As a developer, even if you find a way to monetize your project, you will make a 10th or even a 100th of what you would have from a closed-source project. Meanwhile, someone else (e.g., a hardware vendor or services company) will make the other 90 to 99%. Why the hell would any sane software developer choose that?

All software developers should oppose open source. Whether they are in business in their own right, or working for a salary, it reduces their earning power.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
ScorpioBlue 13th Nov
All software developers should oppose open source. Whether they are in business in their own right, or working for a salary, it reduces their earning power.

It seems to me software developers should be able to choose for themselves what direction to go in. They don't need @Xenia Onatopp to do it for them.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Fri13 13th Nov
@step69 Because they get benefit of being first by paying developers and even smaller development and research costs as everyone else is paying as well.

The Open Source (And "Free Software") does not mean that everyone need to have access to the source code but only those who have binary.

I would bet that 99% of customers would not care at all that source code comes with the software or device. They would support you more and even support other small companies out there.

Like why to buy a new TV, when you got blueprints from manufacturer and manufacturer sells components, so you can pay repair store few blocks away to repair that TV under 100 bucks. And while components came from your company and you maintained customer who felt good by your product, your company wins.

In the end, no one wins anything when things are closed source or that devices are such that it is cheaper to buy a new one than repair the existing, even if it is small thing to fix.
Customer loose money, manufacturer loose more time and even a customer and whole world loose time and money when devices need to be recycled or even destroyed and all the parts need to come somewhere.

World has got now a small reminder that for-profit-companies ain't good to anyone. Competition ain't good to anyone, not even the one who wants to compete.
In the end, world will change and everyone who ain't ready to change their opinion so equal possibility and equal rights are what really matters, not profit or competition, those closed minded people are going to have hard time.

You can not fool everyone all the time. You can not rip people off all the time.

So what if someone does not make 1 million dollar a year, but just 90 000? So what if someone can not buy a 24 carat phone with diamonds but need to use just golden painted?
What if we could actually make almost everyones lifes much better just by stopping being ******** after short time profit like cheetah chasing antilope?

Making company products as open source does not mean that every other person is going to take things off from you. That other manufacturers just rips everything out. If you have good brand and you are good to your customers, they dont abandon you. And everything what other manufacturers do, you can copy them as well. It goes two way, not just one way.

And those who love capitalism, why they ain't ready for what they talk about? Ready about competition? Ready to be in market what they wanted where companies will rise and fall and all the time better product replace the older one and everyone has change to get better product and a change to manufacture a better services or product than what others are doing.

No, those who swear to capitalism do not want that. They only support capitalism so they can rip everyone else off and keep it that way. It is nice to talk when they are top of the food chain and in dominant market position. And then block by all ways necessary every new company so their better product or service does not come to markets.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Psdie 11th Nov
Good call from Mullenweg. Customers are increasingly demanding the ability to customise and gain control over their software, rather than being at the whim of the supplier's priority list. Suppliers that focus on customising existing OSS solutions can offer better value for money and faster time to market, whilst offering best in class solutions - they just have to focus on quality customer service and expertise with key OSS systems.

I'm speaking as someone with skin in the software IP game - I run a web development firm and we have a number of big money proprietary software products that have sold for ??70k+. We switched emphasis to basing our solutions on liberally licensed OSS packages several years ago and haven't looked back.

Customers love the idea that the software can be fully adapted to their needs, yet doesn't have to be built from scratch. We focus on billing for customisation work and lifecycle management of that software.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
step69 Updated - 11th Nov
benched42-
How much would Apple be worth if Steve Jobs made iOS open source years ago when he came back to Apple? How about microsoft if windows 95 was open source when released?
Jobs was & Gates is worth $billions not the $40 million you mention about matt. Plus obviously MS & Apple are sustainable, can you really say the same about wordpress?
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
Natanael_L 11th Nov
@step69: Wordpress ain't exactly going away tomorrow. Microsoft could easily have kept making money on other things then the OS. They could keep the Office software closed and give away the OS. They're actually not making that much anyway on OEM copies of Windows. They could have offered support or just about anything else for that money instead. Fast update servers, extra services, etc.

Apple could still have sold their iPhones as The Best Implementation. Most people buy iPhones for 'simplicity', I hear. Don't you think the OS maker knows how to implement it the best? See the Nexus Android phones for an example.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
step69 Updated - 12th Nov
@Natanael_L
If Microsoft gave away their OS, they would have to layoff most of their employees. They get a lot of $ from business licenses, to open source the os would kill that stream of revenue. That is just one of many examples that would basically be financial suicide for MS to make their OS open source.
MS makes plenty of $ from OEMs that would just disappear based on your idea of adding options as a replacement that a lot of people just wouldn't pay for. Why would MS or any other company volunteer to just eliminate guaranteed profits on the hopes that people will pay for optional add-ons? The answer is they wouldn't because it wouldn't make sense.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
CobraA1 11th Nov
"I believe morally and philosophically that not just software, but everything should be open source"

Morally?
Philisophically?

Morals apply to humans, and perhaps some extent to animals. But software is streching it. I'm not sure I follow it as a philosophy, either. I view opening the source as a matter of practicality, not philosophy.
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What??
MichaelWells 11th Nov
To say that morally and philosophically, that everything should be opens source is ludicrous. I agree with their being the freedom to have two competing business models; but to say that one is morally superior or the other should be eliminated is wrong. Freedom does not equal taking the fruits of one's labor for your own device; whether it be software, music or anything else.
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Why limit "open source" to just software?
adornoe@... 11th Nov
Why not "open technology" and "open design" and "open education" and "open anything"?

Then, as an example, somebody could take the technology that went into making a Mac or an iPad, and duplicate them to so that, everybody could benefit from the fruits of the labor from the originators.

Likewise, everybody could take the design of a washing machine and or a refrigerator or a TV, and, look for equivalent parts, and create their own appliances and TVs. But, even the parts would have to be "open source" or "open technology", so that, anybody could create their own parts or get them cheap from somebody who could produce those parts.

What a different world this would be.

wink

BTW, no IP and no patents and no patent office...

"And the world, would be a better place.
And the world, would be a better place.
For you, and me..."

Or, perhaps not!
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
asifhasan026@... 11th Nov
I think the question which is coming up frequently: "Is open source morally better?".
Well open source is ofcourse a great idea. But comparing it with closed solutions,
closed ones are not free to be used. So, it creates atleast some amount of blockade for development.

On the other hand, companies need to make money too.
So, Everything should be open source?
Its a very basic question i think...but it seems like a paradox.

So, to look deeper into this issue, current structure is such that open source projects and people involved with them may have to accept less monetary return.
But, most probable is they are not that much hungry for huge stack of money and happy to contribute.

And, in short, we could say if everything were open source(Not owned by any specific person or group) we could see real development and with much more speed we can now imagine.

But thats just like day dreaming! Is it??

It has to start from some point...and everything thats good takes time and time is to struggle...

So, if keeping an open free mind is what we really want then open source idea is ofcourse good..but current state of it tells us we still have a long long way to go.
But in any way, we are to be united and open source has a great way of contributing to that.

Sorry, i am not a writer so was not able to express myself fully..Thanks happy
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With open source, there would be a lot less innovation,
adornoe@... 11th Nov
and a lot less products and a lot less wealth and a lot less improvement in the lives of all people's in the world.

What would be the incentive to be creative?

Yeah, there will always be those who will be creative, no matter what the incentives or lack of incentives. But, the majority of people work for a living, and there are a huge number of people motivated by wealth, and if there isn't the wealth motive, then you might as well have stayed in the middle ages. That's were we would all be without the profit and wealth motive.
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
asifhasan026@... 11th Nov
@adornoe@...
If we try to explain what it means by wealth:
Wealth can be:
1. Money : Papers printed in a special pattern such that there is only one authority capable of printing it. Ofcourse their are law enforcers so that there is only one medium for transaction of needs.
2. Real items : Food, Clothes...whatever is needed

Now, majority of the world is poor very poor. Understand that this happens only because of problems in the method of distribution of what we produce or get for free from the nature. Now its almost nothing we get for free!

Im not a communist but it really hurts me when ever some one is saying that i have right to save this million dollars(= tons of foods, clothes....etc) for my future.

I think people has lots of better things to get inspiration from.
This is wrong thing that true development is how improved our methods are. Infact it is paradoxical. How would you decide which method is better.

But we shall never fight saying things good and bad....we can only go forward. So accept everything as they were work of our own.

And we need to rethink of the terms and concepts then, accept truth in our heart.

I dont want to argue...just to share my opinion:

To really become a Human - Its all about love..when one holds love for everything around he would get the ultimate peace. Its never to be found by passing days thinking about how would i grow next thousands dollars.

Most people do works because they have to do it for living. Most of the jobs are selected. So its not always inspiration brother.

If it were inspiration all over...just think what would it have been.

Thanks happy
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
CobraA1 12th Nov
@adornoe@...

"What would be the incentive to be creative?"

Ask anybody who writes software as a hobby. Creativity does not come from money - it comes from a deep natural curiosity and a deep desire to learn.

That being said - even a naturally creative person needs to pay the bills.

@asifhasan026@...

"Now, majority of the world is poor very poor."

The majority of the world is corrupt, very corrupt. Without a firm foundation for an economy, it fails. The majority of the world is not poor because of some failing of economic philosophy - it is poor because there is no enforcement of any economics whatsoever.

"Im not a communist but it really hurts me when ever some one is saying that i have right to save this million dollars(= tons of foods, clothes....etc) for my future."

Many of these people use their money to employ other people to create products that help even more people. We call this a "business." Who is to say that those who have millions always waste those millions for selfish reasons?

And indeed, it may be your future that is affected by these businesses, for they make the products we use.

If we wish to keep the economy going, we need to encourage those with millions to spend those millions, rather than hoarding those millions. For if millions of dollars are hoarded, they are not helping our economy in any meaningful way.

Encouraging the rich to hoard is not an effective policy.
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asifhasan026: Is your real name "Naive"?
adornoe@... 12th Nov
Idealism is not what makes the world go round, although it's one of the prerequisites for creating a better world.

Creativity is how innovation occurs. But, creativity and innovation without the motivation, is a very slow process, and not very efficient at creating wealth and economic progress. There have been many people in the past who were very creative and inventive, like Galileo and Da Vinci and Newton, but, many of them were scholars and thinkers, and not the type to take their theories and innovations and inventions to the next level where the whole world would benefit from those ideas.

What gets societies and the whole world involved is the turning of those ideas into products. And, without the rewards that come from taking those innovations to the product level, most ideas and innovations might remain just curiosity items and theories and scholarly work.

The fact is that, the profit motive is what gets most people moving to take the innovations from the R&D levels, to the hands of the people.

But, the wealth motive is a greater creator of innovation, because, it takes a lot of wealth to hire people with the ideas and the innovations. Drug companies, as an example, hire a lot of people for research to create new drugs, and those new drugs are only possible because those companies are doing it to enrich their owners, and in a lot of cases, the owners are investors or stockholders, who are motivated by the prospects of gaining wealth or turning a profit. The fact is that, a lot more innovation and discoveries and R&D is possible, because of the profit and wealth motive. More progress has been made in medicine and in technology in the last 50 years, than was done in the entire prior history of the world. None of that would've been possible if there hadn't been people willing to risk their money with the expectation of profits. Wealth is a great motivator, and, even if the wealthy are not the innovators, their wealth is what can make more innovation possible. That's how Apple and Microsoft and Google and IBM and General Motors and GE and a lot of other manufacturers have been able to take one innovation and turn them into many more after they hire more great minds to come up with a lot more great ideas that can be "productized".

Like I said before, without the possibility of wealth, progress would be very slow, and instead of the computers and tvs and internet and appliances and automobiles and airplanes and all of the other technology we currently enjoy, we might not be that much further than in the middle ages type of "technology".

Great minds can be creative anywhere, but, wealth is what produces a lot more innovations and products that define the current "modern world".
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"open source" and "Apple" ...
AdnanPirota 12th Nov
For me it is funny to read any article that has words "open source" and "Apple" in the same article, it almost approaches to fairy tale ...
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
tillman19 13th Nov
my co-worker's step-mother makes $78 hourly on the internet. She has been out of a job for 8 months but last month her pay was $9020 just working on the internet for a few hours. Go to this site http://ddp.net/vv3
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RE: Everything should be open source, says WordPress founder
rueiowt86 13th Nov
The moment one puts ideology ahead of technology, becomes a cr0ck of 5h1t....
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Open source has nothing to do with morality
WilErz 13th Nov
Intellectual property rights, like physical property rights, are based on economic efficiency concerns, not morality. Collective ownership is not objectively more or less moral than private ownership, but it does provide an obvious baseline for comparing efficiency.

Theory predicts that unless monopolies (temporary or permanent) over land use are granted by the state to land owners, land will tend to be destroyed through overuse -- the 'tragedy of the commons'. In practice, this prediction tends to be borne out, with one of the starkest examples being the former USSR, where the level of environmental degradation was staggering by Western standards.

With intellectual property, the theoretical basis for private property is the incentive to create. Without monopolies (temporary or permanent), the incentive to create intellectual property is reduced, leading to less IP creation and a poorer society. Again, this prediction tends to be borne out in practice -- economies with strong IP protection tend to dominate IP creation.

Even though it fails in the general case, common ownership of physical and intellectual property can survive within specific groups, provided the members are sufficiently motivated. Often, this motivation comes from religious or quasi-religious principles. However, it cannot be generalised unless the beliefs and dedication of the adherents are shared by the broader society, which usually isn't the case -- and certainly isn't the case with software or other IP.

A crucial aspect of private property regimes, both physical and intellectual, is that they allow collectivisation by dedicated subgroups. In contrast, forced collectivisation doesn't allow those who lack a sufficient religious or ideological motivation to form subgroups where private ownership is allowed. This is why statements suggesting 'everything' should be collectivised are misguided and even dangerous. Hippies (open source or otherwise) are welcome to share within their communes, but they should refrain from trying to impose collectivisation on broader populations who don't share their views.
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amakrekwe78-24378932591277548183341860849389 22nd Nov
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