Hey, don’t worry! We’re just kidding! You’re reading Habari’s April Fools joke.
Update: ForkPress made 20,070,401 downloads already! I can’t believe it!
It started with great promise, great promises, and at an opportune time. Everyone and their mother were starting to get disgruntled with WordPress – it had its share of scandals, its codebase contained a lot of baggage from ye olde times, some of Matt‘s decisions didn’t go over so well with people, and some didn’t like the whole dot-com stuff going on.
Habari promised everything – a complete rewrite, using today’s technology, under a truly free license, and with a meritocratic development process. And it had a number of big names behind it.
It was a nice idea while it lasted.
It is now obvious to me that both the meritocratic process as well as truly free licenses absolutely and utterly fail to produce open, free software.
You might think this to be a strange thing to say, considering Habari finally released the Developer Review version today. Well, see for yourselves:
If I appear to be angry, it’s because I am! Scott (skippy) and Owen – both cofounders of Habari – have left the very project they founded in the dust, choosing to pursue commercial interests instead. The best part is that the codebase for their fork is probably Habari, and our choice of license allowed – encouraged – them to just take the code! Considering the timing of this decision, and the polish that went into their new projects already, it seems obvious to me that this move has been planned since quite some time — taking the hard work of volunteers, and going dot-com. And the worst part? They probably won’t hire me either, just like Automattic didn’t! In short: WTF BBQ.
I must say I feel happy about Habari’s Development Review release, but at the same time, I feel utterly betrayed. On the bright side, it is a statement about Habari‘s quality, but still…
Skippy, Owen… good luck with your new ventures — ForkPress and bbqPress.
Hire me?
Update: Chris J. Davis also talks about the topic.
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