Fork Happens

a brief history of WordPress

Arūnas Liuiza

WordPress Core Contributor, WordPress Kaunas Meetup co-organizer, WordCamp (Lithuania, Riga, Stockholm, Jyväskylä, Oslo, Norrköping) speaker and one of the editors of the Lithuanian WordPress translation team.

 

Free & premium WordPress plugin developer

 

Software Engineer at

Full-Stack PHP Engineer
jobs.jobvite.com/kayak/job/ozc66fwH

For Developers

deployer.seravo.com - a service that syncs WordPress plugins from GitHub to WordPress.org automatically.
 

TryoutWP.com - a service to spin up live temporary demo sites for WordPress plugins and themes.

Licenses,
licenses everywhere

MIT, TL;DR version

A short, permissive software license. Basically, you can do whatever you want as long as you include the original copyright and license notice in any copy of the software/source.  There are many variations of this license in use.

Apache 2, TL;DR version

You can do what you like with the software, as long as you include the required notices. This permissive license contains a patent license from the contributors of the code.

GPL, TL;DR version

You may copy, distribute and modify the software as long as you track changes/dates in source files. Any modifications to or software including (via compiler) GPL-licensed code must also be made available under the GPL along with build & install instructions.

What the
f...ork?

Forking code

Taking a copy of source code from one software package and starting independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software

Fork Happens

b2/cafelog

WordPress

b2++

The year was 2003

b2evolution

0.7 - May 27, 2003

1.2 - May, 2004

  • Plugins
     
  • Moveable Type changes licence

 

1.5 - February, 2005

  • Static Pages
     
  • Comment moderation
     
  • Themes
    • Kubrik

2.0 - December, 2005

  • New Admin panel
    • DHTML
       
  • Akismet
  • WP-DB-Backup
     
  • functions.php

2006 - Automattic

.org vs .com

WordPress.org

  • The Open Source project
  • Dowladable, self-hosetd
  • Plugin repository
  • Theme repository
  • Support forums
  • Documentation
  • ....

WordPress.com

  • Hosted service
  • Free layer + paid plans
  • Akismet
  • Jetpack
  • Calypso
  • ...

2008

  • Shortcodes
     
  • Plugin Installer
     
  • One-click updates
     
  • Admin panel UI
     
  • Child themes

3.0 - June 17, 2010

  • Custom post types
  • Custom taxonomies
     
  • Menu management
     
  • WordPress MU merge
  • One-click updates
     
  • Twenty Ten theme

2011 - 2013

  • 2011
    • Post Formats
    • Admin Bar
  • 2012
    • Theme Customizer
    • Theme Previews
    • New Media Manager
  • 2013
    • Most popular CMS
       
    • 3.7 - automatic updates
       
    • 3.8 - new admin interface

2014 - 2016

  • 2014
    • 3.9 - Post Editor updates
    • non-English downloads surpassed English
  • 2015
    • Localization
    • Emojis !!!
  • 2016
    • "Shiny" updates
    • Custom CSS
    • HTTPS
       
    • 4.7 - REST API

2017 - 2018

  • 2017
    • 4.8 - 4.9
    • New Widgets
    • Gutenberg the plugin
  • 2018
    • 5.0 - Gutenberg in Core

Forks,
forks everywhere

b2evolution

  • A sister fork of b2/cafelog
     
  • Still alive and kicking at b2evolution.net
     
  • Focused to provide a more stable, feature rich Core, less reliant on plugins.

Lyceum

  • A WordPress fork active in 2005-2010

  • A different approach of MultiSite
    • normalised database scheme

  • Closed down once WordPress MU was merged into Core.
  • A WordPress fork active since 2018
     
  • WordPress 4.9, sans Gutenberg
     
  • Business-focused, community-led
  • A WordPress fork active since 2018
     
  • WordPress 4.9, sans Gutenberg
     
  • Focus on stability

Questions?