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.

ClassicPress

• A WordPress fork active since 2018
   
• WordPress 4.9, sans Gutenberg
   
• Business-focused, community-led

CalmPress

• A WordPress fork active since 2018
   
• WordPress 4.9, sans Gutenberg
   
• Focus on stability

Questions?