Sunday, January 15th, 2012, 1:03 pm
Who Created WordPress?
Filed under: The answer may surprise you
ordPress is a leading (probably “the” leading) blogging platform and it is also used extensively as a CMS, even in my business. I run about 10 WordPress sites and I take pleasure in the fact that it is GPL-licensed, community-supported, and managed by very cool and Free software-friendly people.
But who created WordPress?
Crediting just Automattic or Matt for WordPress would be unfair. GPL encourages the laying of one’s work upon another and WordPress actually comes from this piece of software, known to many as b2. Several years ago I personally met the person who liaised with Matt to create WordPress, which helped the succession of the mostly abandoned/forzen b2 (at that time). Matt is currently the only one who receives credit for WordPress, just like Jimmy Wales gets too much credit for Wikipedia (he was merely a co-founder).
In short, WordPress is the fruit of labour of many developers, not just extensions producers who brought appeal to the platform/framework. But originally, WordPress was merely a succession of b2. The nature of Free software is, credit is preserved to a degree, so we can always go back and check who did what. One might say that Michel created WordPress, not Matt.
