Hacker News Reader

Comment by andix | Hacker News Reader

AFAIK there is just no other free and open source CMS with a similarly mature ecosystem, which could replace WordPress. So many websites, companies and agencies are built on WordPress, it would take a decade to move away.

The only possibility I can think of is a fork.

View on HN

Developers are the core of any system. Once they move on, it's game over. What Wordpress.org did sent a clear message to any developer who makes a living on WordPress or a plugin - we can take your plugin and revenue any time we want. No rational person will continue to invest their time in such an ecosystem, no matter its "maturity". It clearly is not mature enough.

I would keep an eye on PayloadCMS or Ghost. Those, among others, are the future, IMO.

There are many good CMSs, no doubt. But Wordpress is the de-facto standard, every theme has first class support for Wordpress. And every thing on the web has a Wordpress plugin.

It’s not rocket science to learn another CMS, but many people are deeply invested into Wordpress and it would take a lot of money and effort to switch.

Even if the popularity of Wordpress decreases now, Wordpress (or a compatible fork) are going to be relevant for at least another decade.

The Wordpress license GPL/Copyleft makes forks rather easy.

The community is just one fork away from a plug-compatible replacement.

Exactly. I don’t know if I’m missing something, but a fork is probably possible just by replacing the trademarked „Wordpress“ inside all translations, and a few minor code changes. Variable names/etc inside the code with „wp“ or „Wordpress“ probably don’t violate the trademark.

I would estimate a proper fork could be done by 3 developers within two weeks, but whoever is doing it, should get some backing by a company (probably also easy) and some legal consulting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com