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Comment by kijin | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't care less about whether WordPress is a mobile-first platform or how easy it should be to wrap a WordPress site in an app. Most of that is presentation layer problem, which can and should be handled by individual themes and plugins. WordPress themes are incredibly powerful; they can do that and much more. The only part of the presentation layer that WordPress needs to concern itself with is the admin interface.

The "open web" might no longer be a cash cow worth billions, but a significant number of people still love to tinker with it and resist the trend of app-ifying everything. Most of them don't care whether they are worth billions, they care about being open and tweakable. If you don't, then you're simply not their target user.

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> The only part of the presentation layer that WordPress needs to concern itself with is the admin interface.

If only this were the case. WP's underlying processes and database structure are so unbelievably stunted and entirely coupled to the core WP application, that to do something as simple as pull rendered posts from the database generally involves performing a series of SQL gymnastics just to retrieve the relevant data. Not to mention all of the convoluted WP functions that are needed to render the final content snippet.

There are pros and cons to WordPress' database structure. While it may take "a series of SQL gymnastics just to retrieve the relevant data" it's database structure is incredibly resilient to the changing requirements of different users. A "better" database structure would almost certainly be too fragile to meet the needs of as many users as WordPress does.

So then you're agreeing that Automattic isn't a unicorn, and you also hinting that they should be a non-profit. And if that's the case and if that's what they want to do (wikipedia is that) then you're right. But I don't get the impression that Automattic views itself as a non-profit, but maybe they should.

Contrary to what some people in the startup scene would like to believe, there are many business models in between "unicorn" and "non-profit". There's nothing wrong with being a regular hornless horse as long as you're making enough money to live a comfortable middle-class life.

Yes but the article clearly refers to them as a unicorn.

Just because you disagree with the article and I disagree with you doesn't mean that I agree with the article on that specific point.

(I think you're right about WordPress being a primarily Web 2.0 platform. My disagreement with you is that I don't think there's anything wrong with being a Web 2.0 platform.)

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