WordPress co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little sat down with Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal, to discuss their experiences and beliefs regarding open source software, specifically WordPress and Drupal. They reflect on their introduction to open source, the power of collaboration and community, the significance of the GPL license, and the evolution and innovation facilitated by open source. They emphasize the importance of open source in creating a more free and connected world, and express their dedication to contributing to open source in the future.
I think open source is the most powerful idea of our generation.
WordPress Co-Founder Matt Mullenweg
In the second part of the conversation the participants discuss the dominance of WordPress as an open-source platform and its ability to compete against well-funded commercial competitors. Matt mentions that open-source projects like WordPress have an advantage in the long run because they involve more users and improve over time. He believes that proprietary software is an evolutionary dead end and that open source, with its focus on user experience, is the future.
They also discuss the accessibility and ease of use of WordPress, which allowed new developers to contribute and resulted in improvements in functionality. The conversation touches on the potential impact of AI on software development, with the mention of AI-generated code and the potential for AI to change the developer experience. They highlight the trend towards low code or no code solutions and discuss the complementary nature of open source and AI.
Matt Mullenweg mentions the demonstration of GPT-4, an AI model, being able to generate code based on a drawn website, and expresses awe and excitement about the potential of AI. He sees open source and AI as the two mega trends of the next 20 years and believes that even proprietary competitors may eventually run on open-source software.
Credits
- Picture of Stockport/UK where WordPress co-founder Mike Little went to school by Jason Jeandron
- This article was written using human and artificial 🤖 intelligence
