Month: September 2010

Happy Programmer’s Day!

Yes, you’ve heard that right – it’s Programmer’s Day today.  At least in Russia, this is an official and recognized holiday.  Not a public day off, though.  Programmer’s Day is celebrated on the 256th day of the year, which falls on September 13th, except for leap years, when it’s on September 12th.

Congratulations to all programmers all over the world and kudos for your hard and often boring work.  Keep it up and enjoy the day.  I wish you fewer bugs, faster compilers, and flexible libraries.

And while I don’t dare to call myself a programmer, I’ve wrote enough to code to join the celebrations today.  Beers, vodkas and tequilas are waiting for the evening!

P.S.: And if you are an outsider and have no idea how a typical programmer spends his day, here is a chart.

Scholar

– How’s school?

– Too early in the morning and too boring.

– Too early, eh?

– Yes, I want to sleep.  (classes start at 7:30am)

– Son, welcome to the adult life.  Everyone wants to sleep here.

– Really?

– Yes.  So, what was so boring about school?

– It’s not like kindergarten.  We have to sit, listen, and keep quiet.  We only have breaks to play.

– Well, that’s another thing about being adult.  You have to do much more boring stuff than before.

– Adult life sucks and it is confusing. (I am paraphrasing here)

– Yes, it does and yes, it is.

Maxim is now a first grader at Logos School of English Education.

WordPress trademark moves to WordPress Foundation

These are some serious news!  Matt Mullenweg announced that his company Attomatic is giving away its core brand name – WordPress – to WordPress Foundation.

Automattic has transferred the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to promoting and ensuring access to WordPress and related open source projects in perpetuity. This means that the most central piece of WordPress’s identity, its name, is now fully independent from any company.

This is huge!

This reminds me of those times when open source software started its way into the enterprise.  Most people weren’t taking it seriously.  A lot of people were laughing at it.  Yet, one by one, company by company, open source made progress.  These days, there are no doubts about the benefits of the open source software, both inside and outside of the enterprise.  It brings plenty of benefits to the table.  But yet there are companies that are built around closed source software which are doing fine.

Similarly to the above trademark news.  We had a few examples of a company giving the source and trademark to open source community and some sort of foundation.  But that was usually a desperate move, a panic attack.   Often, such a move would bring in new blood and save the application or the company.

This time, with WordPress, it’s not a desperate move.  It is a well thought through and calculated decision.  It is the right thing to do.

WordPress is what it is mostly due to the huge and dynamic community of its users and developers.  It’s them who make the most of it, and it’s them who push WordPress forward.  It makes the most sense that they, as a community, via the non-profit WordPress Foundation, own the WordPress trademark.