Common questions
- Can you describe and compare the concepts of open source software, free software and proprietary software?
- Can you define the purpose of the GPL license ?
- Explain the benefits of open source software for WordPress users.
- Explain the power of WordPress
Transcript
Hi, I’m Hari Shanker. I’m a community representative on the WordPress community team.
I’m here today to attend an Open Source Introduction workshop. In this lesson, we will learn a variety of topics related to open source, including what the term open source means in relation to software. What the GPL software license offers, why WordPress is open source software, and how important it is to WordPress users as well as WordPress contributors. And finally, for those of you who are not very familiar with WordPress, I will also show you different ways WordPress can be used. So let’s start. I hope you are ready for an exciting session on what open source and what WordPress means. Let’s dive in. Let’s start by figuring out the definition of open source software. Put simply, open-source software is software whose source code is visible, modifiable, and extensible for anyone. Source code refers to computer instructions written in a programming language by software developers to manipulate the way software works. Therefore, every software in the world needs source code. Today, most proprietary software is controversial in the form of executable files, where the source code has been compiled to be encrypted for computer use. What does that mean? This means that as a user using this proprietary software, you cannot find out its source code. Well, if the software had a source code available without compilation and without encryption, and that would be it, and that it would be possible for you as a user to study and modify the program. That’s what open source software offers to read and modify the code behind the software. In summary, proprietary software is encrypted. It’s built with a programming language, but the code is encrypted, it’s compiled. Therefore, as a user, you cannot view the source code. But on the contrary, open source software, you can see all the source code of the open source software, you should be able to study how the software works. And you should even be able to change the functionality of an open source software. But on the other hand, when it comes to proprietary software, you can’t change how the vendor is after work. I hope you understood the difference between free software and open source software. So, open source software essentially gives you the freedom to modify the software to view the source code. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Okay so let’s move on to the next section which is the definition of free software.
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What is free software. As the name suggests, free software is not just software for which there are no fees. I hope I didn’t confuse you when I said that. But I repeat. Free software isn’t just software for which there are no fees. It’s a little bit different. We’ll get to it. Before we get to that, I want to talk to you about freeware, a term commonly used to describe free software. Free software is much more than that. It essentially gives you, the user, the freedom to share the study to change it. Well, there’s a quote from the Free Software Foundation that says it basically defines what free software is, and I quote free software is software that gives you, the user, the freedom to share, study, and to modify, we call this free software before because the user is free. So what is the difference between a free software project or a free our free software application and a freeware application? So, a proprietary software application could be free, since you can download it for free from the internet, you don’t have to pay any money for it. But you won’t be able to understand this source code, you won’t be able to read it, so of course you can’t change the whole source code. However, when it comes to free software, not only can you download it for free, you can read its source code, you can understand how it works, you can modify it, and you can distribute it. So this is the difference between free software and free software. Just because the software is free to download from the internet doesn’t mean it’s free software, it could be free. But if you really want it to be free software, you should be able to understand the source code, read the source code, you should be able to modify it. I would like, I would like to borrow code from Richard Stallman who is one of the pioneers of the free software world. And I quote, free software is a matter of freedom, not price.To understand the concept, think about free speech, not free beer. What powerful code. Essentially, what Stallman means is that when you use free software, you get the freedom to use it, to modify it, to change it in any way you can. It basically sets you free, as in freedom of thought. But then you use a freeware, a proprietary software that is free. It’s not very different from free beer. Okay, so I mentioned what free software is, let’s move on to understand what exactly makes a piece of software free. Free software fulfills four essential freedoms, the freedom to use, study, modify and distribute software for any purpose without legal restrictions. So a program is free software if the program that uses it has these four essential freedoms. Back to Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation. The Free Software Foundation essentially described or defined these four rules, and I want to code them in a way that will give you a better understanding of what free software actually means. The first freedom is the freedom to run the software however you want for any purpose. This is called freedom zero. The second freedom is the freedom to study how the program works and change it to calculate the way you want. This is referred to as second freedom or liberty. In order for any software to achieve this freedom, access to the source code is mandatory. So if you find a piece of software and want to make sure it conforms to freedom, you should be able to freely read the source code and you should be able to modify the source code. This is freedom one or freedom second. Coming to the third topic, it’s the freedom to distribute or give away copies so you can help your neighbor. This is called freedom so you should be able to distribute the software you download to others as you wish. This is also one of the main requirements of free software.
What is the fourth freedom, we have discussed the first three freedoms. The fourth freedom is the freedom to give copies of your modified versions to others. So the third freedom speaks of being able to distribute copies so you can help your neighbor, it’s not just limited to that, you should be able to modify the software in any way you want. And then you should be able to distribute it to anyone. This way you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from the changes. Access to the source code is now also a prerequisite for the fourth freedom. I hope I explained what free software is to you. Well you would have heard the term open source and you would definitely have heard the term free software, are they the same? Are there differences between open source and free software? let’s find out Open source software is thus categorized according to the public availability of its code. Where free software focuses on the ways in which the software can be used and shared. Now for the explanation of open source software. The main characteristic of open source software is that its code should be publicly available. That’s the focus. But with free software, the focus is on using and sharing the software. Well, these terms have a lot of overlap, as you can see, but they’re not interchangeable. The capabilities and terms that go into the software depend on the specific software licensing, and there are differences in the use of open source and free software licenses. So essentially there is overlap, but both movements are completely different. So there are some additional terms that can be used for these overlapping software product ideologies. So the two most popular terms are FOSS which is free and open source software or Floss which is free slash liberal slash open source software. Let’s move on to the history of open source. We’re talking about open source, so we really need to know about its history. We should go back to the 1950s to discuss this. In the 1950s, for example, ruffled shirts were handed out afterwards to computer scientists who worked at the academy. At that time, computers were still very rudimentary, they didn’t have many functions. So software wasn’t really meant to be a paid product. Over time, however, computer systems became more complex and software development more expensive. And the world saw a growing market for computer products, and more and more people started using computers in their daily lives. And in the 1960s. Companies, companies made computers and shipped them to users. So these computer companies often bundled software products with software necessary for their operation and soul and sold them together. So when you buy a computer, you need to buy or run separate software, or sometimes both software are bundled together. So that’s the point where software is actually priced rationally. This was expanded in the 1980s.And the biggest change was that personal computers came along. So, in the 1960s, computers were mainly used by businesses. But by the 1980s the PC movement had really, really spread. This is how corporate networks were formed. And it also led to an increase in the price of proprietary software. In the 1980s, software became proprietary. So if you look back in the 1950s, software was free. But by the 1980s, software had become a commodity and people realized there was no money to be made from it. Thus, by default, proprietary software was born. And prices came with it and prices went up in the 1980s. It was proprietary software, often tied to vendors. This is how the term Vendor Lock In came about, which meant that you could only use certain software with your hardware. So if you bought your computer from company A, you can only use software B, C and D, not x, y and z. Well, this obviously costs you in the computing community
a lot of movement and a lot in response to the limitations of proprietary software. And as a result, in 1984 the G started a new or the new project to create a computer operating system free from the limitations of its source and conforming to the four freedoms. When reborn, the General Public License was created as an alternative software license for the gn GNU project. Now I said this quantum gn UT and for a long time I knew what it really means? 10 years and a quantum saying news, not Unix. Do you understand it? It’s a recursive joke. It’s a recurrence because the chronic was so awesome. Real means news only, not Unix. The guiding principles for open source development were outlined by a person named Eric Raymond, a pioneer in the open source world. And one of the founding members of the Open Source Initiative in his 1999 book entitled The Cathedral and the Bazaar. So this book was an extension of his essay of the same title, as the name of both the book and the essay suggest, Raymond compares two models of software government so he talks about the cathedral model and the bazaar model. Speaking of the cathedral model, what does the cathedral look like? It is an enclosed space where a select group of people gather. So the cathedral model of software development is very similar. So, in the cathedral model, code is developed between releases and reserved for an exclusive group of software developers. Now if you look at the cathedral model, this is the same model that most proprietary software programs follow. drip platforms. So software is created and released by a select group of people. They make all the decisions about the software they build from scratch, they test it, they release it, they add features. So the entire life cycle of the development software is limited to this select group of people. Most proprietary software still relies on this cathedral model. Now the bazaar model is the exact opposite of the cathedral model. To talk about the bizarre morning, let’s imagine a mental model of a bizarre human being. that’s how bizarre a market is. It’s a huge market with lots of shops, lots of people. So the bazaar is essentially ruled by people. To the right. So it’s a gathering of many people. So people are there to buy stuff from merchants who are seven muttons selling stuff. So in the bizarre model, code is developed over the public access Internet. As an example, the Linux kernel project led by Linus Torvalds. It is one of the most popular projects in the bazaar model. So in this case, the code belongs to the people. So this is the strength of the bazaar model. Now I’m going to ask you a question. Which model is open source software for art goes without saying, it’s a bizarre model. Since the code is developed over the internet, the bazaar is the internet, in this case open to the public, and contributors are live from around the world to contribute to an open source project. Well, the takeaways from this book that are important, and if you’re interested in the open source movement, I would strongly recommend you read it. The most important thing from this book is this quote, which is also called “Lena says love”. The code says that if there are enough eyeballs, all mistakes are superficial. So, making the source code publicly available allows a wider group of contributors to identify and fix software problems. So let’s look at the cathedral model. There is an error in the cathedral model. However, the software is only created and tested by a select group of people. It is not tested by a large group of people. But in the bizarre model there are thousands, there are hundreds or maybe thousands of people
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not only using the code but also testing it at the same time. So there are many eyes on the code at any point in time.This makes it easy to find bugs, make decisions about how to fix the bugs, and improve the overall quality of the software. Now let’s move on to open source software. The term open source software was essentially coined in 1998 when Netscape read the source code of its first web browser, Netscape Navigator, in hopes of improving it by giving more people access to the code so they could find and fix bugs can. So that’s when open source, the term open source, was officially born. The term Free Software has been around for a while because there was an x that came out in the 90’s I think or the 80’s. my story is wrong Thus, the release of Netscape Navigator became extremely popular. The release drew a lot of attention to the open source development process. Today, some of the world’s most popular applications are open source software. Of course, this includes Android, Mozilla Firefox, Libre Office, Git and WordPress. So not only has open source grown far beyond that. And perhaps the greatest success of the open-source project is that Microsoft itself said it would open it. So Microsoft was notoriously opposed to open source in the 1990s. There was one, there was a former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, who made a very, very famous quote that said open source is the cancer of the world, something like that. Source contributors of the world. And other companies are following suit. Open source is really going strong in 2020. After all, why do we have to choose open source? I’ve explained a lot about the benefits of open source, I’ve explained how different companies use open source. I’ve spoken superficially about many ice boxes. But why should you, as an end user, as a developer, or as a business owner, consider using open source software or not? Well, I’m not suggesting that open source software is superior to proprietary software. I mean there are key differences between the two. These can be situations where proprietary software is better, or there could be situations where open source is better. Now let’s explain, let’s see, let’s evaluate why open source is a superior option and could be a better option for you when working on a specific project. The first, most obvious reason is that the cost is usually very low. Therefore, in most cases, open source software is free. So I talked earlier about the intersections between open source and free software. And there’s a lot of overlap between the two, as I mentioned, so most open source projects are free in most cases, most open source software projects are free. In some cases, a small distribution fee may apply. But aside from that, but when you compare that to delivering software, which in some cases can cost millions of dollars, the open source alternative is almost always free or cheap. So, as a person making decisions for a company, you should definitely go with open source software when it comes to cost. This is the first. The second is that the second thing that makes open source software so special is that there is no contractual license. Instead, the license establishes rules for sharing. So if you want to buy some proprietary software, you usually have to sign a license that comes with a license that prevents you from using the software in any way you want. However, with open source software, there is usually a license like the GPL or an MIT license that gives you the four freedoms. So the license that you get with open source software actually contains rules for sharing. You see how advantageous it is. This is definitely one of the biggest advantages of open source software. And the third is that open source software is customizable. And there are almost always public forums and documentation to support this. Therefore, for many, bugs are superficial.
Every open source software project is written and developed by a community, a large community spread all over the world, it doesn’t germinate. It is not based in the United States of Europe but is spread all over the world. So there are public forums and documentation for support. If you have questions or run into obstacles, there’s probably a documentation page dedicated to it, or there’s probably a public forum post dedicated to it. Or worse, you could ask a question on a forum and get an answer from someone who is an expert at it. So this is again one of the biggest advantages of open source software. The fourth benefit is that there is no vendor lock-in for customization or bug fixes. So it is obvious that even open source software would have bugs. And of course you have to adapt open source software to extend its functions.Depending on how complex your needs are, there is no lock at all. You can change the software any way you want, you can fix bugs, if you find bugs, you can actually fix them and you can actually provide the software, you can do it with the proprietary software. So the practice there might prevent you from different customization requirements. So if you want to add some features, you can’t do that. Even if you contact your software provider, they might prevent you from doing so, there might be a clause in the contract preventing you from doing so. And if there is an error, you may have to wait for the software developers to fix it. So there are many limitations. But in the case of open source software, you already have the code. Even if the original developer or development team has a delay in fixing the bugs, you can dive in and fix those bugs yourself. And the other and fifth advantage of open source software is that abandoned software projects can be taken over by new development teams. So if a software project is abandoned, you can theoretically take over a project and work on it. To the right. So if it’s proprietary software and it’s abandoned and you use it, if your business relies entirely on the primary software, you have to discard it, but if, but in the case of open source software, you can basically take it about the software and you can develop on it. This has happened so many times in the open source community, especially in the WordPress world. We will come to that later in the session. And further. The other advantage is that open standards tend to be considered better than proprietary standards. So the different standards first of all on the product. Therefore, most open source software uses open standards instead of proprietary standards that add many limitations. This makes using open software easier. Finally, and most importantly, bugs and security issues can be fixed quickly with software patches. So open source software has open source code that you can read and understand and use to identify security issues and quickly create a patch to fix it. But in the case of proprietary software, this may not be very easy, you may have many limitations, including contractual limitations. So even if you identify a security issue and the port is the company, the company will take their own time to fix it, which may not really align well with your business needs. But then open source software has real advantages because you should be able to identify any problems and you can fix them if you have the bandwidth or maybe you can get community support to fix them . The options are many more. I hope all of these have explained to you what open source software is and what its advantages are. Let’s move on to the next section to learn more about the GPL license. The GPL stands for GNU General Public License. Some people call it the copyleft license as opposed to copyright. This is because the terms of copyright for the software are reversed. So instead of restricting distribution, GPL copyright is used to specify ownership of source code and the terms under which it can be shared. Created by Richard Stallman in 1989, the GPL is the founding license for open source software. Its goal is to protect the four fundamental freedoms that are considered the foundation of free software. Thus, if a derivative of GPL royalty-free software is redistributed in its original or modified form, it must be licensed under the GPL. Otherwise, the license to use the program will be terminated and it would violate the Terms of Use. This makes it possible to fork an open source project into a new project. As long as the GNU project is under the same license. They were free versions of GPL over time. GPL v2 or higher from the Free Software Foundation is the license that the WordPress software runs on.
How is WordPress open source? So, WordPress is free, open-source software distributed under the GPL license. WordPress began as a successor to the fork of the abandoned software project B to Cafe Lock when Matt Mullenweg first pondered a post titled Blogging Software Dilemma in 2003. So, as you all know, Matt is co-founder of WordPress along with Mike. A little later that year, both worked together to launch the software called WordPress. ma.tt later published a blog post called WordPress and then launched the original version of wordpress.org with the post WordPress now available. Since then it has grown to become the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of websites and seen by 10 million people every day. At the time of recording this video in August 2020, WordPress made up more than 37% of the internet.The official WordPress About page says that everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was made by and for the community. WordPress is an open source project, which means hundreds of people around the world work on it more than most commercial platforms. It also means you can use it for anything from a recipe site to a Fortune 500 website without paying anyone a license fee and a bunch of other important freedoms. In addition to the GPL that applies to WordPress open-source code, all associated software must be licensed under the GPL or a compatible license on wordpress.org in the plugins directory and themes re and the blocks directory as such shall be deemed derivatives of the software. Now, according to the Software Freedom Law Center, they are the readers of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress feature. As workshop works of authorship, they are only intended to be combined with what condenses into a larger work. This is from post called Themes GPL too. While WordPress plugins and themes must comply with the GPL license, they can offer paid premium versions. Although these cannot be sold through the wordpress.org directories, this may seem a little confusing at first, but it opens up a broader freedom for users in how to customize which software. And it allows a third-party commercial marketplace to collaborate and combine free software with paid services. In essence, GPL licensing for WordPress is very analogous to the four freedoms I mentioned at the beginning of the session. But aside from the four freedoms, there are a few things to keep in mind. Agreed that these four freedoms are at the root of what GPL is. But the GPL is a bit more than that. So in the next section I will try to analyze all the features of the GPL and their impact on the WordPress world. I’ve also tried to answer some of the key questions we’ve been asked over the years, and I’ll try to answer those questions. So the most important freedom of the GPL is the freedom to copy and distribute the program. The only catch is that all licenses, all copyrights that come with the program should be intact. So if you make changes to the WordPress software, if you make changes to a GPL plugin, GPL theme or GPL block, and if you want them to be redistributed, you should provide all licenses that come with were supplied as such to the existing program . The second point is that you can charge for providing the copy if you wish, yes it is perfectly legal. However, it should still be fully TPO compliant. The third point is that you can modify the program and distribute it, but your modifications will inherit the GPL. So you can make changes to the program and redistribute it, but as long as you have the licenses intact, your changes will automatically inherit the GPL. The fourth point is that downstream recipients of the program or changes inherit the license, but no further restrictions can be imposed, which means that the more changes you make to the software and the more you distribute, the license remains. However, you cannot add more restrictions to the license. Now you lose your GPL license if you copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the program other than as permitted. So
if you break the GPL, an example would be to copy the GPL code and remove all GPL types, then add a restricted license and then basically try the GPL too distribute that constitutes a violation of the GPL. And it means your GPL rights will be terminated. Well, based on what we’ve discussed so far, what are the highlights of the GPL for WordPress. So the biggest way GPL protects anyone who uses WordPress is to control the distribution of derivative or collective works together with the core work itself, which in this case is WordPress, and not challenge the rights of others. So anyone who writes software for or contributes to WordPress retains intellectual property in the code they write. And when the product is distributed as with GPL, the fact that these are the authors remains with the software. However, the software is still freely distributed. So this means that anyone writing software for WordPress or software for the GPL licensed product is in control of the intellectual property, owns the copyrights, but the product can still be distributed, they can still be modified. That’s the beauty of the GPL. The other point now is that if identifiable portions of the modified work are not derived from the Program, they can be considered distinct and separate works. So this applies in cases where a part of a WordPress software or a GPL licensed software is used to create independent software.So if it is a small line of code that is reused for another purpose and if it is not specifically identifiable, and if it is not, if it is not derived from a program and is used to create a separate program, then this is this, the modified work can be considered as separate in itself. That’s one thing to keep in mind. Now the other point is that if you distribute the same portions as a whole work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on GPL terms. In short, if you use a significant part of the GPL license program, which could be a theme, if you use specific code from a WordPress theme or whatever, this is our WordPress blog’s plugin. If you use it to create your own software, which is very important, the software you use should be under a GPL license. The final and final point is that aggregating another work not based on the Program with the Program does not bring the other work within the scope of the GPL. So that means if you use g when you ship a software package, like a GPL-licensed product together with some other GPL-licensed products in a single package, then the entire package becomes non-GPL. But your product will remain GPL. But if you bundle a non-GPL product with your GPL products, the bundle doesn’t become GPL. This is something to keep in mind. Would that move on to the next section? As I mentioned before, people have a lot of questions about the GPL. So let’s try to answer some of these questions people have about the GPL. So the first question is self-explanatory. Is everything a theme, a blog or even the WordPress core? I don’t even know what a plugin was? If I see someone doing this, should the source code of those changes be released publicly? No, it is not required by the GPL. That is the answer. The reason for this is that the GPL allows freedom to modify the software. It is not mandatory to share the changes you make. You can create software according to your own requirements, you can change software, you can edit software as much as you want. However, it’s not required by GPL to share it if you want you to be able to. The GPL gives you the freedom to do this, but it’s not mandatory. The other question is, is selling WordPress software for a fee GPL compliant? The answer is yes. WordPress is software that is available for free, and as I mentioned earlier, the GPL allows you to distribute software for a fee. However, it’s a pointless endeavor because that’s already available for [email protected]. So if software is available for free, what’s the point of distributing it for a fee? Next question: Can I sell my GPL-licensed WordPress plugins, theme blocks, or other derivatives of my site for a fee? Yes, as already mentioned, the GPL license allows WordPress products to be distributed for a fee. However, anyone who takes a copy away from you by paying a fee is entitled to give it to others for free or for a fee.
That’s the beauty of the GPL. So if you want, you can buy software, GPL-licensed software for a fee, and you have the freedom to distribute it to anyone, for a fee or for free, as much as you want. This is one of the most common questions we keep hearing, and again I’m out of the WordPress license and GPL. Can I resell GPL-licensed WordPress plugins or themes purchased elsewhere on my site for a fee? Assuming the GPL license, yes, that’s definitely allowed. And that’s definitely something you can do. However, as a user, you should think twice about the ethics of such decisions. There are also several other challenges, e.g. B. if you buy a plugin from a third party site it may not always be saved as you may lose access to updates as in many cases when selling plugins or themes the cost includes the cost essentially enables the distribution , ie updates along with support. So the amount you pay for updates and support. So if you get a third party when you get a paid plugin or theme or block for free, you may not get access to support. You may not get access to updates. But that these are completely independent of the GPL license. We’re talking about the GPL license, according to the license. Yes, that’s allowed, you can definitely distribute it as many times as you like. As a commercial plugin developer developing a GPL licensed program, am I obligated to make my WordPress installment of the Timo plugin available to a member of the public for free? No, you are not obliged to do this. So this is one of the biggest confusions among developers working on WordPress software. You don’t have to, there’s no GPL, which doesn’t necessarily mean you should make your work available for free. You can make your work available on a fee basis if you actually want to allow the GPL and the DGP allows you to charge a distribution fee.You can also charge for support and updates. So that’s definitely a freedom of the GPL that you can use. So it’s not really necessary. But if you want, that’s a good thing. It allows more people to use it, people who may not be able to pay for it, they definitely have an opportunity to do so. So it’s entirely up to you. You can release a paid product with a GPL license that is fully contained within the license. Can I change a GPL license to what Chris said we’d like to have a plugin or a theme or a block and release it as a commercial product with a non-GPL license? Short answer, this is a violation of the GPL license. Because if you use part of a software or product licensed with the GPL and if you try to release it for a long time with a non-GPL product, that is a blatant violation of the GPL. So if you want to do it, if you take some of the GPL code, and if you add it to a product, it should basically inherit the GPL. This is the down-licensing portion of the GPL clause. So if you take a piece of GPL code and want to release it along with other software that should be GPL software, you cannot release it as non-GPL software as that would be a termination violation of the GPL license. What can I do if I know a plugin, theme, or block developer is violating the GPL. As we have already discussed, all WordPress derivatives inherit the GPL license. This is one of the core tenets of the GPL philosophy. So if you find that a leading plugin or theme or developer violates the GPL, the first thing to do is to report it to the developer. That’s definitely the first thing I can do. Because many people actually do this without realizing that what they are doing is a violation of the GPL. So you can definitely try to make them aware of it. In case they don’t really want to make the change. You can bring this up with the broader, broader WordPress community to share. This would be a wider, wider, wider WordPress community. If you have the bandwidth, you can try to get their support. You can talk to your boss to see if you’re willing to switch the license to the GPL. What if they decide to intentionally use or intentionally not use the GPL? This is definitely a concern now. The other option you have is probably to reach out to the other WordPress software co-developers, folks who are influencers. This definitely works if it’s a very popular plugin or theme. In some cases, people may not understand. But there are examples of other very popular themes, plugins, and WordPress-based software that are open source and successful. So if this is one of the concerns you have, showing these examples can definitely alleviate it.
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You can also try to get help from other members of the WordPress community to try reach out to those developers, of course if you have the bandwidth to try and get them to put their software under the GPL. Also, the other thing is that according to the WordPress community’s guidelines, plugin developers or theme builders were basically all WordPress helpers in violation of the GPL license for the WordPress products. They may not be able to opt out of the WordPress community if they attend Word Camps, for example, or feel that if they cannot, they may not be able to sponsor or volunteer at Word Camps or WordPress meetings. They can definitely add them, but they won’t be able to speak to sponsors that they volunteer, so they’re missing out on a lot just by name for the license. And essentially, they don’t lose anything by switching licenses as they actually support the core license that wordpress.org supports. I definitely believe this should be an incentive for them to move their plugin or team or WordPress derivative products to GPL.
That brings us to the next section of our discussion. How to Contribute to WordPress Now WordPress is maintained by a progressive global community of volunteer contributors. People involved in the WordPress project are employed by several companies around the world. Some of them are individual contributors. Essentially many of these contributors work for companies that specialize in WordPress and there are a few others who are independent users who basically love WordPress, many times I’d love to contribute. Now it is not necessary to be a software developer to contribute code to the WordPress software. Now please don’t get me wrong, this is definitely an important role. But the idea is that you don’t need development, you won’t be a developer, not if you want to contribute to WordPress core. There are several other ways a person can contribute to the WordPress project, from helping out on support forums, by writing documentation, doing language translations through Meetups and WordCamps, the possibilities are endless.Let’s take a look at the different ways you can contribute to the WordPress project. All WordPress posts take place at Make WordPress dot org. The collaborative community is organized into two corporate teams. These teams can be grouped into the categories of building, expanding operations and support. Let’s start with a look at the teams creating the entire building. The first is the core team at Make WordPress. They write the code that is the core of the WordPress software. Next, the design team decides on the Make WordPress theme. They designed and developed the user interface for WordPress. Next is the Make WordPress Accessibility Team. The X-ray team is helping to make WordPress and everything on wordpress.org accessible to people with disabilities. Next is meta. The Meta team helps with the infrastructure that powers ER visit org and wordcamp.org. The WordPress Habits mobile team builds mobile apps for WordPress and the testing team helps patrol, test, curate, and modify the WordPress experience with QA, testing, and user research. Next comes the operation. The Make wordpress.org Slash Marketing marketing team helps develop the materials and resources to market the WordPress software and community. The Hosting Team They make WordPress hosting better for everyone through collaboration, tools, and documentation best practices. The Extension Team The Extension Team helps add features to WordPress. The first half is creating WordPress themes. The Themes team reviews incoming theme code to keep our theme repository in the best of health. The polyglot team in which they translate everything maintains localized websites on wordpress.org. The plugin team keeps the plugin repository safe by reviewing the code and ensuring standards. The close-knit team will help you learn how to standardize your plugin or theme faster and more securely. The seal contributes WBC Li to the official command line tool to manage your WordPress site. Next, the group of groups is a group of teams supporting WordPress. The first of these is the community team, which brings people together with events like meetups at word camps, along with diversity and inclusion initiatives. The Docs team, or documentation team, helps write and edit documentation, including the Codex and our manuals. The training team creates free WordPress training resource curricula that people can really trust. The support team answers questions to help other WordPress users on support forums and IRC. The TV team – they moderate all incoming WordPress videos, let the MacPro post-edit and transcribe and subscribe to videos with subtitles.
We’ve covered a lot so far, we’ve learned what open sources we’ve covered what GPL is and how it affects WordPress. We even learned to contribute to WordPress. And finally, let’s take a look at the different features of WordPress and what the different possibilities add up to. Before we get to that, I’ll quickly explain how to set up a WordPress site in case you don’t already know. So it is an open source software that can be downloaded from wordpress.org. You can set up the software on a web server after downloading it. For this you need to purchase a web hosting plan from a web hosting company, there are several available, you can choose which one you want. In case you don’t want to go through the essentials of installing the software on a web server, you can always go to wordpress.com to create a website so you can avoid all the hassles of buying a hosting plan. based website or create a blog. So, once you create a website, from the dashboard you get a dashboard that allows you to control all the content of the website. So the idea is that you can create content, you can create a very beautiful website without even having to write a line of code. So we talked all about GPL. We’ve talked a lot about coding. It’s interesting that contributing to WordPress is part of using WordPress, another part. So, as a user, WordPress is a very user-friendly piece of software. It allows you to create very beautiful websites and very powerful websites. So I’m going to quickly walk you through some of the features that what has already been offered on some of the sites offers some of the opportunities that you can partake in with WordPress. Let’s take a ride. WordPress can be used to create beautiful websites. Check out this Walt Disney Company website. It is built entirely with WordPress. If you can see it as a lot of features, it has a new section. It has its own section with individual information. It’s kind of a blog. So WordPress is very powerful. You can use it to create any number of beautiful websites. But is it? Let’s take a look at the different possibilities of WordPress. This is the airstream utility company’s website. As you know, Airstream is one of the largest trailer manufacturers in the United States.This is an e-commerce site, which means you can basically buy things from the site. This is built with WordPress. This website has a fully functional payment gateway. I can I can buy I can buy items I can add to cart I can make payment through payment gateway. All of these features are built right into this website. As you can see here. Yes, well yes, all that, this very nice website was built with WordPress. Let’s take a look at TechCrunch’s website TechCrunch is one of the most popular technology blogs in the world. TechCrunch is built directly with WordPress. As you can see, it is powered by wordpress.com VIP. As I mentioned before, WordPress doesn’t end here with the possibilities of WordPress. It’s immense. Here is the New York Post website, also built with WordPress, one of the most popular newspapers in the United States. The origins of the companies using WordPress. As we can see from the footer. Let’s take a look at Singer Company, Singer Australia’s website. As you all know, Singer is a company that manufactures sewing machines. This very nice website was also built with WordPress using the WooCommerce plugin for the ecommerce features.
Let’s take a look at the solo practice university. So this is a kind of social network. They have their own login where students or people can actually log in and have some sort of social networking feed. This very nice site was created with WordPress. Yes, you can even create social networking sites. Oh this is a very cool forum for the angry bird nest. For all Angry Birds fans out there. No points for guessing basically, this very nice site is also built with WordPress using a plugin called BB Press. So here we are. The possibilities of WordPress are endless. Let’s take a look at a real WordPress website. So this is a test website I made on my local development server. As you can see, it’s built entirely with WordPress. So what does the WordPress backend look like? I’ll quickly walk you through a walkthrough. So let’s take a look at the dashboard. This is the dashboard that drives all WordPress content. So let’s play around a bit. Let’s try adding some content. So this is a test post. WordPress allows you to add blocks. So I’m going to add a cover block here. I will find some pictures. I’ll add an image directly from the one on my dashboard. Yes it is there and I will modify it a bit. I’ll do it full width. I’ll play around with it. I will add Yes, as you can see it is very easy to add posts directly to WordPress. There are different layout elements. As you can see I added a three block widget so I’m going to play around with a bed. Yes. So I add a paragraph. I added some tax. I like blocks. So I’ll add some text. I will add some test tags. test test. Test. random test. list one. List one, list two. Yes. I can basically only test something. I can add coats if I want. Okay I’ll add this fancy code, just some fancy code of mine. I have done all this and will publish it. Yes, the post is live. Let’s take a look. Oh it’s in the front end. Yes, as you can see from the post I just published. It was released including the code. So yes, this is essentially how WordPress works. Now let’s clear that up a bit. As you can see, this is in the format of a blog. WordPress offers various features that you can use to add pages, posts, etc. So if you look at this website, this is a page. And that’s a blog post. So this is in blog format now, right? Let’s try converting it to an actual website. how do we do it I go to I go to dashboard, I click settings, read icon. Then I change this to a static page and add an example page. And I save changes. Let’s see what happens in the frontend. Hooray. groovy. To the right? So yes, my site is now a sample site. Well, those are some standard things I want to remove. How do I proceed? So I go back to the dashboard and go to Customize. I go to widgets. I go to footer one. I’m deleting all of this. Yes. I don’t want any of this. I’ll remove all of that. Let’s see what happens, shall we? OK, I published it. Let’s see the changes. OK. Oh, that’s all gone. There is a footer. Pretty. So that’s basically what WordPress is. You can add content using posts, you can add pages. Media is for pictures. So since this is a blog site, it receives comments. Therefore, the comments are recorded here. You can change the look and feel of your website. As you can see, there are also themes. So these are two standard themes. If you want, you can add more topics. So yeah, let’s just pray that we play around a bit. I will try to install a new theme. I don’t know if it works, but I can definitely try to get up. So I will try to solve a new topic.
It seems to be taking some time. In the meantime I’ll go to Yep, the theme has been installed.So let me activate the topic very quickly. Yes, the theme has been activated. Let’s see if anything changes on the site. Yes, the entire appearance has changed. I can actually switch between themes if I want to. So I’ll go back to the old topic because I think that was good. So I switched to see if it changed. Yes, it is. The other thing is that you can add more functionality to your website using plugins. So remember what I told you before about adding functionality to your website like ecommerce. So there is a plugin called WooCommerce that you can use to add ecommerce functionality to your website. Yes. Here is one. Installing this plugin basically turns your website into a store. What if you want to turn your website into a forum? There is a plugin for that. Yes, it is loading. It’s a plugin called BB press Yes, if I install a plugin I can turn my site into a forum. Here I can add users to my website. So, that’s me. This is the default user, which is me. And I can change the name of my site, even change the test site. I’ll change it to test page two. And I saved my changes. I went to the dashboard. Yes, the name of the site has changed. So that’s all about the features of WordPress. I made a very fast, very fast speed overview. And that brings us to the end of this workshop. I hope you found today’s workshop useful. We’ve covered many topics in wireless time. We talked about the GPL. We talked about open source. We’ve talked about contributing to WordPress, and we’ve also literally walked through the features of WordPress. I really hope you find this session useful. And I hope to see you online soon. Goodbye and have a wonderful day.
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