WordPress, Open Source and Monetization: The Need to be Truly Open

By: Pekka Kortelainen, Systems Specialist & WordPress Expert, Seravo Oy

Presentation as part of the track program: The Future of Open Source Business

Mindtrek Conference
OpenTech: From the community for the community.
8th of October, 2024 | Tampere, Finland
www.mindtrek.org 

1. WordPress, Open Source and Monetization: The Need to be Truly Open Mindtrek 2024 October 8, 2024 Pekka Kortelainen – Systems Specialist & WordPress Expert [email protected]

2. $ whois seravo.com 10 years of Premium WordPress Hosting & Upkeep Fast Secure Green Real Based in Tampere, operating globally Server locations on 3 continents, 5 countries 20+ employees Visit our booth and let’s talk!

3. $ whois pekka Work with WordPress Freelancer since 2013 -> Customer Success Specialist 03/2020 - 03/2024 Systems Specialist since 03/2024 WordCamps 2023: Lisbon, Athens, National Harbor (Maryland), Tampere, Gerolstein 2024: Vienna, Porto, Turin, (Hague) Talks at Porto and Turin Sponsoring & contribution: giving back to the project and community Patches for core, WP-CLI Translations Documentation ...and much more

4. What is WordPress, Fast-Forwarded The most popular Content Management System Used on 43.5% of websites in 2024 (source: w3techs.com) Remember blogs? Highly customizable with themes and plugins, thus allowing countless possibilities Your company’s or event’s website e.g. mindtrek.org Online stores (e.g. with WooCommerce) “Plugins for plugins” Payment gateways, integrations to other systems Learning platforms Intranets and data storages (headless solutions)

5. “The Need to Be Truly Open”

6. The Need to Be Truly Open Free plugins & themes Available from wordpress.org Reviewed and approved by a group of volunteers, the Plugin Review Team Free plugins & themes with paid functionalities Extra functionalities are behind a paywall Not available for the public to review Completely closed plugins & themes Everything is behind a paywall Updates can only be done manually Extremely bad considering security Usually a short lifespan

7. Screenshot from patchstack.com/database 2024-09-19 15:05 UTC+3 CVSS Score 7+

8. The Need to Be Truly Open: Problems Problems Monetizing an open-source project by only publishing closed-source The whole product is behind a paywall Not available from wordpress.org or any other public repository (GitHub etc.) Obfuscated code Security scanners going through code raise flags Checking legitimacy is rough and time consuming Bad code quality Not following WordPress coding standards https://developer.wordpress.org/coding-standards/wordpress-coding-standards/

9. The Need to Be Truly Open: Possibilities Possibilities of O penness Anyone can review your code, write patches, file issues and pull requests Establish an active, engaged community around your product Transparency Bug bounty programs Getting the good guys on your side Innovate and roll out new features more efficiently Users and developers may have ideas you haven’t thought of

10. What does this mean for your organization?

11. Thank You!