2022 Q&A - Caption/Subtitle File

I'm moving around, so I'm masking. I am
our mobile microphone, but we have a

standard microphone also. We have
people all over the place in the world

at home and we also have a resident
question asker right here.

So he's going to represent the
online questions right?

- Yes, correct.
Also, so you all know

I do not know what any of the
questions are in advance. I will be

hearing them all for the first time,
which also means I might not know the

answer or I might pass it to someone
in the audience, or sometimes I

just don't know. So that's what
happens with these.

That's my job. The passing.

All right, so we can kind of start
wherever you want. We can start

with in-person. We can start with some
pre-submitted. We can start with some

currently submitted. We have an
in-person -

Looks like we have a hand right here.
You mind coming over to the

microphone? Just so folks on the livestream
can hear. And if you have also a

question, feel free to go up and line
up. We're going to prioritize, of course,

those of you who came on a train for two
and a half days to be here and then I

think Paul will be reading some of the
ones that are coming in via the social

channels. YouTube, Twitter, etc. So
we'll have a mix of both.

Then we'll have food and drinks.

Thanks so much for the presentation.
Very exciting stuff. Looking forward to

the future. My question is about Openverse.
And I wonder if you could speak a

little bit about the safety measures
that have been thought about or will

need to be thought about in terms of the
content that is uploaded there? Will

EXIF data be removed from photos that
are uploaded? That's my question.

That's a great question, actually. So
first, I do not know if we've thought of

EXIF before. So you actually just raised
something really great that we should

write down and look at later. I will say
that - so there's two things there.

There's Openverse, which is - think of it
like a search engine. So it's crawling

literally the whole web, and looking for
things that are Creative Commons

licensed and providing a directory of
them. So what people publish to their own

websites is kind of the state of
responsibility there. But it's kind of

like a Google but for Creative Commons
licensed content. That is separate from

the WordPress.org/Photos directory that
we've created, which is kind of like a

Getty or an Unsplash or everything
but all CC0 licensed forever and

ever. By the way, we're not going to
change that on you like some other photo

directories have. That goes to
moderation. If you want to submit to

something there, you'll see that right
now, it says, "Hey" - one of the checkboxes

it certifies, of course, one, that
you have rights to the photo. Please

don't upload other people's photos to it,
only your own. But, two, that it doesn't

have any human faces or other copy
written material in the photo itself. So

this first phase of the photo directory
really focused on things that can truly be

CC0 all the way. Something we've all
been learning - and it's a little

complicated - is with humans and, like, a
picture of - let's say you had a picture

of a piece of art that might have a
copyright embedded. So even if the image

is CC0, something in it might be
copywritten. And so we're

working on - what is an open
source, GPL, CC0 model release?

What does that look like? And that is a
very open set of lawyers working on

things. But once we have it, I think
that's actually really exciting. Maybe

someone could license their likeness as
well to be in the Openverse. Maybe

we generate something with GPT-3
that replaces faces and then that's the

thing that's open. Or maybe someone even
says, "Maybe while I'm alive, I don't want

my likeness used. But maybe on my death, I
bequeath my likeness to this open

commons that belongs to humanity."
There's lots of different ways this

could work, kind of is fun to think
about and imagine. But that's how that's

working right now. We'll probably, you know,
what makes sense is something that maybe

shows the EXIF data you upload before it
goes into the thing, at least for a

photo directory. So you're just aware of
everything that's being put in there.

Location is actually fantastic to have.
Like if I have a picture of Stonehenge

the location where I took that picture
is kind of awesome. But other metadata,

which could be contained in EXIF,
probably people should just be aware of.

Right? So we'll work on getting that
added to the photo uploader. And by the

way, awesome question. Thank you.
- Thank you very much for the answer.

Strong open.

No problem. Did we cover everything you think
is important there? Anything else?

Okay, awesome. Bob, before you
ask your question

can you share how you got here?

By train, from Seattle
- From Seattle?

Yeah, Seattle.
- That's on the other side of the country, right?

On the other side of the country, and
spending about six days on the train, two

days here. And yeah, it's been an
adventure. So I've come all this way.

Give me some Woo for 2022.

- Some moo?
Woo.

I want to hear what WooCommerce is going
to do in 2022 in your eyes.

Sure. So Woo, spelled W-O-O for those who don't
know, is a plugin for WordPress, which

creates commerce functionality in
WordPress. It's one of the 55,000

plugins that exist. But it is a very
popular one, an important one,

especially as we look at things like - you
saw Shopify coming up on that usage

graph. WooCommerce is an open source
Shopify, and we hope that it can do to

democratizing commerce what WordPress
has done to democratizing publishing.

In terms of what's coming for WooCommerce
in 2022, the thing I'm most excited

about that's most relevant for this
audience is, I would say, embracing

Gutenberg and the block interfaces for
everything with Woo. So right now, Woo still

has some ways of doing things which are
more tied to the Classic Editor, or

shortcodes, or other ways of creating,
like, check out blocks, products,

everything like that. There are some
plugins and experiments around

Gutenberg and blocks. And I think that I
would love if Woo was one of the best

plugins in the world for embracing how
to use Gutenberg. And I think the team's

been working really hard on that. It is
an amazing team. That both includes a

lot of community and a lot of the folks
sponsored by Automattic to work on that.

And I'd say that's what 2022 - the thing
that's most relevant for this audience

I'm excited about is more Gutenberg in Woo.

And we also have the CEO of WooCommerce
here. Does that sound -

Giving me a thumbs up? That sounds good?
All right. Sounds good.

So more Gutenberg? That's kind of
the answer to everything is more

Gutenberg. It's like cowbell. You can
always have more cowbell.

You can always have more Gutenberg.

Thank you. Well, that was worth 6000
miles.

Cool. Alright, should we move to an online
question or - wait, we got one in

person. And then next, let's do an
online one, just to make sure we have

everything from those folks.

Sweet. So my question is about styles. I
think, you know, the theme styles and - or

variants, I think they were called
initially, is a very innovative idea that

lets people paint their sites. It's
great for developers, designers, and

everyday users. So I understand that. I
think, what could be interesting, and I

wonder if you've thought about this, is
perhaps there's a Style Directory like

we have a Pattern Directory. Is that
something we're in the thought of?

I know that there's a couple other
concerns, you know, we'd have to have a

standardized way that themes are being
made, which we're moving towards

already. So I don't know, I think that's
an interesting way to empower people to

also give back to the Directory or into
WordPress, just like patterns. Like if

you can save a pattern, can you save a style?
And then anybody can save a style?

Is that something on the docket?

I'm going to fast-forward a little bit here
into basically science fiction. But if

you could imagine us getting a really
great repository of truly CC0

Creative Commons, zero license stuff,
around images, fonts, etc. That opens up

a lot of possibilities for creating
essentially GPL compatible styles, like

you talked about. If you've ever watched
or helped a friend set up WordPress, or

watched a user test or something, one of
the most hard - most heartbreaking things

is when someone chooses a theme based
on the image in the demo. And I learned

this myself. So in one of the previous
themes, like Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven

there wasn't a lot of open source licensed
imagery in the world and so I just took

all my photos and GPL-licensed them. So one
of these old themes - I think it's Twenty Ten

there's a picture from Ireland of some
sheep on a road. And we would literally

do user tests where people were like, "I like the
sheep, so I chose this theme." And it's

like, "Yes, I like the sheep too, but you can
put any image in the world there. It

doesn't just have to be a sheep theme."
It's really, it's a - yeah, you know what

I'm talking about. Styles right now are
tied to themes and it's tied to theme.json

And so I think theme.json is - theme
dot J-S-O-N, which I call JSON. I don't

know how you pronounce it, but that's
how I call it - it's the number one thing. If

you're a theme developer or interested in
developing themes, look up that. Learn as much

about theme.json as possible. So
right now, it's specific to the

theme. But over time, particularly for
things like typography, which is a

passion of mine. Actually, my very first
open source code I ever created,

which was a contribution to b2, the
predecessor to WordPress, was texturize.

Which was - I'd learned a ton about
typography and I wanted all posts to

have proper typography. So instead of a
prime mark in between a word like

that's - between the that and the s - I
wanted to be a proper curly quote. And

so this first code I ever contributed to
open source was texturized. I'm very

passionate about this. I would love for
people to be able to see the incredible

transformations that can happen to a
site through updating the typography

and particularly pairings of type where
you have might have like, a really

awesome serif paired with a really
awesome sans serif for the body text or

something like that. And I think how
themes evolve a little bit - actually

I'm not sure entirely how themes evolve but -
to be honest - but it's pretty

exciting that the theme can almost be a
little bit like - honestly it reminds me of

jazz. I grew up playing jazz. It's why
we name every WordPress release after a

jazz musician. Jazz are often based on
something called standards. So like a

good chunk of all popular jazz songs are
built on rhythm changes, which is a set of

chord changes, actually from I think, a
musical song called "I Got Rhythm."

[sings] I got rhythm, I got music.

Really cool chord changes there.
Really awesome bridge.

And people have written lots of other songs
on top of that. What's cool

is the chord changes - I think I'm a
little outside of my realm of expertise

here - but the chord changes themselves
are essentially open source, meaning

anyone can use those chord changes. Now
the melody right on top of it

might be proprietary, might belong to a
specific thing. But that kind of

underlying structure is open. And so I
think themes become that kind of

underlying structure. And then what
people take on top of it - it's the chord

changes. And then what people create on
top of it could be as varied and unique

as all the things written, people have
written on top of the rhythm changes

as they're called in jazz

which is incredible. Thousands of songs,
countless millions of, like, performances

and solos. So that's my hope for what
happens with themes. And hopefully, we

can get more - like, we don't have a ton of
CC0 licensed fonts yet. So hopefully,

we can develop more and more of that
content in the Openverse/metaverse

that is available to all WordPress
users. And the cool thing

about Openverse, as well, is the API is
totally open. So that's available to Drupal

users, Joomla users, everyone else -
Wix users, Squarespace users. Anyone

who wants to access this content, it is
something the WordPress community is

creating for benefit to the world. So if
you contribute to that you're

essentially contributing to humanity's
repository of cool open stuff that's

available for anyone to use in any way. So
I'm very excited about what the

future of Openverse will be. We have
the very first - we basically just got the

code ported over and the search engine
ported over, and not even the audio yet,

that's coming in January. And I cannot
believe more in the mission of that.

Thank you.
- Thank you.

Cool, and you can line up behind her
if you also have a question.

But come on in. What's your name,
by the way?

Ali.
- Hi Ali.

Hi Matt. So I create a lot of content
around WordPress for the people who are

looking at WordPress in front of them
for the first time looking to, you know,

build something with it having never
used it before. And I think a lot about

the young people who are looking at
WordPress as a path to something, as a

path to improving their life or
brightening their future whatever that

might be. And I know that we have in the
live stream right now a lot of young

people watching, listening, and being inspired
by this. What advice would you have to

those young people who are looking to
inherit this world that we're leaving

them? And what advice can you give
them as far as using WordPress as a tool

to improve what we're leaving them?
No pressure.

That's a cool one.

In my life, one of the most influential
things I ever realized

was that everything I was using, every
piece of technology, every piece

of furniture, every chair, everything
was created by someone who wasn't that

much different from me or people I
knew. And so there's crafts that can be

developed when you focus on an area. And
in fact, with the internet, there's more

and more of this through YouTube,
Wikipedia, online blogs, etc. There's so

much you can learn about pretty much any
area that you're passionate about. And I

think, for me, and it might be Steve Jobs or
someone else who talks about this, but

just this idea that the things that I use and
love are created by people

not that much different from me was
really powerful. And that's part of

what got me contributing to open source
in the beginning. When I was - again, I got

started on the forums of b2. So b2 is
the predecessor to WordPress. It had some

forums, probably run by like phpBB or
something. And I just, at first, I was

asking questions and then, later, I saw
questions I had already asked being

asked by other people. And I started
answering them. I didn't know anything.

I couldn't - I cannot overemphasize how
ignorant I was, as a 17, 18, 19 year old

kid in Houston, Texas, who had no formal
training, no university courses, etc. So

I think what's exciting about the
digital economy is that, in this

Openverse that we're trying to create
together, it doesn't matter who you are,

where you're from, or anything like
that. It matters what you contribute.

And learning to contribute has never been
more accessible and more open source

more open. The other advice I'd give is
that, when you're younger, you have a

lot more time than you realize. And to
try to invest that time - if there's

anyone young listening to this - in what
your passion is, you know. If you

feel drawn to a particular area - I was
actually shocked both in my own

experience, and in seeing many other
successful folks since then, in how

being a world expert in XYZ - whatever
XYZ is - is maybe 100 hours of work in

some areas. Maybe 200 hours of work. But
when you're young, you have a lot more

hours than folks who maybe are providing
for the family or full-time jobs or

other things. So really embrace that
opportunity of both school, education,

literature available to you, etc. to try to
consume and absorb as much of it

as possible. I feel so much - one of my only
regrets as a almost 38 year old is that

I didn't pay as much attention when I
was in school. And I went to all public

schools in Houston. But I had some
amazing teachers, like the text I was

given, the literature, etc. was free
or inexpensive, and was really

passion from these teachers of some
of the best things that humanity has

created so far. So check that out. And
the code equivalent of that is

WordPress in a lot of ways. Meaning
that, again, you can think of the other

largest Internet services in the world -
Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. You

can't go and look at how they work. You
can't suggest a change to how the Google

homepage works or the Facebook
algorithm or anything like that. Those

are all proprietary. With things like
Wikipedia and WordPress, it's all open

source. Which means that you could
suggest a change of the WP admin

homepage, which hundreds of thousands
of millions of people see and impacts a

lot of folks. So open source for me was
a huge enabler - again, not growing up in

the Bay area or the traditional, like,
Seattle or other traditional

centers of technology. It was really
exciting for me. So I'll start with

that. Hopefully, I guess folks and maybe
younger folks like something to start

with. And I saw Josepha raise her hand, so
maybe you have something to add there.

- I do. I also have an additional thing.
Can I introduce you really quick?

- Of course.
So Josepha is the lead of WordPress.org. So she -

she is - all of the cool things we talked
about around like the Directories, etc.

Josepha is in charge of that. So she
really leads the community development of

WordPress.org. Everything around that. So
thank you, Josepha. And now -

And now this. So I think also one of the
most important things - where am I

looking? I'm going to look at you, Matt.
Also, one really important thing to

remember for people who are getting
started with WordPress for the first

time is that the open source nature of
it does mean that we also have really

active and passive ways to learn some of
the most vital 21st century skills that

the workforce of the future will need.
We need it now. But not all of us

actually are any good at it in the world.
WordPressers are generally really

really good at it. And there's a
reason for it. It's because we do it

every day. And so like that, in the
immediate - in my immediate advice that I

can give to people, that is the number
one thing. Like, observe the way that

this works, because it's going to be
relevant from here until they're done

wanting to work.

Anything else in the audience? Because
we have an unusual audience here.

Here we go. Do you mind introducing
yourself really quick?

I'm Michelle Frechette and I'm with Stellar WP,
but I also do a whole bunch

of other stuff in the community, which
is fun. So my question is actually off of those

two responses as well. We have a ton
of education out there, right? So

whether it's through Learn WordPress,
whether it's people on YouTube, all these

opportunities to learn about it. What
are we doing to bring the next

generation in to help continue to grow?
I'm watching the age of people I see at

WordPress continue to grow, but not a
ton of people coming in with us?

I don't know, I'm looking around. This is
a very youthful group.

Well, I'm one of the older here. I admit
that. But what are we doing to bring -

I mean, I tweeted last week. Olivia
Bisset - she's in middle school - had a

hackathon. I think I tagged you in my
tweet. And she herself, with her sister

put on a huge hackathon of all middle
schoolers, but that's unusual. So what

are we doing to make sure that the next
generation of kids is going to want to

contribute the way that the people in
this room do?

You stole my answer because I was going
to talk about David and Olivia Bisset.

David Bisset, one of the most prolific
tweeters about WordPress, Hi, David.

Will post a lot of gifs from this talk.
Olivia is his daughter and already

started to be really active in the
WordPress community. I would put that

back to everyone in this room and
everyone listening here as well. You

know the old adage, like you teach a
person to fish or you teach a person -

you give a person a fish, you feed him
for a day. Teach a person to fish, you

feed them for their lifetimes. I think
you just give a person a blog or, even

worse, a social media account, you feed
him for a day. You teach them how to

create the web, which is, in many ways,
in my opinion, the most amazing

actualization of shared humanity and
knowledge. Like how do we create

something that lasts beyond our own
individual lifetimes? It's the web. How

do we create something that lasts beyond
us? A legacy, a true legacy? It's adding

to the information that's part of what
hopefully goes forward for future

generations. And then becomes - allows us
to sort of fast - skip all the

mistakes, skip all the learnings to
what's latest. It's upgrading the clock

speed and version of humanity. So for
anyone who's listening, mentoring and

guiding someone younger than yourself
into participating in the WordPress

community is - you get like. What is it?
A mitzvah? You get like an extra

special bonus and, sort of like the
history of open source in the world, if

you bring someone new into it. So I'd
highly encourage you - and there's so

many, if you look at some of the biggest
contributors to WordPress over the

years, a Ryan Boren or a Nacin, etc. part
of their legacy, beyond just all the code

they wrote, is all the people they
brought in. And the folks who felt like

you know, they knew a lot but they
weren't able to contribute or something.

And they said, "No, you got it. You can
be a Core committer. You can be someone

who patches a Core bug. You can be
someone who translates WordPress

into an entirely new language, or
preserves a language for posterity."

Like there's so much you can do using
WordPress as the launchpad for

contributing something positive to
humanity. And so that is, I think, a real

key. So I don't know what is perfect for
the young people because I'm not one of

them anymore. I was when WordPress
started. But to the extent you have anyone

in your lives, both here in the audience
or broader to the folks watching this

that has that desire to have an impact,
teach them how to be involved with open

source and whether that's WordPress or
some other open source project, I think

is the best way to contribute to the
future of humanity. Thank you.

What's that?
- More KidsCamps?

More KidsCamps? Yeah, we do have some
KidCamps. So very specifically

we have KidsCamps at places
like WordCamp - was it

Orlando? Miami, Miami. Yeah. Which David
Bisset helped organize. Let's all be

more like David. If you have kids, why
aren't they contributing? I wouldn't

put that on anyone because kids do
the opposite of what you ask them. So

like, tell them don't contribute to
WordPress. And then maybe they will.

- Take your kids to WordPress day.
Take your kids to WordPress day actually is

an awesome idea.
- We'll talk later.

Cool. Should we do one from online?

This is a question from - I lost the name.
But it was essentially - there were a couple

of references to the metaverse in, I
think, sort of a joking way, but

one's on WordPress in virtual reality.

WordPress in virtual reality.

Let's pass the mic really quick.
Do you want to say something?

Hey, no, we got one. We
got one. Here you go. Again, the

intelligence in this audience is far
greater than what I have so I want to

push this back as much as possible.
- I just wanted to say

WordCamp Boston did do that, if not
earlier this year - it was last year.

They had a virtual reality WordCamp
- Oh, cool.

And it was last year. Thank you. Just yeah.

That's a tricky one. I don't know how to
answer that, to be totally honest.

Because like, the internet is virtual
reality. It's just kind of text-based.

And then when you think of other ways of
interfacing with virtual reality, like

VR headsets, or AR, etc. One good thing
WordPress - WordPress is great at dealing

with content. So don't build on top of
WordPress if you're building like

a messaging system or real time game or
something like that. But if you're

making something that essentially
is people inputting content and

outputting that to the world, you should
probably be building it on WordPress.

Whether it's real estate, records, almost
anything. If it's content going in and out

that should be on WordPress. When
companies - nameless - should talk about

this idea of a metaverse, they often
talk about the interoperability. This

idea that contents or items that you
create in one metaverse is available in

all of them. If I imagine my most sci-fi
thoughts of the future - science fiction

it's hard for me to imagine that if humanity
interacts more and more in a

virtual space, that will be controlled
by one company. I really think it'll

look more like the web. Like a place
where people can register domains. We

actually had a joke in here, I forgot to
tell. So you get it now. What if there

were something like a DAO, a distributed
autonomous organization, that

manage a namespace, which you could pay
to own a part of, and in fact, there's

no gas fees for owning part of it.
The fees are borne by the merchant.

That would essentially be buying a
domain with a credit card on any

registrar. So we have things already
that any person listening to this can

have true ownership of, like a domain.
That's their, like, home on the internet.

Internet is the best metaverse we've
created so far. And part of that's

because of the interoperability, and the
open standards that these things are

built on. Patent-free standards as well,
which I'll emphasize. So to the extent

that things will be - I don't know exactly
what it'll look like. Nothing I've seen

so far is that compelling. But to the extent
that there are fun, content-driven things

that are going to be part of the next
generations of the web? Web3, Web4

Web5, Web10 - I expect WordPress
will be at the center of it.

We've got an in-person question. Okay.
Please introduce yourself.

Hi, my name is Bud Kraus. We've never had the
pleasure to meet but I've heard you

speak at several of these.
- Thank you.

And welcome to New York. So all
I want to know

is this is a brand new space. Sorry
for the people who aren't here, but

this is a brand new space. What are you
going to be doing here? And can we use

it too, the people who live in this area?

Yeah. So for those who are watching
online, we're in this cool space in the

Noho - which means north of Houston,
which is a New York incorrect way to

pronounce Houston, which is the city
where I'm from - neighborhood. And it's

a cool neighborhood, it's near a lot of
public transit. And it's a cool space. A

company I'm involved in, CEO of
Automattic, when we purchased the

company called Tumblr, got this space.
And so we have this until 2025. Not

coincidentally, a lot more of the people
working on Tumblr and everything we do

have gone more distributed. So there's
not as many people in this particular

space as there used to be. But we tried to
create this in a way that, much like

tonight, could be a place that people use
for events and other community things.

So if you're interested in doing that,
for something particularly open source

driven within the community, we're happy
to open up this space for anything in

the future. And a cool kind of aside is
all the art in the space, including

what's behind me, is from people on
Tumblr. And so these are all publishers

on Tumblr. So all the art that will be
in the space and eventually - right now

we have this wall covered. We're going
to cover every single wall here. So we

have many thousands of square feet to cover
still. It's all going to be people who

publish on WordPress and Tumblr. And in
the future, Tumblr will be powered by

WordPress, so that'll happen. So it'll
all be the same thing. So it's kind of

cool that it'll all be artists that use
open source publishing to put their

content into the Openverse. Alright.

Hi, Matt. My name is Anil, and I have a
curiosity question. You mentioned about

Gutenberg Phase Three, which will be
collaboration. So I'm curious, what can

we expect at that phase of
Gutenberg and collaboration?

That's a good question. Because I talked
twice as long as last year, but maybe

missed that particular point. So that
Collaboration Phase - collaboration?

Sorry. Phase Three of Gutenberg is -
imagine Google Docs. It's probably the

best analogy. You know how when you're
in a Google Doc, when someone

else is editing at the same time, you
see exactly what they're doing, what

they're changing. So imagine every single
thing on WordPress updating in real

time, as other people edit it. So
there's no more version conflicts or

anything like that. Literally, WordPress
represents the kind of real-time source

of truth for whatever the content -
whether it's, again, posts, pages, or

other in real-time. And then there's
both a real-time awareness and workflows

around editing that. And so the real-time
awareness is kind of the easy part

actually. It's that part where when
someone else is editing at the same

time, and you're editing it, you see
what's happening. So there's no

conflicts. The workflow is a little
trickier and that's what I'm

actually more excited about working on.
Where workflow is a word we use for

someone edits it, someone approves it,
someone like - there's different stages of

different forms of content. Which is
also very relevant for translation.

Someone writes the content, let's say
in English, and then maybe it gets

translated into another language. I
realized this personally, to share

another weird story like the economics
thing. On WordPress.com, we use

GlotPress and allowed anyone to
translate any string on WordPress.com.

And for a while, on every - I forget which
language it was, but let's just call it

Italian. Instead of saying "Leave a
Comment" on every Italian blog hosted on

WordPress.com, it said "Happy Birthday." So
someone obviously was like trolling us

and said, like, instead of "Leave a
Comment," it'll say "Happy Birthday."

That was actually pretty funny. Whoever
did that, I'll buy you a beer. But

ideally, there would have been a
workflow or someone else who speaks

Italian would have said, "This says 'Happy
Birthday.'" How do you even say that

in Italian? Does anyone know? I know you say
"Feliz navidad." How do you say like

happy birthday and merry Christmas. What
is happy birthday?

- Buon natale? I'm guessing

Buon natale? Okay, okay. We'll go there.
Someone would have seen that and said,

"That doesn't mean 'Leave a Comment.'
And we shouldn't put this on the

homepage of every single Italian
WordPress in the world." So that

workflow, I think, is key to Phase Four
of Gutenberg, which is why it's part of

Phase Three. So collaboration is the fun
part, which will be easy and hard to do

at the same time, which is that kind of
real time co-editing. And there's some

cool new standards in browsers that
allow us to do this in a decentralized

way, which I'm really excited about,
using essentially features built into

Chrome and others that allow us to, like
connect multiple people editing a

page or post at the same time, using
just a browser and open source

technology. But the more like, approval,
etc, is a little bit more of the later

Phase Three. So 2023, we'll work on
that. For now, contribute to Openverse,

block patterns, blocks, and block themes.
That is the key for 2022. Again, if I

get on stage next year, and say there's
30 - we've gone to 40 block themes?

Utter failure. Please throw fruit at me
or something else. I hope that we have

300, or ideally 3000, of these block-
enabled themes and that's - both that's

updating existing themes and creating
new ones to allow people to express their

creativity online through the Gutenberg
editor. Again, right now, if you look at

what social networks do, they try to
really narrow you into a very limited

expression of creativity. Why? Because
they want to serve ads against your

profile and what you're creating. They
want to target you. That's not what

we're trying to do with WordPress. So we
want you to create the most unique, cool

stuff online as possible. And blocks
enable people to do that. And I'm

looking forward to more and more of it.
Does that answer the question?

- Yes, thank you.
Cool, thank you.

I saw someone stand up over here. Was that? Okay.

You have preempted so many of the
questions that were submitted.

Oh!
- We're getting you one, though.

Somewhat related to what you were just
speaking to, the question is:

soon we'll have blocks that allow you to
drag everything everywhere. We'll soon

have a ton of free images, patterns,
etc. How are we going to make all that

easy to understand and use for users?

Yeah, that's our problem. So this is
what is going to be, I think, the focus

of Core WordPress iterations over
5.9, 6.0, 6.1, and beyond. I'll say it in

an abstract sense, which is things like
user tests. And we do run these and we

publish them on our Make WordPress blogs,
which is where we'll ask someone

who has never used WordPress before,
"Please try it out." And this is something

proprietary software companies do all
the time. But in WordPress, we actually

publish these. And so you can see them
and you can learn from them. And you can

see what someone who's never used
WordPress before has trouble with using

and not using. Things that might be very,
very intuitive to people in this room

because we've been using WordPress for
five or 10 years, might be very

challenging to someone entirely new to the
concepts or the abstractions that we

use. The other example, which I hope
everyone listening to this does - because

if you're listening to this, you're like
a WordPress OG - is helping a friend use

WordPress. Right? I hear a laugh in the
front row. It's like that whole thing

like, "Friends don't let friends publish on
Wix." Take someone who's

building a website, you say, "All right,
I'm going to help you set this up." And

while you're doing that, you're probably
going to learn a lot of things that are

tough in WordPress. And hopefully, that
helps you then contribute a bug or an

improvement or something into the Core
software that makes it easier for

everyone else to use. By the way, to the extent
WordPress - again, that's what's amazing

about it to me. When you look at that
10 times larger than the second in the

marketplace - by the way, Shopify is a
company valued at like $140 billion. How

did we do that? How do we be 10 times
larger than that? It's just people

helping other people. I can't put it
more simply than that. It's how

WordPress has had basically no marketing
dollars through its whole history. Its

friends telling friends, like, "Hey, you
want a website? Let me help you set it

up." And then when they have trouble,
coming back to a cool WordPress Make

site or something else and saying, "Hey,
my friend had trouble with XYZ. Can - I

think if we move this around or change
this widget or make this button more prominent

or something like that - that would be
more intuitive for folks." And the beauty

of a project like WordPress, and there's
a few other open source projects which

are similar, is we can simultaneously
become more intuitive for new users at

the same time that we become more
powerful for power users. That's not

easy. I think it can only happen in the
digital realm. Like an SLR camera with

like 80 buttons can't also become
simultaneously easier for people

just taking their first photo. But in the
digital world, we can do that. And

that's actually really, really exciting.
So that's part of what excites me about

WordPress, and I hope is a part of what
people contribute in the future.

Another from the off site questions?
Let's see. This is from Sarah Gooding.

What can WordPress do to protect small
publishers from the threat of big tech

companies' greed and hostility to the
open web?

Oh, my goodness.

Big tech companies - was it
hostility to the open web?

Greed and hostility to the open web.

Greed and hostility. Oh, my goodness,
we're dealing with one of the

seven deadly sins. First, I'll say that
there's some giant tech companies whose

greed and hostility is somewhat aligned
with the open web. Meaning that a Google

who is indexing the web, is probably more
aligned with the mission of WordPress

than a Facebook, which is trying to
create an alternative to the open web or

other companies. Fill in the blank there.
So that's something to keep in mind. The

number one thing I think we can do is
create an alternative. So it's easy to

forget that someone starting a WordPress
might not want - the thing they

wake up in the morning and think about is
not like, "I want to make more open source

software in the world." They might be
thinking, "Hey, I want more customers in

my restaurant" or "I want more visitors,
to my salon" or "I want more readers of

my novel I'm working on." Like, whatever
it might be. And the beauty of WordPress

is there's so many things you can do on
top of it. It's that WordPress is a means

to an end. And this is our strength and
our weakness. On third-party measuring

services, like a Quantcast or a Nielsen
or something like that, like

a facebook.com or a google.com shows up as
one domain. And WordPress is, in many

ways, like the dark matter of the web
in that it's the thing that comprises

the majority of the universe, but
doesn't show up on one domain by

definition. It's across millions, tens -
hundreds of millions of different

domains and represents each person on
the domain owning a piece of the web.

It belongs to them. Literally domains,
I'm not - I'm going to pitch domains

here. Domains are like the most Web3
thing you could create. It really

belongs to you far more than almost
anything else. So I think what we can do

is - well, I'll tell you the biggest
thing I've learned, which goes a little

back to your question on what is a
thing to talk about to the youth or

people that create things. Early on, I
was like a Slashdot reading zealot.

Meaning like, I was like, "Ah, Microsoft
and Bill Gates are evil." I had a very

like, black and white view of the world
where I saw open source as good and

anything proprietary as bad. And it was
binary. As you mature, you learn that

things are not binary. It's grayscale.
It's duotone. And there's things that

are both simultaneously good and bad,
and things that exist on the

spectrum. And over time, I've chosen to
devote more of my life to things that I

feel like are on the side of the
spectrum that I want future generations -

if I ever have children or grandchildren -
them to experience of the web. But that

the - everything exists on the spectrum. I
would say that for - pure philosophy does

not win. Meaning that for folks, maybe
like here in the room, or some of the

folks watching the livestream, the idea of
owning your content, owning the software

that powers it and everything like that,
is very compelling. That's probably

compelling for like 1 or 2% of humanity.
We're at the very end of the bell curve

of folks who care about those
things. For the rest, if we want a

majority of the web - hopefully, I hope a
majority, or even like 85 or 90% of the

web to be powered by open source. For them,
we need to create the best user experience.

Meaning it needs to be the easiest. It needs
to be the most intuitive. And it needs to be

the thing that gets them towards
their goals the fastest. For many

people, that means WordPress will be
invisible. And that's okay. We don't

need people to even know what WordPress
is. If they're using WordPress, open

source, open API, open data, everything
to get to where they're going, that is

infinitely better than using proprietary
software to get from A to B. So we need

to create as many use cases, as many -

work on usability as much as possible to
create that. So that is my learning. And

something I hope we can all work together
great, because even if someone

doesn't realize that using open source
and making the web more open. If by

creating their website, creating their
restaurant, creating their online service

selling something online, they are doing
so in a way that makes the web even just

a smidgen more open. That's cool. That's
good for humanity. That's the part I

want future generations to grow up in.
Thank you.

Okay, we got two minutes.

- No, no. Two questions.
Two questions! Okay.

Well, how I talk, that could take 20
minutes.

- Okay, we're down to 20 minutes, so I'm
giving you five for each.

Okay, five minutes per for each question,
apparently. So.

Hi Matt, my name is Aaron Jorbin. I
probably came the shortest distance

because I live, like, three blocks away.
A couple of times, tonight, you've

talked about the GPL, the importance of
the GPL, the importance of the Four

Freedoms of the GPL. Over the last year,
there's been an effort to dual license

the Gutenberg repository, and thus allow
people to use the WordPress code in ways

that would not confer those four
freedoms on to future users of

WordPress. I'm wondering how that lines up
with your ideas of the four freedoms and

why I, as a contributor to WordPress,
should support my code being re-licensed

to remove the four freedoms from future
users?

That's such a good question. So thank
you, Aaron, for asking that. And also,

thank you for being someone else who
makes me not the only person in the room

with a suit. And Aaron looks great. So
thank you very much for that. Hopefully,

we get that on camera. So this is
interesting. So the GPL was created in

the 80s and 90s, and had no concept of,
essentially, delivery over the web. So

the GPL says that if you share something,
distribute it, which was - historically

means, distributed the source code over
like floppy disk, or CDs, or things like

that, you must confer the same freedoms.
But it didn't count if you were just

running your website, which is good and
bad. It's good in that, like, your

password file on your WordPress site is
not GPL. Right? You don't need to share

that to the world. There are licenses
like the Affero GPL and others that say

like you need to share everything, but it
also creates a loophole. So technically,

like WordPress.com doesn't need to share
any of its code back to the world. It

does. Those folks work really hard on
putting improvements back into

WordPress, but they're not required to because
delivery and distribution through SaaS

services does not confer the distribution
in which the GPL was intended.

In practice, we do it but in letter of
law, it's not required. Mobile apps

are whole new worlds. And again, there
is the ideal thing and there's the

pragmatic thing. Practical - ideally, I
would love to use a mobile device which

had firmer hardware, and everything
involved with it was fully open source.

Pragmatically, I need to use an Android
or iOS device, probably from Apple or

Samsung, that works. That has good
battery life and everything like that.

So I've always thought of myself as a
pragmatic, open source evangelist.

Gutenberg. Now how do we bring this to
Gutenberg? So, Gutenberg is trying to

create a pan-CMS or pan-creation
standard for things like blocks. We

think, or I think, that in Gutenberg,
if we can create a standard interface for

things like adding an image or the
basic things that you do within a block

interface, that is good for the web and
humanity. So part of that is that I

would really like to see even
proprietary systems adopt Gutenberg

blocks. I think that would be a win. You
know, I've made fun of some systems like

Wix and Squarespace or Mailchimp or
others. I think they - I would love

I would be thrilled if they all used
Gutenberg. And Gutenberg is licensed

under a way that, if you use it, you
don't have to make the rest of your

software also open source. So the way
the GPL is, is it's what's called a

"viral license." So if you use part of it,
everything else that links it also has

to be open source. Which I like for
WordPress. I like for everything I do.

But I also recognize that maybe, in
let's say, a mobile app, I might want to

have an open source-based editor that
uses the standards and code of

Gutenberg, but the rest of the app might
not be open source. Maybe it's the

Mailchimp app. Let's use Mailchimp as an
example. I don't have any relation to

Mailchimp. So I can talk about that.
Mailchimp's awesome, very successful, just

sold to Intuit for like $10 billion or
whatever. If you look at what they're

doing with their newsletter creator,
it's blocks. If you look at what they're

doing and like - and they don't actually
have a great mobile app yet, so it'd be

cool. So when we took our mobile apps -
which means developing Gutenberg three

times. We have to develop for the web,
iOS, and Android, which is a lot of

work. We are re-licensing the mobile
versions of Gutenberg as MIT, which

means that they can be embedded in
mobile apps, which are not also open

source. This gets into another weird
thing, which is all mobile apps are

mediated by app stores. I don't love
that, for the record. But it's the

reality. You're either going through
Google or Apple to distribute on an app

store to the majority of humans in the
world.

And you have to - when you distribute your
app, you kind of have to - you don't kind of,

you have to agree to their terms of
services and licenses, which are sort of

compatible with open source. Actually,
WordPress has been a pioneer there.

Apple originally did not allow GPL
applications to be distributed on the

Apple Store. And WordPress fought for
that. And we won it, essentially. And, in

fact, Apple has used WordPress code in
demos. So we kind of got the unofficial

blessing that like, our GPL app was okay
to be on the Apple store. But like,

that's still a process, which we fight
and we go for. Most famously - was it

last year that it happened?

Either last year or earlier this year,
it all blends together.

It all blends together. I don't know.
Post-COVID, everything's a real mix.

But that Apple issued an incredibly rare apology,
which Apple never does, where they had

sort of told the WordPress open source
app they needed to do something that

seemed a little outside of the
requirements and the license. And they -

someone higher up realized that and
walked it back. So not often that

happens with a $2 trillion company. But
it happened with WordPress and Apple.

And that was exciting. So we will
continue fighting wherever we can for

getting these app stores to open up a
little bit. We will also be pragmatic in

that in reality, everyone who has an
Apple or iOS device means you go to the

app stores to reach them. And I think
it's actually a flaw of - if we think of why

Drupal or Joomla hasn't done as well, I
think they need apps. And I've

encouraged those communities to create
great apps because they need them.

Why we're expanding the license of Gutenberg,
in particular, to be both GPL and MIT

is that I would like WordPress blocks - or
Gutenberg blocks to become standards

that are larger than just WordPress. And
there is a Drupal version of Gutenberg

etc. But I think part of that is that if
blocks can become standards across every

proprietary system. I make fun of Wix - I
think it's fair, they've earned it. But

if they adopted Gutenberg, I would toast
them and take them out to beers.

I think that'd be awesome. Gutenberg is
something even bigger than WordPress,

which is basically saying how do we edit
and create the web? And can we get as

many people - both proprietary and open
source - collaborating on that as possible?

So that is the bet we've made. Maybe it's
correct, maybe it's incorrect. I hope

that you, as a contributor, still are
excited about being part of Gutenberg,

even though it's Gutenberg and MIT,
which are both open source licenses. But

MIT, of course, allows proprietary
licensing. I understand that. The

majority of open source software in the
world is, well, I think majority is GPL.

But there's a big chunk that's non-GPL.
I think, what we're doing - folks in this

room, you and I - are creating more that
open source stuff. And if proprietary people

use it along the way to creating more open
source, I think that's great and okay.

Thank you.
- And thank you for wearing a suit.

And thank you for coming tonight.

Someone asked me earlier why I wear a
suit. And it's actually - one of my

favorite folks is Frank Sinatra. And he
talked about - someone asked why they

wore a tux every night to perform. And
he said to the other band members, he

said, "Well, if we were performing for
the king or queen, what would we wear?

We'd dress up. We'd wear a tux to perform
for them." And he said, "Well, every

single night that this band performs,
there might be someone in the audience

who saved up two months to be there, or
a waitress or someone like that, who

really worked to be there. And so, guess
what? We're gonna dress up for them and

perform for them like they are the King or
Queen of England." Royalty. Every person

in the audience is royalty. So that's
why I wear a suit every year. If you're

wondering. This is like the only suit I wear
during the year, but I wear it because I

consider every member of the WordPress
community to be royalty. And I dress up for

y'all. So thank you.

Alright, this is the last question.
I'm so excited.

Bring us home.

I think it's a short question. Hopefully
it wasn't already asked.

Can you introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm Rachel Winchester. Most people
know me as Win. I'm here for representing

DigitalCube. And I'm just curious if
the topic of internet art has made it on

your radar. And if it's something of
interest to you.

Tell me more about internet art.
How do you define it?

Well, internet art is browser art or web-based
art. But it's art that uses the Internet

as a medium. So it works with WordPress,
because WordPress is that paintbrush.

Hmm.

I will also call out that you have an amazing
Issey Miyake purse, who's one of my

favorite designers of all time. Thank
you for bringing that to the microphone

as well. What do you think about the
Openverse and internet art? Like this idea

that people could maybe even contribute
internet art to the Openverse?

Oh, I love the idea of making publicly accessible
images more accessible.

I love that idea.

That this is - it's an interesting
tension, right? Because artists create

things, and they want to earn a living
from the things they create. And people

create things and want to contribute it
to the commons of humanity. That becomes

part of what we remix, part of what we
build on, part of the foundation of what

creates the next generations, next
versions of what happens. And in

copyright law, which I would say is
popularly epitomized - since in United

States copyright law, you have an
ability to do that. You know, rest in

peace for Joe Ablow. Like, would talk
about his 3% rule where he would take an

existing thing, modify 3%, and create
something new. Incredible, right? One of

the great artists of our generations, in
so many ways, that affected popular

culture, that affected art, that affected so
many things through that taking something

that exists and modifying it. So I don't
know. I think that's the epitome

of open source. I would say that
WordPress' limitation is, before, that

was basically all in the code and
language realm. It was all about the

plugins, the themes - a little bit of
design, and the translations that were

open source. If you had to define what's
next for us, it's expanding through the

Openverse, through things that are
more content-driven: images, video,

audio, art. I'm a photographer. My
username is Photomatt. So I consider

photographs to be art and I hope to put
more and more of the art I create and

hopefully others into that commons, so
that is the basis for what generations

create in the future. So, thank you so
much. I appreciate the question.

And with that, I think we might be -
I mean, Josepha's coming up.

I've got two notes for everyone,
because I would, naturally.

Number one, there were a lot of questions

that were asked beforehand and
also in the livestream chat that we

did not get to. But just like last year,
we will have a blog post up where we can

get those answered for you all. Don't
worry. And my final, final thing, let's

have a round of applause for the folks
who put this event together and for our

excellent slide makers.