The Lone Mamber — Independent News From The Frontier 20 YEARS · 2005–2025

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28 May 2026 · Frontier Publications

Open Source Matters — Then WordPress Proved It Doesn't

OSM on the letterhead. GPL in the footer. Third-party devs in the till. BAAAAAAAHHAHA — the irony writes itself.

August 2005. Mambo's core team walks. The fork needs a nonprofit so righteous it could survive a Sunday sermon — Open Source Matters. SFLC in the room. Joomla ships. Then WordPress ate the market. Then WordPress third-party devs proved what actually matters is who owns the repo, the trademark, and your renewal invoice. BAAAAAAAHHAHA. THE IRONY.

The Lone Mamber — Independent News From The Frontier — desert hero banner

Chief's thesis: Open Source Matters wasn't a vibe. It was governance cosplay with articles of incorporation. WordPress didn't disprove open source. It proved that when third-party devs, hosts, and platform czars run the economy, the slogan becomes wallpaper — and the lock-in stays in the plugin folder.

Open source matters — until the invoice matters more. Bri Bri still has trophies on his Facebook banner. WordPress has a trademark policy that names names. THE IRONY. BAAAAAAAHHAHA. 8)

Act I — When the name meant something (Aug 2005)

Miro captured the Mambo Foundation. Enter Open Source Matters, Inc. (OSM) — nonprofit to hold Joomla's trademarks. Same fork letter Brad Baker signed. Same roster as Bri Bri.

"We declare that we will no longer contribute to Mambo — and that we will release a new project called Joomla!"

Receipts: OSM open letter · opensourcematters.org

Editorial: Real trademark escape. Lawyer-approved. Generator meta on live sites: Joomla! - Copyright (C) 2005 Open Source Matters. The Chaser ran on it.

Act II — Foundation déjà vu (Joomla edition)

The thing that broke Mambo? A captured Foundation. Joomla's answer? Form another Foundation. OSM on the letterhead; institutions in the boardroom. WordPress kept climbing — themes, hosts, agencies, meetups.

Act III — Third-party devs: the real religion

Premium plugins & GPL theater — WordPress is GPL. Half the economy runs on license keys, update servers, pro tiers. Free as in speech, subscription as in your site breaks if you don't renew.

Lifetime licenses — R.I.P. — Buy once. Get acquired. Get sunset. Open source matters until the third-party dev matters more than your SLA.

Marketplaces — Envato. CodeCanyon. ThemeForest. The code is free. The dependency graph is where they get you.

Act IV — WP Engine vs Automattic (2024–2025)

Matt Mullenweg / Automattic vs WP Engine — cease-and-desist ping-pong, fair use vs confusion, proposed $32M/year royalty on trademark use.

"WP Engine has never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress."

Then it got spicy for third-party devs:

  • Automattic briefly blocked WP Engine from WordPress.org updates
  • WordPress.org took over ACF (WP Engine–owned) → Secure Custom Fields
  • Courts ordered access restored; trademark policy rewritten mid-fight

Chief annotates: They held the update repo hostage and forked a third-party plugin from the org. Miro wishes it had that portal access in Aug '05.

Act V — Chief's full circle (Brisbane)

Doctor D. Charles Caynes — Joomla fork saloon rider — now runs WordPress Vibe Coding LIVE! at Brisbane WP Meetup. Full circle. Not betrayal. Receipt of market gravity. They booted Go Joomla! WordPress third-party devs built the mall anyway.

Receipts wall

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