Matt Mullenweg WCUS 2024 Keynote - WP Engine

# Matt Mullenweg WCUS 2024 Keynote - WP Engine ## Theme The lecture discusses the Open Source movement, emphasizing its intellectual and moral foundations. It highlights debates on what constitutes true open source, especially concerning corporate practices. The speaker criticizes companies like META for not adhering to open source principles and warns against private equity firms exploiting open source projects. The ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ is explained, advocating for sustainable resource management. The speaker calls for community-driven development and ethical business practices, particularly within the WordPress community, to ensure the growth and sustainability of open source ecosystems.  ## Links - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/The Maker-Taker Frame Confuses Two Different Scarcities]] — evidence-for: the keynote treats commercial extraction and maintainer contribution as one moral ledger, the conflation this later claim separates - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Coerced Contribution Kills the Commons]] — contrasts: the keynote's contribution duty creates the coercive pressure that voluntary commons governance must avoid - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Public Credit Mechanisms Are the Visible Skeleton of Open Source Social Contracts]] — applies-in: Five for the Future contribution counts turn an implicit reciprocity norm into a public institutional scoreboard - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Concentrated Authority Without Accountability Produces the Same Failure Patterns Across Religious and Software Ecosystems]] — evidence-for: a project leader's keynote can convert a personal governance judgment into ecosystem-wide pressure without an independent check - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Trademarking a Commons's Descriptive Terms Converts a Steward Into a Gatekeeper]] — evidence-for: the dispute shows how control of project identity and naming can become a unilateral gatekeeping mechanism. - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Open Source Governance MOC]] — applies-in: the MOC lists this note under Connected Permanent Notes (synthesis 2026-07-21 — run 18). ## Takeaways 1. Open Source software provides freedom to users, but there are debates about what constitutes true open source. 2. The Open Source movement has grown into an intellectual and moral movement with widespread adoption in major tech companies. 3. There are concerns about companies co-opting open source for profit, without truly adhering to its principles. 4. The speaker criticizes META’s licensing of Lama as not truly open source. 5. The concept of ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ is explained as a situation where shared resources are depleted due to individual self-interest. 6. The speaker advocates for the ‘abundance of the commons’ where shared resources are nurtured for future growth. 7. The speaker discusses the role of private equity firms like Silver Lake in monetizing open source projects at the expense of community health. 8. Silver Lake’s involvement in companies like WP Engine and Talent is cited as examples of aggressive monetization strategies. 9. The speaker calls for the WordPress community to support companies that contribute back to the open source ecosystem. 10. The speaker emphasizes the importance of teaching and sharing knowledge to enhance understanding. ## Highlights - `"The idea that what we create together is bigger than any one person."` ## Chapters & Topics ### Open Source Movement > The Open Source movement is an intellectual and moral movement advocating for software that is freely available for use, modification, and distribution. - **Keypoints** - Open Source software provides freedom to users. - There is a debate about what constitutes true open source. - The movement has widespread adoption in major tech companies. - **Explanation** The Open Source movement promotes the idea that software should be freely available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. This philosophy has gained traction in the tech industry, with many companies adopting open source practices. However, there are ongoing debates about what truly qualifies as open source, especially when companies impose restrictions or monetize open source projects. ### Tragedy of the Commons > The Tragedy of the Commons is a concept where shared resources are depleted due to individual self-interest, leading to the degradation of the resource. - **Keypoints** - Occurs when individuals exploit a shared resource for personal gain. - Leads to the depletion and degradation of the resource. - Requires collective action to manage and sustain the resource. - **Explanation** The Tragedy of the Commons describes a situation where individuals, acting in their own self-interest, overuse and deplete a shared resource, ultimately harming the entire community. This concept highlights the need for collective management and sustainable practices to preserve shared resources for future generations. - **Examples** > A community field where farmers bring their animals to graze, but if they do not maintain the field, it becomes overgrazed and turns into dirt. - Farmers bring animals to graze on a shared field. - Without maintenance, the field becomes overgrazed. - The resource is depleted, illustrating the Tragedy of the Commons. ## Assignments & Suggestions Transcription 00:00:01 --> 00:00:32 That software can give you more freedom. Freedom to hack. Freedom to charge. Freedom to break it. Freedom to do things I disagree with. Freedom to experiment. Freedom to be yourself. Freedom expressed across the entire range of the human world. Open Source, once ridiculed and attacked by the professional classes, as a link to the Halloween memos from Microsoft, has taken over as an intellectual and moral movement. 00:00:34 --> 00:01:05 Its followers are a legion within every major tech company. Yet, even now, false prophets like that are trying to co-opt it. From the Open Source AI model, it's free to use, at least until this is imposed. Monthly active users of a product or service made available by Microsoft Teams, like this affiliate, is greater than 700 million monthly active users, representing the entire market. Seriously? So basically, by the way, people misinterpret this. 00:01:05 --> 00:01:37 I actually think Lama is fantastic. It's amazing. I really like it. I just don't want to call it open source. So anyway, excuse me. Is that registered users? Visitors to WordPress Parasites? Which number in the millions? That's like if the U.S. government said that you can have the First Amendment and freedom of speech, until you make over $50,000 a year and the proceeding calendar year. At which point, your First Amendment rights will be abolished. That's what that license says, basically. Now, that's not open source. 00:01:37 --> 00:02:11 That is not freedom. I believe META should have the right to set their terms. The smart business and amazing people who use Lama. But don't pretend Lama is open source when it doesn't actually increase humanity's freedom. It's proprietary license issues at META's discretion of META. If you use it, you're effectively a vassal state of META. Vassal state, sorry. I guess a lot of people are like, what's a vassal state? It's this idea of like a, in some countries, like a state that's like another, sort of. 00:02:11 --> 00:02:33 under another country. Canada, the U.S., I don't know. No one likes being a vassal state, by the way. I don't know. 00:03:31 --> 00:04:04 Evolve is where we apply those learnings to our next generation, our next version. We see how things work in the real world. The natural selection of actual usage. Teach is where we're actually learning more, because you don't really know something until you teach it. Who's ever done that, where you've taught something and you learn way more? Oh my goodness. It's all the time. It's incredible what you think you don't know. Actually, one of my best economics teachers, one of the best things he did is every day he'd ask me, one of the students teach one of the new concepts. I thought, wow, this guy is like making us. 00:04:04 --> 00:04:35 do his work. I wasn't getting paid for it. Then I realized he was actually hands-to-learn way more. Thank you, Mr. Rowland. We open source our knowledge by sharing what we've learned so others can follow along the same path. Nourish is the trickiest and the most important part. It's where we water the garden. If you've done the previous three steps, you've been very successful. Now your responsibility is spread the fruits of your labors around the ecosystem so that everyone can succeed together. This is the philosophy behind Five. 00:04:35 --> 00:05:09 Year Old Future, which you're going to see is emphasized a lot more now. I'm going to be fresh from the post for a minute. Who's heard of the economics term called Tragedy of the Commons? A few people here? Let me explain it with an analogy really. quickly. Imagine you lived in a town and there was a field where farmers were working. The field doesn't belong to any one person, it belongs to the community. 00:05:10 --> 00:05:40 Now, if people bring their animals to graze there, but they don't water, water the grass, fertilize the soil, everyone just brings and takes, eventually that field will just turn into dirt, right, it will be overgrazed, there will be nothing left of the shared resource, it will go away. That's what's known as the tragedy of the commons. It occurs in so many things, it actually comes from literally, this would literally happen in villages and things. 00:05:42 --> 00:05:59 I think we have an opportunity in the opposite, which is the abundance of the commons that may be able to provide for the future growth. Which is saying, okay, if all the farmers, all the people who are coming to bring their animals to graze this field, take 5% of their time, 5% of their profits from selling the animals or selling the fur or whatever. 00:06:34 --> 00:07:00 And there are those that treat open source simply as a resource to extract from its natural surroundings, like oil from the ground, a finite resource to be extracted and used. Compare the five for the future agents from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size, with revenue in the ballpark of about half a billion dollars. 00:07:30 --> 00:08:05 That's actually gone down since I wrote this, so some WP Engine employees have modified their PowerPoint features down to 40 now. By the way, a lot of this information I'm sharing with y'all has come from WP Engine employees who have reached out to me and talked to me about all this. So thank you all for being brave and for sharing this information because you think your company is doing something wrong. WP Engine has good people. Someone from our list on that page. The company is controlled by Silverlake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets. 00:08:05 --> 00:08:36 under management. Silverlake doesn't give a dang about your open source ideals. It just wants return on capital. So it's at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to go vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? If someone's going to nourish the ecosystem, if someone's going to frack every bit of value out of it to look rigorous. Newfold. It's the acquisition of the OCDS. It gives back. Right now, Newfold's contributions are split across a couple different part of the future. 00:08:36 --> 00:09:00 pages, but I'm going to try to consolidate those. Also, Newfold sponsors Automatic, so we want to give them credit for some of the Automatic powers as well. So we'll figure out what to do with that. So there's Awesome Photo, Tenup, Ocinger, even Google. I know I said even Google. Google's awesome, by the way. We got a lot of Google shirts. Raise your hand. Thank you. Google has been doing amazing work. 00:09:31 --> 00:10:01 Those of us who are makers, who create the source, need to be wary of those who would take our creations and squeeze out the juice. Like riffids who will hop off to the next bath. But what we're trying to build is something big here. Something long-term. Something that lasts for generations. I may screw up along the way, or my health may falter. By the way, I wrote that because last week I was in the hospital with a kidney stone. Who's had a kidney stone? 00:10:03 --> 00:10:37 Oh man, what's up with that? I'm going to open source some of this because we need to figure this out. That it's not okay if this is going to happen. It can be totally normal one day and the next day it's like a shamanic demon pain amount happening. Like, that's not, that's weird. But we're all human, we're bodies, I think we should just talk about this stuff. Or my health may falter. These principles and beliefs will stand strong because they represent the core tenet of our community. The idea that what we create together is bigger than any one person. 00:10:39 --> 00:11:09 Is that supposed to be? Applause. Now I'm going to walk out through just some of the other stuff that's been sung. Oh, we got the music going? Turn it up, turn it up. Okay, so uh, when you get home, play this song and just take a quick read through it. 00:11:10 --> 00:11:43 It kind of depends on your reading speed. Okay, we'll have this in the background while I talk for a bit. Beautiful song. So, I've had some cryptic tweets over the past few days. Here's one of them I'll talk about. I know private equity and investors can be brutal. Read the book, Barbarians at the Gate. Has anyone ever read that one? A few people? Oh, man. Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation, 00:11:43 --> 00:12:00 or something comes up about their company's participation or lack thereof in WordPress. I'll make sure it's a big public appeal and that you read some of those. Again, I've had dozens at this point of people inside these companies reach out to me. Thank you. 00:12:19 --> 00:12:52 So, I'm going to tell you all about this firm called Silver Lake now, they're the ones with $102 billion under management and I'm going to call this portion of the talk, How Private Equity Can Hollow Out and Destroy Open Source Communities. We're not the first one they're doing this to, there's actually a company called Talent, in 2010, Silver Lake bought 25% of Talent, leading to an aggressive monetization of the. 00:12:52 --> 00:13:24 open source users for our activities and commercial inversions over community health. They sacked up through four CEOs in seven years. They generated a 20x return, but the open source community is completely gone. UD is another one. So they got about 15% of UD for $400 million and got a 10x return on that. By the way, that means they got $4 billion out of it. But they did toxic price changes that led to a massive community backlash. 00:13:25 --> 00:13:55 And the current CEO's ousting. And multiple CEO changes. There's an open source thing that came up in response to this. Crypto.com, I'm not sure how it's pronounced. It's a top 10 open source project. But I just want to show that this is a pattern. These are silver lake companies. So what's another silver lake company? WB. And who's the person behind all this? This guy. 00:14:03 --> 00:14:34 I'm also on board with a company that's here. I'm making the case for why this might be the last word of the MPCWP any time soon. And if you would like to express your opinions on any of this, this is the email address we can email. It's on their website. I'm not talking to anyone or anything. It's just on their website. So, you know, you can kind of see when there's like one person, one thing behind all of this. 00:14:35 --> 00:15:09 And it's just like a school caravan. I know this is, I see this is a lot to call out, but unfortunately this has been going on since they bought WP Engine in 2018. If you all saw Noel Talk's presentation at WordCamp Europe, he talked about the slowing of the growth of WordPress, which we actually had for a few years. You can map that actually pretty well. And we've been trying to debug this. And, you know, part of my background is macroeconomics. You can actually map it pretty well to the revenue growth of a company like WB Engine. 00:15:10 --> 00:15:42 Think about this. If you ran a business, and you only spent part of the budget on the R&D, how great is it that if you get all the software for free, you don't spend a single dollar on it, or spend $40 on YouTube, you can make $100,000 a year on it. And you can make $450 million per year off it. That'd be pretty sweet, right? Pretty good business. But then what happens to that software? If you're taking the business from companies like the other ones I mentioned, the Automatic, New Fold, etc., that actually put back to that software. 00:15:42 --> 00:16:11 Those companies are fighting with, like, one hand tied behind their back. I've got 100 full-time people working on 4 and things in the comments. I could have those 100 people working on more customers for WordPress.com or something like that. But all of us belong to WordPress. So, that's my talk. Any questions? Damn! Copyright©2024 PLAUD.Al.All Rights Reserved ## Overview This document summarizes the meeting notes from various discussions held on 2024-09-20. The topics covered include contributor dashboards, blockchain and open web, WordPress usage, business ethics, AI in WordPress, community contributions, and open-source initiatives for NGOs. The document also consolidates action items and merges sections with similar titles for better clarity. ## Contributor Dashboards and Transparency ### Research Findings - **Transparency in Contributions**: - Research conducted on contributor dashboards. - Findings shared on make.org.gov.org/project (MDP). - Data sources include manually credited numbers. - Aim: Increase transparency about ongoing contributions. ### Improvement Efforts - **Focus on Enhancing Dashboards**: - Dedication to improving contributor dashboards until the end of the calendar year. - Notable improvements observed, particularly in understanding and contribution mechanisms. - Example: Significant changes noted in GoDaddy’s contribution process. ### Leadership and Communication - **Leadership Involvement**: - Importance of involving top leaders in the process. - Efforts to communicate changes without causing incidents. - Example: Attempt to discuss with Heather, highlighting the need for transparent communication. ### Support and Commitment - **Support for Contributors**: - Assurance of support for contributors facing retaliation. - Commitment to assist those who lose their jobs due to speaking up. - Emphasis on collective effort and building nourishing environments. ## Open Web and Blockchain ### Blockchain and Open Source - **Intersection with Open Web**: - Blockchain as a complement to the open web economy. - Open source’s transformative impact on various fields. - Example: Wikipedia as an open-source encyclopedia. ### Crypto and WordPress - **Crypto Projects**: - Many crypto projects are open source (e.g., Ethereum, Bitcoin). - Similarities with WordPress in terms of committers, communities, and conferences. - **Potential Integration**: - Future possibilities for e-commerce using crypto. - Current challenges: usability issues, mobile device compatibility, and wallet management. - Potential areas of integration: donations and e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce. ## Discussion on Open Source and Crypto ### Open Source as a Religion - Open source is often compared to a religion, with strong beliefs and communities. - Crypto is similarly seen as a fervent belief system. ## WordPress Usage and Block Editor ### Decline in WordPress Usage - **Data**: Mentioned a decline in WordPress usage since 2018. - **Factors**: Introduction of the block editor and dissatisfaction within the community. - **Counterpoints**: Multiple forces in macroeconomics affecting usage, not just one factor. ### WB Engine Trademark Issues - **Issue**: Misuse of the WordPress trademark by WB Engine. - **Impact**: Confusion among users, leading to support requests. ### Business Practices and Open Source - **Criticism**: Business practices that prioritize profit can be detrimental to open-source communities. - **Example**: WordPress has grown significantly since 2018 but has stalled in the past 18 months. - **Methodology Changes**: Changes in W3Text tracking affecting data. ## Collaboration and Future Developments ### Upcoming Features - **Collaboration Tools**: New features allowing real-time collaboration on WordPress pages, similar to Google Docs. - **Sponsorship**: Sponsoring open-source projects to foster community growth. ## Tragedy of the Commons and Economic Models ### Eleanor Armstrong’s Work - **Discussion**: Eleanor Armstrong’s work on disproving the Tragedy of the Commons. - **Economic Models**: Zero marginal cost of distribution in digital software. ### Encouraging New Generations - **Growth**: WordPress has grown an entire Drupal market share in the past year. - **Investment**: Significant contributions from companies like Automatic to core development. ## Business Ethics and Acquisitions ### Conscious Capitalism - **Philosophy**: Advocating for conscious capitalism and ethical business practices. - **Example**: Automatic’s acquisition and open-sourcing of Tumblr and podcasting tools. ### Call to Action Against Bad Actors - **Strategy**: Encouraging users to switch hosts if dissatisfied with current services. - **Example**: WP Engine customers encouraged to consider alternatives like Bluehost, Cloud, Pressable. ## Government and Education Sector Adoption ### WordPress in Public Sectors - **Adoption**: Increasing use of WordPress in U.S. Army and federal government. - **Cost Savings**: Significant savings for public school districts by switching to WordPress. ## AI and Open Source ### Future of AI in WordPress - **Current State**: Lack of GPUs in WordPress data centers for running open-source AI models. - **Vision**: AI models likely to be integrated at the OS or browser level for better accessibility and performance. ### Encouraging Open Source AI - **Goal**: To get plugin authors and innovators to use open-source AI models within WordPress. - **Impact**: Creating demand and proving the value of open-source AI. ## Community Contributions and Themes ### Amnesty’s Open-Source Theme - **Project**: Amnesty’s theme open-sourced under GPL. - **Community Building**: Seeking advice on getting themes into the repository and building community support. ## Open-Source Initiative for NGOs ### Overview - The organization has open-sourced its work to benefit other NGOs, non-profits, and grassroots organizations. - The goal is to allow these organizations to use the work developed over the last six years. ### Discussion Points - **Website Integration**: Each chapter has its own website but shares the same name to maintain consistency. - **Repository Submission**: The theme has been submitted to the repository but is not yet accepted. - Current status: A lot of work is needed to get it ready for acceptance. - Interim plan: The theme will be available on GitLab or GitHub until it is accepted into the repository. - **Plugin Management**: Discussion on whether to use individual plugins or group them logically. - Aim: Make individual plugins lighter weight. - Alternative: Use patterns that can be sideloaded as JSON from the pattern directory. ### Future Vision - The organization is creating new primitives to build these sites. - Potential impact: Improved methods for non-profits to receive donations, benefiting multiple organizations. ## WordPress Support and Updates ### Robustness of WordPress - **Support Experience**: A client with a 10-year-old site successfully updated with minimal issues. - Example: Charged $97 to update the site, making it functional for another decade. - **Auto-Update Feature**: Discussion on the benefits of auto-updating WordPress sites. ### Classic Editor End-of-Life Concerns - **Miscommunication**: Agencies misleading clients about the Classic Editor’s end-of-life. - Clarification: Classic Editor is not necessarily going away; it will be supported as long as needed. - Issue: Agencies using this misinformation to stress clients into paying for unnecessary rebuilds. ### User Experience with Classic and Gutenberg Editors - **Older Posts Compatibility**: Gutenberg loads the Classic Editor interface for older posts, providing a familiar experience. - **User Adaptability**: New users can figure out the new interface, even those less tech-savvy. ## WordCamp Attendance and Events ### Efforts to Increase Attendance - **Work Camp Promotion**: Strategies to boost attendance at upcoming WordCamp events. - **Speed Build Challenge**: An event to make WordCamp more engaging and fun. ## Action Items - [ ] Continue improving contributor dashboards until the end of the calendar year. - [ ] Communicate with top leaders to ensure transparency and avoid incidents. - [ ] Provide support to contributors facing retaliation or job loss. - [ ] Encourage WP Engine customers to consider alternative hosting providers. - [ ] Promote the use of open-source AI models within the WordPress community. - [ ] Support Amnesty’s efforts in community building and theme contributions. - [ ] Submit the theme to GitLab or GitHub while awaiting repository acceptance. - [ ] Ensure communication about the Classic Editor’s support status to prevent misinformation. - [ ] Promote the speed build challenge to increase engagement at WordCamp. Transcription 00:00:13 --> 00:00:44 If you have questions, there's a microphone right here and you can line up down the center aisle. I'd like to ask Matt questions at a lot of our work camps in Europe, we mentioned the contributor dashboards and since then I have done some research and you were interested. 00:00:44 --> 00:01:15 in the findings of that research. It is transparency about the contribution that is happening. There's a post on make.org.gov.org slash project and it's an MDP. We're using data that we're getting right now from a few sources such as, the numbers were manually credited. So we're bringing transparency about the contribution that's happening. 00:01:17 --> 00:01:49 Thank you. Hard part. I've been on the receiving end, and I want to say this with all due respect, I've been on the receiving end about improving contribution. And this is why I am dedicating most of my time between now and the end of the calendar year to continuing to improve these contributor dashboards. Because the change that you called out about GoDaddy in this process, this week I saw massive improvements in understanding and how to further that contribution and those contribution mechanisms. 00:01:49 --> 00:02:19 I was in some meetings with my team about these things, and I feel really good about this. When we name a change, I want to know from a leadership perspective. So, from a leadership perspective, have we gone to the top leaders that you've shared and have you tried to work channels without it becoming an incident? Because I've been on the other side of this. Oh yeah. I'm actually trying to talk to Heather. I did not want to give this presentation. So, I was supposed to be in front of her. 00:02:20 --> 00:02:52 And we all kind of stepped up. So, I'm going to be in front of her. By the way, I did not commit suicide. But, you know, it's scary. But, like, I think you have to speak the truth about it. 00:02:52 --> 00:03:25 And this is all transparent stuff. This is all public information. There's no place that you can't fact check online. So yeah, thank you. And like I said, for the retaliation thing, like, I know this, that's what's rude about this is because companies have made up of people, right? People don't always agree with the management. And if any one of you gets in trouble, for speaking up about this or supporting the issue or anything like that, let me know. 00:03:25 --> 00:03:56 If you lose your job, I'll do my best to like support you until you find another one, anything like that. We're all in this together, we're committed. And ultimately we need to like build things together that nourish part of it, so thank you. My name is Sasha, and I would like to thank you in person for your honesty, for your greatness. 00:03:56 --> 00:04:31 You've been my inspiration for many, many years. And I would like to thank you in person for your honesty, As you said, we mostly gather for the open web, right? And for the open web, we should be powerful. The open web economy should be powered by open minds, right? What is your thought about blockchain and how it can complement the repressed economy and repressed movement? Because we share the block. I've been in the repressed movement for almost 20 years, right? 00:04:31 --> 00:05:00 I've been in blockchain for more than 7 years. And there is a pure, I don't know, overlap between the open web and making real stuff. Yeah, so blockchain, crypto. So I love when open source gets applied to different areas. This is part of the beauty, like I said, open source is a movement that's changing everything it touches. So if you apply open source to an encyclopedia, what do you get? You get Wikipedia. 00:05:14 --> 00:05:44 It's been kind of a wild ride, you know, there's like a lot of scammy stuff in crypto, there's a lot of interesting things, but what's amazing and a lot of people don't realize is most of these projects are open source. Ethereum is open source, Bitcoin is open source, and so they have committers just like us, they have communities, they have conferences, this whole thing. So that's pretty powerful. Now how that interacts with WordPress, I'm not sure yet. I could see like more e-commerce going over crypto rails in the future, like more, you. 00:05:44 --> 00:06:20 know, companies like Coinbase and others make it like kind of easier, but right now it's kind of hard to use some of this stuff, like running your wallet to the blockchain, downloading it, like all these sorts of things. It doesn't work around mobile devices unless you have like someone else custody of your wallet, so it's a cool technology. It's a technical solution, and I love that it's the future from a freedom of distribution point of view. So probably the place where Big Graphics and WordPress will be that commercial side. So when people are making donations or buying something, they're like one of the shopping cart plugins like WooCommerce or others. 00:06:22 --> 00:06:49 Sounds good. Let's start. Cool. Thank you. I have huge doubts about it, and we're already testing it in production. And crypto is also one of those other religions, right? Open source is a religion, and crypto people, like, they'll tell you right away. Thank you, and recover from it and keep the stone. Thank you, thank you. Appreciate it. Apparently you get more of them. More water. More water, yes. Okay. 00:06:58 --> 00:07:28 Well, I think it's a valid criticism. You mentioned 2018, and a downfall in usage of WordPress, and I was just wondering how you compare that to the fact that the block editor was released at a similar time, and. 00:07:28 --> 00:08:00 the dissatisfaction of that amongst many people in the WordPress community. And I don't say that, it's just as an aside, because what you said in your presentation sounded like you were blaming all the downfall on one person. Yeah, in macroeconomics, I'm not, by the way, in macroeconomics there's so many countervailing forces, so there's a lot of different things happening simultaneously. We ship new versions of new features, including block editor, which predates 2018. 00:08:40 --> 00:09:00 By the way, I've had a few people come up and say that WB Engine is tricky because of their misuse of the trademark. I've heard it called WordPress Engine before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, we've got a few there. People have come up to me. I get support requests a lot from WB Engine because people think it's like an additional tool. 00:09:30 --> 00:10:05 Yeah, yeah. Squeeze out that profit. That's what happens with these things. And it is a way to run business. And obviously it can be very lucrative. Extremely successful. 10x returns on some of these things. But it's not great for consumers. Often, when you do that, you squeeze every last bit out of the business. And for open source communities, it can be fatal. And I think that can be really rough. And if you look at it, the award price is fairly unique. And it's an open-source community that has actually accelerated its growth. 00:10:05 --> 00:10:38 So we've actually grown a ton since 2018. We stalled out a little bit in the past 18 months. And we were kind of looking into why. There's also some methodology changes in W3Text. We're going to share our tracking and things like that. There's a lot of stuff happening at once. But I do think one of the factors of many is sort of the wallet share, sort of revenue being taken away from companies that are giving back and going to companies that aren't because they're competing more mercilessly. 00:10:38 --> 00:11:09 and in a far more nakedly capitalistic and evil way. There should be a tailwind for us because it's getting better and better with every release. And so I guess we burst up 10 years ago. I said from the beginning it was going to be a 10-year project, right? With the collaboration stuff that's coming up, it's about to get real cool. Like imagine that you can do this. You can open up a WordPress page and then, you know, hang a friend or a collaborator. You both have to open at the same time. Be moving blocks around just like Google Docs. 00:11:10 --> 00:11:41 See people changing things in real time. Share a draft with a client. Let them make changes. Upload it. Like, all this collaboration stuff is going to be really, really, really cool. And we've got some very fun stuff happening there. Including, by the way, sponsoring some open source projects. That'll be kind of fun too. Hi, Matt. I wanted to first address the tragedy of the commons, which was disproved by Eleanor Armstrong and her work on economics. 00:11:41 --> 00:12:16 I'm familiar with her book, yes. And so, I'd like to... I wouldn't say it was disproved. I would say that some of the examples... But it's kind of a logical thing you can think of. We have this deal where everyone raises a million dollars. We can all understand that. We have zero marginal cost of distribution. And we have a lot of people working on it. We're excited about WordPress, and I wanted to share that when you punch down, which is not... I wish I was punching down. I don't have $102 million. And I'm not talking about only singling out a super-admin sponsor at the WordCamp here. 00:12:16 --> 00:12:30 I'm also talking about, personally, you've, in the past, punched down other people who are less powerful than you. And I find it deeply... Well, I went out publicly on Thursday to defeat someone like that. 75,000 dollars. 00:13:08 --> 00:13:39 And I think that in order for WordPress to grow, we need to be encouraging a new generation of people coming into WordPress. The good news is, it is growing. So in the past year, we've grown an entire Drupal market share. It is growing again. And so it's stalled out for a little bit, but there's counterfeiting forces, and there's a lot of folks, including Automatic, that have put a ton back into core. We've got a lot of activity and everything. I mean, you see it around the room. 00:13:39 --> 00:13:53 So we're going to get through this, but I think that we also just need to call out bad actors. And the only way to find a bully is to find them back. If you just allow them to run rampant on the playground, they're just going to keep terrorizing you. Thank you. 00:14:25 --> 00:14:28 I really did not want to give this presentation today to be honest, it was terrible. 00:15:00 --> 00:15:30 Because they're spending some revenue on maturity back. Someone else is saying, oh, I'm going to take that cash and I'll buy things. They're at an advantage now. And then look at what happens after that acquisition. You know, some companies may acquire things. Like, for example, automatically acquire podcasting. We open-sourced it afterwards, right? We're now open-sourcing Tumblr, right? Switching into WordPress. Like, that's kind of our vibe. We like to make things more open. So just look at track records. I think a lot of this is in the public. 00:15:30 --> 00:16:02 And you should judge companies by their actions. What they've done in the past and what they're going to do in the future. I had a follow-up post to this where I said, every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. So, like, you know, they can change in the future. Companies can change in the future. And nothing's ever – we all make mistakes and we can all change. Just a micro follow-up on that. So it's almost like they're calling for a strike from end users. developers, and so on and so forth. 00:16:03 --> 00:16:34 Well, I hope that we can get every single WP Engine customer to watch this presentation, and that when that renewal time comes up, they think about that. And there's some really hungry other hosts. Those things are Bluehost, Cloud, Pressable, et cetera, that would love to get that business. And by the way, something else that happens is lack of capital investment. So CPUs aren't as fast, et cetera. Servers are slowing down. You might get past a performance even switching to someone else. And migrating has never been easier. 00:16:34 --> 00:17:08 than this part of the idea of data liberation. So again, it's kind of like one day of work to switch your site to something else. And I would highly encourage you to think about that when your contract renewal comes up. If you are currently a customer of WP Engine. Thanks, Matt. Hi, Matt. It's Allie Getsch, WP Fan Girl. And I don't have a logo yet, so you can't complain about it. I was listening to a history podcast and I'm trying to remember which one it was and when, 00:17:08 --> 00:17:39 and I thought of this at the time and then I forgot to get in touch, but they mentioned that the Tragedy of the Commons was actually written to justify the enclosure of public lands by large landowners. And I thought, oh my, that's really interesting because people talk about this in a very different way and I started wondering, is that an analogy we want to use? Is the problem really that the individual, since quite a lot of individual WordPress. 00:17:39 --> 00:18:00 users do whatever they can to get back, is the problem the individuals who are using this in common or is the problem people who are not at that level but who are exactly trying to make sure that people can't do that? 00:18:13 --> 00:18:44 And I do think that is private equity's approach, they've done some frightening things to other industries, including veterinarians, and it's a thing to worry about, and yet, the people who built up the company that got acquired, like, I'm pretty sure that having it eaten up into bits was not their purpose in building it, and hopefully not even their purpose in. 00:18:44 --> 00:19:14 selling it, although yes, sometimes it's just like, I don't care, just give me tons of money, everyone has a price. I'm a big proponent of something I like to call conscious capitalism, and by the way, I did a follow-up post where I talked about how that's like, some people interpreted it I'm a big proponent of something I like to call conscious capitalism, and by the way, I did a follow-up post where I talked about how that's like, some people interpreted it as saying like, It's a lot of prosperity that we experience. 00:19:15 --> 00:19:48 You're right that it's not a perfect analogy. Try to hear the comments. The gentleman before you, you're right. In digital software, there's not that marginal distribution. In fact, there's often network effects where the more people that use something, it can become more valuable versus less valuable because it becomes standard. So there are some nuances to it. I'm not worried about this analogy being used to take freedom away because the license of WordPress itself, the GPL, protects all of our freedom. WordPress belongs just as much to every single person in this room as it does to me. 00:19:49 --> 00:20:21 That's beautiful. No one can take that away. If, say, my next kidney stone turns me into Eagle Matt and I have little horns, it doesn't matter. Y'all can keep it. It's the ownership that really belongs to us, and that's why the license is so important. Because it's like our constitution, it really guarantees these freedoms that can't be taken away regardless. And that's why often when these companies come in and do is they change licenses. 00:20:23 --> 00:20:54 I've only re-licensed something once in my career. It was actually Goodbird, which we re-licensed to be more open. So Goodbird was under GPL, and I think we put it under, what was it, 10 GPL? So that could be embedded in like mobile apps and things. Even commercial applications, because we wanted to be very consistent. It's even bigger than WordPress. So, yeah, that's the only re-license I have ever done in my career. You can look at a lot of other investors or business owners and things. We're going to put a camera license in there because often taking the license is more closed. 00:20:54 --> 00:21:24 Taking away your freedom, taking away your flexibility. That's what we need to fight against. And that's why I get so worked up about this stuff. I know I'm a little bit of a religious zealot, but when you see me get worked up about things, it's what people have violated the GPL in the past, right? We've gotten real spicy over that. And now we have this more complex thing. Now that we've matured a lot as an ecosystem, it's more about, okay, what are the business incentives, where's the revenue going, where's the investment going, everything like that. 00:21:24 --> 00:21:54 Because, you know, this is an ecosystem where the revenue that goes to the WordPress ecosystem every year isn't that probably like $8 to $10 billion per year. That's a lot of economic activity. A lot of us benefit from it. I've had so many people come up to me and say, like, hey, I put my kids through college with my WordPress sites, or, like, you know, I made a living from WordPress. That's beautiful. And that all is part of a broader system. Next question. Hi, Matt. I'm Cam Barrett. 00:21:56 --> 00:22:27 Thank you for pointing out the bullies in the room in our industry. Do you guys have any questions? I think that collectively, we are bigger than $102 million. I think all of us together can stick up for ourselves and make sure that they don't take away our industry. Secondly, I got into WordPress because I got sick and tired of our school districts spending taxpayer money on proprietary CMSs, 00:22:27 --> 00:23:00 spending $10, $15, $100 a year for most websites. This is crazy. This is what taxpayer money needs to be spent. So I put everything on WordPress about 10 years ago, and I've been doing it ever since. I've saved billions of dollars by putting our public school districts on WordPress. And I'm going to keep doing it, and I'm going to keep doing it for other articles as well. So I just want to thank you for creating WordPress. I think all of us would benefit greatly from it. 00:23:06 --> 00:23:37 And now, by the way, those millions of dollars you saved, can now go into, like, more school lunches for people, or better pay for teachers, or something like that. I think they're all part of our system. Yes, absolutely. And I also know that we are seeing adoption of WordPress in the U.S. Army, as well as the federal government, as you know. Yeah, I'm really excited about one good source of government, WordPress. I think we can save a lot of money, and I pay a lot of taxes. I'm sure a lot of you do, as well. I would love to see that be more efficiently used. 00:23:38 --> 00:24:09 Next up here. Hey, Matt. I'm Matt Mulder, founder of WordFence. You can see that things are stepping about in our country today. So this AI thing that's underway, there's a bit of a war that's going on between proprietary AI models and open source. And you mentioned that a little bit in your blog post. It seems like the world is deciding which direction we're headed in, 00:24:10 --> 00:24:43 whether we're going to have a lot of open-source models available for innovation or whether the future is going to be proprietary behind a REST interface or a feature that we've never had before and whether we're going to actually get to see the models or use them or iterate on them. And I guess in the early days of the Web, you know, we had proprietary Web servers. Escapes Commerce server back in 1994, and Apache came along and rescued us all. And the future of the Web became very much open-source. 00:24:45 --> 00:25:15 And, you know, I think WordPress is one of the largest open-source movements in the world. And so I was wondering if you had any thoughts about WordPress's place in that, in determining that future of AI. What we could do to sort of influence that. Along those lines, you know, I've been chatting a lot with hosting providers, and we're not seeing many GPUs in WordPress data centers. 00:25:16 --> 00:25:47 that would enable one to run an open source model from Hugging Face locally, as part of WordPress or accessible to WordPress on the server or on the server local to that. It seems as though there's not a whole heck of a lot of planning or innovation that's going on around open source AI in the space. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that and how our community might be an enabler for that and help determine that future and help perhaps make it open source. 00:25:49 --> 00:26:20 Thank you so much for that question. It's a good one. I'm obsessed with AI. I've been reading the papers for years, like spending all my time on it. There's some fun stuff coming. So, we talked about this earlier on the floor. If you have a try-it-out like Cursor, or Revlon, or some of the AI-assisted coding things, please do it. As a developer, it's wild. I can now do things that used to take me, like, 2 or 3 hours, in, like, 2 or 3 minutes. It's, like, wild the productivity boost you can get. Especially for generating new scripts and things. 00:26:20 --> 00:26:51 But even the context for those, as we talked about, are getting larger. Models like JetBinary, I think, are up to, like, a million and a half tokens. We also have Google here. You all have, what's it called, Web AI? Is it Web AI? The new standard we're talking about? Yes. So, I think my theory on what's going to happen here... Now, all the models open source or not. I'm not sure open source, you know, foundation is talking about open weights, is maybe a thing to talk about, for what makes something open source. What I do think, practically, that will happen, though, 00:26:51 --> 00:27:21 is the access to these models will probably be mediated by either the operating system layer or the browser, which is basically like an operating system, right? They'll have embedded access, so just calling an API or something, you'll be able to call out a system call to some sort of model. And with Apple Intelligence and stuff that they just announced, it could be a local model. And these chips are crazy powerful now. It's happening in Silicon with them and also some of the Google TVU and other chips and things that are happening. Kind of incredible. 00:27:23 --> 00:27:49 So a lot of this, I hope, will move to the edge, which I think is also great for speed and privacy. And then they could then call out to maybe the big, you know, nuclear power gigadata center models for more complex things. So that's what I think. And that's why I've actually sort of stopped focusing as much of our time on, like, doing these specific kind of product integrations, because it really feels like something that's going to happen more in the OS layer. 00:27:55 --> 00:28:27 Thank you. I think that the main goal is to get plugin authors and WordPress innovators using open source AI models in a WordPress context, and I think that if we can do that, and the more users we can get and the more weight of usage that we can get, the better shot we have at. 00:28:27 --> 00:29:00 creating an open source future when it comes to AI, because the demand will be there, and we will also prove that it's worth doing, as opposed to leaving it up to the megacorporations, and sort of trusting them with having the best available artificial brains and the best available computation, and they can just rent it to us, and that's what we get. It might be, we'll see, but they need a lot of these. 00:29:02 --> 00:29:32 And let me tell you, they're expensive. They're massive. I'll tell you another cool fact, though. The human brain, which, by the way, is more powerful than all of these models still, runs on about 20 watts of power. So think of all the electricity and all the transformers that we have to do to power these data centers, and you and I can eat hot dogs and some potato chips and power our natural intelligence. It's kind of incredible. So, like, wow, biology is incredible. 00:29:33 --> 00:30:00 Thank you. All right. We've got a few more here. Hello, Matt. Austin here from Amnesty. So we recently open-sourced our theme, GPL, same as you guys. And I had a question to basically find out, you know, do you have any advice for people that are trying to get their theme into the repo community building? And also another question around, like, we're trying to strip out, we're trying to strip out all the, you know, we're trying to strip out all the, you know, we're trying to strip. 00:30:07 --> 00:30:39 And by the way, let's share a little bit of your story, now you're on Showcase Day, right? So I understand that's still international. You have, I believe that's how many, was it 80 sites? 46 sites, usually. I think it could be more because it's, you know, people can come download it. We opened it, open-sourced it about six months ago, big way, sitting over there somewhere. And yeah, we've got, I think some, some people have given us some contributions as well, so. And tell us what Amnesty is, it's a non-profit? Yes, sorry, Amnesty is a human rights organization trying to reduce human rights violations, hopefully. 00:30:39 --> 00:31:11 And you've got loads of it, yeah. Thank you. And you've got loads of chapters, and they all have their own websites. Yeah. But they all have the same name, they can use it to kind of like tie things together. That's right, we're trying to get other, we open-sourced it so other NGOs or non-profits or grassroots organizations can use the work that we've built over the last six years. So let's give a round of applause for that. That's amazing. First, thank you. You asked about getting in the theme repo. 00:31:11 --> 00:31:43 So you submitted it, but it hasn't been accepted yet? We've just got a lot of work to do to get it ready for acceptance. Gotcha. Yeah, so, I mean, we're going to throw it up on, you know, something like GitLab or GitHub in the meantime. We'll get in the repo as soon as possible. So if you're running any, like, rules there that will hold you back, like, let me know. In terms of taking the blocks, the individual plugins versus sort of a move plugin, I think it would depend on, like, how many there are and if they're logically grouped. 00:31:44 --> 00:32:14 We are going to try to make it so that, like, individual plugins are a little lighter weight. Or we can put these things in patterns. They go in the pattern directory. So it's not a plugin. It just kind of gets sideloaded. It's like JSON from the pattern directory. So there might be some different ways to approach it. And we're kind of creating a lot of new primitives that can be used to build these sites. And I'd be excited to see how this grows, and how amazing it would be if you figure out a better way to get donations to a non-profit. And all these other non-profits are going to get that. 00:32:14 --> 00:32:44 That's really going to make the world a better place. Brilliant. Thank you. Well, thank you, John. Thank you. Oh, and Otto says to email him. So that's otto at WordPress.org. He'll help you get on. All right, we're fixing things live. Thanks, Otto. Otto, O-T-T-O. So I've got a cool story about how cool WordPress is robustness-wise. And then a request. 00:32:44 --> 00:33:14 I do a lot of support for all the 299 million WordPress sites that are not actively supported. So I do a lot of site rescues, and cleanups, and things like that. I got a client who had a 10-year-old site. Hadn't been up there yet. And I was going like, oh boy, this is going to be a mess, right? I just said, why not try it? And so I clicked the button. I clicked the button. And it worked! 00:33:15 --> 00:33:47 It worked! It really worked. That's amazing. And man, so much code went into that. Right? So this is the one. And it's like, she's a personal organizer. She's not wealthy at all. And so I was really happy that I could do it almost for free. So, okay, I charged her $97 to completely update her website. 00:33:47 --> 00:34:28 It's now good for, I guess, another 10 years, right? So, but here's something else I did. What about auto-update now? Just for an auto-update. So, yep. Yesterday on Reddit, in r slash WordPress, somebody came in and said, our agency has told us we have to pay them to rebuild our site because the Classic Editor is end-of-lifing December 31st. And they said, we can't afford that. And so I went and I looked and I said, I don't think that's true. And it says, end-of-life December 31st or as long as it's needed. 00:34:28 --> 00:35:00 And I just want to, I don't necessarily want to punch down, up, or sideways, but somebody is messing around with people, stressing them out, and sort of semi-blackmailing them into paying them to rebuild. Because they're saying the Classic Editor is end-of-life, you have to. So I don't think Classic is necessarily going to go away, but I just wanted to call out, if anybody else sees somebody saying something like that, 00:35:01 --> 00:35:34 Unless it really is end of life, and I'm sure it's not, can we make sure that there aren't people being taken advantage of that way? Because that's just not nice. Man, I don't want to defend the classic edger, though. So part of me wonders, like, man, maybe they just have some stuff they should upgrade to blocks. You know, they'd have a much better thing, a younger person, they'll work, cost money, but... 00:35:34 --> 00:35:59 The ten-year-old site, she didn't want, so I just said, OK, I'll install it. Because she just wants to keep doing what she's been. She's like 65. By the way, I've asked you down, so if you open up an old post, even without the classic edger, if you open up an old post, that was built in the classic edger, Goodberg actually loads a classic edger, like, immediately, so they get a familiar interface. And the new stuff, we find people can figure it out. 00:36:31 --> 00:37:00 I was one of three release coordinators for WordPress 6.5. I'm 64. So I don't really need to stress too much about how. Oh, she's 64. 00:37:20 --> 00:37:24 We're trying to get attendance up at the work camp, so we're trying to make sure we're. 00:38:01 --> 00:38:13 I'm probably a challenger, because I think you're buying way. But yeah, I'm looking forward to the speed build challenge. I'll make it fun. Let's talk a little. Sounds good. All right, we're going to end up there. Thank you all so much. Copyright©2024 PLAUD.Al.All Rights Reserved](<--- tags: [#WPDrama, #MattMullenweg, #WCUS, #WPEngine] title: "Untitled" date created: 2024-09-29 date modified: 2024-09-29 --- ## Theme The lecture discusses the Open Source movement, emphasizing its intellectual and moral foundations. It highlights debates on what constitutes true open source, especially concerning corporate practices. The speaker criticizes companies like META for not adhering to open source principles and warns against private equity firms exploiting open source projects. The ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ is explained, advocating for sustainable resource management. The speaker calls for community-driven development and ethical business practices, particularly within the WordPress community, to ensure the growth and sustainability of open source ecosystems. ## Takeaways 1. Open Source software provides freedom to users, but there are debates about what constitutes true open source. 2. The Open Source movement has grown into an intellectual and moral movement with widespread adoption in major tech companies. 3. Concerns exist about companies co-opting open source for profit, without truly adhering to its principles. 4. The speaker criticizes META’s licensing of Lama as not truly open source. 5. The concept of ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ is explained as a situation where shared resources are depleted due to individual self-interest. 6. The speaker advocates for the ‘abundance of the commons’ where shared resources are nurtured for future growth. 7. The speaker discusses the role of private equity firms like Silver Lake in monetizing open source projects at the expense of community health. 8. Silver Lake’s involvement in companies like WP Engine and Talent is cited as examples of aggressive monetization strategies. 9. The speaker calls for the WordPress community to support companies that contribute back to the open source ecosystem. 10. The speaker emphasizes the importance of teaching and sharing knowledge to enhance understanding. ## Highlights - `"The idea that what we create together is bigger than any one person."` ## Chapters & Topics ### Open Source Movement %3E The Open Source movement is an intellectual and moral movement advocating for software that is freely available for use, modification, and distribution. - **Keypoints** - Open Source software provides freedom to users. - There is a debate about what constitutes true open source. - The movement has widespread adoption in major tech companies. - **Explanation** The Open Source movement promotes the idea that software should be freely available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. This philosophy has gained traction in the tech industry, with many companies adopting open source practices. However, there are ongoing debates about what truly qualifies as open source, especially when companies impose restrictions or monetize open source projects. ### Tragedy of the Commons > The Tragedy of the Commons is a concept where shared resources are depleted due to individual self-interest, leading to the degradation of the resource. - **Keypoints** - Occurs when individuals exploit a shared resource for personal gain. - Leads to the depletion and degradation of the resource. - Requires collective action to manage and sustain the resource. - **Explanation** The Tragedy of the Commons describes a situation where individuals, acting in their own self-interest, overuse and deplete a shared resource, ultimately harming the entire community. This concept highlights the need for collective management and sustainable practices to preserve shared resources for future generations. - **Examples** - **Community Field**: Farmers bring animals to graze on a shared field. Without maintenance, the field becomes overgrazed, illustrating the Tragedy of the Commons. ## Assignments & Suggestions ### Transcription **00:00:01 --> 00:00:32** That software can give you more freedom. Freedom to hack. Freedom to charge. Freedom to break it. Freedom to do things I disagree with. Freedom to experiment. Freedom to be yourself. Freedom expressed across the entire range of the human world. Open Source, once ridiculed and attacked by the professional classes, as a link to the Halloween memos from Microsoft, has taken over as an intellectual and moral movement. **00:00:34 --> 00:01:05** Its followers are legion within every major tech company. Yet, even now, false prophets are trying to co-opt it. From the Open Source AI model, it's free to use—at least until certain restrictions are imposed. People often misinterpret this. **00:01:05 --> 00:01:37** I actually think Lama is fantastic. It's amazing. I really like it. I just don't want to call it open source. So anyway, excuse me. That’s like if the U.S. government said that you can have the First Amendment and freedom of speech, until you make over $50,000 a year, at which point your First Amendment rights will be abolished. That's what that license says, basically. Now, that's not open source. **00:01:37 --> 00:02:11** That is not freedom. I believe META should have the right to set their terms. It's a smart business, and amazing people use Lama, but don't pretend Lama is open source when it doesn't actually increase humanity's freedom. It's a proprietary license issued at META's discretion. If you use it, you're effectively a vassal state of META. **00:02:11 --> 00:02:33** No one likes being a vassal state, by the way. **00:03:31 --> 00:04:04** Evolve is where we apply those learnings to our next generation, our next version. We see how things work in the real world. Teach is where we're actually learning more, because you don't really know something until you teach it. Who's ever done that, where you've taught something and you learn way more? Oh my goodness. It’s incredible what you think you don’t know. **00:04:04 --> 00:04:35** We open source our knowledge by sharing what we've learned so others can follow along the same path. Nourish is the trickiest and most important part. It's where we water the garden. If you've done the previous steps, you’ve been successful. Now your responsibility is to spread the fruits of your labor around the ecosystem so that everyone can succeed together. **00:04:35 --> 00:05:09** This is the philosophy behind “Five for the Future,” which is emphasized a lot more now. Who's heard of the economics term called “Tragedy of the Commons”? Let me explain it with an analogy. **00:05:10 --> 00:05:40** Imagine you lived in a town, and there was a field where farmers worked. The field doesn’t belong to any one person; it belongs to the community. Now, if people bring their animals to graze there, but they don’t water or fertilize the grass, eventually, the field will just turn into dirt—it will be overgrazed, and there will be nothing left of the shared resource. That’s what’s known as the Tragedy of the Commons.>)