Give Back … Deeply?  ## Metadata - Author: [[Michelle Frechette]] - Full Title: Give Back … Deeply? - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #OpenSource - #WordPress - #CommunityBuilding Author: [Cory Miller] Source: [Post Status](https://poststatus.com/give-back-deeply/) Reference: [Link](https://poststatus.com/give-back-deeply/) date created: {{date:2024-09-25}} {{time:10:30}} --- # Title: Give Back Deeply: The Importance of Contributing to Open Source ## Table of Contents:  1. 📝 [Summary](#📝-Summary) 2. 📖 [Main Content](#📖-Main-Content) 3. 🗒️ [Notes](#🗒️-Notes) 4. 🗣️ [Paraphrase](#🗣️-Paraphrase) 5. 📰 [Newsletter](#📰-Newsletter) 6. ✅ [Action Items](#✅-Action-Items) 7. 🧪 [Hypotheses](#🧪-Hypotheses) 8. 📊 [Methodology](#📊-Methodology) 9. ❓ [Questions](#❓-Questions) 10. 🔮 [Future Research](#🔮-Future-Research) 11. 💡 [Implications](#💡-Implications) 12. 🧠 [Learning Styles Assessment](#🧠-Learning-Styles-Assessment) 13. 📊 [Accessibility Assessment](#📊-Accessibility-Assessment) 14. 🌍 [DEIB Assessment](#🌍-DEIB-Assessment) 15. ✅ [Logical Validity](#✅-Logical-Validity) 16. 🔍 [SEO Evaluation](#🔍-SEO-Evaluation) 17. 🎯 [Conclusion](#🎯-Conclusion) ## 📝 Summary: Cory Miller reflects on the significance of giving back to the open-source community. His message focuses on the deeper sense of purpose and connection that comes from contributing time and effort to WordPress, not just for individual gain but to ensure the community thrives. He urges those who benefit from WordPress to contribute in meaningful ways. ## 📖 Main Content: Cory Miller explains how contributing to the WordPress community fosters growth both for individuals and the project. He advocates for moving beyond transactional relationships and embracing a mindset of service, where success is measured not just by personal gain but by the success of the entire open-source ecosystem. By giving back, contributors build relationships, gain skills, and create a lasting impact on a global scale. ### 🗒️ Notes: - **Contributing Beyond Code**: Contributions can take many forms, including documentation, support, and community building. - **Purposeful Giving**: True success in open-source communities stems from deep, meaningful contributions. - **Relational Benefits**: Contributors gain not just professional skills but lifelong relationships and networks. - **Long-term Impact**: A single contribution can influence thousands of users globally. ## 📖 References: - Miller, C. (2024). "Give Back Deeply: The Importance of Contributing to Open Source." Post Status. [Link](https://poststatus.com/give-back-deeply/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase:  1. **Original**: "Contributing isn’t just about adding code or features—it’s about supporting the community that’s behind everything you benefit from." **Paraphrase**: Contribution goes beyond writing code or adding new features; it involves backing the community that creates and maintains the systems you benefit from. 2. **Original**: "When you give back deeply, it’s more than a transactional exchange—it’s about purpose and connection, and that’s where the real magic happens." **Paraphrase**: True contributions go beyond a simple trade-off; they foster purpose and connection, which is where the real value of giving back lies. ## 📰 Newsletter: In this issue, we explore the value of giving back to the WordPress community. Cory Miller's article, *Give Back Deeply*, highlights how contributing to open-source projects isn’t just about writing code—it’s about fostering meaningful connections and ensuring the longevity of WordPress. Miller encourages everyone who benefits from WordPress to think about how they can give back, whether through code, documentation, or simply by helping others. Read the full article [here](https://poststatus.com/give-back-deeply/), and learn how you can contribute! ## ✅ Action Items: - **Open-Source Contribution**: Identify opportunities within GoDaddy or WordPress where team members can contribute to open-source projects. - **Community Engagement**: Promote community involvement as a key part of personal development for new contributors. - **OSPO Initiative**: Build an action plan for advocating open-source contributions within the organization as part of a future OSPO (Open Source Program Office). ## 🧪 Hypotheses: 1. Individuals who contribute deeply to open-source projects build stronger, long-term relationships within the community. 2. Organizations that encourage open-source contributions experience higher innovation and employee satisfaction. ### 📊 Methodology: Conduct surveys among contributors to assess the relational and professional impacts of giving back to open-source communities. Measure both individual satisfaction and organizational performance. ### ❓ Questions: - How does giving back to open-source projects shape an individual's professional growth? - What are the long-term benefits for organizations that actively encourage open-source contributions? ### 🔮 Future Research: Future studies could focus on the correlation between sustained contributions to open-source projects and career progression within tech companies. Examining how corporate sponsorship of contributions affects community dynamics would also be valuable. ### 💡 Implications:  If contributions to open-source projects are found to have significant career and relational benefits, this could influence more organizations to encourage employees to participate. It could also affect how companies approach corporate responsibility in the open-source space. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: 1. **Visual Learners (Spatial)**: - **Present**: There are no visuals. - **Improve**: Add flowcharts that map out the different types of contributions people can make. 2. **Aural Learners (Auditory-Musical)**: - **Present**: No auditory components. - **Improve**: Provide an audio version or podcast about contributing to open-source projects. 3. **Verbal Learners (Linguistic)**: - **Present**: The article is rich in descriptive language. - **Improve**: Include stories of contributors to make the language more relatable. 4. **Physical Learners (Kinesthetic)**: - **Present**: No interactive content. - **Improve**: Suggest actions people can take, like submitting a code patch or helping in forums. 5. **Logical Learners (Mathematical)**: - **Present**: The logical steps in the argument are sound. - **Improve**: Add data showing the impact of contributions on the community's growth. 6. **Social Learners (Interpersonal)**: - **Present**: Relational benefits are discussed. - **Improve**: Encourage group discussions or team-based contributions. 7. **Solitary Learners (Intrapersonal)**: - **Present**: The article does not directly engage solitary learners. - **Improve**: Include personal reflection prompts, such as “What does giving back to open-source mean to you?” 8. **Naturalistic Learners**: - **Present**: The article does not address environmental or natural contexts. - **Improve**: Introduce nature metaphors, comparing open-source contributions to ecosystems. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader Compatibility**: The article is simple text and compatible with screen readers. - **Keyboard Navigation**: The content is easily navigable with a keyboard. - **Contrast and Readability**: The font and contrast are sufficient, though adding larger text options would help. - **Text Resizing**: The content adjusts well to text resizing. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - **Cultural Relevance**: The article could improve by featuring diverse contributors from different regions. - **Inclusive Language**: The language is neutral and accessible. - **Neurodiversity Support**: Using more headers and breaking up text would make it easier to process. - **Representation**: The article doesn’t highlight contributions from a variety of gender or ethnic backgrounds. - **Psychological Safety**: The tone is welcoming, but more explicit encouragement for beginners would enhance safety. ### ✅ Logical Validity:  - **Strong Points**: The argument about the relational and professional benefits of giving back is clear and well-supported. - **Weak Points**: The article could benefit from more data or examples to back up claims about long-term impacts. - **Suggestions**: Include t - Document Tags: [[automattic]] [[matt mullenweg]] [[open source corporate contribution]] [[wcus]] [[wordpress]] [[wordpress contribution]] [[wpdrama]] [[wp engine]] - Summary: Matt Mullenweg's WordCamp US Q&A has opened a lot of controversy, and split sentiments among community members. What are your thoughts about it? Is there a way forward from this? - URL: https://poststatus.com/give-back-deeply/ Four days of WCUS. Four happy, helpful, fun, and learning-filled days. And it all became (at best) awkward, and (at worst) confrontational, in the very last session, a Q&A keynote with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. In 2015 Matt urged us to “learn Javascript deeply.” In 2024 it seems he’s admonishing us to give back to WordPress deeply. #### The Address Some content could not be imported from the original document. [View content ↗](https://www.youtube.com/embed/fnI-QcVSwMU?feature=oembed) (You can watch the whole talk here.) I won’t rehash the actual talk. You can watch it above. You can also read about it on MANY blogs and get many opinions. Some of which I’ll list here. And a few social posts to read, too: #### The WordPress Ecosystem Over 21 years ago WordPress was released to the world. Its open source nature going on to grow not only a global community, but also a global ecosystem, fueled to extend WordPress through themes and plugins, and to help grow WordPress to over 40% of the Internet through services and agencies to build sites for themselves and other businesses. A quick look at the [WordPress.org Showcase](https://wordpress.org/showcase/) can serve to show how amazing WordPress websites can be. The recent [WCUS Showcase Day](https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/introducing-showcase-day/) is proof of innovation with WordPress. Work done at every Contributor Day is testimony of a community’s desire to help move the open source project forward, and one has only to look at any Slack channel in the official WordPress Slack instance to see the thousands of contributors to not only core, but community, photos, TV, testing, vetting, and so much more. Many people contribute to WordPress. And many people (and businesses) profit from business within the WordPress ecosystem. #### Five for the Future [Five for the Future](https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/) (FFtF) is one way that individuals and businesses can pledge to work toward the future of WordPress, the open source project (not to be confused with WordPress.com). It’s looking at Five for the Future that seems to be at the heart of the controversy (or at least the catalyst for it), although the conversation and accusations grow from there (as seen in the posts listed above). WP Engine makes a lot of money in the WordPress ecosystem. And their FFtF doesn’t seem to represent 5% of their organization. Which begs the question of how much of the FFtF reporting is accurate. But it also makes one question how much other goodwill is being done by any organization that isn’t part of the FFtF metrics. Free plugins (in and out of the repo), YouTube tutorials, webinars, podcasts, forum support, and more, don’t seem to have any way to be counted, but certainly contribute to the overall health of the project. And while I’m not commenting specifically on WP Engine, I know that many, if not most of us (individuals and companies) give back to WordPress outside of those metric-driven contributions. #### Questions for the Rest of Us * How accurate is the reporting for FFtF? + My guess is that you and your employees are lax in reporting how your pledge and actual work being done corroborate one another. If your company participates, I’d urge you to make sure your employees’ profiles list you as their employer (accurately), as well as listing the hours you sponsor them for work they do in the open source project and the teams they work on. * Can we use the word “WordPress” in advertising? + While there is no trademarked prohibition on using “WP” in your sites, domains, and advertising, maybe this is a good time to confer with your legal team on how you use the WordPress name in advertising. Refer to the [WordPress Foundation’s Trademark Policy](https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/) for more information. #### What Now? [Lawsuits are now in play](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fn3mjr/comment/lokzvec/), and I know we will all be watching to see what happens. And while the conversations will slow over the next week, they will continue while all of this plays out. While none of this is comfortable for any of us (and the hashtag [#WPDrama](https://x.com/search?q=%23wpdrama&src=typed_query) has had an uptick recently), I don’t believe the sky is falling. I do believe that this is an important call for diligence in how we all work within the WordPress community, a review of our own uses of any WordPress trademarks, and thoughtful planning on how to move forward. I don’t claim to have any answers. But I, like most of you, will be paying attention. I may be a Polyanna, but I remain hopeful for the future of WordPress. If you have comments and/or ideas for future posts, send them via our [Contact Form](https://poststatus.com/contact/)., Give Back … Deeply?, Michelle Frechette, 01j8hwrvzvbrc3bq3trerswwaf.