Big Picture Goals  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **GPL Piracy And Malware** - Luke described GPL “null” sites that sell premium plugins cheaply but often bundle malware, creating real problems for users. - Jonathan noted some authors simply link to the GPL version to avoid users installing modified, unsafe copies. Transcript: Luke Jonathan, there was a conversation recently on post status. I don't know if you saw it, about plugin piracy. Do you have any thoughts? How should we handle the piracy of our plugins when they're shared? Our premium code is shared on null sites and things like this. I'm assuming we're talking about GPL. Jonathan Yeah. Base plugins, right? Which brings up this interesting, like, can you, what does it mean to pirate a GPL base piece of software? Yeah. Luke Well, you have this, this like huge, it's almost like a mini industry that's come up now of GPL sites that charge you for access to premium plugins but they just sell them a lot cheaper And and they still contain a whole heap of malware inside them in addition so you're paying for the privilege of installing rubbish on your server but it's some people finding it to be A real problem. And in this discussion on post status, I made the bold claim that we should not worry about piracy. In fact, the best way of combating piracy is by giving away our stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Jonathan It's always been a bit strange to me, Luke. I feel like over the years i've had conversations with folks uh about licensing and gpl and and it's like i don't know how often i think sometimes people come into the space to have a and Create a product and don't really like think through the ramifications of it or even necessarily and i don't mean this negatively but even necessarily have an understanding like maybe They might not have even read like the GPL license, like built right into it is this idea of redistribution being part of the, uh, so I don't like the idea that there are sites out there That are charging, um, to redistribute these things. Uh, but to me, to your, to that point, one of the things I've admired that a few folks do is that they'll just link to the GPL version of their software. They won't like shout it from the rooftops, but it's like if you just want, or not the version, it's all GPL, but if you just want a copy of it and don't want to pay for licensing, it'd be better To do that than get an old version of it, which can have modifications that you're not aware of. Luke Yeah so that's what I suggested in this post status slack and it didn't go down super well with a lot of people although some people seem to appreciate it. Have a version of your premium plugin up on GitHub and let people access it that way. They're not going to get support, they're not going to get updates. If you distribute free and pro together, just make your is pro function well documented and really easy and not obfuscated. And that's how we've done it in the past. Anyway, that was just a little side interest. I did a little academic study or a review of the academic studies out there on piracy and things like that. Had a good bit of diversion with it the other day. I've always struggled when I, like to me, it's like if your ([Time 0:00:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6e866b74-8e1e-4cbd-81a8-13da2294a21b)) - **Access-Only Models Lack Viability** - A business model that depends solely on restricting code access is fragile under the GPL. - Jonathan argued sustainable models add service or server components rather than gatecode access. Transcript: Jonathan Business model is based on protecting access, like if the heart of your model is just predicated on whether or not someone has access to your code, that doesn't feel like a good model To me. Right? Like it's like that. So you can either have maybe a service component to it where there's like an API or a server doing something else, which one of the things that annoys me is when people just try to push that In. It's like this doesn't need a server to do this thing that it's doing, right? But that's one of the way of justifying the ongoing cost. But in situations where it makes sense, that's a very viable approach that you can take. But if your software, if your business model is predicated on whether or not someone has access and you're just focused on protecting that access, I don't know. It doesn't feel like it has good long-term viability because someone can just go in and purchase it once and then just redistribute it themselves and they'd be well within the appropriateness Of the GPL to do so. ([Time 0:03:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/781a6ee3-4376-4a3e-953b-4e90cbab5194)) - **Momentum Over Grand New Plans** - Mary Hubbard's 2026 goals emphasize building momentum and refining existing work rather than grand new initiatives. - Jonathan appreciated the focus on making contribution easier to harness community energy. Transcript: Jonathan Goals for 2026? I don't know if I have a good segue, but we can certainly. Do you have any bad ones? Well, so one of the things I loved about Mary's post, because at first I just sort of scanned it, like, okay, there's some good highlights here. I could go and read, you know, Ray did some great coverage on the repository. But then I went back through and actually like read it. And there's a couple of things I noticed. First, I love her emphasis on momentum, like which is realistic to me. Like this idea that 2026 is about building momentum. We want to take what's already working, make refinements and improvements to it. But she's not coming in with this, like we're going to do this big new thing here or this over there. And there are some new initiatives. There are new energies and efforts that are coming into it. But the overall focus is this idea of let's harness the energy that's already there and build on it. We had our perspectives episode with Jonathan Derosier earlier this week. And when we recorded that, that was one of the things that had stood out to me there that on reading Mary's post, it's like you have all this energy. You have all these folks that are using WordPress, but we're not necessarily harnessing it. And part of Mary's emphasis here is like, how do we do that more effectively? How do we build the momentum that we've got? And a big piece of that is making things easier for new contributors, which I was really happy to see. ([Time 0:04:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dab41878-1209-41ca-9d68-e52783b2ac86)) - **AI To Support Contributors** - WordPress's AI effort aims not just at tooling but at supporting contributors with context and clearer next steps. - Jonathan saw potential to lower barriers for new contributors using AI guidance. Transcript: Jonathan Yes. Yeah. Luke And another big piece of that though is artificial intelligence in that that is where all the momentum seems to be. Not only in the WordPress project, of course, but everywhere we look, there's a lot of energy and excitement around AI. And I don't know, maybe we need to be a little careful about how we think about AI in WordPress. I'm not saying the AI team is for nothing, just that it might get unbalanced if we're only focused on what's exciting and where there is momentum. If that makes sense, like maybe we should also try to make a real effort in other areas where there isn't quite so much momentum. Jonathan Okay, so I thought Mary actually hit this really well. Under the AI section, she called out a few practical outcomes of the AI effort in WordPress. The first is this idea of help people create, edit and refine content where they already work. Right. Like this is this idea. It makes sense. Like practical tooling within WordPress make that easier. The second was this idea of reducing friction and building in WordPress, like site build, common workflows, like lower the barrier of entry there. But the last two were the ones that I found most interesting and I think represent newer opportunities. First was this idea of supporting contributors themselves with clearer guidance, like context, next steps, and then lowering the barrier of entry to new contributors coming into The space, which to me is not something I would have expected, but makes a lot of sense in thinking back on it. It's like, sure, we're going to see some AI tool improvements in WordPress, but how can we actually use some of this technology to navigate all the, it's, there's overwhelming amounts Of inputs when you step into a big open source project. And for a new contributor, there could be some real wins. ([Time 0:05:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26cd6ef2-e90d-45c3-a5e0-9548003f199f)) - **Avoid In-App AI Authoring** - Luke advised against embedding AI authoring tools into WordPress for content generation. - He recommended the OS-level or native editor integrations instead of WordPress-specific AI features. Transcript: Luke I, okay, so I have some criticisms with the caveat, of course, being that it's very early days in both AI and in the implementation of AI within WordPress. So it's, I mean, and this, this post is, it's got some points to it, but it's also a little vague. So, you know, that aside, I have said from the start and still believe that it is not WordPress's job to help people create, edit, or refine content. I do not believe that we should have AI tools built into WordPress that integrate with the content people are writing. That to me is a bad idea. Interesting. Jonathan And is that based on the idea that WordPress should be focusing on just the publishing side of it versus the authoring? Okay. So it's based on a couple of things. Luke Partially it's based on, we shouldn't be using AI to write content in general, but that's like, whatever. Good luck with that one. I agree with you, but good luck. Yeah. You know what I mean though? Like it's a lost cause maybe, or I don't know, but just like this fight against slop, you know, I noticed, I was doing a Google image search, no, not Google image, Kagi, K-A you know, the Search engine. I've been using that for years and I was doing a Kagi image search. And I noticed that at the bottom of the results, because it was a very specific thing, there weren't that many images. And at the very bottom of the results, it had some AI images that it had found. It didn't generate them. It had discovered them. And it had a little splatter logo, which to me said slop. And the letters AI, like a little watermark in the corner. And it was demoting AI images. I love that and i think we should allow ai content but demote it but that's a separate conversation well i think that the responsibility for a for for implementing ai in content should Be at the operating system level that's where it should live and ai in apple's products apple stuffed it up, right? But their intention there with like writing tools and stuff, it's a terrible implementation, but I think that's the future. And doubling up by adding stuff into WordPress where you're going to have to make external calls to external providers because AI doesn't run efficiently in the browser. ([Time 0:07:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/397c656e-c608-41de-b2e2-61ee77b632bd)) - **Push Heavy Work To The Browser/OS** - Both hosts argued heavy client-side processing (browser) can shift resource burden from servers for media and AI tasks. - They said native or OS-level AI integration provides consistent tooling across apps and avoids reinventing interfaces. Transcript: Jonathan Not a great architecture. So, Luke, we may actually have a point of additional contention that we can draw out in perhaps coming seasons because I agree with you. I would argue that WordPress still has this unrealized potential as an operating system itself. Now, I know that you mean technically. I know that you mean in this, I guess, more tangible sense. It's either Mac or Linux or Windows. But Luke, even as we're focusing on one of the highlights of this particular post was the reliance on the browser for more of the image and media handling, right? Because let's take away some of this, like this is one of the things that WordPress can do next is take some of the heavy lifting off of the servers and into the browser where more of this Media manipulation can be done, right? Luke So, and we also have things like- That's an architectural reshuffle that puts the burden of like resource management in the right place, right? All of the heavy lifting can be done in the browser, save on server costs. It's not really any huge overheads for the computer these days, which it was when it was first implemented. So it's no big deal. It makes sense. And that's the same argument that I would apply then to AI. Let the computer itself do it or let some external service do it. But don't try and be like a middleman in the browser where you're like going to go and connect and here and there. And in fact, just don't use AI tools at all for content generation. But I really think if you're going to use an external tool you want to be using that everywhere that you're writing content right you want to use that in text edit you want to use that in Whatever like wherever you're writing your content and you want it to be the same tool and accessible from the same places and so and i so i don't see why you need to have like a chat GPT or Cord integration built into WordPress. You want it built into Windows or Mac and then let that content be edited natively. And then it will just work in WordPress. And it will work consistently the same way that it does in other applications. ([Time 0:10:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/876a0908-cfd0-4575-b844-f11d810983f7)) - **Releases Align With Events** - WordPress will align releases with events and add collaborative editing, offering a testbed for operating-system-like features. - Jonathan suggested this year provides a chance to explore WordPress-as-OS ideas further. Transcript: Jonathan Around it. This will be interesting to see how this carries out because we're supposed to get Google Docs style collaborative editing in WordPress. One of the things that Mary also called out is we're going to shift our WordPress releases to a lineup with events. So 7.0, we'll come to WordCamp Asia and presumably 7.1 at WordCamp Europe. And I'm guessing the next one at U.S. I don't know. But the event, the release is being corresponding to events. So you're supposed to get collaborative editing later this year. I think my position in this, Luke, has started from this, it's like there is just this massive ecosystem like around WordPress, right? They give all these parts and pieces. And when I think about people creating things on the web, so much of those pieces are within this space. I'm kind of, I'm still, I'm becoming a little bit optimistic as we talk through this. Like if we go back to talking about WordPress as an operating system five years ago, not lot has really happened to strengthen that argument over the past five years. Luke Right. If I could like. I mean, I don't think that argument ever was particularly strong to begin with. I still don't understand what you mean by that, to be honest. I've known you so long and you've talked about this so much and I still just don't get it. Well, okay. Jonathan Then, so part of this, this is probably not the discussion for the moment though, but I think that there's something there. You can't summarize it in 45 seconds? I saw the clock ticking down and I was like, I don't know if I can in 45 seconds. But with all my thinking, I'm going to give it some fresh thought this year and I think there's fresh material. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm entirely wrong about it. It just didn't make any sense. Matt gets the credit for the original idea. And I just sort of took it further in my own thinking. Luke And once upon a time, that lent you credence to the idea being something. But these days, I think this year, though, is we're going to have an opportunity to test it. Jonathan And I think ([Time 0:12:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/56346aea-f20a-4a96-a2e8-5dc8ee7ddba1))