Episode 161 – A Chat With Matt Mullenweg  ## Metadata - Author: [[Hallway Chats]] - Full Title: Episode 161 – A Chat With Matt Mullenweg - Category: #podcasts - Document Tags: [[Matt Mullenweg]] [[Open Source]] [[WordPress]] - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/12e59dd3-b7bc-4173-b293-8a1fa6b7abed ## Document Notes ## Highlights - The Power of Open Source Contributions The more you learn about WordPress, the more superpowers you have. The beauty of it is that when you teach someone to do it, also say like, Hey, if you enjoyed this, if you see someone else who needs some help,. That's how we got started with open source contributions. And I love that. Well, I will be that spark there. I hope we do great things. Transcript: Speaker 2 So, and I, I still do this to this day, you know, like I come across a, a small business or something and their websites to little janky and I'll reach out to them and be like, Hey, here's Speaker 1 My email. Let me help you fix this. Let me connect you with someone who can fix this. Just that leading by example, that little spark, it, it works. And really it's the whole history of WordPress. Like, you know, our competitors like wicks and square spaces have spent billions of dollars telling people about themselves. WordPress is really all, I mean, it's some marketing, but it's really like all like word of mouth. Speaker 2 It's like human, human, saying like, Hey, you want to do this thing? Speaker 1 I got this tool and here's how you can use it and here's how it can make you awesome. And the more you learn it, the more superpowers you have. Like, that's kind of the magic of, of education and learning and something like WordPress, which is free and open and accessible, right? Like, there's no, like literally, you can download the code, you can run it anywhere, you can run it on any host, you can run it yourself. You can run it in a web browser. Now I'm going to talk about that and say the word like there's so much you could do that puts a lot of power in your hands. And I love that. Great. Speaker 3 Well, I will be that spark there. Speaker 2 I hope we do great things. Speaker 1 But when you do it, also tell that person, Hey, help someone else, you know, so that's like the GBL, right? The GBL is called a viral license. The beauty of it is that when you teach someone to do it, also say like, Hey, if you enjoyed this, if you see someone else who needs some help, don't think that, you know, wherever you are, You can always help someone else. That's how we got started with open source contributions. I was at the, you know, the predecessor to WordPress was called B2, open source offer. And I just went to the forums to ask for help because I couldn't figure something out. And so when I answered my question and I went back and I gave it, you know, it was just kind of going back and then I went back and to ask for help. But I saw someone else had asked the question that I already knew the answer to. And again, I'm like a neophyte. I'm like brand new. And so then I just went and answered their question, not because I was an expert because someone to answer my question like three weeks before. Speaker 2 And so I was able to know. ([Time 0:26:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/386c2872-72f3-46df-b309-f24137217834))