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WordPress is celebrating its 20th anniversary tomorrow and recently its co-founders, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, joined Drupal founder Dries Buytaert together on stage at a private event for the first time on May 17. They discussed how their lives were influenced by open source and how they built their projects around the freedoms it guarantees.
Founders of both projects expounded on the benefits of open source collaboration, and Buytaert characterized their continued improvements as an example of the flywheel effect, accumulating small wins that compound over time. They discussed the early history of WordPress and how something as seemingly insignificant as a comment on a blog can be the first step towards building a better future for the web.
Mullenweg acknowledged that it may not be possible to reach everyone with open source philosophy so “at the end of the day you have to make the best user experience.” This has been WordPress’ path over the past 20 years, working in tandem with the power of its open source license and the freedoms that has enabled for the community.