Open source, Automattic, and the origins of PublishPress

WPTavern is probably the best-known WordPress news site. Technically, the site is owned by Matt Mullenweg (through one of his companies), but they've always been a great source of WordPress news. And they're often unafraid to criticize Automattic, which is Matt's main company.

A couple of weeks ago, WPTavern wrote that Automattic has stopped active development on the Edit Flow plugin.

We started PublishPress in 2017 as a replacement for Edit Flow. We loved the plugin and wanted to see it continue. However, even then, development had halted.

That's really the beauty of open source: if you love something, you can keep development going … it's how WordPress itself started. The Edit Flow code was freely available and we were able to make improvements.

PS. WPTavern followed up last week by recommending PublishPress: “Edit Flow Future in Flux: Here Are 5 Alternative Plugins“.

PPS. Even if they don't write about PublishPress again any time soon, it's well worth subscribing to WPTavern. They just signed Justin Tadlock, who's a very talented developer and writer. For a great example, check out his post on Gutenberg and the future of WordPress themes.