The original post is at feathervane.blogspot.com. I’m re-posting this one. 
September 4, 2008. Bryan’s Grill & Café, Davao City, Philippines. Welcome my dear readers. First of all, I wanna extend my gratitude to the people behind WordCamp Philippines, specially to Mr. Bloggie Robillo for the undying effort on making WordCamp Davao a success. WordCamp Davao was a mini event of the WordCamp Philippines 2008. It was an informal gathering attended by individuals and groups in Davao City who were interested in WordPress.
I’m glad that I attended the event. For me, it was truly an amazing experience. I met a lot of people, some were complete strangers, others were familiar faces in the IT Industry of Davao. But that was just the tip of the ice berg because the highlight of the said event was Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress.
A lot of great stuffs happened and that led me made this post. I’ll mention it accordingly as to how I could remember things. These are the following:
REASON #1
I received an early bird award which was a WordCamp Philippines bag. Hmmm… kind of very eager to meet Mr. Matt Mullenweg. The bag was made of a simple fabric but it’s totally creative. It was awarded to the top 20 early birds and fortunately I’m one of them.
REASON #2
I was able to handshake Matt when I received the award, the bag. But grrr… I wasn’t able to bring my cam and that frustrates me a bit.
REASON #3
Individuals and groups that run a blog with self-hosted WordPress or at WordPress.com were given the time to talk about their sites. Some of them promoted their blogs. Others just completely share the stuffs they’re doing on their sites.
REASON #4
A quick talk given by my colleague Mr. Nathaniel Jayme about DabaweGNU, Inc. It was a great step on promoting Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and some of our upcoming Projects and Events.
REASON #5
Matt started to talk about WordPress. Among of the topics raised were designs, plug-ins, & future plans of WordPress. He also talked about Automattic, the company he founded 3 years ago, if I’m not mistaken.
REASON #6
I made a short talk in front of the crowd about my previous blog at WordPress.com which was Ang Pilipino GIMP in exchange for a giveaway. I received an IBM Pen & an IBM Mug for that matter. Yes, IBM sponsored those giveaways for WordCamp Philippines. But I really wanted to have a WordPress shirt. Fortunately, a girl who received a WordPress shirt agreed with me to exchange what we had received. Whew, thank God. I’m happy but not that much coz’ the tee size is 3XL. It’s impossible for me to use it coz’ it’s too large. But on the other hand, it’s a WordPress shirt that I wanted so it’s completely fine.
REASON #7
A thought provoking, eye-openner question was raised by my colleague to Matt. And the question was — Why Matt Mullenweg chose the FOSS Model to drive WordPress? Were there any regrets making WordPress licensed under GPL. For future upgrades of WordPress, would it still be licensed under GPL? That simple question lead Matt to a lengthy answer. Below are just key points that he mentioned.
1 – Matt chose the FOSS Model for WordPress because of the freedom, the openness, the sharing factor, the collaboration, & the fun it offers.
2 – No regrets of choosing GPL for it allowed WordPress to flourish in an incredible way. Tremendous improvements were contributed from around the globe to have better plug-ins, great web design themes, and marvelous features. He even pointed out a quote from Benjamin Franklin about Freedom (They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety). That was quite heavy, huh! Not only that he even encouraged the spectators to try out themselve GPL and adapt it to their needs.
3 – For as long as Matt Mullenweg is there, WordPress will always be licensed under GPL, period!
That being said by Matt, it totally inspired me as I completely devoted myself to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and embraced the philosophies and principles behind it.
Thats gonna do it for today’s post my dear readers. Thank you so very much for visiting.
Filed under: FOSS , davao, experiences, FOSS, wordpress
