The freedom to organize yourself
Jake Caputo’s experience with the WordPress Foundation:
On Friday, January 18, I was told that I may no longer participate in WordCamps.
More specifically, I was contacted by Andrea Middleton (Dot Organizer for Automattic). She said according to the WordCamp guidelines, I may not speak or volunteer at WordCamps while I sell my themes on ThemeForest with their split license as is.
In Germany we had different issues, mostly with requirements regarding sponsoring and leftover funds. It is a tradition of German WordPress bar camps to send these to those who need it most: people in need. Not allowed:
Leftover funds from a WordCamp budget should be disposed of in one of the following ways: used to fund the continuing WordPress meetup group’s activities, donated to the Foundation to support other WordCamps and community initiatives, fund the development of a contribution to the WordPress.org community (such as releasing a free plugin or theme), or provide partial refunds to attendees and sponsors.
The WordPress community is large. Large enough to go beyond criticism and and encourage better behavior by good examples. In Germany the team did just that and named the event WP Camp. It was a really great bar camp, and the money was sent to Help e.V. to help Syrian refugees. Everyone was happy, and maybe the WordCamp guidelines will be improved one day to make that official.
The same is true for other forms of organizations. You don’t want use the wordpress.org forum for development questions? Welcome to WordPress Stack Exchange. Need a plugin or theme recommendation? There is a WordPress community on Google+. The size of our community is an opportunity for experiments. We don’t have to fight each other to fix the one central place.
Organize alternative WordPress bar camps, discussion groups, code repositories … whatever. Be creative. Share your experiences and let everybody learn. Where and how you give something back is up to you.
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WordPress Events: Why Not Roll Your Own? - WP Daily
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Caspar Hübinger – 23.01.2013 11:24
WordPress Meetups are another community-driven activity that has gotten in the focus of centralizing efforts lately. While personally, I wouldn’t doubt at all the good intentions behind a goal like Aaron Jorbin’s to “develop a first-class system” for meetups, until today no one has convinced me how a centralized approach would help the meetup spirit to grow and prosper. The story of WordPress meetups in Germany has only just begun and so far everyone seems happy to build their own sites, communicate over the channels they choose and network as groups with each other as they see fit.
Rodolfo Buaiz – 23.01.2013 12:50
That’s open source expanded to a wider level: a Society of Commons. There’s a term (taxonomy?) for it: Open Source Economy.