On this 8th episode of "Thinking the Unthinkable" we are asking “is ‘open source’ a liability? This was prompted by a 2021 incident. A zero-day attack called Log4Shell that affected major players like Microsoft and Cloudflare. It's a chat about risk assessment really. Lots of levels with WordPress’ LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL). It seems quite remarkable that WordPress has worked so well for 20 years. So how do we 'sell' free, open source solutions to our clients, when most of them are from a world in which you need to pay for all-the-things?
If something is free then it's likely not very good. That's the generally accepted wisdom is most aspects of life, but not with WordPress! WordPress like many other software platforms is free to use and free to modify. It's yours to use as you see fit, and you don't have to pay a penny for it. This is great, and it's all underpinned by a the 'philosophy' of the Open Source. Today in the podcast we talk about what this means and how it plays out for WordPress in particular. It's got huge benefits, but also some significant downsides. Maybe you contribute back to the WordPress project, or earn a living off the back of the development and popularity of it, there's sure to be something in this episode, so go and take a listen...
