4 ms·

Lots of people read something called the New York Times today, but it’s not printed on the same hot metal typesetting machine they used in 1923 (or printed at a

by pavlov 3y ago

Lots of people read something called the New York Times today, but it’s not printed on the same hot metal typesetting machine they used in 1923 (or printed at all). Similarly it doesn’t seem too unlikely that people would be publishing on a platform called Wordpress in 2123. If there’s anything left of the original PHP code, it will probably have been transformed and rewritten many times over by AI because we already have the capability for that, just missing some context window to process a Wordpress-sized code base.

moralestapia 3y ago
Weird argument, you're mixing things up. The NYT is a media property and a trademark, they can choose to deliver their content on any platform they want. Wordpress is one of such platforms to deliver content (like the hot metal typesetting machine). Other sites could still be around and ditch Wordpress for any other new platform that comes up. And GP would be horrified to think that 100 years from now, people would still use said platform to deliver their content.
- pavlov 3y ago
  The article is about Wordpress.com selling 100-year registrations. Their platform is whatever they call “Wordpress”. In the same way, NYT on a phone app is conceptually the same NYT as the one printed in 1923, even if almost nothing in the production pipeline is the same.
  - moralestapia 3y ago
    The NYT can change any of the tech they use and still be the NYT in 100 years. Wordpress is the technology, if it changes, it becomes something else. That's the difference, explained.
    - pavlov 3y ago
      Wordpress.com can change their technology without becoming something else. They own the Wordpress trademark just like NYT owns theirs. Somebody who buys a 100-year registration from Wordpress will have the service delivered on whatever Wordpress has become by 2123.
      - moralestapia 3y ago
        People don't go to wordpress.com because of the name or the content on the site. People use WP because it's a technology they understand and can put to a particular use. If that changes, said people may not use it anymore. If the NYT decides to change their content delivery platform to, literally, whatever, people would still go read the NYT. Their audience doesn't care. If WP becomes a different product (a static site generator for Rust, deployed with Kubernetes?), their customer base will drop to ~0 overnight.
        pavlov 3y ago
        Well, duh. If a company suddenly stopped selling the product that their users rely on, they would lose sales. This is hardly a revelation. There are lots of examples of software platforms transitioning to a new foundation while retaining a compatibility shim for those bits of the old applications that customers still need. Text-mode COBOL applications are deployed on Windows 11, which itself has almost nothing in common with Windows 1.0. Wordpress.com would need to maintain compatibility with some PHP+MySQL plugins. This doesn’t seem insurmountable, especially as AI code translation is now a thing.
        derefr 3y ago
        > If WP becomes a different product (a static site generator for Rust, deployed with Kubernetes?), their customer base will drop to ~0 overnight. You're imagining this change happening in a world where people still care about Wordpress. Try imagining instead, a world where Wordpress is already a dead technology that nobody would use for a greenfield project, and it's only "legacy" sites that haven't been modified in 10 years (but which are owned by brick-and-mortar companies that continue faithfully paying the hosting bills every month) that are still hosted on Wordpress.com. Can you not then see the value in some company buying up Wordpress.com, and migrating its customers over to a Wordpress-compatibility-shim over their own service that's based on a not-dead technology?
    - pacifika 3y ago
      You’re confusing WordPress.com the sass with WordPress.org the product. Which they’re banking on.
    - xeromal 3y ago
      I'm not sure if you're being intentionally dense but predicting the future is hard and wordpress could be a package of gummy bears in 100 years. Nintendo used to sell cards or something. Yeah, wordpress is a technology but it also is a name and that name has value regardless if they technology stops working.
    - derefr 3y ago
      Wordpress-the-company owns the name "Wordpress." They can sell that trademark, and then whoever they sell it to can call something else "Wordpress", and the current technology would have to get a different name.
    - wongarsu 3y ago
      Windows 98 is a technology. Windows XP is a technology. Both share very little in common under the hood, one being descended from DOS and one from Windows NT. The customer doesn't care, to them it's still Windows as long as it looks and feels the same, and most of your old stuff still works. Just because Wordpress 6.3 is a php monstrosity with a security-disaster-riddled ecosystem doesn't mean Wordpress 12 has to use php and can't have sandboxed extensions. For all we know, Wordpress 12 could be a fancy frontend for a static site generator (marketed as "ultra-caching" or whatever)
    - ufjfjjfjfj 3y ago
      Wrong... WordPress' code could 200% different and still be worpress
- millzlane 3y ago
  Why wouldn't WP just adapt to whatever new thing comes up? For instance, is there mastadon plug-ins for wordpress?

by pavlov 3y ago

moralestapia 3y ago

Weird argument, you're mixing things up. The NYT is a media property and a trademark, they can choose to deliver their content on any platform they want. Wordpress is one of such platforms to deliver content (like the hot metal typesetting machine). Other sites could still be around and ditch Wordpress for any other new platform that comes up. And GP would be horrified to think that 100 years from now, people would still use said platform to deliver their content.

pavlov 3y ago
The article is about Wordpress.com selling 100-year registrations. Their platform is whatever they call “Wordpress”. In the same way, NYT on a phone app is conceptually the same NYT as the one printed in 1923, even if almost nothing in the production pipeline is the same.
- moralestapia 3y ago
  The NYT can change any of the tech they use and still be the NYT in 100 years. Wordpress is the technology, if it changes, it becomes something else. That's the difference, explained.
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Wordpress.com can change their technology without becoming something else. They own the Wordpress trademark just like NYT owns theirs. Somebody who buys a 100-year registration from Wordpress will have the service delivered on whatever Wordpress has become by 2123.
    - moralestapia 3y ago
      People don't go to wordpress.com because of the name or the content on the site. People use WP because it's a technology they understand and can put to a particular use. If that changes, said people may not use it anymore. If the NYT decides to change their content delivery platform to, literally, whatever, people would still go read the NYT. Their audience doesn't care. If WP becomes a different product (a static site generator for Rust, deployed with Kubernetes?), their customer base will drop to ~0 overnight.
      - pavlov 3y ago
        Well, duh. If a company suddenly stopped selling the product that their users rely on, they would lose sales. This is hardly a revelation. There are lots of examples of software platforms transitioning to a new foundation while retaining a compatibility shim for those bits of the old applications that customers still need. Text-mode COBOL applications are deployed on Windows 11, which itself has almost nothing in common with Windows 1.0. Wordpress.com would need to maintain compatibility with some PHP+MySQL plugins. This doesn’t seem insurmountable, especially as AI code translation is now a thing.
      - derefr 3y ago
        > If WP becomes a different product (a static site generator for Rust, deployed with Kubernetes?), their customer base will drop to ~0 overnight. You're imagining this change happening in a world where people still care about Wordpress. Try imagining instead, a world where Wordpress is already a dead technology that nobody would use for a greenfield project, and it's only "legacy" sites that haven't been modified in 10 years (but which are owned by brick-and-mortar companies that continue faithfully paying the hosting bills every month) that are still hosted on Wordpress.com. Can you not then see the value in some company buying up Wordpress.com, and migrating its customers over to a Wordpress-compatibility-shim over their own service that's based on a not-dead technology?
  - pacifika 3y ago
    You’re confusing WordPress.com the sass with WordPress.org the product. Which they’re banking on.
  - xeromal 3y ago
    I'm not sure if you're being intentionally dense but predicting the future is hard and wordpress could be a package of gummy bears in 100 years. Nintendo used to sell cards or something. Yeah, wordpress is a technology but it also is a name and that name has value regardless if they technology stops working.
  - derefr 3y ago
    Wordpress-the-company owns the name "Wordpress." They can sell that trademark, and then whoever they sell it to can call something else "Wordpress", and the current technology would have to get a different name.
  - wongarsu 3y ago
    Windows 98 is a technology. Windows XP is a technology. Both share very little in common under the hood, one being descended from DOS and one from Windows NT. The customer doesn't care, to them it's still Windows as long as it looks and feels the same, and most of your old stuff still works. Just because Wordpress 6.3 is a php monstrosity with a security-disaster-riddled ecosystem doesn't mean Wordpress 12 has to use php and can't have sandboxed extensions. For all we know, Wordpress 12 could be a fancy frontend for a static site generator (marketed as "ultra-caching" or whatever)
  - ufjfjjfjfj 3y ago
    Wrong... WordPress' code could 200% different and still be worpress
millzlane 3y ago
Why wouldn't WP just adapt to whatever new thing comes up? For instance, is there mastadon plug-ins for wordpress?