Category: Open Source + WordPress

WordCamp Montclair might have been one of the smaller events on the WordPress calendar this year, but it packed a lot of value into a single day in New Jersey.

I flew solo for this one, setting up a simple table with Kinsta swag and a QR code giveaway for a pair of AirPods Pro. (Congrats to the winner!) While the setup was low-key, the conversations were anything but. From thoughtful discussions on AI in WordPress to tactical partner chats, this community proved once again how resilient and generous it is with ideas and experience.

One of the best parts? Running into Austin from Anchor, a current Kinsta customer. He shared how happy he is with Kinsta’s quick turnaround on product requests, especially API improvements.

There were some strong talks throughout the day, including one on building successful partnerships from WPVIP’s Jodie Fiorenza.

Unfortunately, this was the final year for WordCamp Montclair, at least for now. The organizing team is stepping back after years of incredible work. There’s chatter about WordCamp NYC returning in 2026, and I hope it happens. This region has a lot of WordPress energy, and it deserves a space to gather.

If you were there and we didn’t get a chance to connect, drop me a note. If you weren’t there, let’s catch up at a future WordCamp or one of our upcoming events. Kinsta will be there–swag and all.

Let’s keep building together.

At the Open Source Summit in Denver, I grabbed a few minutes with Madelyn Olson, one of the maintainers behind Valkey, a project that’s been making waves in the infrastructure world.

Madelyn had just finished delivering a keynote titled “Your Core Infrastructure Should Be Vendor Neutral and Open Source,” and the theme carried right into our conversation.

Valkey is a community-driven fork of Redis, launched after Redis Labs changed its license. Unlike Redis, Valkey remains under the BSD 3-Clause License, fully open source and governed by the Linux Foundation.

The message is simple but significant: your core infrastructure shouldn’t be at the mercy of vendor decisions.

Madelyn emphasized that Valkey is built as a drop-in replacement for Redis. For engineering teams who already rely on Redis’ speed and simplicity, switching to Valkey doesn’t require rewriting your apps–it just gives you back confidence in the license and long-term governance model.

We didn’t dwell on licensing drama. Instead, we talked about momentum. Valkey has a growing group of contributors, active discussions about its future, and a roadmap shaped by the people who use and maintain it, not just a single company.

When I asked Madelyn what stood out most at the summit, she mentioned how energizing it was to see so many new contributors from adjacent communities. The project isn’t just preserving Redis, it’s evolving in the open.

If you’re a CTO or architect re-evaluating the tools your stack depends on, especially for caching or real-time workloads, Valkey deserves a closer look. It’s stable, familiar, and driven by principles that matter, like vendor neutrality and open governance.

And if your team is already exploring Valkey, or grappling with Redis license concerns, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Drop a comment and let’s compare notes.

I recently had the chance to sit down with Sarah, Head of Engineering at Openlane, for a quick three-minute chat during the Open Source Summit.

In just a few minutes, we covered a surprising amount–how Openlane is shaking up the world of compliance certification (SOC 2, ISO 27001), why flexibility and cost transparency matter in that space, and how Sarah’s background in building developer tools led to a platform that’s far more than just another checkbox engine.

She spoke candidly about the company’s approach:

• Lowering costs through smarter automation
• Making vendor relationships less rigid and more transparent

Sarah also shared some of her excitement from the Open Source Summit itself. Between sessions and hallway conversations, it’s clear Openlane is plugged into a growing ecosystem of companies working on real, systemic problems. Their focus on compliance isn’t just red tape–it’s infrastructure for a safer, more trustworthy internet.

Give the interview a watch below. It’s short, sharp, and packed with insight:

If you’re following the compliance, or infrastructure-as-a-service space, Openlane’s worth keeping an eye on.

I landed in Denver just after 7am, headed straight to the Convention Center, and found a seat up front for the opening keynote of the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit North America. By 9:00, I was wide awake, not from coffee, but from the staggering figure shared on stage:

$8.8 trillion.

That’s the estimated economic value of open source software, according to a new report commissioned by the Linux Foundation and presented by Harvard Business School’s Frank Nagle. And even that’s a conservative estimate, based only on the top 1% of open source projects. The long tail, smaller libraries, side projects, and tools that quietly power our digital lives, wasn’t even included.

So: open source is massive. But the people maintaining it? Not so much.

The FAIR Project: Redefining WordPress Governance

A standout session followed from Joost de Valk and Karim Marucchi. Together, they introduced the FAIR Package Manager, a new initiative aimed at modernizing plugin and theme distribution in WordPress.

What struck me wasn’t just the technical ambition, but the clear diagnosis of a larger issue: growing distrust in centralized governance models and a lack of cross-pollination between the WordPress and broader open source worlds. Joost and Karim weren’t subtle, they brought up last year’s banning of a major web host from the .org Slack and the abrupt plugin removal saga as signs of deeper governance fractures.

Their call to action? Build a more democratic, Linux-Foundation-style structure: technical steering committees, elected co-chairs, working groups, and a roadmap ratified (but not dictated) by a technical advisory council. A governing board would focus on unblocking barriers and fundraising.

It was an open challenge to the status quo, and it got applause from a non WordPress crowd.

Open Source Is Aging Out

Later, Abigail Kubunok-Maez from GitHub delivered a talk titled “Who Will Maintain the Future?” She raised a sobering point: many OSS maintainers are burned out or aging out, and we’re failing to bring the next generation in fast enough. This may not be news to people inside of open source projects but it needs to be repeated and shown to corporate leadership as much as possible.

Drawing on her work with GitHub’s Maintainer Program and Mozilla Open Leaders, she outlined how to engage Gen Z contributors: mobile-first design, async video content, and spaces to connect like Discord, not just GitHub Issues. Her talk reminded me that developer experience isn’t just about tools; it’s about creating community to work comfortably in the open.

And if we want long-term sustainability, compensation matters. Volunteerism alone won’t cut it. We need onramps, mentorship, and real incentives. Recently I talked with Stephane Graber of the Incus project about his work with a class at the University of Texas. Many of the students who participate in contributing to the Incus project go onto work at major tech companies like Nvidia and the FAANGS.

Devs need to treat their GitHub as their working resume.

Who’s Watching the Licenses?

Another powerful discussion came from a panel featuring Stormy Peters, Nithya Ruff, Rao Lakkakula, and others. They focused on OSPOs (Open Source Program Offices) as critical infrastructure for any serious tech company.

Their key points:

• If you’re using OSS, you’d better understand your license obligations.
• Violating them is reputationally dangerous–and the community will notice.
• SBOMs (Software Bills of Materials) are becoming essential, especially in AI-era complexity.

It was clear: if you’re consuming open source at scale, you need compliance, coordination, and contribution in one place. And that place is often the OSPO.

The ROI of Giving Back

Frank Nagle‘s keynote drilled home the numbers:

• 97% of companies now use open source.
• Only 64% give back.
• Organizations that contribute to open source projects enjoy a 2x productivity boost over free riders.
• Countries with strong OSS participation see more startups, more VC investment, and better exits.

And yet, in many companies, contributing is still seen as a cost center or passion project, not a strategic lever. That needs to change.

The Quality Conversation (and the Quiet Room)

One of the most candid sessions I joined was a meetup hosted by Lance Willett. With only a handful of us in the room, including Joost, Karim, Robert Jacobi, and a couple of Linux Foundation folks, we talked openly about the tension between open collaboration and software quality.

How do we maintain high standards in ecosystems built on volunteer labor, across vast forks and repos? How do you scale code review, test coverage, and triage when the talent pool is distributed and overworked?

There weren’t easy answers. But there was mutual respect and a real willingness to wrestle with the tradeoffs.

Final Thoughts

Day one left me inspired, and a little unsettled.

We’re riding a $8.8 trillion wave powered by an aging, often invisible volunteer base. We need new governance models, better onboarding, deeper funding strategies, and clearer ways to measure impact. And we need to stop treating contribution as charity.

It’s investment. It’s strategy. It’s survival.

If you’re a tech leader and you haven’t started thinking seriously about how your organization contributes to the open source software it depends on, you’re late. The good news is that there are organizations like the Linux Foundation with vast resources and projects available to help.