| I don't think the point of the article is that everything was intentional. He leads with the differentiators from WordPress because WordPress alternatives are a big conversation at the moment. This is a chance to inform people about how Ghost chose to be different: Non-profit, no plugins, etc. But the final section ("Governance & the road ahead") seems like a subtle admission that the current Ghost structure wouldn't prevent a BDFL from going off of the rails. Maybe it's too subtle, since he doesn't explicitly connect statements like these: > Neither myself nor Hannah own any shares, assets, domains, trademarks, or other companies related to Ghost. Everything is owned by the Foundation. > From the beginning, Ghost's governance structure has had a board of trustees made up of its two founders, myself and Hannah. I think Matt showed that some of the open-source-foundation shell game isn't real: There's a WordPress Foundation, and WordPress.org, but it really all belongs to Matt. So, if Ghost can follow through on changing it's governance structure, it gains another differentiator from WordPress. |
The author (Ghost's original co-founder) outlines how Ghost differentiates itself by:
- Operating as a profitable non-profit foundation with no owners, where all profits are reinvested into the project
- Maintaining independence from investors and commercial interests to better serve its community's needs
- Focusing exclusively on publishing workflows rather than trying to be an all-purpose platform
- Planning for sustainable long-term governance, by
- Intentionally limiting the organization to ~50 people
- Planning to expand its board of trustees beyond the founders
- Growing an ecosystem rather than a single large company
I emphasized the active, concrete verbs (actually gerunds fwiw) so that you may see how they are different than the passive verbs associated with 'luck' like hoping, wishing, praying, etc.