news WP.org was donated to WordPress Foundation by WPBeginner.com

[Atta]

One of the important news last week for WordPress community was the donation of domain WP.org to WordPress foundation by Syed Bakhi – the founder of WPBeginner. It is a commendable decision. He said in his blog post:

For majority of you, this doesn’t mean anything and life goes on as usual. For those who’re more involved in the WordPress community, this is a huge deal because now you can type wp.org in your Tweets, Slack messages, Facebook statuses, etc without cursing at me or WPBeginner.

Many of you may experienced the redirect of WP.org to WPBeginner.com in past. It is a great 2L.org domain. WordPress is one of the most popular CMS and has very strong developers, designers, and writers community.

WP is a perfect short name for WordPress used heavily in news, at social media and in general discussion.

What you do think about this decision?

 

[frank-germany]

call me skeptic too

 

[namezest]

He just got free advertising for the life of wordpress and his site, how much do you think that move was really worth? My guess is more than the domain was worth that move just guaranteed him an income and probably a very very good one.

 

[Chris Rice]

He just got free advertising for the life of wordpress and his site, how much do you think that move was really worth? My guess is more than the domain was worth that move just guaranteed him an income and probably a very very good one.

I don't have time to dig through the details but I believe there had to be some sort of arrangement, even if it wasn't for strict cash.

I believe he was either compensated in some way or forced. I don't think a simple press release about him donating the domain would recoup enough money warrant a 'donation'.

 

[Chris Rice]

First of all, WP is not a trademark. So WordPress doesn't have any legal ground to block website using 'wp' keyword. There are thousands of website with 'wp' keyword - even I own one too wppaid.com. Here is what WordPress foundation says:



Secondly, lets not look for the negative side always. The world is already full of idiots. Lets appreciate those who do something for the community.

I read a press release about Wordpress trying to enforce their WP rules for domains. I will double check.

 

[Akos123]

I don't think wp.org was sold and then presented as a donation to the public as it may already break rules of the NDA. It was probably still worth donating the domain by counting the free press coverage he got for doing so.