Many of us who are involved in the WordPress community are also big fans of open source. We use tools such as GitHub to share code and collaborate with others, we often blog about the advantages of open source, and even challenge one another to open source our projects even if the developer’s initial desire is to keep it closed.

But why?

It’s because we believe that the advantages of open sourcing a project far out weigh keeping it closed, right? At least that’s part of it.

Obviously, I’m not someone who has built any large applications that are open source. I use a few, I’ve contributed to a few, and I’ve done my best to make sure a number of projects are open source (though, for the record, I’m not someone who is philosophically against closed source, either).

The thing is, there’s a side of the open source community that is rarely discussed. Or, if it is discussed, then I’ve missed the conversation. But after releasing the second version of the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate yesterday, I thought it might be worth sharing some of the downside of open source development. Continue reading