Automattic’s Architecture and Open Source Director Anne McCarthy is auctioning off framed WordPress release albums she received for participating in WordPress release squads, with proceeds going to Stimpunks, an organization founded by early WordPress contributor Ryan Boren that supports neurodivergent and disabled people.
McCarthy has launched release-auction.blog to host the auction, with an initial bid price of $500 for the albums.
An auction for a good cause
McCarthy said the albums are meaningful to her because she received them as thank-you gifts for her work on WordPress release squads. She has been a sponsored contributor to WordPress since 2020 through her work at Automattic, which has resulted in her participating in multiple release squads and receiving several albums. She was also the release lead for WordPress 7.1.
At the same time, McCarthy said she regularly reviews the things she owns and wanted to find a way to pass the framed albums on to people who would appreciate them. She considered giving them to family and friends, while also exploring other ideas, including displaying them at WordCamp US and auctioning them to raise money for a fund supporting LGBTQ+ WordPress contributors.
Those ideas ultimately did not work out. McCarthy said she eventually settled on an auction supporting an organization focused on neurodivergent and disabled people. She spent part of the week building release-auction.blog to host and coordinate the effort.
The auction currently has an initial bid price of 500, although McCarthy said she is open to feedback on whether that is the right starting point, “I’m also curious about the initial bid price ($500) and what a better initial bid might be.”
The auction includes framed release albums from WordPress 5.9 “Josephine” through 6.5 “Regina,” with bidding underway and the highest current bid at $550.
The money raised will go to Stimpunks, which was co-founded by Ryan Boren after he retired from the technology industry in 2021. Boren helped start WordPress.org, WordPress.com, WordCamp.org, and Automattic.com, and retired from tech in 2021 after 15 years at Automattic. He joined the WordPress project in 2003 and wrote the plugin system that is used by nearly every WordPress site. He also served as a lead developer for more than a decade.
In an interview with Siobhan McKeown for Milestones: The Story of WordPress, Boren described his role in WordPress’s early development. When McKeown told him, “you basically built WordPress,” Boren replied, “Pretty much, I guess. At least the early days.”
Boren was also involved in creating WordPress’s plugin system. He recalled that Matt Mullenweg proposed doing something “event-y,” and Boren implemented the system using actions and filters. He said the approach opened WordPress up and reduced the project’s bottleneck by allowing functionality to be developed as plugins.
Boren described this as an “80/20” approach, where features that were not useful to most users could be tried in a plugin first.
McCarthy encouraged people who have benefited from WordPress to donate to Stimpunks even if they do not participate in the auction, “Whether you win an album or bid at all, I encourage you to donate if you’ve benefited from WordPress in any way as Ryan Boren (he/they) is one of the people who built WordPress from the ground up.”