For decades, open source advocates and Internet purists have rallied behind a righteous call: “we must fight to preserve the open web.”
That rallying cry is all wrong. The web itself remains as open as the day Tim Berners-Lee created it – built on patent-free standards, decentralized architecture, and universal access. Yet today, billions of users have been conditioned into believing the opposite is true, unknowingly abandoning and surrendering openness in favor of convenience in the form of walled gardens, proprietary apps, and centralized services.
In reality, we’re not losing the open web – we’re losing the battle against closed alternatives trying to replace it.
Open source projects like WordPress have long championed the technologies built on open web standards that have powered the web from the very beginning. The project and surrounding ecosystem exemplifies what the web is meant to be: open by default. Let’s explore how WordPress continues to embrace the true spirit of the Internet and identify the real enemy: the closed web that seeks to replace the web’s open foundation.
