WooCommerce is celebrating 10 years since WooThemes launched the primary iteration of the WooCommerce plugin. Paul Maiorana, WooCommerce’s present CEO, lined a number of excessive highlights of the plugin’s rising recognition through the years in his anniversary publish. After 16 months within the wild, WooCommerce had been downloaded 500,000 instances and handed the 1 million downloads milestone simply 137 days later. In 2014, the night time earlier than the very first WooConf, the plugin celebrated passing 5 million downloads. It was acquired by Automattic in 2015 in a deal rumored to be greater than $20 million.
WooCommerce’s anniversary publish, which glossed over its checkered origin story, reignited a few of the controversy surrounding the Jigoshop fork. Whereas the publish mentions that WooThemes employed two Jigoshop builders “to create a devoted eCommerce plugin referred to as WooCommerce,” it uncared for to say that the preliminary model was truly a fork of Jigoshop. WooThemes had satisfied Mike Jolley and Jay Koster to fork the work they’d carried out for his or her earlier employer, Jigowatt, after failing to make a cope with the Jigowatt staff.
In a publish titled “Our forking views,” the remaining Jigoshop staff shed some gentle on what transpired privately earlier than WooThemes introduced its fork:
Woo’s bid to purchase out the Jigoshop undertaking grossly undervalued the enterprise and didn’t come near overlaying our preliminary development prices, not forgetting the planning, effort and time each the Jigowatt staff and neighborhood put into the undertaking.
Woo then made to a suggestion to ‘collaborate’ which led to their choice to fork Jigoshop. What hasn’t been made public is that collaboration provide included circumstances which might have given WooThemes full strategic management over the path and development of the Jigoshop undertaking sooner or later.
WooThemes was effectively inside its rights to fork the open supply Jigoshop code, however convincing a few of its key builders to go away the undertaking primarily forked Jigoshop out of its momentum and fractured its consumer base. It’s clear from the reactions to the WP Sweet information publish on the subject that many individuals in the neighborhood frowned upon this transfer on the time. It was one of the vital eviscerating, real-world functions of the GPL within the earliest days of WordPress product companies.
Mike Jolley was interviewed earlier this yr by HollerWP. When requested in regards to the Jigoshop fork he mentioned that his job at Jigowatt was 90% shopper work on e-commerce websites, and “Jigoshop felt extra like a side-hustle than something.” He discovered it draining to remain on high of each the shopper work and the open supply undertaking. Jigowatt had provided him no shares or vested curiosity past his wage. Jolley mentioned his transfer to WooThemes “was inevitable” and that he was grateful to proceed engaged on a undertaking that he was obsessed with.
In a publish titled Classes realized from the Jigoshop – WooCommerce fiasco, Scrumptious Brains founder and CEO Brad Touesnard mentioned he agreed Jigowatt had acquired “a stiff kick within the crotch courtesy of WooThemes,” as a consequence of what he perceived to be a deadly error on Jigowatt’s half:
In case you are an organization with an open supply undertaking gaining momentum, your core builders completely should have a vested curiosity in your organization. And never 1%. It must be a great chunk of the pie. Sufficient that the builders really feel your organization can be their firm. Then if one other firm comes alongside to rent them, the developer is more likely to inform them, “Purchase the firm or take a hike.”
I feel the entire scenario would have been totally different if Mike and Jay owned a chunk of the pie and had a vested curiosity in Jigowatt. In such a case, they most certainly wouldn’t have entertained employment at WooThemes except it was a part of a buyout deal.
These occasions have virtually light from reminiscence for many informal observers after 10 years, however not for these of us who have been there to look at it occur. Many of those web sites referenced are now not on-line however they’re obtainable through the Web Archive.
In 2014, Jigowatt offered Jigoshop to Proxar IT Consulting. The brand new plugin they launched was obtainable within the official plugin listing till 2020 when WordPress.org eliminated it, citing a tenet violation.
In 2021, WooCommerce is extra of a power than ever earlier than, put in on greater than 5 million web sites. Retailers world wide are constructing thriving, worthwhile companies on high of WooCommerce and its numerous ecosystem of extensions. Ten years later, it seems the founding companions of Jigowatt have largely moved previous the controversy and are actually constructing all of their e-commerce web sites with WooCommerce.
“Quite a bit has occurred over the previous 10 years, and we’ve come a good distance from our humble beginnings,” Paul Maiorana mentioned within the anniversary publish. The next “journey down reminiscence lane” omits the messy particulars of forking Jigoshop. The Jigoshop.com web site has now disappeared from the online, excluding pages preserved by means of the Web Archive. Earlier than the remainder of these historic references disappear, it’s good to do not forget that all of the earliest contributors to the Jigoshop open supply undertaking have been additionally a part of WooCommerce’s “humble beginnings,” even when not formally acknowledged by the e-commerce powerhouse that advantages from their contributions immediately.