Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, thinks we, who make money off the open source publishing platform, should contribute more. 5% of our time, actually.

It’s a big commitment, but I can’t think of a better long-term investment in the health of WordPress overall. I think it will look incredibly modest in hindsight. This ratio is probably the bare minimum for a sustainable ecosystem, avoiding the tragedy of the commons. I think the 5% rule is one that all open source projects and companies should follow, at least if they want to be vibrant a decade from now.

The relevance of WordPress is in our hands, and although I’m not so sure about the numbers (5% might nit be the sweet-spot), I do believe that we need to amp up the contributions from the commercial side of things. We’ll definitely be talking about this at Odd Alice, where we already have contributions and core patches to be proud of, but we can no doubt do more.