“As a businessman I love building on Free Software because you can be certain of your rights and freedoms with regards to the software.”

Name: Matt Mullenweg Location: San Francisco, CA Company/Organization: Automattic Project Contributions: Co-founding developer and lead, WordPress

"I am lucky enough to be able to code, and only have a limited time on this earth, so I want as much of my work as possible to benefit humanity. Having my output be freely available under the GPL is one of the best ways to make the world just a little bit better and more open with every line I write.

Also, as an anecdote, every good thing that has happened in my life was because I gave something away first, be it time, money, or code. I see no reason to change that now. It's just good karma.

I have seen time and time again that a community working together on a shared goal can create something so much greater than the sum of their contributions. The best Free Software projects encompass more than just a license, they're a process for creating software that is fundamentally innovative in its approach and, in my opinion, eventually creates software far better than a proprietary process could.

As a businessman I love building on Free Software because you can be certain of your rights and freedoms with regards to the software. You can't have the licensing rug pulled out from under you by a proprietary license change. What's yours is yours. I find this a far more stable environment to build a business in, because it adds certainty to your software stack and allows you to focus on what differentiates you: your core competitive advantage."