Our roots

WordPress is our roots.

Everything we do started here. This show exists because a piece of free software, built by people who mostly never met, changed who gets to publish on the web. We're still grateful.

The name

From WP Legends to Web Legends.

This show started as WP Legends, and that name carried us through our first episodes. But the things that drew us to WordPress aren't unique to it. Free software, work done in public, and the freedom to run, study, share and improve what you use hold up a much bigger part of the web.

So we're widening the lens. Web Legends covers every corner of open source: the projects, and the people pushing the web forward, wherever they work.

We're not leaving anything behind. WordPress stays at the heart of the show, because it's where we learned everything we know. It's the same show, and all 172 episodes are still here. Only the name got bigger.

Where we come from

Open source made us.

Our team at Seahawk Media grew up in WordPress. It's where we learned the craft, found our clients and met most of the people we admire. We didn't pay for that education. Thousands of strangers gave it away.

That is the strange and wonderful thing about this community. In 2003, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little picked up an abandoned blogging tool called b2 and kept it going in the open. More than two decades later, the project they started runs more than four in ten websites, and it is still free for anyone to use.

So when we sat down to make a show, the subject was obvious. 172 episodes in, we're still asking the same question: who are the people behind all of this, and how did they get here?

Why we love it

Four reasons, among many.

It belongs to everyone

No one can take WordPress away from you. The code is free, your site is yours, and you can pick it up and move it whenever you like.

Anyone can start

A blogger, a shop owner or a teenager with a side project can publish on the same software as some of the world's biggest publishers.

It's built in the open

The roadmap, the debates and the code all happen in public. You can read how a decision was made, then join in and change the next one.

It lasts

WordPress has been around since 2003 and has outlived most of what launched beside it. Sites built years ago still run, and that patience is a kindness to the people who rely on them.

The idea underneath

Four freedoms hold it all up.

WordPress is released under the GPL, and its philosophy comes down to four promises to every user. Careers, companies and whole communities have been built on them.

01
Run it
Use the program for any purpose.
02
Study it
See how it works and change it to do what you need.
03
Share it
Give copies to anyone.
04
Improve it
Pass on your changes so the whole community benefits.

To the builders

Most legends never get a podcast.

The name on this show is a little misleading. For every founder we interview, there are hundreds of people doing unglamorous work for free, or close to it, because they care. WordPress runs on their generosity. This is for them.