WordPress is the Content Management System winner in the 2018 Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards.

Note that the contenders were nominated by readers via Twitter. Here's the breakdown:

• WordPress: 42%
• Drupal: 23%
• Other: 15%
• Joomla: 10%
• Concrete5: 4%
• Grav: 3%
• ModX: 3%

Unless you've been living under a rock, you most certainly have heard of WordPress, one of the most popular blogging platforms around that also happens to be 100% open source. WordPress powers 27% of the web from personal to corporate to even government sites (Whitehouse.gov for one).

In a 2008 interview, Linux Journal's Katherine Druckman asked WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, "You frequently have reiterated your commitment to open-source ideals and GPL licensing. How has this commitment factored into the development of your company, Automattic? How do you use open-source technology to achieve your goals?"

Mullenweg responded:

When I set out to create Automattic, it was an interesting dilemma—in our society, it seemed the best way to have an impact on the world was working within a for-profit framework, but at the same time, I'd seen multiple examples of "open-source companies" suffocating the communities they grew from.

I came across an interesting hack though—by keeping WordPress.org a separate entity from Automattic and basing our business entirely on GPL code, you create a balance that aligns the fiduciary responsibilities of the corporation with the interests of the community at large. In the long term—10, 20 years from now—it still will be in the best interest of Automattic to support the broader community as much as possible, because its own business succeeds when they do.

I didn't want WordPress to be a one-company project, so by separating out the nonprofit and for-profit sides and making some explicit decisions about businesses Automattic would never enter, we created a lot of room for other companies to embrace, support and build on top of WordPress. Hopefully, we also set a good example of how to contribute back to the community.

It was the best way I could think of to ensure that the principles I believe in would endure beyond my personal involvement or control of either organization. (But I still look both ways when crossing the street.)

Congratulations to WordPress for being Linux Journal's Readers' Choice.