Matt’s comments about hitting the front page of Digg and you just touch a button and all problems are solved. What are the compute overages? Does it just solve the problem? Who is doing this?

At HostCo we took a real world data drive approach to this and cracked the code for VPS configurations that could take simultaneous front pages from both Digg and Redit and predictable and affordable pricing. Picchore.Com saw 210K visitors in 10 hours on a commodity VPS. No fancy fabrics, load balancing, or other things that become unstable and break. To be fair, we also tested on a “cloud” and not only broke it but got a huge bill from the overages.

Congrats to Matt for getting on MS’s radar screen. Also, congrats in meeting Ray Ozzie. He is truly one of the greatest software minds in the business and you have truly achieved something when he recognizes you. Still, I’m not sure that Azure is the home for self hosted WordPress.

(blog herald write-up they did on us http://www.blogherald.com/2010/09/14/is-wordpress-vip-beyond-reach-let-wphostco-wipe-away-the-tears/ )

@Zmicer – No apologies needed. It’s a free world. :-)

Matt and the core team, Automattic, the loyal community (especially plugin authors) all deserve a mighty pat on the back. With the recent CMS award and now the interaction between MS and WP I feel a deep sense of honour and kudos to be associated with and be a part of this vibrant, dynamic and at times almost zen-ish phenomenon called WordPress.

WordPress has literally changed my life. Apart from giving me the means to “share” about my interaction with a tribal people and culture (Highlands of Papua New Guinea) , it has without a doubt rekindled my passion for getting under the “hood” for some good old fashioned tinkering. Each time I learn something new I realise that I have only just scratched the surface. The true limits and potential of WordPress remain yet to be developed and discovered.

Yesterday I read the story on “Is Automattic Evil” and I was amused. If Matt or Automattic or anyone else is making a bucket of cash then good luck to the lot of them! Anyone out ther making making a good living out of WordPress? Half your luck… I wish I could! The “free” part of the Open Source culture gets misunderstood at times. The software license and the code itself is free – the services and value add that accompanies OSS must remain (or become) profitable. Free everything is utopia at this point in human history – at the end of the day a man (or woman) cannot survive on thin air alone. I would even go so far as to say that a healthy profit is vital in order to ensure the evolution and ultimate survival of products such as WordPress.

The “Software for Profit” model is slowly (and surely) being replaced with an “Open Source” model. The coming together of WordPress and Microsoft is proof of the fall and rise of the old and the new. The old model aims for financial profit whilst the new one strives relentlessly and selflessly towards quality – a living process of never ending improvement. The paradigm shift away from a “Software for Profit” model has certainly come of age but is yet to mature and “rock” the foundations of the software industry and large corporates. I suspect strongly that Winblow$ version 8 will have a very different licensing arrangement to the recently released V7. The announcement by Microsoft to “open up” .Net is surely a sign of more to come.

This comment started out as a two line congrats to the “Team” (recent award) but has ended up a short essay. I get envious at times when I read about Wordcamps and other similar gatherings. It kind of gets a little “lonely” in Papua New Guinea at times and I yearn for an opportunity one day to be able to share the WordPress passion with others – face to face and over a couple of cold ones. Who knows? One day we might even have a Papua New Guinea Wordcamp!!

Enough raving… it’s a bloody comment not a post!!

R