Hi, developer of b2 here. Can't believe I finally have to create an account on HN, but here we are.
First of all, Matt and Mike (along with Doug, Alex, Donncha, and other devs from that time) deserve all the credit for WordPress and its success. Often I get way too much credit from friends and people who mean well.
I have mixed feelings about calling b2 a crappy project though.
When I started writing it, I only had one month of PHP behind me, and no computer science background.
It was a time when Blogger was flaky and a lot of bloggers were tired of the frequent downtime. There was a demand for blogware that could be installed and customized easily, and most existing blogware fell short (those written in Perl required specific hosting, others were not easy to use or customize).
What I brought with b2 at the time wasn't technical prowess, but software that could be installed on super cheap webhosting plans by just editing a config file and uploading.
I take pride in the documentation that allowed folks who only knew HTML to customize their blog's markup without having to know PHP or a custom template language. (Keep in mind we're talking about a time when bloggers would hand-write their site's HTML, ready-made themes weren't a thing.)
I have fond memories of the dozens of fine people who contributed ideas and code to the project; among those contributions were the first opensource implementation of PingBack and perhaps the first of TrackBack too (not so sure about that one, but at the time there wasn't a lot of GPL blogware).
The relative success of b2 (among those who self-installed their blog) was not due to the intrinsic quality of its code, but to those important things. It was mostly crappy PHP, but there is more to projects than just code.
I would keep on talking about what blogs looked like in 2001, but if I recognize your name correctly, I believe you were there too.
Finally, yes, it was abandoned. I was suffering from depression following the loss of my job at the time, and took time away from the internet. It was just not physically possible to open a code editor, or even reply to email, for a few months. It's not like I decided that I had enough and decided to explore greener pastures. If I could go back in time, I would hang on to the community we had, instead of abandoning the users and contributors.
TL;DR: Matt, Mike, and the team deserve all the credit for WordPress's success, and it's a bit harsh to judge a 20+ years old project created by an enthusiastic newbie coder.
I deeply apologize for calling it crappy - that had absolutely nothing to do with my point and not based on any sort of knowledge beyond dim, decades old memory, and also more based on how I describe "solve a problem" coding. Literally ALL my code is crappy, if that helps clarify. Really, I'm totally sorry I threw that in there, I could have made my point without it.
Worse, someone else might read my comment and worry about publishing their own project which is the last thing I want to do. I used to worry constantly about the quality of my projects. I don't any more because I realized that a line of published ugly code which solves a problem is worth thousands of perfect lines of code which never sees the light of day, and that open code can be used as a starting point for others. That's exact what happened with b2, of which you should justifiably be proud and happy!
upvoting to at least justify your effort in creating an account here :)
Fond memories myself - of finding, downloading, running B2 back in 2002, then wondering "what happened to Michel V?" - then moving on to .72 of Matt/Mike's fork...
Thanks for rounding out the missing details, and for your understated contribution.
First of all, Matt and Mike (along with Doug, Alex, Donncha, and other devs from that time) deserve all the credit for WordPress and its success. Often I get way too much credit from friends and people who mean well.
I have mixed feelings about calling b2 a crappy project though.
When I started writing it, I only had one month of PHP behind me, and no computer science background.
It was a time when Blogger was flaky and a lot of bloggers were tired of the frequent downtime. There was a demand for blogware that could be installed and customized easily, and most existing blogware fell short (those written in Perl required specific hosting, others were not easy to use or customize).
What I brought with b2 at the time wasn't technical prowess, but software that could be installed on super cheap webhosting plans by just editing a config file and uploading.
I take pride in the documentation that allowed folks who only knew HTML to customize their blog's markup without having to know PHP or a custom template language. (Keep in mind we're talking about a time when bloggers would hand-write their site's HTML, ready-made themes weren't a thing.)
I have fond memories of the dozens of fine people who contributed ideas and code to the project; among those contributions were the first opensource implementation of PingBack and perhaps the first of TrackBack too (not so sure about that one, but at the time there wasn't a lot of GPL blogware).
The relative success of b2 (among those who self-installed their blog) was not due to the intrinsic quality of its code, but to those important things. It was mostly crappy PHP, but there is more to projects than just code. I would keep on talking about what blogs looked like in 2001, but if I recognize your name correctly, I believe you were there too.
Finally, yes, it was abandoned. I was suffering from depression following the loss of my job at the time, and took time away from the internet. It was just not physically possible to open a code editor, or even reply to email, for a few months. It's not like I decided that I had enough and decided to explore greener pastures. If I could go back in time, I would hang on to the community we had, instead of abandoning the users and contributors.
TL;DR: Matt, Mike, and the team deserve all the credit for WordPress's success, and it's a bit harsh to judge a 20+ years old project created by an enthusiastic newbie coder.