Binpress Interviews CKEditor Creator Frederico Knabben
Frederico Knabben, the creator of CKEditor and owner of CKSource, was recently interviewed by Alexis Santos of Binpress. The podcast, which you can listen to in its entirety below, covers various topics ranging from CKEditor’s humble beginnings to how CKSource came to light.
In the podcast, Fred talks about his background, how the FCKeditor name came about, and how he built CKSource around the famous Open Source WYSIWYG editor. When asked about offering commercial licenses back in 2003, Fred remarked that "companies were still not feeling comfortable with Open Source," and that this "legal responsibility" appealed to many companies, which Open Source does not offer.
In the interview, Frederico also explains how he expanded the company around the new responsibilities brought on by CKEditor's commercial options, which now include new Solutions and Services, and how CKFinder was added to the mix.
Despite this new commercial dimension, Fred points out that he never lost contact with the Open Source community. Today, CKEditor is still very much present on open platforms like GitHub and Drupal, and it's this openness that keeps the editor innovative. "Since the very beginning, CKEditor has always brought innovation - features which no one thought about", he adds while also bringing up the new Widgets feature requested by Drupal that is currently innovating the WYSIWYG world.
On the topic of CKEditor 5, Fred explains that it will be a "total rewrite" because of how people's perception of content has changed. Today people are more conscientious about producing content that will be valid and semantic in the future. He reveals that when version 5 comes out the company will have two production lines so that CKEditor 4 users are not alienated by the big changes planned.
During the interview Fred also told the story of how CKEditor was chosen as the default WYSIWYG editor in Drupal 8, how Drupal influenced some aspects of the editor's progress and how thanks to this partnership CKEditor "will have a huge, quality user base", and how this "makes Open Source win over commercial applications, because when you have a huge user base... you have quality".
This is only a small part of what was covered in the podcast. In all, the interview was a lot of fun for the creator of CKEditor. It gives the community a clearer image of how the Open Source project evolved and how it will continue to expand in years to come. You can check out the podcast on Binpress.com.
Let us know what you thought about the interview by leaving comments below.