OStatic

Om reported yesterday that Automattic, which makes the blogging platform WordPress (which we use), just raised $29.5 million in a B-round of venture funding. It is a big deal for the blogging industry ﾗ one investor is The New York Times, just the latest warning flare over the bow of old media. (True Ventures, an Automattic investor, has also funded GigaOM.)

There are many benefits to using open source software for web applications: rapid development cycles, leading functionality in many market segments, and of course the price. But actually deploying those applications can be a huge, daunting nuisance. The WordPress installation instructions, for example, may brag of taking only five minutes - but that presumes you are already running MySQL and PHP and a web server and are comfortable configuring them.