Popular podcast platform Pocket Casts has issued are mobile clients under an open source license.
WordPress parent company Automattic acquired Pocket Casts last July, after it was acquired in 2018 by a group of public radio companies, including NPR. Pocket Casts is one of the most popular “podcatcher” apps outside of the major tech ecosystems of Google, Apple, and Spotify, allowing users to search and subscribe to podcasts for free, with premium features such as desktop apps available for a fee.
It should perhaps come as no surprise that Automattic has chosen to push the Pocket Casts app code to GitHub, as Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic, is a big believer in open source — and WordPress among the best open source. projects in the world.
Making Pocket Casts open source means anyone can access the code, fix bugs, create new features, and even fork to build their own competing service on top of the Pocket Cast codebase.
The android and iOS apps are now available under a Mozilla Public License 2.0, a copyleft license that requires all derivative projects or customizations to be released under the same license.