The parent company of WordPress and Simple Note is now the proud owner of Pocket Casts, a podcast application that has an established history on both Android and iOS. Automattic is now ready to make Pocket Casts an open source platform, which means that we should see more quality podcasting tools in the near future as developers dig into the source code.

The base source code of Pocket Casts has already been posted on GitHub; the app’s new owner plans to release more code in the near future so that programmers can make their own projects. Automattic has explained that open source is the only way the company releases its products, and this is a great part of the company’s success with Simple Note, WordPress, and other applications that work as powerful internet platforms for digital media.


The history of Pocket Casts dates back to 2010 as the first premium podcasting app for iOS; it was later ported to Android and acquired by National Public Radio eight years later. Automattic entered acquisition talks with NPR last year, but the deal was not finalized until recently.

The full open source project will be released on GitHub in two weeks. It was previously scheduled to be released at the end of April, but that is no longer the case. The project will be released into the “beta” category, but it will most likely become a fully-fledged project in the coming months. Automattic has also explained that they have a new manager that will take over the code of Pocket Casts and make sure that the project stays on its current trajectory. The new manager is Nick White, who has a wealth of experience working with open source software on iOS platforms.

In closing, the company will continue to add new features to its application, just like any other mobile application that has an open source codebase. Automattic has an excellent reputation of releasing open source software, and this is a great way for developers to build something amazing without the need to pay for the creation process. It will be interesting to see the level of activity once the new app becomes available on Github.