11 ms·

Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP

45 points by rpgbr 2y ago

ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: WP Engine is not WordPress https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628
joshstrange 2y ago
> Additionally, it’s also ironic (hypocritical, I’d say) for him to complain about the lack of post revisions as something that undermines WordPress, while Automattic offers WordPress without access to plugins and all themes in its basic hosting plans, and makes Jetpack, a Trojan horse to upsell features (even the basics, like… stats), mandatory for all users. It's absurd that they gate so many features behind their higher tiers. Early this year I wanted to blog about something and was tired of my Ghost self-hosted blog. I decided that I was just going to pay someone else to host it and since I get like 100 visitors/week (if that) I really was put off by the pricing from so many blog providers that want to charge you based on visitors. Especially since my blog is read by normally either very few (<100) or it hits on somewhere like HN (rare but it's happened) and I have thousands of visitors for a day or two. I finally settled on wordpress.com, I've used Wordpress in some form or fashion for 15+ years and so I thought it would be a good choice. I went ahead and paid for 3 years at once for the savings (bad idea) but then started running into issues. Want to see analytics? You need to pay for Premium or above. Want to upload video? Need to pay for premium or above. Want plugins (you know, a /massive/ aspect of wordpress)? You need to pay for business or above (Starting at $25/mo). Yes, I could have worked around some of the issues but in the end I paid for Premium so I could get my stupid little blog up and running. I'm still bitter to be paying that much for a rounding error of traffic blog and still not have plugins but whatever. I don't know what I'll do in 2 years but I know it won't be wordpress.com. I'd rather deal with self-hosting again than give them another penny.
- rpgbr 2y ago
  Have you tried SSGs? For simple blogs, like mine (blog post author), it's so good: easy to maintain, to understand, and to manage. Way less features than a proper CMS, but for a simple blog they are enough. I use Jekyll, btw.
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    Yeah, I played with SSGs a while back. I like them overall and might go in that direction again but I really enjoyed the WYSIWYG-type post-writing interface. Bottom line I got lazy. I wanted a way to publish some words that was easy and didn't send me down a programming hole every time I touched it (which I acknowledge is more of a "me" thing than a SSG-thing).
    - rifty 2y ago
      Maybe you want to look into running wordpress locally and exporting it as a static website? Or alternatively using something like https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/
- nchmy 2y ago
  No one should be using any of the big wordpress hosts - theyre all overpriced garbage. Its so damn easy to get a WP site up and running with a decent and cheap VPS server and a cloud panel (e.g. runcloud, xcloud, enhance, spinupwp, gridpane, etc...). Some even have a free tier. Cyberpanel is even a free option, though clunky. For a rounding error of blog traffic which can probably be fully cached in cloudflare CDN, you could use a 1vpcu server from Hetzner for like $3/month. Hell, I think there's a fully free tier at aws lightsail and Oracle cloud (theyre garbage, but again, just cache it all in cdn).
  - tomlin 2y ago
    You don't understand the core offering.
  - nullindividual 2y ago
    It’s the maintenance of the software that gets tiring. Constantly keeping up with updates and security patches. That makes SaaS attractive.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
This is a really basic blog post and it doesn’t make any kind of convincing argument for the provocative title. Towards the end it says: > I really like WordPress, as I’ve stated many times, but Matt has become an irresponsible and damaging actor. He urgently needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership, or he risks undermining WordPress’ popularity and driving the community away. But it makes at best, a really weak case for how he is “irresponsible” or a “damaging actor”. Sure there may be some minor controversies like this redirection thing it mentions, but that really doesn’t seem like a big deal or anywhere close to requiring anyone to step down. I find the accusation that Matt Mullenweg is doing something wrong by mixing in commercial interests to be ridiculous - he CREATED Wordpress. That was 20 years ago. Given its success and adoption, I think he deserves the commercial spoils of it. > WP Engine was acquired by a private equity firm, Silver Lake. It is hilarious that this blog post does not actually talk about Silver Lake or private equity at all. PE is a cancer on society - all they do is acquire assets and financially optimize them to squeeze money out at the expense of everyone else - employees, customers, society. They don’t actually add value to the product or affected people around the product. Silver Lake is one of the worst of them. This is a firm that was literally called evil by Wired magazine (https://www.wired.com/2011/06/skype-silver-lake-evil/ https://www.wired.com/2011/06/skype-silver-lake-evil/), for firing employees right before the Skype sale in a purposeful scheme to rob hard working people who built the company of their equity. Why should anyone trust WP Engine or its leadership? Let’s start there, because it sounds a lot like Matt Mullenweg is right.
- florinmuresan 2y ago
  [dead]
- shevekofurras 2y ago
  > he CREATED Wordpress No he didn't. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little forked Michel Valdrighi's b2 cafeblog in 2003 to add new features and an admin panel. Wordpress is GPL because b2 was GPL. Matt built most of the early XHTML while Mike integrated patches and worked on the backend. Mike and Ryan Boren wrote large parts of the code early on. Christine Tremoulet came up with the name. Without them b2evolution or one of the other forks would've most likely raced ahead.
nkotov 2y ago
The author should put the context which would help understand the situation better instead of a pitchfork. > Couple days ago he [Matt] posted on X that wpengine has similar revenue to automattic, yet doesn’t contribute back to open source as much as they promised to (5 hour per week per employee or something like that). A wpengine employee replied to a post saying that management doesn’t allow them to contribute to Wordpress open source because it doesn’t align with KPI targets. That employee got fired the next day. That’s when Matt’s issue with wpengine escalated. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628#41614406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628#41614406
rpgbr 2y ago
A lot more reasons, in a timeline, to Matt step down: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1--Erh8gHfFs0M-Ty1G7LODwx8gahG0FP9ZjYIJH9TA8/ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1--Erh8gHfFs0M-Ty1G7LODwx...
- florinmuresan 2y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- edward28 2y ago
  Are there any sources to that document?
replete 2y ago
The founder of an open source project he founded should step down because you don't like his opinions? He's allowed to be pissed off that some other company is profiting without contributing back. Developing the single most popular website framework is not without cost. Don't like his paid service? Don't use it!
- arp242 2y ago
  > He's allowed to be pissed off that some other company is profiting without contributing back. Reading Matt's post, it's not my impression that he's really pissed about that – that seems more like an additional (less important) aside. His core complaint is, paraphrased, "WP-Engine offers WordPress hosting, but all they offer is a bowdlerized version of it, which reflects badly on all of WordPress. So I'm pissed about it because I spent a lot of time and money on WordPress and I care about it a lot". This sort of thing comes up every now and then in different contexts. A few months ago the Debian developer decided to offer a bowdlerized version of KeepPassX and was then excessively abrasive and rude about it when people complained. At the core, this is the same kind of disagreement/conflict. All of that only amplifies your "he's allowed to be pissed". I'd probably be slightly more careful in my use of language, but I'd be pretty cross too. Certainly doesn't seem like a resigning issue. The hell is up with that?
mrkramer 2y ago
The dude(Matt) thinks WPEngine is doing the enshittification without realizing that he started it!

45 points by rpgbr 2y ago

Related: WP Engine is not WordPress https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628

joshstrange 2y ago

> Additionally, it’s also ironic (hypocritical, I’d say) for him to complain about the lack of post revisions as something that undermines WordPress, while Automattic offers WordPress without access to plugins and all themes in its basic hosting plans, and makes Jetpack, a Trojan horse to upsell features (even the basics, like… stats), mandatory for all users. It's absurd that they gate so many features behind their higher tiers. Early this year I wanted to blog about something and was tired of my Ghost self-hosted blog. I decided that I was just going to pay someone else to host it and since I get like 100 visitors/week (if that) I really was put off by the pricing from so many blog providers that want to charge you based on visitors. Especially since my blog is read by normally either very few (<100) or it hits on somewhere like HN (rare but it's happened) and I have thousands of visitors for a day or two. I finally settled on wordpress.com, I've used Wordpress in some form or fashion for 15+ years and so I thought it would be a good choice. I went ahead and paid for 3 years at once for the savings (bad idea) but then started running into issues. Want to see analytics? You need to pay for Premium or above. Want to upload video? Need to pay for premium or above. Want plugins (you know, a /massive/ aspect of wordpress)? You need to pay for business or above (Starting at $25/mo). Yes, I could have worked around some of the issues but in the end I paid for Premium so I could get my stupid little blog up and running. I'm still bitter to be paying that much for a rounding error of traffic blog and still not have plugins but whatever. I don't know what I'll do in 2 years but I know it won't be wordpress.com. I'd rather deal with self-hosting again than give them another penny.

rpgbr 2y ago
Have you tried SSGs? For simple blogs, like mine (blog post author), it's so good: easy to maintain, to understand, and to manage. Way less features than a proper CMS, but for a simple blog they are enough. I use Jekyll, btw.
- joshstrange 2y ago
  Yeah, I played with SSGs a while back. I like them overall and might go in that direction again but I really enjoyed the WYSIWYG-type post-writing interface. Bottom line I got lazy. I wanted a way to publish some words that was easy and didn't send me down a programming hole every time I touched it (which I acknowledge is more of a "me" thing than a SSG-thing).
  - rifty 2y ago
    Maybe you want to look into running wordpress locally and exporting it as a static website? Or alternatively using something like https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/
nchmy 2y ago
No one should be using any of the big wordpress hosts - theyre all overpriced garbage. Its so damn easy to get a WP site up and running with a decent and cheap VPS server and a cloud panel (e.g. runcloud, xcloud, enhance, spinupwp, gridpane, etc...). Some even have a free tier. Cyberpanel is even a free option, though clunky. For a rounding error of blog traffic which can probably be fully cached in cloudflare CDN, you could use a 1vpcu server from Hetzner for like $3/month. Hell, I think there's a fully free tier at aws lightsail and Oracle cloud (theyre garbage, but again, just cache it all in cdn).
- tomlin 2y ago
  You don't understand the core offering.
- nullindividual 2y ago
  It’s the maintenance of the software that gets tiring. Constantly keeping up with updates and security patches. That makes SaaS attractive.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

This is a really basic blog post and it doesn’t make any kind of convincing argument for the provocative title. Towards the end it says: > I really like WordPress, as I’ve stated many times, but Matt has become an irresponsible and damaging actor. He urgently needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership, or he risks undermining WordPress’ popularity and driving the community away. But it makes at best, a really weak case for how he is “irresponsible” or a “damaging actor”. Sure there may be some minor controversies like this redirection thing it mentions, but that really doesn’t seem like a big deal or anywhere close to requiring anyone to step down. I find the accusation that Matt Mullenweg is doing something wrong by mixing in commercial interests to be ridiculous - he CREATED Wordpress. That was 20 years ago. Given its success and adoption, I think he deserves the commercial spoils of it. > WP Engine was acquired by a private equity firm, Silver Lake. It is hilarious that this blog post does not actually talk about Silver Lake or private equity at all. PE is a cancer on society - all they do is acquire assets and financially optimize them to squeeze money out at the expense of everyone else - employees, customers, society. They don’t actually add value to the product or affected people around the product. Silver Lake is one of the worst of them. This is a firm that was literally called evil by Wired magazine (https://www.wired.com/2011/06/skype-silver-lake-evil/ https://www.wired.com/2011/06/skype-silver-lake-evil/), for firing employees right before the Skype sale in a purposeful scheme to rob hard working people who built the company of their equity. Why should anyone trust WP Engine or its leadership? Let’s start there, because it sounds a lot like Matt Mullenweg is right.

florinmuresan 2y ago
[dead]
shevekofurras 2y ago
> he CREATED Wordpress No he didn't. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little forked Michel Valdrighi's b2 cafeblog in 2003 to add new features and an admin panel. Wordpress is GPL because b2 was GPL. Matt built most of the early XHTML while Mike integrated patches and worked on the backend. Mike and Ryan Boren wrote large parts of the code early on. Christine Tremoulet came up with the name. Without them b2evolution or one of the other forks would've most likely raced ahead.

nkotov 2y ago

The author should put the context which would help understand the situation better instead of a pitchfork. > Couple days ago he [Matt] posted on X that wpengine has similar revenue to automattic, yet doesn’t contribute back to open source as much as they promised to (5 hour per week per employee or something like that). A wpengine employee replied to a post saying that management doesn’t allow them to contribute to Wordpress open source because it doesn’t align with KPI targets. That employee got fired the next day. That’s when Matt’s issue with wpengine escalated. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628#41614406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628#41614406

rpgbr 2y ago

A lot more reasons, in a timeline, to Matt step down: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1--Erh8gHfFs0M-Ty1G7LODwx8gahG0FP9ZjYIJH9TA8/ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1--Erh8gHfFs0M-Ty1G7LODwx...

florinmuresan 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
edward28 2y ago
Are there any sources to that document?

replete 2y ago

The founder of an open source project he founded should step down because you don't like his opinions? He's allowed to be pissed off that some other company is profiting without contributing back. Developing the single most popular website framework is not without cost. Don't like his paid service? Don't use it!

arp242 2y ago
> He's allowed to be pissed off that some other company is profiting without contributing back. Reading Matt's post, it's not my impression that he's really pissed about that – that seems more like an additional (less important) aside. His core complaint is, paraphrased, "WP-Engine offers WordPress hosting, but all they offer is a bowdlerized version of it, which reflects badly on all of WordPress. So I'm pissed about it because I spent a lot of time and money on WordPress and I care about it a lot". This sort of thing comes up every now and then in different contexts. A few months ago the Debian developer decided to offer a bowdlerized version of KeepPassX and was then excessively abrasive and rude about it when people complained. At the core, this is the same kind of disagreement/conflict. All of that only amplifies your "he's allowed to be pissed". I'd probably be slightly more careful in my use of language, but I'd be pretty cross too. Certainly doesn't seem like a resigning issue. The hell is up with that?

mrkramer 2y ago

The dude(Matt) thinks WPEngine is doing the enshittification without realizing that he started it!