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I don't use any their products, so I don't have any community insider insights, but based on what I've read so far, it seems like WordPress did the right thing.

I don't use any their products, so I don't have any community insider insights, but based on what I've read so far, it seems like WordPress did the right thing. If another company is profiting from the '.org' ressources (very heavily I'd imagine) without contributing back, then they need to be cutoff.

sureIy 2y ago
Makes no sense. Everyone is profiting off WordPress and probably 0.1% of those ever contributed back. Either you give away your product or you don’t. It’s obvious the guy is being an absolute PITA because he can. This isn’t even his first time. Check out what happened with thesis dot com.
- ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
  I don't think the issue is about WordPress, the open source software, but rather about using up ressources on the wordpress.org servers.
  - 1116574 2y ago
    Yep, Matt (wordpress guy) has a dramatic writing style, but in essence WPE is using plugins, their security research, user system, theming store etc, without contributing back that much. Worth adding that WPE is owned by private equity, and they allegedly tried to remove the newsfeed from wp-admin to hide his (dramatic) posts about them
    - tbyehl 2y ago
      > Worth adding that WPE is owned by private equity How do you think Matt got the money to build his empire?
    - dncornholio 2y ago
      My company is also a heavy user of WordPress and never have contributed. We also hide those widgets. Do we need to be blocked as well then?
      - Arnt 2y ago
        Open source is a gift. There's etiquette involved. Suppose one of your developers writes on twitter that you don't permit contribution, and you fire that developer on the next day. What reaction do you expect from the people who pay for most of the development?
        cldellow 2y ago
        I keep seeing people refer to this tweet. Can you share a link to it, please?
        Arnt 2y ago
        I'm afraid not. I look at twitter only in incognito mode and don't have any history, and can't find anything now.
      - batuhanicoz 2y ago
        Hiding the widgets isn't the main issue. If you infringe the WordPress trademark in commercial use, and ignore any attempt to make it right, and pursue legal action, W.ORG does not have to provide those free services to you. I'm guessing you are not size of WP Engine and Silver Lake, honest question, if you were, would you want to contribute back to WordPress?
      - manuelmoreale 2y ago
        Does your company offer a competitor to what Automattic is offering, taking revenues from them, and make 500+ millions in revenues a year? If the answer to those is yes then I’d probably keep quiet before Matt notices you :)
        FireBeyond 2y ago
        That is a really problematic question to ask. Because remember, Automattic is not the Foundation or the open source project... so then the question becomes "Why is the Foundation/project hamstringing a competitor to their director's for profit company who is, in theory, and legally should be, independent?"
  - DonnieBurger 2y ago
    I think the issue is using a non-profit (WordPress) to suppress a for-profit's (Automattic's) competition.
    - Arnt 2y ago
      I heard that there was an old handshake agreement that WPEngine should contribute so-and-so many developer hours to Wordpress per employee, but doesn't now and hasn't for a while. At some point the CEO of Automattic, which does contribute developer hours, blew up.
  - sureIy 2y ago
    I keep not getting it. WordPress.org is offered as a free download and it accesses the website FOR FREE. Complaining that people don’t pay for free stuff is not a healthy mental state. WP Engine is no different from the million hostings that auto-install WordPress and “abuse” their resources.
- startages 2y ago
  WordPress Foundation is paying for the servers, so I guess they have the right to choose who gets access or not. Using the resources as a single person or a small business is not the same as using them from a hosting company with millions of websites. Other hosting companies contribute to the foundation which keeps the service running. If WPEngine isn't contributing anything, it would be unfair for other contributors/sponsors. Especially that they are making a large amount of money from it.
  - appendix-rock 2y ago
    You’re moving the goalposts. We aren’t talking about who has a right to what. We’re talking about what is and what isn’t a deranged dick move.
    - consteval 2y ago
      It's not at all a dick move to block IPs that essentially DDOS your free services. Google, Amazon, you name it do this infinite times a day with crawlers. If you build a business on taking resources from some public source, on a large scale, you could very well be out of a business at any time. This has been the case for a long, long time. And nobody seems to take issue with it.
  - sureIy 2y ago
    How would you feel if WordPress.org suddenly decided to lock ALL installations across the world and ask for $800/site/month to access it? Is it their right? Sure. I don’t think you’d be here defending them though.
  - seb1204 2y ago
    As so often I think it would be beneficial for the conversation to provide some more context. Single user install generated load VS WP generated load on the infrastructure of WordPress.org
  - ValentineC 2y ago
    What I find fascinating is that people in this thread and elsewhere are saying that Matt funds the WordPress.org servers personally.
2Gkashmiri 2y ago
what do you mean profiting. .org is open source. where in the open source licenses you are supposed to pay the original maintainer a share of your revenue or contribute back in code? free software gives 4 freedoms. none of them say about contributing back. they only talk about freedom of source code. same for OSI approved licenses. they are either permissive, MIT aka, do whatever you want or like AGPL provide source code but none that i can think of forces downstream users to contribute back to main.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  Think in infrastructure costs. A simple VPS is around $5/mo which is enough for some users. When you're running a company which has tons of users, all of them are doing updates, theme pulls and whatnot. ..and WPEngine channels all these requests to wordpress.org. This creates tons of load on said .org servers. When you singlehandedly can increase the load number on an infrastructure, the owner of the infrastructure can tell you to stop. This is nothing to do with the four freedoms of software. SourceHut had to endure something similar due to Go package repository, and they made an agreement about the bandwidth management. I'm ha huge GPL fan, but this doesn't mean somebody can abuse their servers' resources while making tons of money because of freeloading on somebody else's servers.
  - bawolff 2y ago
    Yes, but just because you can do something, doesn't mean it isn't a dick move. If you are offering an API to the public, generally its considered nice if you document what is considered reasonable traffic and if someone is going above it, give them some notice before cutting them off (unless the amount of traffic is so much its affecting availability). In this case, it doesn't seem to be about the amount of traffic at all. It doesn't seem like WPEngine was abusing the service at all but using it in the way it was expected to be used. It seems like the operator of the service has a financial interest in making WPEngine's life difficult, so they suddenly cut them off. Do they have the right to do that? Sure. Is it a dick move? Definitely. Especially since no notice was given and it doesn't really seem like the amount of traffic or other policy violation was the issue at hand.
bawolff 2y ago
Was there ever any attempt to reach some sort of agreement on what appropriate usage would be? I imagine if this was the real issue, then WPEngine could probably sort out some fair solution to not use more than their fair share. I dont know much about this ecosystem but surely a caching proxy is not hard to setup. However reading between the lines, it sounds like the real issue is that WPEngine is more succesful which is making other players jealous, who are using their control over other parts of the ecosystem to give WPEngine the middle finger. In such a case its not really about resourse usage.
- batuhanicoz 2y ago
  We made many attempts to communicate and solve these issues long before it was made public. They were asked to contribute back, either in cash or in people hours and they refused.
  - fortyseven 2y ago
    Well, I hope the blow to the reputation was worth it. Regardless of what is claimed to have happened behind the scenes, the very public meltdown is what's going to live on. It's already sowing doubt internally, where I work, about recommending WordPress in general going forward.
Spivak 2y ago
They're not though, WPEngine's users are the ones installing plugins. If I host my own WP site and profit off of it I'm sure I'll be allowed to download plugins. Why does that change when I hire someone to host it for me?

sureIy 2y ago

Makes no sense. Everyone is profiting off WordPress and probably 0.1% of those ever contributed back. Either you give away your product or you don’t. It’s obvious the guy is being an absolute PITA because he can. This isn’t even his first time. Check out what happened with thesis dot com.

ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
I don't think the issue is about WordPress, the open source software, but rather about using up ressources on the wordpress.org servers.
- 1116574 2y ago
  Yep, Matt (wordpress guy) has a dramatic writing style, but in essence WPE is using plugins, their security research, user system, theming store etc, without contributing back that much. Worth adding that WPE is owned by private equity, and they allegedly tried to remove the newsfeed from wp-admin to hide his (dramatic) posts about them
  - tbyehl 2y ago
    > Worth adding that WPE is owned by private equity How do you think Matt got the money to build his empire?
  - dncornholio 2y ago
    My company is also a heavy user of WordPress and never have contributed. We also hide those widgets. Do we need to be blocked as well then?
    - Arnt 2y ago
      Open source is a gift. There's etiquette involved. Suppose one of your developers writes on twitter that you don't permit contribution, and you fire that developer on the next day. What reaction do you expect from the people who pay for most of the development?
      - cldellow 2y ago
        I keep seeing people refer to this tweet. Can you share a link to it, please?
        Arnt 2y ago
        I'm afraid not. I look at twitter only in incognito mode and don't have any history, and can't find anything now.
    - batuhanicoz 2y ago
      Hiding the widgets isn't the main issue. If you infringe the WordPress trademark in commercial use, and ignore any attempt to make it right, and pursue legal action, W.ORG does not have to provide those free services to you. I'm guessing you are not size of WP Engine and Silver Lake, honest question, if you were, would you want to contribute back to WordPress?
    - manuelmoreale 2y ago
      Does your company offer a competitor to what Automattic is offering, taking revenues from them, and make 500+ millions in revenues a year? If the answer to those is yes then I’d probably keep quiet before Matt notices you :)
      - FireBeyond 2y ago
        That is a really problematic question to ask. Because remember, Automattic is not the Foundation or the open source project... so then the question becomes "Why is the Foundation/project hamstringing a competitor to their director's for profit company who is, in theory, and legally should be, independent?"
- DonnieBurger 2y ago
  I think the issue is using a non-profit (WordPress) to suppress a for-profit's (Automattic's) competition.
  - Arnt 2y ago
    I heard that there was an old handshake agreement that WPEngine should contribute so-and-so many developer hours to Wordpress per employee, but doesn't now and hasn't for a while. At some point the CEO of Automattic, which does contribute developer hours, blew up.
- sureIy 2y ago
  I keep not getting it. WordPress.org is offered as a free download and it accesses the website FOR FREE. Complaining that people don’t pay for free stuff is not a healthy mental state. WP Engine is no different from the million hostings that auto-install WordPress and “abuse” their resources.
startages 2y ago
WordPress Foundation is paying for the servers, so I guess they have the right to choose who gets access or not. Using the resources as a single person or a small business is not the same as using them from a hosting company with millions of websites. Other hosting companies contribute to the foundation which keeps the service running. If WPEngine isn't contributing anything, it would be unfair for other contributors/sponsors. Especially that they are making a large amount of money from it.
- appendix-rock 2y ago
  You’re moving the goalposts. We aren’t talking about who has a right to what. We’re talking about what is and what isn’t a deranged dick move.
  - consteval 2y ago
    It's not at all a dick move to block IPs that essentially DDOS your free services. Google, Amazon, you name it do this infinite times a day with crawlers. If you build a business on taking resources from some public source, on a large scale, you could very well be out of a business at any time. This has been the case for a long, long time. And nobody seems to take issue with it.
- sureIy 2y ago
  How would you feel if WordPress.org suddenly decided to lock ALL installations across the world and ask for $800/site/month to access it? Is it their right? Sure. I don’t think you’d be here defending them though.
- seb1204 2y ago
  As so often I think it would be beneficial for the conversation to provide some more context. Single user install generated load VS WP generated load on the infrastructure of WordPress.org
- ValentineC 2y ago
  What I find fascinating is that people in this thread and elsewhere are saying that Matt funds the WordPress.org servers personally.

2Gkashmiri 2y ago

what do you mean profiting. .org is open source. where in the open source licenses you are supposed to pay the original maintainer a share of your revenue or contribute back in code? free software gives 4 freedoms. none of them say about contributing back. they only talk about freedom of source code. same for OSI approved licenses. they are either permissive, MIT aka, do whatever you want or like AGPL provide source code but none that i can think of forces downstream users to contribute back to main.

bayindirh 2y ago
Think in infrastructure costs. A simple VPS is around $5/mo which is enough for some users. When you're running a company which has tons of users, all of them are doing updates, theme pulls and whatnot. ..and WPEngine channels all these requests to wordpress.org. This creates tons of load on said .org servers. When you singlehandedly can increase the load number on an infrastructure, the owner of the infrastructure can tell you to stop. This is nothing to do with the four freedoms of software. SourceHut had to endure something similar due to Go package repository, and they made an agreement about the bandwidth management. I'm ha huge GPL fan, but this doesn't mean somebody can abuse their servers' resources while making tons of money because of freeloading on somebody else's servers.
- bawolff 2y ago
  Yes, but just because you can do something, doesn't mean it isn't a dick move. If you are offering an API to the public, generally its considered nice if you document what is considered reasonable traffic and if someone is going above it, give them some notice before cutting them off (unless the amount of traffic is so much its affecting availability). In this case, it doesn't seem to be about the amount of traffic at all. It doesn't seem like WPEngine was abusing the service at all but using it in the way it was expected to be used. It seems like the operator of the service has a financial interest in making WPEngine's life difficult, so they suddenly cut them off. Do they have the right to do that? Sure. Is it a dick move? Definitely. Especially since no notice was given and it doesn't really seem like the amount of traffic or other policy violation was the issue at hand.

bawolff 2y ago

Was there ever any attempt to reach some sort of agreement on what appropriate usage would be? I imagine if this was the real issue, then WPEngine could probably sort out some fair solution to not use more than their fair share. I dont know much about this ecosystem but surely a caching proxy is not hard to setup. However reading between the lines, it sounds like the real issue is that WPEngine is more succesful which is making other players jealous, who are using their control over other parts of the ecosystem to give WPEngine the middle finger. In such a case its not really about resourse usage.

batuhanicoz 2y ago
We made many attempts to communicate and solve these issues long before it was made public. They were asked to contribute back, either in cash or in people hours and they refused.
- fortyseven 2y ago
  Well, I hope the blow to the reputation was worth it. Regardless of what is claimed to have happened behind the scenes, the very public meltdown is what's going to live on. It's already sowing doubt internally, where I work, about recommending WordPress in general going forward.

Spivak 2y ago

They're not though, WPEngine's users are the ones installing plugins. If I host my own WP site and profit off of it I'm sure I'll be allowed to download plugins. Why does that change when I hire someone to host it for me?