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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 obvi
by 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 agoI 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 agoYep, 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 agoMy 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 agoOpen 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?
- batuhanicoz 2y agoHiding 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 agoDoes 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 agoThat 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?"
- austhrow743 2y agoSeems like you should act as if you will be.
- rglullis 2y agoIs your company building a business with half a billion of dollars in revenue out the uncountable amount of man-hours put into Wordpress development?
- dncornholio 2y agoWe probably made a lot more then that in the past 20 years.
- rglullis 2y agoWe are talking about yearly revenues here, and something tells me that your company is not in the business of selling services that depend on WordPress code being developed
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DonnieBurger 2y agoI think the issue is using a non-profit (WordPress) to suppress a for-profit's (Automattic's) competition.
- Arnt 2y agoI 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 agoI 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 agoWordPress 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 agoYou’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 agoIt'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 agoHow 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 agoAs 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 agoWhat I find fascinating is that people in this thread and elsewhere are saying that Matt funds the WordPress.org servers personally.