8 ms·

Given the age and ubiquity of Wordpress, I am shocked at the relative immaturity of Matt's communication skills. He thinks the world has all the historical und

by mvkel 2y ago

Given the age and ubiquity of Wordpress, I am shocked at the relative immaturity of Matt's communication skills. He thinks the world has all the historical understanding and nuance of the situation. Why would they? This looks like a world record speedrun attempt (any%) at destroying a legacy. It's worth noting that WPEngine looked like this all the way back in 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110112043959/http://wpengine.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110112043959/http://wpengine.c... They have never pretended to be anything else. Why now, Matt?

atonse 2y ago
Exactly. This comes off as a totally unhinged and immature rant, unbecoming of the CEO of a company that likely has a 8 or 9 figure revenue. I didn’t know (or really care) about this battle, but I’ve always passively seen Matt as one of the insightful grandfathers of the blogging era, having insights from the observations from his perch. This blog post erased that.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  >I’ve always passively seen Matt as one of the insightful grandfathers of the blogging era. I've always felt he was an asshole but could never ground that to a concrete observation. Now I'm certain of it.
  - mvkel 2y ago
    He's not an asshole, he's just "post-economic"
    - BlueTemplar 2y ago
      What does this mean ? That he doesn't have to care about earning a living any more, and so he's acting like... an asshole ?
      - mvkel 2y ago
        In a Slack channel, "post-economic" was the term he used to describe his financial situation as a justification for his actions. So, yes? https://x.com/sereedmedia/status/1839394786622722432?s=46 https://x.com/sereedmedia/status/1839394786622722432?s=46
        moralestapia 2y ago
        Dang, what an ass.
      - killingtime74 2y ago
        People don't have to make a living and now show who they really are
- dawnerd 2y ago
  Something about these CEOs becoming or at least showing in public how unhinged they are. We’ve had quite a few in the last couple years. Almost like they think it’s cool.
- hackerbeat 2y ago
  > I didn’t know (or really care) about this battle Then why comment on it?
  - atonse 2y ago
    I mentioned it’s because I have held Matt Mullenweg in higher regard as someone who’s been insightful about the evolution of the web.
pilgrim0 2y ago
According to his recent interview on Primeagen, he argues that WPEngine operations incur high costs to his company, due to the millions of installations consuming resources from Wordpress.org. And despite being a very large player, they contribute nothing back to the ecosystem. He argues that they even illegally modified code attributions (stripe plugin) which diverts millions from Automattic. The fact that it took, apparently, so long for him to take some action can be interpreted in his favor, because he tolerated a lot along the years. Add the fact that they had somewhat good relations before WPEngine being taken over by private equity. So this is not about trademark, trademark is the best weapon he has to fight back against a very bad neighbor. And being the sole trademark holder, Automattic can enforce it arbitrarily, as it sees fit. Taking side with WPEngine I think is not only rationally baseless, but also immoral, since they put nothing and only take, which is in the very opposite of what Matt represents, whether or not you like Wordpress.
- karmajunkie 2y ago
  i think the point of TFA was that those allegations are a gross distortion of the record, and MM’s ultimate actions are grossly inappropriate and harm the community he is pretending to stand up for.
- chuckadams 2y ago
  > He argues that they even illegally modified code attributions (stripe plugin) which diverts millions from Automattic. Which turned out to be blatantly false, quelle surprise I'm currently asking @photomatt elsewhere what his plans are to help others lift the load from wp.org by way of supporting alternate plugin/theme repositories. I'll keep you posted.
  - ydlr 2y ago
    Maybe banning wpengine customers from the official repo is exactly the push the community needs to create alternatives.
- sjs382 2y ago
  > he argues that WPEngine operations incur high costs to his company To the foundation? Ok, then work with them to create a mirror and share the load. Even publicly shamed them into doing so. Do what's good for the community and product rather than engaging in this embarrassing spat.
_acco 2y ago
That 2011 snapshot actually makes the opposite point: the WordPress logo is prominently displayed next to the "WP Engine" title on the screenshot! It does look like they fixed just a few months later, though: https://web.archive.org/web/20111001085943/http://wpengine.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20111001085943/http://wpengine.c... (How fun to see the selling point "Digg-Proof Scalability")
- interestica 2y ago
  > Digg-proof What's the modern soon-to-be-obsolete equivalent?
  - snowwrestler 2y ago
    Shitty-AI-crawler-proof
  - philistine 2y ago
    Your blog will be compatible with the blockchain!
  - inhumantsar 2y ago
    reddit-proof
- rafark 2y ago
  > the WordPress logo is prominently displayed next to the "WP Engine" title Pretty sure that Wordpress logo is just the stock logo that came with every Wordpress installation. The name wp engine was the website name of that Wordpress installation.
underseacables 2y ago
It really does feel like Matt is saying "how dare you question me"
Zamiel_Snawley 2y ago
Giving Matt the benefit of the doubt, the answer to “Why now?” is that enough is enough. Why does Matt deserve the benefit of the doubt? Because his companies have been contributing to WordPress while WP Engine has not. Matt claims he has been privately discussing with WP Engine for ~18 months about their level of contribution. Automatic contributes the equivalent of 75 full time employees to WordPress and WP Engine contributes 1, despite the companies being comparable in size. Matt’s actions may have been bad for optics, but I do not fault him for using the resources at his disposal to correct what he sees as injustice.
- wslh 2y ago
  I really wonder what that mean contributing to WordPress... from the cybersecurity point of view in 2024, there is/were no contributions: it is common to be hacked when you use Wordpress (e.g. [1]). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProWordPress/comments/1cv15mt/would_malware_even_be_an_issue_on_a_wordpress_site/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProWordPress/comments/1cv15mt/would...
  - dns_snek 2y ago
    That discussion is largely about themes and plugins. Severe vulnerabilities in WP Core are quite rare.
    - wslh 2y ago
      I believe WP Core and plugins should not be viewed separately in terms of security. Plugins are omnipresent. Integrating security measures across both could create a more robust system overall.
    - yencabulator 2y ago
      Themes and plugins are the severe vulnerability of WP Core.
  - claudiulodro 2y ago
    WordPress is secure enough that whitehouse.gov runs on it and zero-day vendors pay $100,000+ if you have an exploit for the core WordPress software. It's not "magically secure" though -- you wouldn't say that AWS is insecure because some people set it up wrong or use bad integrations.
chmod775 2y ago
Unrelated, but that site is so much better than their current one. Now I finally know what they do and offer!
adfm 2y ago
Consider that there are other hosting providers out there giving back to the community and he's not going after them. Reciprocity seems to be an issue along with proprietary jank that screws interoperability. Say what you want, but I'd question investing in anything that's built on a foundation that relies on reciprocity that doesn't put in their share. Healthy relationships involve creating more value than you capture. That's something that should resonate with the thickest of fountainheads. And if it doesn't, you can always turn off the tap, which seems to be the case.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > but I'd question investing in anything that's built on a foundation that relies on reciprocity that doesn't put in their share. Look - I agree. However, there is not a single person that thinks twice about buying an Android or iPhone handset because it might not be contributing fully to upstream Linux or BSD. People don't care. They don't question it because this is the norm, and frankly neither should Matt if he's going to disagree with the terms of a license he's not qualified to change. Even the Open Source community doesn't really care that much. Selling modified versions of a program is not inherently a violation of GPL, or even the intent of free software. Matt's disproportionately vocal uproar kinda proves that the only people who care in this instance are the ones trying to profit off Free Software. He's not being righteously cavalier, here - he's being courageously wrong.
  - adfm 2y ago
    There's a difference between picking up your ball and walking off the field and not dealing a hand to the empty seat at the table. Silverlake can buy the DVD.

by mvkel 2y ago

atonse 2y ago

Exactly. This comes off as a totally unhinged and immature rant, unbecoming of the CEO of a company that likely has a 8 or 9 figure revenue. I didn’t know (or really care) about this battle, but I’ve always passively seen Matt as one of the insightful grandfathers of the blogging era, having insights from the observations from his perch. This blog post erased that.

moralestapia 2y ago
>I’ve always passively seen Matt as one of the insightful grandfathers of the blogging era. I've always felt he was an asshole but could never ground that to a concrete observation. Now I'm certain of it.
- mvkel 2y ago
  He's not an asshole, he's just "post-economic"
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    What does this mean ? That he doesn't have to care about earning a living any more, and so he's acting like... an asshole ?
    - mvkel 2y ago
      In a Slack channel, "post-economic" was the term he used to describe his financial situation as a justification for his actions. So, yes? https://x.com/sereedmedia/status/1839394786622722432?s=46 https://x.com/sereedmedia/status/1839394786622722432?s=46
      - moralestapia 2y ago
        Dang, what an ass.
    - killingtime74 2y ago
      People don't have to make a living and now show who they really are
dawnerd 2y ago
Something about these CEOs becoming or at least showing in public how unhinged they are. We’ve had quite a few in the last couple years. Almost like they think it’s cool.
hackerbeat 2y ago
> I didn’t know (or really care) about this battle Then why comment on it?
- atonse 2y ago
  I mentioned it’s because I have held Matt Mullenweg in higher regard as someone who’s been insightful about the evolution of the web.

pilgrim0 2y ago

According to his recent interview on Primeagen, he argues that WPEngine operations incur high costs to his company, due to the millions of installations consuming resources from Wordpress.org. And despite being a very large player, they contribute nothing back to the ecosystem. He argues that they even illegally modified code attributions (stripe plugin) which diverts millions from Automattic. The fact that it took, apparently, so long for him to take some action can be interpreted in his favor, because he tolerated a lot along the years. Add the fact that they had somewhat good relations before WPEngine being taken over by private equity. So this is not about trademark, trademark is the best weapon he has to fight back against a very bad neighbor. And being the sole trademark holder, Automattic can enforce it arbitrarily, as it sees fit. Taking side with WPEngine I think is not only rationally baseless, but also immoral, since they put nothing and only take, which is in the very opposite of what Matt represents, whether or not you like Wordpress.

karmajunkie 2y ago
i think the point of TFA was that those allegations are a gross distortion of the record, and MM’s ultimate actions are grossly inappropriate and harm the community he is pretending to stand up for.
chuckadams 2y ago
> He argues that they even illegally modified code attributions (stripe plugin) which diverts millions from Automattic. Which turned out to be blatantly false, quelle surprise I'm currently asking @photomatt elsewhere what his plans are to help others lift the load from wp.org by way of supporting alternate plugin/theme repositories. I'll keep you posted.
- ydlr 2y ago
  Maybe banning wpengine customers from the official repo is exactly the push the community needs to create alternatives.
sjs382 2y ago
> he argues that WPEngine operations incur high costs to his company To the foundation? Ok, then work with them to create a mirror and share the load. Even publicly shamed them into doing so. Do what's good for the community and product rather than engaging in this embarrassing spat.

_acco 2y ago

That 2011 snapshot actually makes the opposite point: the WordPress logo is prominently displayed next to the "WP Engine" title on the screenshot! It does look like they fixed just a few months later, though: https://web.archive.org/web/20111001085943/http://wpengine.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20111001085943/http://wpengine.c... (How fun to see the selling point "Digg-Proof Scalability")

interestica 2y ago
> Digg-proof What's the modern soon-to-be-obsolete equivalent?
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  Shitty-AI-crawler-proof
- philistine 2y ago
  Your blog will be compatible with the blockchain!
- inhumantsar 2y ago
  reddit-proof
rafark 2y ago
> the WordPress logo is prominently displayed next to the "WP Engine" title Pretty sure that Wordpress logo is just the stock logo that came with every Wordpress installation. The name wp engine was the website name of that Wordpress installation.

underseacables 2y ago

It really does feel like Matt is saying "how dare you question me"

Zamiel_Snawley 2y ago

Giving Matt the benefit of the doubt, the answer to “Why now?” is that enough is enough. Why does Matt deserve the benefit of the doubt? Because his companies have been contributing to WordPress while WP Engine has not. Matt claims he has been privately discussing with WP Engine for ~18 months about their level of contribution. Automatic contributes the equivalent of 75 full time employees to WordPress and WP Engine contributes 1, despite the companies being comparable in size. Matt’s actions may have been bad for optics, but I do not fault him for using the resources at his disposal to correct what he sees as injustice.

wslh 2y ago
I really wonder what that mean contributing to WordPress... from the cybersecurity point of view in 2024, there is/were no contributions: it is common to be hacked when you use Wordpress (e.g. [1]). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProWordPress/comments/1cv15mt/would_malware_even_be_an_issue_on_a_wordpress_site/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProWordPress/comments/1cv15mt/would...
- dns_snek 2y ago
  That discussion is largely about themes and plugins. Severe vulnerabilities in WP Core are quite rare.
  - wslh 2y ago
    I believe WP Core and plugins should not be viewed separately in terms of security. Plugins are omnipresent. Integrating security measures across both could create a more robust system overall.
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    Themes and plugins are the severe vulnerability of WP Core.
- claudiulodro 2y ago
  WordPress is secure enough that whitehouse.gov runs on it and zero-day vendors pay $100,000+ if you have an exploit for the core WordPress software. It's not "magically secure" though -- you wouldn't say that AWS is insecure because some people set it up wrong or use bad integrations.

chmod775 2y ago

Unrelated, but that site is so much better than their current one. Now I finally know what they do and offer!

adfm 2y ago

Consider that there are other hosting providers out there giving back to the community and he's not going after them. Reciprocity seems to be an issue along with proprietary jank that screws interoperability. Say what you want, but I'd question investing in anything that's built on a foundation that relies on reciprocity that doesn't put in their share. Healthy relationships involve creating more value than you capture. That's something that should resonate with the thickest of fountainheads. And if it doesn't, you can always turn off the tap, which seems to be the case.

talldayo 2y ago
> but I'd question investing in anything that's built on a foundation that relies on reciprocity that doesn't put in their share. Look - I agree. However, there is not a single person that thinks twice about buying an Android or iPhone handset because it might not be contributing fully to upstream Linux or BSD. People don't care. They don't question it because this is the norm, and frankly neither should Matt if he's going to disagree with the terms of a license he's not qualified to change. Even the Open Source community doesn't really care that much. Selling modified versions of a program is not inherently a violation of GPL, or even the intent of free software. Matt's disproportionately vocal uproar kinda proves that the only people who care in this instance are the ones trying to profit off Free Software. He's not being righteously cavalier, here - he's being courageously wrong.
- adfm 2y ago
  There's a difference between picking up your ball and walking off the field and not dealing a hand to the empty seat at the table. Silverlake can buy the DVD.