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> 1) the "WordPress community" that Matt thinks he's fighting for step up and tells him "No thanks, we absolutely do not want you to fight this fight" and remov

> 1) the "WordPress community" that Matt thinks he's fighting for step up and tells him "No thanks, we absolutely do not want you to fight this fight" and removes him from power The issue with this is that it absolutely will require a fork: The WordPress Foundation President is Matt. There are only two other board members, only one of whom is active, and both were appointed by Matt unilaterally. The WordPress Foundation (i.e. Matt) granted Automattic (i.e. Matt) an "exclusive, perpetual and irrevocable" license to Automattic re use of WordPress identity. Wordpress.org is the exclusive property of Matt (although he has long played fast and loose here - just yesterday he was caught editing Automattic blog posts from referring erroneously to WP.org as a non-profit charity to 'a website that performs a community service').

Suppafly 2y ago
>The WordPress Foundation President is Matt. There are only two other board members, only one of whom is active, and both were appointed by Matt unilaterally. The thing is, once you organize a foundation as a non-profit with the government, you lose some of your ability to make decisions that are contrary to whatever charter and goals and such you specified when it was created. Matt may have screwed himself over by putting the stuff he wants to profit off of into ownership of the non-profit.
bigiain 2y ago
> The issue with this is that it absolutely will require a fork Perhaps? There is a significant group of people Automattic relies on to make the WordPress project and community a thing. While Matt probably can afford to pay enough devs to maintain WP core, I doubt he's wanting to pay to do all the maintenance for all the OSS/GPL plugins and themes on wordpress.org that are a big part of what makes WP attractive over other free and OSS CMS/blog alternatives. Those people could probably mount a campaign that'd threaten Automattic's financial bottom line, which since Matt's extortion show that for him this is all about money that someone else has that he wants, perhaps that'd be "enough"?

Suppafly 2y ago

>The WordPress Foundation President is Matt. There are only two other board members, only one of whom is active, and both were appointed by Matt unilaterally. The thing is, once you organize a foundation as a non-profit with the government, you lose some of your ability to make decisions that are contrary to whatever charter and goals and such you specified when it was created. Matt may have screwed himself over by putting the stuff he wants to profit off of into ownership of the non-profit.

bigiain 2y ago

> The issue with this is that it absolutely will require a fork Perhaps? There is a significant group of people Automattic relies on to make the WordPress project and community a thing. While Matt probably can afford to pay enough devs to maintain WP core, I doubt he's wanting to pay to do all the maintenance for all the OSS/GPL plugins and themes on wordpress.org that are a big part of what makes WP attractive over other free and OSS CMS/blog alternatives. Those people could probably mount a campaign that'd threaten Automattic's financial bottom line, which since Matt's extortion show that for him this is all about money that someone else has that he wants, perhaps that'd be "enough"?