7 ms·

My WordPress Slack Ban

134 points by hodgesrm 2y ago

chacha102 2y ago
This is a plague on both houses. People want stability and reliability, not drama. And what they're getting feels and awful lot like drama.
Glant 2y ago
Can't wait for Matt to show up in the comments here saying how he isn't a bad guy and banning people who ask questions is actually for the benefit of WordPress.
- Spivak 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - jb1991 2y ago
    Hey Matt, I sent you an email. I know you probably are getting a lot of emails right now, so I just wanted to let you know here. Whenever you get a chance, I have some additional questions about this. Thanks!
    - appendix-rock 2y ago
      That’s…not Matt.
      - jb1991 2y ago
        I know.
GiorgioG 2y ago
Matt is just burning WordPress down with one dumb move after another.
- beaconify 2y ago
  From a PR and Marketing point of view certainly. I love WP but wary to use it now. This stuff make me nervous. WP is it's ecosystem, and these moves may slowly kill that. I see WP as the quiet never talked about on HN nocode superpower! Here is hoping for no more drama.
dcchambers 2y ago
Matt has handled this whole thing so poorly. I wanted to be on his side but everything that has come out is just not a great look. He could have had basically the entire internet on his side just by laying out the facts: "They use our product for free, generate hundreds of millions in revenue, and don't contribute back. It's just not fair. Please contribute more." Instead this tantrum has turned a bunch of people that would be in his camp against him and he's dragged Wordpress.org into the mud. Single handedly destroying a legacy.
- ecshafer 2y ago
  This sums up the situation nicely. Though the part where Matt tried to extort wp engine into paying him personally an absurd sum didn't help put him on the right foot. It seems like every step Matt makes just makes the whole situation worse.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Plus I don't know how you give that threat before the speech with a straight face.
  - dcchambers 2y ago
    Yup...that and (allegedly) trying to extort the rival CEO with a job offer/threat.
- mikae1 2y ago
  Framing it as a David vs. Goliath fight was also a huge mistake. Considering the might of Automattic it looks like he's completely out of touch with reality. What I see is a incredibly wealthy person displaying self pity because he can't have more.
- pointlessone 2y ago
  Do they use a product? WordPress’ license is GPL. However unfair it might feel they can use it under the terms of the license. Matt has chose the license and has to live with that choice. He’s doing basically the same thing Redis/Elastic Search/Mongo did but worse. He wants the money without getting the relicensing backlash. Which, I’d argue, is even worse than those other instances.
23B1 2y ago
Dear Matt, Resign.
gnabgib 2y ago
Small discussion (27 points, 2 days ago, 8 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704
arp242 2y ago
Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41791369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41791369 - Oct 2024 (240 comments) WordPress contributor banned for asking about new checkbox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704 - Oct 2024 (8 comments)
kemayo 2y ago
The checkbox on WordPress.org is such a bad look, and is dragging the theoretically non-commercial parts of WordPress into this big (stupid) licensing fight. It continues to reinforce that the entire WordPress.org / Foundation / Automattic cluster has turned out to just be Matt's personal fiefdom... which worked out okay when he was pretty chill, but is terrible when he decides to burn it all down.
pocketsand 2y ago
For me, the fact he tried to compel the WPE CEO to work for him or else he would expose that she was in negotiations with him is the most unhinged thing I’ve ever heard in a hiring process. Quite literally an affront to freedom. My most charitable guess at what is going on is severe mental illness.
- kemayo 2y ago
  It did all seem to blow up around when he came back from a sabbatical, presumably taken because he really needed a break. Though I guess that he also had a bit of a PR disaster with Tumblr during that sabbatical, so...
- tptacek 2y ago
  "Quite literally an affront to freedom"? Really? Say more.
  - appendix-rock 2y ago
    Americans relating everything back to “freedom” is so jarring for literally everyone else.
  - pocketsand 2y ago
    Work for me or I will publicly shame you, try to damage your reputation, and make your employees potentially question your loyalty. Threatening people if they don’t take a job with you is in the most literal way a challenge to your autonomy as a human being.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      I think a lot of this whole saga is easier to understand if you just remember that WordPress is a major open source project and a company, so you get to see a lot of the stuff every company --- almost none of whom run major open source projects --- does in the ordinary course of business. Anyways, if you thought there was any freedom or purity to the tech job market, bad news for you.
mikeortman 2y ago
This checkbox will absolutely not look good in front of a jury. It's petty at best.
kemayo 2y ago
Threadreader of the linked twitter thread with all the Slack discussion (since X was completely not working for me): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1843963052183433331.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1843963052183433331.html ...Matt doesn't come across well in it. Lots of refusing to state what he thinks the checkbox that he added means.
DannyPage 2y ago
I saw an interesting tweet from DHH to Matt that seems relevant: > I have nothing but the out-most respect for what you've built with WordPress. It's an incredible achievement, and you're been justly rewarded for that accomplishment. No need to squeeze the lemon that hard. It's undermining open source as a whole. [1] A lot of folks had compared it to DHH/Basecamp because of the voluntary severance. But for the most part, those issues did not spill into Rails like this. I think if anyone can talk Matt down from the ledge, it would be another "Benevolent Dictator". That said, I think DHH misses something: lots of people built Wordpress, not just Matt. And we are slowly seeing the most engaged people, some who do it for the love of Wordpress instead of the money, either back away or get forced out. THAT is what will kill the ecosystem that has been built. Any harm that WP Engine may have been doing cannot compare with the harm that's happening right now from their own spiteful actions. 1: https://x.com/dhh/status/1843809648123752586 https://x.com/dhh/status/1843809648123752586
throwaway888abc 2y ago
Why is Wordpress(TM) not open source ? Like under Apache foundation or something https://www.apache.org/ https://www.apache.org/
- beaconify 2y ago
  Go nuts: https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/license.txt https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/license.t... Trademark != Copyright
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  Because it is "perpetually, exclusively, and irrevocably" licensed to Automattic.
  - nxicvyvy 2y ago
    Irrevocably? Sure about that?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      They are sure the license says that. It only controls the trademark anyway no different from firefox or anything else with a trademarked name. Anyone else can do anything else the gpl allows with the software, just under some other name.
alwa 2y ago
Wait. From TFA I’m to understand that this Matt person, posting as Wordpress.org, tweeted: > We’re still getting lots of questions about this [checkbox]. What if an agency is part of your affiliate program[…]? …addressing the WP Engine firm whose users he’s been weirdly bullying with all this? He attempted to frame his own ambiguously menacing checkbox-cum-loyalty-oath as somehow being of its target’s making? What? Is that type of… duplicitous? dissociative? schizophrenic?… tactic common these days in twitter kinds of spheres?
- beaconify 2y ago
  Glad I am not the only confused person. I marked it down in my "ah well i dont understand 10-20% of social media inside baseball" category.
- apple4ever 2y ago
  I wonder if it was an accident post
badlibrarian 2y ago
He's been in ego preservation mode since at least February and he really, really needs to get the hell off the internet for six months and possibly heal. It's a spiral and it's painful to watch. https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-with-trans-user-over-account-ban-revealing-private-account-names-in-the-process/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-...
sergiotapia 2y ago
so tl;dr this is like redis/amazon thing where $CONGLOMO takes open source and bleeds it dry and doesn't contribute enough back to the open source project? i'm so disappointed in open source. there has to be a better way for projects to get something out of the deal.
- rty32 2y ago
  You might want to actually understand what's happening instead of simplifying the whole thing as tldr.
  - sergiotapia 2y ago
    is this not true? Main Points of Contention Trademark and Branding Issues Mullenweg accuses WP Engine of misusing the WordPress trademark and causing confusion among users1. WP Engine has since changed some of its plan names to address these concerns1. Open Source Contributions Mullenweg criticizes WP Engine for not contributing enough to the WordPress open-source project relative to their profits5 . Core Feature Modifications WP Engine is accused of altering core WordPress features, particularly disabling post revisions by default2. Mullenweg argues this compromises the integrity of WordPress and its promise to users2.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      Like they said, go read up on it, since no this is not the story at all. By now there are many good write-ups.
    - sionisrecur 2y ago
      To me it seems like he's using the trademark as a weapon to go after the competition, even through the Wordpress Foundation should be neutral. Many other companies, including his, also make money out of Wordpress. And I think technically the owner of the trademark is Matt and not the Wordpress Foundation, but also technically, WP Engine isn't required by the license to give him money or contribute back, they are allowed to modify the code and required to share their modifications when they redistribute the software.
swatcoder 2y ago
Expect to see this kind of drama happening regularly and frequently as the gazillion dollar commercial industry continues to subvert every ideal of the original open source ethos. Some of the best and now most commercially critical open source software started a long time ago, by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future. Turns out, we did not arrive in that future. We arrived in the one where both $xxxB companies and their countless cargo cultists explot every means possible to profit from open source software, making angry demands on volunteers and small teams, while giving back as little as possible. It's essentially a test to find every open source developer's breaking point. Recently, we found Matt's. Next month, it'll be someone else's.
- beaconify 2y ago
  I do see OSS as free labour for Bezos, Altman et. al. and act accoringly. Closed source (but open data formats) may be the new open source.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Agreed, but Matt is not the innocent and distressed open source maintainer who hit a breaking point, he's the extremely wealthy CEO of a company that brings in hundreds of millions a year in revenue. The CEO who recently tried to extort another large company for tens of millions of dollars per year to be directed to his personal for-profit company. The problem with Open Source as a movement isn't just the megacorps using it, it's also that paying for the project's ongoing development stopped being the goal for many monetization efforts—making the shareholders or the maintainers themselves (or in this case both) wealthy (or in this case even more wealthy) has become the new goal. That is why it's such a problem that these companies don't "give back". Having the software in the world doing its job is no longer the primary goal of starting an open source project, and the "takers" are encroaching on the founders' market cap.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  What? WordPress was a fork of B2 and quickly intended to make money. Matt and Automattic bought into WPE. They were the ones who sold their shares to the Private Equity firm that now owns it! The only other board member of the Foundation is ... drum roll ... the Managing Partner of another Private Equity firm, that Matt himself appointed. All his hand wringing about PE is to distract from the simple fact that he has repeatedly been an asshole through this process, and it's not because he "reached his breaking point" as an open source developer. This is so apologistic it's not funny. He reached a breaking point as a CEO, because he made a horrible business decision to buy Tumblr, which has been nothing but a money pit, ever since. Since then, MATT's for profit business has had this boat anchor around it, so he's looking for extra cash. That's why he demanded their royalties be paid to Automattic, his for profit company, not the open source project. > by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future. Horseshit. People with RMS-like visions for the future don't see the commercial potential for an open source project, immediately spin up a Foundation with themselves as President, and immediately grant their own for-profit company a perpetual, exclusive and irrevocable commercial use license for said open source project. (They may however release self-congratulatory press releases talking about how they are champions of open source for assigning ownership of the project to their Foundation while neglecting to mention the licensing that they[1] signed off on, that very same day.) You have apparently fully bought into the narrative. > making angry demands on volunteers and small teams What "angry demands" has WPEngine made of the project? I'd love to hear of at least one. [1] I say 'they' but really, the licensing was signed for the Foundation by "Matt Mullenweg, President", and for Automattic by "Matt Mullenweg, President and CEO".
evantbyrne 2y ago
The checkbox is so outrageous I thought it was just a meme the first time I saw a screenshot of it. This will result in WordPress being forked.
dmitrygr 2y ago
Is there a TL;DR on this story? I feel like I missed the start of it and am now hopelessly behind on the drama-du-jour.
xnx 2y ago
It's not enough for some people to be rich beyond all needs and comfort, they also want to be richer than their peers and be influential and be well liked.
nashashmi 2y ago
The word affiliate is so loose that it could mean anything. IANAL but I recommend everyone read that word with the tightest of definitions. That means you are not an affiliate if: you are not wpengine, you are not their employee, you are not doing work for wp engine, you are not owned by wpengine, nor do you work for any wpengine companies, and you don't have any ownership in organizations or companies that wpengine also has ownership or control in. And none of wpengine's board of directors or any of the board of directors of any companies wpengine has ownership or control in are your employees or managers. Effectively, they want to ensure wpengine is not interfacing with wordpress.org through undisclosed ways like shady shell companies. That is the reason for the checkbox. If you are selling stuff on wpengine or being paid by wpengine for selling stuff on there, you are not an affiliate. you are a seller. if you are selling wpengine subscriptions, you are not an affiliate; just a seller. if you are advertising wpengine services, you are not an affiliate. you are an advertiser.
- takinola 2y ago
  The challenge is this is a commonsense interpretation of the checkbox. The legal interpretation could be much broader. If you have something to lose (ie you are a money making entity), you are much less willing to take the risk that someone someday will decide to interpret the checkbox in a manner that you did not expect.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > IANAL but I recommend everyone read that word with the tightest of definitions. Why would you recommend that when Matt/WordPress is on record questioning WP Engine's common sense interpretation? In a Twitter thread linked in TFA WP Engine put forward an interpretation like yours in an attempt to make their customers less nervous and WordPress (probably Matt) replied with a "what if..." casting doubt on that interpretation. We're talking about a guy who is currently following through on a threat to wage "nuclear war" (his words) and has very clearly shown that he does not care how much collateral damage he causes. It's totally reasonable to take the broadest interpretation of the checkbox possible.
rty32 2y ago
This is stunning. Once a dedicated user of WordPress, I never thought I would ever say this, but here it is -- I hope WordPress dies as soon as possible and gets replaced by something else. Well, a better outcome would be Matt goes away, but I don't see that happening.
gwerbret 2y ago
In psychiatry, the concept of insight is used to describe an individual's ability to view their actions, beliefs and overall situation with what would be considered a normal perspective. It's probably best exemplified in popular culture by the movie "A Beautiful Mind". In the movie, a loss of insight is shown as one characteristic of schizophrenia, but it is by no means limited to that disorder. I'm just a rando on the internet, and this isn't a diagnosis, and you shouldn't diagnose either, kids; but given the relatively sudden onset of Mr. Mullenweg's public situations, and the associated seeming complete loss of insight, I can't help but wonder if there is a known or unknown mental health challenge in the background underlying all of his actions. Such things are invariably complicated by a person being "post-economic", with the lack of the usual checks and balances that come with that state of privilege.
- 8490109481 2y ago
  Agreed. It is frowned upon in public discourse to be an armchair psychiatrist, but I am seeing this implosion as the second-order effect of some condition afflicting Matt's mind. This situation can be seen in mechanical terms, the end-user effects like vendor-lock in, legal conflicts, profit and loss... or maybe Matt just woke up one day and, for some reason, felt like he's had it with everything. For some reason nobody knows. And also happened to be a few clicks away from the WordPress.org admin console. I am reminded of Kayne West. I think some people latched on to what he said in a literal sense instead of just ignoring it outright as the rants of a diagnosed bipolar person. To be sure what he said was deplorable at face value in a public space. But behind all the dialogue, the entire event might have been nothing more significant than the inevitable progression of a disease, one which leaves consciousness just intact enough to keep one recognizable, yet also compels one to say the most polarizing things. Also related, an article about one of Cloudflare's founders who was afflicted with a neurodegenerative disease that largely destroyed his personality. It went unnoticed for so long because his actions were taken at face value - he was just tired and disengaged from daily life - instead of as originating from a disease of the brain. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878136
AnonHP 2y ago
photomatt, if you’re reading this, you need to step away from all things WordPress and let someone else lead it. Focus on the lawsuit at hand and spend time away from the internet as much as possible. These kind of knee jerk and extremely petty actions don’t add any value to whatever you think your moral or legal position is. On the contrary, you (and you alone) are making things far worse for yourself.
ValentineC 2y ago
Someone on r/Wordpress pointed out that Matt suffered a nosebleed during a podcast: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g1omxy/matt_forgot_to_switch_account_wp_official_account/lriibwu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g1omxy/matt_for... It's very possible that he's ill.
apple4ever 2y ago
As a big fan of Wordpress and someone who does not like WP Engine - Matt is handling this so bad and making me question whether I should continue with it. The checkbox is ridiculous.
PeterZaitsev 2y ago
Wow! Whatever WP Engine is doing to discriminate against anyone affiliated with them in any way (ie being their customer?) is such a bad form :(

134 points by hodgesrm 2y ago

This is a plague on both houses. People want stability and reliability, not drama. And what they're getting feels and awful lot like drama.

Glant 2y ago

Can't wait for Matt to show up in the comments here saying how he isn't a bad guy and banning people who ask questions is actually for the benefit of WordPress.

Spivak 2y ago
[flagged]
- jb1991 2y ago
  Hey Matt, I sent you an email. I know you probably are getting a lot of emails right now, so I just wanted to let you know here. Whenever you get a chance, I have some additional questions about this. Thanks!
  - appendix-rock 2y ago
    That’s…not Matt.
    - jb1991 2y ago
      I know.

GiorgioG 2y ago

Matt is just burning WordPress down with one dumb move after another.

beaconify 2y ago
From a PR and Marketing point of view certainly. I love WP but wary to use it now. This stuff make me nervous. WP is it's ecosystem, and these moves may slowly kill that. I see WP as the quiet never talked about on HN nocode superpower! Here is hoping for no more drama.

dcchambers 2y ago

Matt has handled this whole thing so poorly. I wanted to be on his side but everything that has come out is just not a great look. He could have had basically the entire internet on his side just by laying out the facts: "They use our product for free, generate hundreds of millions in revenue, and don't contribute back. It's just not fair. Please contribute more." Instead this tantrum has turned a bunch of people that would be in his camp against him and he's dragged Wordpress.org into the mud. Single handedly destroying a legacy.

ecshafer 2y ago
This sums up the situation nicely. Though the part where Matt tried to extort wp engine into paying him personally an absurd sum didn't help put him on the right foot. It seems like every step Matt makes just makes the whole situation worse.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  Plus I don't know how you give that threat before the speech with a straight face.
- dcchambers 2y ago
  Yup...that and (allegedly) trying to extort the rival CEO with a job offer/threat.
mikae1 2y ago
Framing it as a David vs. Goliath fight was also a huge mistake. Considering the might of Automattic it looks like he's completely out of touch with reality. What I see is a incredibly wealthy person displaying self pity because he can't have more.
pointlessone 2y ago
Do they use a product? WordPress’ license is GPL. However unfair it might feel they can use it under the terms of the license. Matt has chose the license and has to live with that choice. He’s doing basically the same thing Redis/Elastic Search/Mongo did but worse. He wants the money without getting the relicensing backlash. Which, I’d argue, is even worse than those other instances.

23B1 2y ago

Dear Matt, Resign.

gnabgib 2y ago

Small discussion (27 points, 2 days ago, 8 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704

arp242 2y ago

Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41791369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41791369 - Oct 2024 (240 comments) WordPress contributor banned for asking about new checkbox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704 - Oct 2024 (8 comments)

kemayo 2y ago

The checkbox on WordPress.org is such a bad look, and is dragging the theoretically non-commercial parts of WordPress into this big (stupid) licensing fight. It continues to reinforce that the entire WordPress.org / Foundation / Automattic cluster has turned out to just be Matt's personal fiefdom... which worked out okay when he was pretty chill, but is terrible when he decides to burn it all down.

pocketsand 2y ago

For me, the fact he tried to compel the WPE CEO to work for him or else he would expose that she was in negotiations with him is the most unhinged thing I’ve ever heard in a hiring process. Quite literally an affront to freedom. My most charitable guess at what is going on is severe mental illness.

kemayo 2y ago
It did all seem to blow up around when he came back from a sabbatical, presumably taken because he really needed a break. Though I guess that he also had a bit of a PR disaster with Tumblr during that sabbatical, so...
tptacek 2y ago
"Quite literally an affront to freedom"? Really? Say more.
- appendix-rock 2y ago
  Americans relating everything back to “freedom” is so jarring for literally everyone else.
- pocketsand 2y ago
  Work for me or I will publicly shame you, try to damage your reputation, and make your employees potentially question your loyalty. Threatening people if they don’t take a job with you is in the most literal way a challenge to your autonomy as a human being.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    I think a lot of this whole saga is easier to understand if you just remember that WordPress is a major open source project and a company, so you get to see a lot of the stuff every company --- almost none of whom run major open source projects --- does in the ordinary course of business. Anyways, if you thought there was any freedom or purity to the tech job market, bad news for you.

mikeortman 2y ago

This checkbox will absolutely not look good in front of a jury. It's petty at best.

kemayo 2y ago

Threadreader of the linked twitter thread with all the Slack discussion (since X was completely not working for me): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1843963052183433331.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1843963052183433331.html ...Matt doesn't come across well in it. Lots of refusing to state what he thinks the checkbox that he added means.

DannyPage 2y ago

I saw an interesting tweet from DHH to Matt that seems relevant: > I have nothing but the out-most respect for what you've built with WordPress. It's an incredible achievement, and you're been justly rewarded for that accomplishment. No need to squeeze the lemon that hard. It's undermining open source as a whole. [1] A lot of folks had compared it to DHH/Basecamp because of the voluntary severance. But for the most part, those issues did not spill into Rails like this. I think if anyone can talk Matt down from the ledge, it would be another "Benevolent Dictator". That said, I think DHH misses something: lots of people built Wordpress, not just Matt. And we are slowly seeing the most engaged people, some who do it for the love of Wordpress instead of the money, either back away or get forced out. THAT is what will kill the ecosystem that has been built. Any harm that WP Engine may have been doing cannot compare with the harm that's happening right now from their own spiteful actions. 1: https://x.com/dhh/status/1843809648123752586 https://x.com/dhh/status/1843809648123752586

throwaway888abc 2y ago

Why is Wordpress(TM) not open source ? Like under Apache foundation or something https://www.apache.org/ https://www.apache.org/

beaconify 2y ago
Go nuts: https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/license.txt https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/license.t... Trademark != Copyright
FireBeyond 2y ago
Because it is "perpetually, exclusively, and irrevocably" licensed to Automattic.
- nxicvyvy 2y ago
  Irrevocably? Sure about that?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    They are sure the license says that. It only controls the trademark anyway no different from firefox or anything else with a trademarked name. Anyone else can do anything else the gpl allows with the software, just under some other name.

alwa 2y ago

Wait. From TFA I’m to understand that this Matt person, posting as Wordpress.org, tweeted: > We’re still getting lots of questions about this [checkbox]. What if an agency is part of your affiliate program[…]? …addressing the WP Engine firm whose users he’s been weirdly bullying with all this? He attempted to frame his own ambiguously menacing checkbox-cum-loyalty-oath as somehow being of its target’s making? What? Is that type of… duplicitous? dissociative? schizophrenic?… tactic common these days in twitter kinds of spheres?

beaconify 2y ago
Glad I am not the only confused person. I marked it down in my "ah well i dont understand 10-20% of social media inside baseball" category.
apple4ever 2y ago
I wonder if it was an accident post

badlibrarian 2y ago

He's been in ego preservation mode since at least February and he really, really needs to get the hell off the internet for six months and possibly heal. It's a spiral and it's painful to watch. https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-with-trans-user-over-account-ban-revealing-private-account-names-in-the-process/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-...

sergiotapia 2y ago

so tl;dr this is like redis/amazon thing where $CONGLOMO takes open source and bleeds it dry and doesn't contribute enough back to the open source project? i'm so disappointed in open source. there has to be a better way for projects to get something out of the deal.

rty32 2y ago
You might want to actually understand what's happening instead of simplifying the whole thing as tldr.
- sergiotapia 2y ago
  is this not true? Main Points of Contention Trademark and Branding Issues Mullenweg accuses WP Engine of misusing the WordPress trademark and causing confusion among users1. WP Engine has since changed some of its plan names to address these concerns1. Open Source Contributions Mullenweg criticizes WP Engine for not contributing enough to the WordPress open-source project relative to their profits5 . Core Feature Modifications WP Engine is accused of altering core WordPress features, particularly disabling post revisions by default2. Mullenweg argues this compromises the integrity of WordPress and its promise to users2.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Like they said, go read up on it, since no this is not the story at all. By now there are many good write-ups.
  - sionisrecur 2y ago
    To me it seems like he's using the trademark as a weapon to go after the competition, even through the Wordpress Foundation should be neutral. Many other companies, including his, also make money out of Wordpress. And I think technically the owner of the trademark is Matt and not the Wordpress Foundation, but also technically, WP Engine isn't required by the license to give him money or contribute back, they are allowed to modify the code and required to share their modifications when they redistribute the software.

swatcoder 2y ago

Expect to see this kind of drama happening regularly and frequently as the gazillion dollar commercial industry continues to subvert every ideal of the original open source ethos. Some of the best and now most commercially critical open source software started a long time ago, by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future. Turns out, we did not arrive in that future. We arrived in the one where both $xxxB companies and their countless cargo cultists explot every means possible to profit from open source software, making angry demands on volunteers and small teams, while giving back as little as possible. It's essentially a test to find every open source developer's breaking point. Recently, we found Matt's. Next month, it'll be someone else's.

beaconify 2y ago
I do see OSS as free labour for Bezos, Altman et. al. and act accoringly. Closed source (but open data formats) may be the new open source.
lolinder 2y ago
Agreed, but Matt is not the innocent and distressed open source maintainer who hit a breaking point, he's the extremely wealthy CEO of a company that brings in hundreds of millions a year in revenue. The CEO who recently tried to extort another large company for tens of millions of dollars per year to be directed to his personal for-profit company. The problem with Open Source as a movement isn't just the megacorps using it, it's also that paying for the project's ongoing development stopped being the goal for many monetization efforts—making the shareholders or the maintainers themselves (or in this case both) wealthy (or in this case even more wealthy) has become the new goal. That is why it's such a problem that these companies don't "give back". Having the software in the world doing its job is no longer the primary goal of starting an open source project, and the "takers" are encroaching on the founders' market cap.
FireBeyond 2y ago
What? WordPress was a fork of B2 and quickly intended to make money. Matt and Automattic bought into WPE. They were the ones who sold their shares to the Private Equity firm that now owns it! The only other board member of the Foundation is ... drum roll ... the Managing Partner of another Private Equity firm, that Matt himself appointed. All his hand wringing about PE is to distract from the simple fact that he has repeatedly been an asshole through this process, and it's not because he "reached his breaking point" as an open source developer. This is so apologistic it's not funny. He reached a breaking point as a CEO, because he made a horrible business decision to buy Tumblr, which has been nothing but a money pit, ever since. Since then, MATT's for profit business has had this boat anchor around it, so he's looking for extra cash. That's why he demanded their royalties be paid to Automattic, his for profit company, not the open source project. > by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future. Horseshit. People with RMS-like visions for the future don't see the commercial potential for an open source project, immediately spin up a Foundation with themselves as President, and immediately grant their own for-profit company a perpetual, exclusive and irrevocable commercial use license for said open source project. (They may however release self-congratulatory press releases talking about how they are champions of open source for assigning ownership of the project to their Foundation while neglecting to mention the licensing that they[1] signed off on, that very same day.) You have apparently fully bought into the narrative. > making angry demands on volunteers and small teams What "angry demands" has WPEngine made of the project? I'd love to hear of at least one. [1] I say 'they' but really, the licensing was signed for the Foundation by "Matt Mullenweg, President", and for Automattic by "Matt Mullenweg, President and CEO".

evantbyrne 2y ago

The checkbox is so outrageous I thought it was just a meme the first time I saw a screenshot of it. This will result in WordPress being forked.

dmitrygr 2y ago

Is there a TL;DR on this story? I feel like I missed the start of it and am now hopelessly behind on the drama-du-jour.

xnx 2y ago

It's not enough for some people to be rich beyond all needs and comfort, they also want to be richer than their peers and be influential and be well liked.

nashashmi 2y ago

The word affiliate is so loose that it could mean anything. IANAL but I recommend everyone read that word with the tightest of definitions. That means you are not an affiliate if: you are not wpengine, you are not their employee, you are not doing work for wp engine, you are not owned by wpengine, nor do you work for any wpengine companies, and you don't have any ownership in organizations or companies that wpengine also has ownership or control in. And none of wpengine's board of directors or any of the board of directors of any companies wpengine has ownership or control in are your employees or managers. Effectively, they want to ensure wpengine is not interfacing with wordpress.org through undisclosed ways like shady shell companies. That is the reason for the checkbox. If you are selling stuff on wpengine or being paid by wpengine for selling stuff on there, you are not an affiliate. you are a seller. if you are selling wpengine subscriptions, you are not an affiliate; just a seller. if you are advertising wpengine services, you are not an affiliate. you are an advertiser.

takinola 2y ago
The challenge is this is a commonsense interpretation of the checkbox. The legal interpretation could be much broader. If you have something to lose (ie you are a money making entity), you are much less willing to take the risk that someone someday will decide to interpret the checkbox in a manner that you did not expect.
lolinder 2y ago
> IANAL but I recommend everyone read that word with the tightest of definitions. Why would you recommend that when Matt/WordPress is on record questioning WP Engine's common sense interpretation? In a Twitter thread linked in TFA WP Engine put forward an interpretation like yours in an attempt to make their customers less nervous and WordPress (probably Matt) replied with a "what if..." casting doubt on that interpretation. We're talking about a guy who is currently following through on a threat to wage "nuclear war" (his words) and has very clearly shown that he does not care how much collateral damage he causes. It's totally reasonable to take the broadest interpretation of the checkbox possible.

rty32 2y ago

This is stunning. Once a dedicated user of WordPress, I never thought I would ever say this, but here it is -- I hope WordPress dies as soon as possible and gets replaced by something else. Well, a better outcome would be Matt goes away, but I don't see that happening.

gwerbret 2y ago

In psychiatry, the concept of insight is used to describe an individual's ability to view their actions, beliefs and overall situation with what would be considered a normal perspective. It's probably best exemplified in popular culture by the movie "A Beautiful Mind". In the movie, a loss of insight is shown as one characteristic of schizophrenia, but it is by no means limited to that disorder. I'm just a rando on the internet, and this isn't a diagnosis, and you shouldn't diagnose either, kids; but given the relatively sudden onset of Mr. Mullenweg's public situations, and the associated seeming complete loss of insight, I can't help but wonder if there is a known or unknown mental health challenge in the background underlying all of his actions. Such things are invariably complicated by a person being "post-economic", with the lack of the usual checks and balances that come with that state of privilege.

8490109481 2y ago
Agreed. It is frowned upon in public discourse to be an armchair psychiatrist, but I am seeing this implosion as the second-order effect of some condition afflicting Matt's mind. This situation can be seen in mechanical terms, the end-user effects like vendor-lock in, legal conflicts, profit and loss... or maybe Matt just woke up one day and, for some reason, felt like he's had it with everything. For some reason nobody knows. And also happened to be a few clicks away from the WordPress.org admin console. I am reminded of Kayne West. I think some people latched on to what he said in a literal sense instead of just ignoring it outright as the rants of a diagnosed bipolar person. To be sure what he said was deplorable at face value in a public space. But behind all the dialogue, the entire event might have been nothing more significant than the inevitable progression of a disease, one which leaves consciousness just intact enough to keep one recognizable, yet also compels one to say the most polarizing things. Also related, an article about one of Cloudflare's founders who was afflicted with a neurodegenerative disease that largely destroyed his personality. It went unnoticed for so long because his actions were taken at face value - he was just tired and disengaged from daily life - instead of as originating from a disease of the brain. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878136

AnonHP 2y ago

photomatt, if you’re reading this, you need to step away from all things WordPress and let someone else lead it. Focus on the lawsuit at hand and spend time away from the internet as much as possible. These kind of knee jerk and extremely petty actions don’t add any value to whatever you think your moral or legal position is. On the contrary, you (and you alone) are making things far worse for yourself.

ValentineC 2y ago

Someone on r/Wordpress pointed out that Matt suffered a nosebleed during a podcast: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g1omxy/matt_forgot_to_switch_account_wp_official_account/lriibwu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g1omxy/matt_for... It's very possible that he's ill.

apple4ever 2y ago

As a big fan of Wordpress and someone who does not like WP Engine - Matt is handling this so bad and making me question whether I should continue with it. The checkbox is ridiculous.

PeterZaitsev 2y ago

Wow! Whatever WP Engine is doing to discriminate against anyone affiliated with them in any way (ie being their customer?) is such a bad form :(