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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
by 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 agoThis 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 agoPlus I don't know how you give that threat before the speech with a straight face.
- dcchambers 2y agoYup...that and (allegedly) trying to extort the rival CEO with a job offer/threat.
- mikae1 2y agoFraming 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 agoDo 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.
- satvikpendem 2y agoHe can't relicense as WordPress is a fork of B2 which is GPL. That's one reason why he's trying to extort instead.
- pointlessone 2y agoI don’t think the fact that it’s a B2 fork is relevant. He wouldn’t be able to relicense even if it wasn’t a fork but initially chosen GPL.
- runjake 2y agoBased on my understanding, this is not how it works. IP issues withstanding, the owner of a software can relicense any time they want. Any software released in the past would still be subject to the GPL. So, if Matt decided to make WordPress closed source, previous versions would still be licensed under the terms of the GPL.
- greyface- 2y agoAccording to `git blame`, Matt isn't the sole, or even majority, owner of the WordPress codebase.
- runjake 2y agoI understand your point, but that wasn’t my point. And in terms of reality, it’s easy to argue that Matt is the effective owner of the codebase.
- greyface- 2y agoThe reality is that copyright law treats the author, not maintainer, as owner. Matt is the author of less than 1% of the codebase by line. To relicense, he would need consent from the remaining 99%. I'm not sure how you could argue otherwise.
- deely3 2y ago> 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." I remember reading exactly this statement about corps generating profits on a open source thousand of times. Usually with zero effect.
- lolinder 2y agoZero effect would have been strictly better than what we're seeing here.
- philistine 2y agoAt this point if Matt insists on his corporate orobouros of fiefdoms all controlled by him, the only solution to the problem is forking Wordpress, to rid him of any control.