10 ms·

Response to DHH

176 points by markx2 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
minimaxir 2y ago
> Rails, finally some open source! Looks like ~943k lines of code, 143k from Basecamp org. Automattic publishes 6.58M lines of open source code, 6.9x more than you. Yet, we’re “doing open source dirty”? Wait, did he just use lines of code as a success metric unironically?
- jsnell 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's not being used as a success metric there, but as a contribution metric.
  - everforward 2y ago
    It's not really meaningful either way. I could write a script to append "print('Hello, world!')" to the main function 6 million times, and I would have contributed 6 million lines but nothing of value. Actually, it's probably negative value now that someone else has to go clean that up. It may also have to do with the brevity of the respective languages; I'm not a Ruby or PHP expert, but I do Go and Python and I would not be surprised if the Go version required an order of magnitude more lines because of how verbose it is and how terse Python can be. Comparing lines of code in different languages, doing different things, with differing levels of complexity, is an exercise in futility.
- nikolay 2y ago
  Keep in mind that PHP is way more verbose and LOC-hungry than Ruby! So, to compare apples to apples, you need to device the PHP LOCs by at least 2!
  - Ayesh 2y ago
    WordPress coding standards is also full of padding. Spaces `like_this( foo, bar )`, curly braces on new lines, etc. Plus, WordPress bundles all JS and PHP dependencies, including a whole userland PHP polyfill for libsodium.
    - nikolay 2y ago
      WordPress is the biggest bowl of spaghetti code in existence! I can't believe it powers 40% of the web! PHP could do tons better - Laravel is a proof that PHP projects could be beautifully coded, readable, and extensible! I've dealt with WordPress for so many years! It's sickening! Even the overglorified WooCommerce - I won't trust a business with it. I've done only a few sails and I had data loss, and so many issues. Also, WooCommerce and other popular plugins such as GiveWP abuse the posts system. I've had so many issues causes by patch upgrades, because migrations went bonkers! Honestly, WP had to be rewritten from scratch 10 years ago. There were some attempts, but they were not supported by Matt. With a rewrite, most plugins and "themes" would have stopped working, but if they are not maintained, they shouldn't be used anyway. I put "themes" in quotes as executable code is not a theme - it's a plugin installed in a different directory! In general, WordPress is a patch over patches of patches! From mu-plugins (i.e., "must-use") to filters that could hijack the data read from the database - it's nearly impossible to trace which plugins screw up which plugins - even with the help of the overly glorified debugging plugins! I've participated in a project where the management has decided to migrate a commercial online newspaper from a commercial Python CMS to WordPress - they hired me as I had PHP on my resume and it was hard to find PHP developers in SoCal. Anyway, for over a year, I had to completely remove WordPress from serving customers! Yes, everything was proxied, cached with nginx and optimized ngx_pagespeed (now abandoned). At the time, no commercial WP plugin could keep our website up! For example, an earthquake would take our website down, too, because people would go on our website to check for information and guess what happens if tens of thousands of people want to see the same page when according to the cache it's expired - there was no queue and it would generate 10,000 requests trying to regenerate the same homepage, which was making well over 500 DB calls to render!!! WordPress hasn't changed much since! Yeah, PHP 7+ is much better, but it is still multi-process. The number of processors is determined by your available memory, and WordPress sometimes uses a lot of memory. That's why the only solution is heavy caching on all tiers!
- znpy 2y ago
  > Wait, did he just use lines of code as a success metric unironically? Not only that, he also compared php code to ruby code. Totally different languages. I'm not even arguing which one is better or worse (i dislike them both) but for example ruby is way more expressive than php... You (usually) need less lines of ruby code than php code to do most things. Clownish, clownish.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
98codes 2y ago
In this particular case, it's helpful to remember that two people can be wrong.
- itsdrewmiller 2y ago
  While helpful in general, on this topic DHH seems to be right about basically everything. Is there any specific point he makes that you disagree with?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- legitster 2y ago
  I don't know if DHH is wrong at all in this case. All he did was write two blog posts, which were rather fair to Matt all things considered: https://world.hey.com/dhh/automattic-is-doing-open-source-dirty-b95cf128 https://world.hey.com/dhh/automattic-is-doing-open-source-di... https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-a8f79d16 https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-... It's also obvious from this post that Matt didn't actually bother to read the blogs closely. Most of the points Matt makes about Ruby on Rails or trademarks in his "response" were already addressed by DHH himself.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point
  - drcongo 2y ago
    However, we're all winners when the two worst people you know fight each other.
GiorgioG 2y ago
Rich people arguing on the internet. We've only got one life to live, it's just not worth the time to follow this soap opera.
- legitster 2y ago
  Counterpoint, nearly half of the internet uses WordPress. Learning that it's fully under the control of a vindictive techbro who is showing an ability and willingness to damage large swaths of the internet at a time is kinda a big deal.
  - pathartl 2y ago
    The recent forking of Advanced Custom Fields is just a smoking gun for where his priorities actually lie. Matt is part of a small group of people who have made a significant amount of wealth from an open source project. The project itself, however, has stagnated over the past 10 years. The community's reliance on plugins like ACF is a complete failure of the development of core more than it is the tyranny of private investment.
    - legitster 2y ago
      It's clear to me now that the reason WordPress development has been stalled for so long is because Matt has been in charge this whole time and he has no idea what the development community actually wants/needs. So instead of in-housing a really basic tool like ACF he forces through garbage like Gutenberg.
      - ChallengeEup237 2y ago
        Matt has unfortunately been very unresponsive to any feedback about what should or should not go into core. Despite claiming WordPress core is open-source and open to almost everyone, the team leaders responsible for what goes into each release have been all Automattic employees since 2019.
        2y ago
jonathrg 2y ago
This is just sad to watch
liviux 2y ago
Lol, what a bunch of garbage talk. He just attacks dhh on random things like why he bought a car, not talking about any of dhh's points in his article. Matt trying hard to kill WordPress
- _t4za 2y ago
  By my estimation, about 45% of the article is about DHH's revenue which is irrelevant to the discussion about Matt's behavior. Links on HN about Matt and WordPress keep getting downranked, and that'll continue to happen as long as Matt is not interested in seriously discussing it. Not that my opinion matters, but my preference would be that Matt stops with the pithy comments like "this is a respectful debate" or "I'll try to do better" and is instead just honest that he doesn't care what others think.
  - kotaKat 2y ago
    > Links on HN about Matt and WordPress keep getting downranked, and that'll continue to happen as long as Matt is not interested in seriously discussing it. Or until they stop using company employees as flag-and-downvote farms.
tock 2y ago
tldr: I make more money than you so your points don't matter What's really embarrassing is the same few Automattic employees arguing for Matt online.
- JamesSwift 2y ago
  I had the same thought yesterday reading through some of these threads. Its great that things are part of the public record as a snapshot in time. But now these employees have all sorts of awkward google-able conversation starters for future interviews etc. I'm happy for them if they are standing up for what they believe, but also how can you be so naive?
dolni 2y ago
This article tries to provide cover for slamming DHH by opening with "this is a respectful debate". DHH, like anybody else, is imperfect. But the author acts like he is superior. He isn't. But I will say there is not much worse than a person who feigns respect and then goes on to say things like: "toxic personality and inability to scale teams" "it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach" (therapist really being the dig, here) "Why are you still so small?" "Instead of bragging about your beautiful office in the clouds, you should question why you can’t scale teams." If your respect for DHH was real, you would have given your feedback in a respectful way instead of writing some blog post with such incendiary comments.
- oriettaxx 2y ago
  it reminds my that crypto "genius" who kept saying: "are you still poor?", then was taken to prison
tock 2y ago
I don't even know how to describe this: https://x.com/ThePrimeagen/status/1845851330063028718 https://x.com/ThePrimeagen/status/1845851330063028718
- pier25 2y ago
  This is not related to the WP drama tho. https://casetext.com/case/attayeb-v-mullenweg https://casetext.com/case/attayeb-v-mullenweg
  - ChallengeEup237 2y ago
    The actual lawsuits are available here to download, https://freewp.com/2024/10/14/matthew-charles-mullenweg-defendant/ https://freewp.com/2024/10/14/matthew-charles-mullenweg-defe...
- Degorath 2y ago
  What did it say?
wglb 2y ago
Suggesting that DHH should seek therapy is way out of line. > I’m unsure why you felt you had to insert yourself into this fight with Silver Lake / WP Engine and take their side, but here we are. It seems that the fight has been made public with photomatt's constant commentary, at least on HN. Unconvincing.
- ankleturtle 2y ago
  > Suggesting that DHH should seek therapy is way out of line. Matt already knows this.[0] photomatt: "It is also unethical to publicly speculate on my medication, medical state, or mental health." 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB1ZXFiEgJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB1ZXFiEgJY
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    I love that people can say anything they want online. “It is unethical to publicly speculate on my mental health” is a sentence that sounds like it could be true, but it certainly is not. That’s not true! People are very much allowed to wonder out loud about extremely public behavior that has real impacts on real people. That argument sounds more like “it is unethical to treat me as anything but God’s Special Fancy Boy, as my crusade is righteous and my foes ontologically evil”, which has the opposite effect when you’re trying to discourage people from asking “What the fuck is going on with this guy?” I’ll refer to my previous comment on this ordeal as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41822606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41822606
- slenk 2y ago
  The instant I saw that I stopped reading. Matt does not seem like a great person.
  - jeltz 2y ago
    Given how he is now accused of creating a toxic work environment for household staff and defending his mother when she sexually harassed the staff it does indeed seem like he is not a good person at all.
ptdorf 2y ago
> you should question why you can’t scale teams. They can afford not to.
tptacek 2y ago
David, perhaps it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach why you keep having these great ideas but cannot scale them beyond a handful of niche customers. I will give full credit and respect. 37signals inspired tons of what Automattic does! We’re now half a billion in revenue. Why are you still so small? Gonna go out on a limb here and say that following this paragraph with links to DHH's $2MM sports cars and his home office that costs an integer multiple of what my entire house costs sort of undercuts his argument.
- itsdrewmiller 2y ago
  He's playing both sides so he always comes out on top.
4ndrewl 2y ago
Missed out ", age 4" from the title.
gkapur 2y ago
Been watching this episode unfold on Twitter and has read about Matt’s domain hijacking of thesis, etc. It seems to me like Matt is the type of person who likes to hide behind character and other ad hominem attacks rather than addressing actual issues at hand. Perhaps this is because of a psychological issue but I can’t really know. Normally I would think the community would be repulsed by this and would find an alternative. What is remarkable is that there has not been enough community animus to fork relative to Terraform and OpenTofu. It shows the power of the underlying GPL license and “plugin” approach. Something to think about for other companies that may be thinking about relicensing versus just building a durable ecosystem around their proprietary brand and assets.
hluska 2y ago
Saying nothing is always an option. It’s too bad that Automattic won’t consider that option because over the last 24 hours this has gone from embarrassing to nasty. I didn’t expect a supply chain attack yesterday. And sure didn’t expect Mullenweg’s reply to DHH to be so childish.
- pluc 2y ago
  Seriously he needs to really weigh shutting the fuck up instead of doing this pointless arguing. WPEngine haven't said a thing and have gotten all the support because he keeps digging this hole. Hopefully the consequences of his actions will bring him back to reality, but the longer it goes unchecked the more damaging it gets
- polotics 2y ago
  Childish? Really? I read Matt's post as modern incivility, very grown-up nasty, one thin layer of fainted respectable sounding wordage wrapping extremely rude barbs.
  - hluska 2y ago
    I think that most of us are more interested in value created than value personally captured.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  Matt cannot help but just continuing to attempt to post through it. I'm seeing him all over the place in HN or even random Youtube video comments. Honestly feels like he's pretty... unwell or otherwise distracted/trying to distract.
slantedview 2y ago
This is less a response to the points that DHH raised than a personal attack against him.
- pier25 2y ago
  yeah total ad hominem
pelagicAustral 2y ago
"David, perhaps it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach why you keep having these great ideas but cannot scale them beyond a handful of niche customers." This is kind of intriguing to me too...
- bigiain 2y ago
  "I’ll just remind everyone at the start that this is a respectful debate. Matt, its probably way past time to put down the crackpipe and open the windows."
legitster 2y ago
> I was surprised someone as smart as DHH would fall for WP Engine’s lame deferral to make this about “GPL code” or forking, rather than trademarks. We have no problem with their use of GPL code, our beef is with their trademark abuse. Ah yes, defending trademarks. Really the rallying cry of the people. That's what everyone cares about here. Nice motte and bailey you have there. Also, Matt is not even reading Ruby on Rail's trademark clause that he posted: "You may use these marks to refer to Ruby on Rails in a way where it’s clear that you’re simply referring to the project, not claiming endorsement or association." Also, also Matt: If you are going to throw down over people about not donating enough to charity, you should really tell people what charities you are donating to. It better not turn out your charitable donations are to your own Wordpress org which we now know is little more than a marketing/PR department for Automattic.
- ankleturtle 2y ago
  Matt made a post a few weeks ago about his charitable donations.[0] It's really just a "I'm better than them" post. And it doesn't say where any of it was donated. 0. https://ma.tt/2024/09/charitable-contributions/ https://ma.tt/2024/09/charitable-contributions/
  - legitster 2y ago
    That's exactly what I was referring to. For all we know these are self-dealing tax write-offs to his own foundation. The one that is currently doing dirty work for his private business.
    - ChallengeEup237 2y ago
      The Foundation's public filings are online, and I think they only had $22k in donations last year. Doesn't mean his contributions were all charitable, but they don't appear to have gone to the Foundation at least.
      - bigiain 2y ago
        How much would you bet against most (or all?) of Matt's "donations" being money he spent to keep wordpress.org running? (which he explicitly admits is not owned by the WordPress Foundation, but is owned by Matt personally)
Kye 2y ago
>> "And you can arbitrarily cut off anyone publishing with Hey, they have no open source rights." This is not a serious person. This is not a self-aware person.
- blueridge 2y ago
  Yeah, no idea why he'd make this statement. It's not relevant, not important, not tied to reality.
kibwen 2y ago
This is currently flagged, but I don't think it should be. Yes, it's unlikely to result in any constructive discussion here. At best we could remark that the author appears to be unwell and that taking this down could save him some face. However, the author is also an adult who is capable of taking responsibility for their own actions. In addition they are presenting themselves genuinely and sincerely here, which IMO is an important consideration for anyone who uses or is thinking about using WordPress. So yes, it's drama, but it's highly relevant drama to people who are making decisions of what stacks to build on. This is information that people to deserve to have, even if, perhaps, it's not the interpretation that the author intended to evoke.
- Lorin 2y ago
  The linked blog post seems to have been deleted
  - serial_dev 2y ago
    https://archive.is/2024.10.15-041615/https://ma.tt/2024/10/on-dhh/ https://archive.is/2024.10.15-041615/https://ma.tt/2024/10/o...
    - fspoettel 2y ago
      This seems to have been edited already, it's missing some ad hominem attacks and the recommendation to see a therapist which were definitely present when this article was linked.
      - pluc 2y ago
        Here's a previous edit: https://archive.ph/7ZRbY https://archive.ph/7ZRbY
        bsimpson 2y ago
        None of the archive links are loading for me, but maybe that's for the best.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mirzap 2y ago
I have no idea what is the point of this article. > Looks like ~943k lines of code, 143k from Basecamp org. Automattic publishes 6.58M lines of open source code, 6.9x more than you. Yet, we’re “doing open source dirty”? Whaaat! Since when is LoC metric of “dirtiness”? Your hostility towards community Matt is what makes you and Automattic “dirty”, your toxic leadership. Matt is clearly having a mental breakdown. I hope investors force him out.
nikolay 2y ago
[flagged]
znpy 2y ago
This is starting to get clownish. At this point I wonder when will Matt Mullenweg will start closing wordpress.com account owned by people that don't align with his opinions. There already is a checkbox to check for people affiliated in any way with wpengine, i wouldn't be surprised to see a checkbox for a field like "i agree with our lord an savior Matt Mullenweg in the WordPress vs WPEngine case".
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
I read half of the blog post and it's revolting. Wtf?
hobotime 2y ago
TLDR: DHH doesn't make kilo-millions so his ideas suck.
unconed 2y ago
>David, perhaps it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach why you keep having these great ideas but cannot scale them beyond a handful of niche customers. I will give full credit and respect. 37signals inspired tons of what Automattic does! We’re now half a billion in revenue. Why are you still so small? I'm just going to tell a little story here. A long time ago, I worked on a recolorable Drupal theme, which was to be the new default look (Garland). It was completed and awaiting the next major release. Before that happened though, Matt Mullenweg grabbed the theme and the assets from our repo, ported it to Wordpress, and offered it as a theme on wp dot com to his customers. When this was pointed out as being in extremely poor taste, he hid behind the GPL as the justification. WP was large enough already at the time that they could get away with stuff like this without suffering too much PR damage. In short, if he's bragging about how much money he's making, it's because he has few scruples and doesn't actually care about credit and respect.
- ValentineC 2y ago
  If this happened in public, links?
  - pah861 2y ago
    here you go! https://acko.net/blog/wordpress-com-copies-drupal-theme/ https://acko.net/blog/wordpress-com-copies-drupal-theme/ https://wordpress.com/blog/2006/12/12/new-theme-garland-and-rockin-color-picker/ https://wordpress.com/blog/2006/12/12/new-theme-garland-and-...
- unsnap_biceps 2y ago
  I just read the links you gave about the port and I wanted to say I'm just sorry for both you and Stefan Nagtegaal. What a gut punch to not even get to release your work in the way you intended before it was taken. Ugh.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- 2y ago
28304283409234 2y ago
This trolling is unworthy of Hackernews, IMHO. It is just mudslinging without content.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
pluc 2y ago
"I’ll just remind everyone at the start that this is a respectful debate", proceeds to insult the guy in every paragraph
alexander2002 2y ago
What is the endgoal for WpEngine.I am not following the drama closely. 1.Are they legally in the clear?(Note:Legally) 2.Can they rebrand to something other than Wp?
- hadad 2y ago
  the 'wp' word never been legally trademarked. The usage is okay until Sep 24th [1], but becoming problematic since the king mad [2] 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20240924024555/https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240924024555/https://wordpress... 2. https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/ https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/
  - bigiain 2y ago
    To save a few clicks and page scans, In 1, the WordPress Foundation who owns the Wordpress trademark says: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. 2 changed that to say, presumably by Matt (or under Matt's instruction) ignoring or failing to get any legal advice, to: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress. "Please don't use the abbreviation 'WP' which is not a trademark we own, and that we've been telling everybody for years that they are free to use in any way, under these new conditions we made up today" - is not a legally binding requirement. It's "becoming problematic" only as evidence of the deranged behaviour of "the mad king". WPEngine, quite reasonably, for more than a decade have been running/building a business using a name based on what the WordPress Foundation said in 1. I find it extremely hard to believe that a court/judge could possibly find that "problematic" or rude that WordPress (.com, .org, or foundations) or Matt or Automattic - have any rights that prevent WPEngine (or any other company) from using "WP" in their name, even if it is widely understood to be an abbreviation of WordPress.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
puppycodes 2y ago
abolish copyright and move on
amanzi 2y ago
I feel sad saying this, but at this point I hope Matt falls hard over this whole episode. He's wilfully oblivious to how wrong he is - I find it hard to believe he can come back from this.
- amanzi 2y ago
  Replying to myself to note that Matt deleted the blog post. Not sure if that's because he's gaining some self-awareness or if he's finally taking some outside advice?
nbittich 2y ago
I was pretty neutral,but man this guy just can't stop. It's not gonna end nicely for you bro, just enjoy your wealth instead of destroying your health and reputation by literally annoying the entire world
LordAtlas 2y ago
DHH has responded on Twitter: https://x.com/dhh/status/1845887043748221421 https://x.com/dhh/status/1845887043748221421
thrillgore 2y ago
I never thought Matt's unhinged behavior would make DHH look sane, and private equity look reasonable, but here we are. I guess it's a good thing I moved to Hugo a year ago.
reconnecting 2y ago
DHH has replied in his blog (14 Oct): https://world.hey.com/dhh/capture-less-than-you-create-c30e462e https://world.hey.com/dhh/capture-less-than-you-create-c30e4...
tmsh 2y ago
Isn't the nuance / difference that wordpress hosting between wp engine and wordpress.org are competitors v. creating a platform/environment like rails that is by default meant to be used to create other things? It would be more like if rails had an arm that made money and someone cloned it and also tried to make money? I.e., the whole company was about rails and rails hosting and not about creating things with rails (basecamp) and worrying about other people who create things with rails (shopify, etc.) - that's a very different thing. I can see how then there'd be more pressure to look at trademark differences when the service provided is more similar? Or am I missing something?
SLWW 2y ago
This is one of those moments where you make your opponent look really good and you're too blind to see it. I never took much issue with DHH and now I feel I just side with him. Talk about being out of touch with everything Matt.
Terretta 2y ago
> It's even more outrageous that Automattic has chosen trademarks as their method to get their "Al Capone" ... I give you a gift of code, you accept the terms of the license. There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations... Except there is a second set of obligations, specifically designed to help avoid business confusion: trademarks. It's not clear why trademarks are considered outrageous. Rails™ matters to DHH, WordPress™ matters to Matt.
neduma 2y ago
> DHH claims to be an expert on open source, but his toxic personality and inability to scale teams means that although he has invented about half a trillion dollars worth of good ideas, most of the value has been captured by others. Just wondering about ruby, linux, etc. Poor Linus.
deepfriedchokes 2y ago
“This is a respectful debate” in paragraph one. Okay that’s good. “DHH has a toxic personality” in paragraph three. Uh oh.
omar12 2y ago
Genuine question, is Matt ok? I hope nothing bad is happening in his personal life.
reconnecting 2y ago
This page in Matt blog is not exist anymore. (404)
c4u2024 2y ago
he removed it - bing still has it in cache: https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=https%3a%2f%2fma.tt%2f2024%2f10%2fon-dhh%2f&d=2423457656957&mkt=de-DE&setlang=de-DE&w=fS5mn636Jv5NRuuJD0ffsP4n7qwvB3UX https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=https%3a%2f%2fma.tt%2f2024...
big-chungus4 2y ago
Thats right! 3.. 2.. 1.. FIGHT!!! JUGGERNAUT KICK!!!

176 points by markx2 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

> Rails, finally some open source! Looks like ~943k lines of code, 143k from Basecamp org. Automattic publishes 6.58M lines of open source code, 6.9x more than you. Yet, we’re “doing open source dirty”? Wait, did he just use lines of code as a success metric unironically?

jsnell 2y ago
I'm pretty sure it's not being used as a success metric there, but as a contribution metric.
- everforward 2y ago
  It's not really meaningful either way. I could write a script to append "print('Hello, world!')" to the main function 6 million times, and I would have contributed 6 million lines but nothing of value. Actually, it's probably negative value now that someone else has to go clean that up. It may also have to do with the brevity of the respective languages; I'm not a Ruby or PHP expert, but I do Go and Python and I would not be surprised if the Go version required an order of magnitude more lines because of how verbose it is and how terse Python can be. Comparing lines of code in different languages, doing different things, with differing levels of complexity, is an exercise in futility.
nikolay 2y ago
Keep in mind that PHP is way more verbose and LOC-hungry than Ruby! So, to compare apples to apples, you need to device the PHP LOCs by at least 2!
- Ayesh 2y ago
  WordPress coding standards is also full of padding. Spaces `like_this( foo, bar )`, curly braces on new lines, etc. Plus, WordPress bundles all JS and PHP dependencies, including a whole userland PHP polyfill for libsodium.
  - nikolay 2y ago
    WordPress is the biggest bowl of spaghetti code in existence! I can't believe it powers 40% of the web! PHP could do tons better - Laravel is a proof that PHP projects could be beautifully coded, readable, and extensible! I've dealt with WordPress for so many years! It's sickening! Even the overglorified WooCommerce - I won't trust a business with it. I've done only a few sails and I had data loss, and so many issues. Also, WooCommerce and other popular plugins such as GiveWP abuse the posts system. I've had so many issues causes by patch upgrades, because migrations went bonkers! Honestly, WP had to be rewritten from scratch 10 years ago. There were some attempts, but they were not supported by Matt. With a rewrite, most plugins and "themes" would have stopped working, but if they are not maintained, they shouldn't be used anyway. I put "themes" in quotes as executable code is not a theme - it's a plugin installed in a different directory! In general, WordPress is a patch over patches of patches! From mu-plugins (i.e., "must-use") to filters that could hijack the data read from the database - it's nearly impossible to trace which plugins screw up which plugins - even with the help of the overly glorified debugging plugins! I've participated in a project where the management has decided to migrate a commercial online newspaper from a commercial Python CMS to WordPress - they hired me as I had PHP on my resume and it was hard to find PHP developers in SoCal. Anyway, for over a year, I had to completely remove WordPress from serving customers! Yes, everything was proxied, cached with nginx and optimized ngx_pagespeed (now abandoned). At the time, no commercial WP plugin could keep our website up! For example, an earthquake would take our website down, too, because people would go on our website to check for information and guess what happens if tens of thousands of people want to see the same page when according to the cache it's expired - there was no queue and it would generate 10,000 requests trying to regenerate the same homepage, which was making well over 500 DB calls to render!!! WordPress hasn't changed much since! Yeah, PHP 7+ is much better, but it is still multi-process. The number of processors is determined by your available memory, and WordPress sometimes uses a lot of memory. That's why the only solution is heavy caching on all tiers!
znpy 2y ago
> Wait, did he just use lines of code as a success metric unironically? Not only that, he also compared php code to ruby code. Totally different languages. I'm not even arguing which one is better or worse (i dislike them both) but for example ruby is way more expressive than php... You (usually) need less lines of ruby code than php code to do most things. Clownish, clownish.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

98codes 2y ago

In this particular case, it's helpful to remember that two people can be wrong.

itsdrewmiller 2y ago
While helpful in general, on this topic DHH seems to be right about basically everything. Is there any specific point he makes that you disagree with?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
legitster 2y ago
I don't know if DHH is wrong at all in this case. All he did was write two blog posts, which were rather fair to Matt all things considered: https://world.hey.com/dhh/automattic-is-doing-open-source-dirty-b95cf128 https://world.hey.com/dhh/automattic-is-doing-open-source-di... https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-a8f79d16 https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-... It's also obvious from this post that Matt didn't actually bother to read the blogs closely. Most of the points Matt makes about Ruby on Rails or trademarks in his "response" were already addressed by DHH himself.
madeofpalk 2y ago
Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point
- drcongo 2y ago
  However, we're all winners when the two worst people you know fight each other.

GiorgioG 2y ago

Rich people arguing on the internet. We've only got one life to live, it's just not worth the time to follow this soap opera.

legitster 2y ago
Counterpoint, nearly half of the internet uses WordPress. Learning that it's fully under the control of a vindictive techbro who is showing an ability and willingness to damage large swaths of the internet at a time is kinda a big deal.
- pathartl 2y ago
  The recent forking of Advanced Custom Fields is just a smoking gun for where his priorities actually lie. Matt is part of a small group of people who have made a significant amount of wealth from an open source project. The project itself, however, has stagnated over the past 10 years. The community's reliance on plugins like ACF is a complete failure of the development of core more than it is the tyranny of private investment.
  - legitster 2y ago
    It's clear to me now that the reason WordPress development has been stalled for so long is because Matt has been in charge this whole time and he has no idea what the development community actually wants/needs. So instead of in-housing a really basic tool like ACF he forces through garbage like Gutenberg.
    - ChallengeEup237 2y ago
      Matt has unfortunately been very unresponsive to any feedback about what should or should not go into core. Despite claiming WordPress core is open-source and open to almost everyone, the team leaders responsible for what goes into each release have been all Automattic employees since 2019.
      - 2y ago

jonathrg 2y ago

This is just sad to watch

liviux 2y ago

Lol, what a bunch of garbage talk. He just attacks dhh on random things like why he bought a car, not talking about any of dhh's points in his article. Matt trying hard to kill WordPress

_t4za 2y ago
By my estimation, about 45% of the article is about DHH's revenue which is irrelevant to the discussion about Matt's behavior. Links on HN about Matt and WordPress keep getting downranked, and that'll continue to happen as long as Matt is not interested in seriously discussing it. Not that my opinion matters, but my preference would be that Matt stops with the pithy comments like "this is a respectful debate" or "I'll try to do better" and is instead just honest that he doesn't care what others think.
- kotaKat 2y ago
  > Links on HN about Matt and WordPress keep getting downranked, and that'll continue to happen as long as Matt is not interested in seriously discussing it. Or until they stop using company employees as flag-and-downvote farms.

tock 2y ago

tldr: I make more money than you so your points don't matter What's really embarrassing is the same few Automattic employees arguing for Matt online.

JamesSwift 2y ago
I had the same thought yesterday reading through some of these threads. Its great that things are part of the public record as a snapshot in time. But now these employees have all sorts of awkward google-able conversation starters for future interviews etc. I'm happy for them if they are standing up for what they believe, but also how can you be so naive?

dolni 2y ago

This article tries to provide cover for slamming DHH by opening with "this is a respectful debate". DHH, like anybody else, is imperfect. But the author acts like he is superior. He isn't. But I will say there is not much worse than a person who feigns respect and then goes on to say things like: "toxic personality and inability to scale teams" "it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach" (therapist really being the dig, here) "Why are you still so small?" "Instead of bragging about your beautiful office in the clouds, you should question why you can’t scale teams." If your respect for DHH was real, you would have given your feedback in a respectful way instead of writing some blog post with such incendiary comments.

oriettaxx 2y ago
it reminds my that crypto "genius" who kept saying: "are you still poor?", then was taken to prison

tock 2y ago

I don't even know how to describe this: https://x.com/ThePrimeagen/status/1845851330063028718 https://x.com/ThePrimeagen/status/1845851330063028718

pier25 2y ago
This is not related to the WP drama tho. https://casetext.com/case/attayeb-v-mullenweg https://casetext.com/case/attayeb-v-mullenweg
- ChallengeEup237 2y ago
  The actual lawsuits are available here to download, https://freewp.com/2024/10/14/matthew-charles-mullenweg-defendant/ https://freewp.com/2024/10/14/matthew-charles-mullenweg-defe...
Degorath 2y ago
What did it say?

wglb 2y ago

Suggesting that DHH should seek therapy is way out of line. > I’m unsure why you felt you had to insert yourself into this fight with Silver Lake / WP Engine and take their side, but here we are. It seems that the fight has been made public with photomatt's constant commentary, at least on HN. Unconvincing.

ankleturtle 2y ago
> Suggesting that DHH should seek therapy is way out of line. Matt already knows this.[0] photomatt: "It is also unethical to publicly speculate on my medication, medical state, or mental health." 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB1ZXFiEgJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB1ZXFiEgJY
- jrflowers 2y ago
  I love that people can say anything they want online. “It is unethical to publicly speculate on my mental health” is a sentence that sounds like it could be true, but it certainly is not. That’s not true! People are very much allowed to wonder out loud about extremely public behavior that has real impacts on real people. That argument sounds more like “it is unethical to treat me as anything but God’s Special Fancy Boy, as my crusade is righteous and my foes ontologically evil”, which has the opposite effect when you’re trying to discourage people from asking “What the fuck is going on with this guy?” I’ll refer to my previous comment on this ordeal as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41822606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41822606
slenk 2y ago
The instant I saw that I stopped reading. Matt does not seem like a great person.
- jeltz 2y ago
  Given how he is now accused of creating a toxic work environment for household staff and defending his mother when she sexually harassed the staff it does indeed seem like he is not a good person at all.

ptdorf 2y ago

> you should question why you can’t scale teams. They can afford not to.

tptacek 2y ago

David, perhaps it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach why you keep having these great ideas but cannot scale them beyond a handful of niche customers. I will give full credit and respect. 37signals inspired tons of what Automattic does! We’re now half a billion in revenue. Why are you still so small? Gonna go out on a limb here and say that following this paragraph with links to DHH's $2MM sports cars and his home office that costs an integer multiple of what my entire house costs sort of undercuts his argument.

itsdrewmiller 2y ago
He's playing both sides so he always comes out on top.

4ndrewl 2y ago

Missed out ", age 4" from the title.

gkapur 2y ago

Been watching this episode unfold on Twitter and has read about Matt’s domain hijacking of thesis, etc. It seems to me like Matt is the type of person who likes to hide behind character and other ad hominem attacks rather than addressing actual issues at hand. Perhaps this is because of a psychological issue but I can’t really know. Normally I would think the community would be repulsed by this and would find an alternative. What is remarkable is that there has not been enough community animus to fork relative to Terraform and OpenTofu. It shows the power of the underlying GPL license and “plugin” approach. Something to think about for other companies that may be thinking about relicensing versus just building a durable ecosystem around their proprietary brand and assets.

hluska 2y ago

Saying nothing is always an option. It’s too bad that Automattic won’t consider that option because over the last 24 hours this has gone from embarrassing to nasty. I didn’t expect a supply chain attack yesterday. And sure didn’t expect Mullenweg’s reply to DHH to be so childish.

pluc 2y ago
Seriously he needs to really weigh shutting the fuck up instead of doing this pointless arguing. WPEngine haven't said a thing and have gotten all the support because he keeps digging this hole. Hopefully the consequences of his actions will bring him back to reality, but the longer it goes unchecked the more damaging it gets
polotics 2y ago
Childish? Really? I read Matt's post as modern incivility, very grown-up nasty, one thin layer of fainted respectable sounding wordage wrapping extremely rude barbs.
- hluska 2y ago
  I think that most of us are more interested in value created than value personally captured.
madeofpalk 2y ago
Matt cannot help but just continuing to attempt to post through it. I'm seeing him all over the place in HN or even random Youtube video comments. Honestly feels like he's pretty... unwell or otherwise distracted/trying to distract.

slantedview 2y ago

This is less a response to the points that DHH raised than a personal attack against him.

pier25 2y ago
yeah total ad hominem

pelagicAustral 2y ago

"David, perhaps it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach why you keep having these great ideas but cannot scale them beyond a handful of niche customers." This is kind of intriguing to me too...

bigiain 2y ago
"I’ll just remind everyone at the start that this is a respectful debate. Matt, its probably way past time to put down the crackpipe and open the windows."

legitster 2y ago

> I was surprised someone as smart as DHH would fall for WP Engine’s lame deferral to make this about “GPL code” or forking, rather than trademarks. We have no problem with their use of GPL code, our beef is with their trademark abuse. Ah yes, defending trademarks. Really the rallying cry of the people. That's what everyone cares about here. Nice motte and bailey you have there. Also, Matt is not even reading Ruby on Rail's trademark clause that he posted: "You may use these marks to refer to Ruby on Rails in a way where it’s clear that you’re simply referring to the project, not claiming endorsement or association." Also, also Matt: If you are going to throw down over people about not donating enough to charity, you should really tell people what charities you are donating to. It better not turn out your charitable donations are to your own Wordpress org which we now know is little more than a marketing/PR department for Automattic.

ankleturtle 2y ago
Matt made a post a few weeks ago about his charitable donations.[0] It's really just a "I'm better than them" post. And it doesn't say where any of it was donated. 0. https://ma.tt/2024/09/charitable-contributions/ https://ma.tt/2024/09/charitable-contributions/
- legitster 2y ago
  That's exactly what I was referring to. For all we know these are self-dealing tax write-offs to his own foundation. The one that is currently doing dirty work for his private business.
  - ChallengeEup237 2y ago
    The Foundation's public filings are online, and I think they only had $22k in donations last year. Doesn't mean his contributions were all charitable, but they don't appear to have gone to the Foundation at least.
    - bigiain 2y ago
      How much would you bet against most (or all?) of Matt's "donations" being money he spent to keep wordpress.org running? (which he explicitly admits is not owned by the WordPress Foundation, but is owned by Matt personally)

Kye 2y ago

>> "And you can arbitrarily cut off anyone publishing with Hey, they have no open source rights." This is not a serious person. This is not a self-aware person.

blueridge 2y ago
Yeah, no idea why he'd make this statement. It's not relevant, not important, not tied to reality.

kibwen 2y ago

This is currently flagged, but I don't think it should be. Yes, it's unlikely to result in any constructive discussion here. At best we could remark that the author appears to be unwell and that taking this down could save him some face. However, the author is also an adult who is capable of taking responsibility for their own actions. In addition they are presenting themselves genuinely and sincerely here, which IMO is an important consideration for anyone who uses or is thinking about using WordPress. So yes, it's drama, but it's highly relevant drama to people who are making decisions of what stacks to build on. This is information that people to deserve to have, even if, perhaps, it's not the interpretation that the author intended to evoke.

Lorin 2y ago
The linked blog post seems to have been deleted
- serial_dev 2y ago
  https://archive.is/2024.10.15-041615/https://ma.tt/2024/10/on-dhh/ https://archive.is/2024.10.15-041615/https://ma.tt/2024/10/o...
  - fspoettel 2y ago
    This seems to have been edited already, it's missing some ad hominem attacks and the recommendation to see a therapist which were definitely present when this article was linked.
    - pluc 2y ago
      Here's a previous edit: https://archive.ph/7ZRbY https://archive.ph/7ZRbY
      - bsimpson 2y ago
        None of the archive links are loading for me, but maybe that's for the best.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mirzap 2y ago

I have no idea what is the point of this article. > Looks like ~943k lines of code, 143k from Basecamp org. Automattic publishes 6.58M lines of open source code, 6.9x more than you. Yet, we’re “doing open source dirty”? Whaaat! Since when is LoC metric of “dirtiness”? Your hostility towards community Matt is what makes you and Automattic “dirty”, your toxic leadership. Matt is clearly having a mental breakdown. I hope investors force him out.

nikolay 2y ago

[flagged]

znpy 2y ago

This is starting to get clownish. At this point I wonder when will Matt Mullenweg will start closing wordpress.com account owned by people that don't align with his opinions. There already is a checkbox to check for people affiliated in any way with wpengine, i wouldn't be surprised to see a checkbox for a field like "i agree with our lord an savior Matt Mullenweg in the WordPress vs WPEngine case".

Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago

I read half of the blog post and it's revolting. Wtf?

hobotime 2y ago

TLDR: DHH doesn't make kilo-millions so his ideas suck.

unconed 2y ago

>David, perhaps it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach why you keep having these great ideas but cannot scale them beyond a handful of niche customers. I will give full credit and respect. 37signals inspired tons of what Automattic does! We’re now half a billion in revenue. Why are you still so small? I'm just going to tell a little story here. A long time ago, I worked on a recolorable Drupal theme, which was to be the new default look (Garland). It was completed and awaiting the next major release. Before that happened though, Matt Mullenweg grabbed the theme and the assets from our repo, ported it to Wordpress, and offered it as a theme on wp dot com to his customers. When this was pointed out as being in extremely poor taste, he hid behind the GPL as the justification. WP was large enough already at the time that they could get away with stuff like this without suffering too much PR damage. In short, if he's bragging about how much money he's making, it's because he has few scruples and doesn't actually care about credit and respect.

ValentineC 2y ago
If this happened in public, links?
- pah861 2y ago
  here you go! https://acko.net/blog/wordpress-com-copies-drupal-theme/ https://acko.net/blog/wordpress-com-copies-drupal-theme/ https://wordpress.com/blog/2006/12/12/new-theme-garland-and-rockin-color-picker/ https://wordpress.com/blog/2006/12/12/new-theme-garland-and-...
unsnap_biceps 2y ago
I just read the links you gave about the port and I wanted to say I'm just sorry for both you and Stefan Nagtegaal. What a gut punch to not even get to release your work in the way you intended before it was taken. Ugh.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
2y ago

28304283409234 2y ago

This trolling is unworthy of Hackernews, IMHO. It is just mudslinging without content.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

pluc 2y ago

"I’ll just remind everyone at the start that this is a respectful debate", proceeds to insult the guy in every paragraph

alexander2002 2y ago

What is the endgoal for WpEngine.I am not following the drama closely. 1.Are they legally in the clear?(Note:Legally) 2.Can they rebrand to something other than Wp?

hadad 2y ago
the 'wp' word never been legally trademarked. The usage is okay until Sep 24th [1], but becoming problematic since the king mad [2] 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20240924024555/https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240924024555/https://wordpress... 2. https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/ https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/
- bigiain 2y ago
  To save a few clicks and page scans, In 1, the WordPress Foundation who owns the Wordpress trademark says: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. 2 changed that to say, presumably by Matt (or under Matt's instruction) ignoring or failing to get any legal advice, to: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress. "Please don't use the abbreviation 'WP' which is not a trademark we own, and that we've been telling everybody for years that they are free to use in any way, under these new conditions we made up today" - is not a legally binding requirement. It's "becoming problematic" only as evidence of the deranged behaviour of "the mad king". WPEngine, quite reasonably, for more than a decade have been running/building a business using a name based on what the WordPress Foundation said in 1. I find it extremely hard to believe that a court/judge could possibly find that "problematic" or rude that WordPress (.com, .org, or foundations) or Matt or Automattic - have any rights that prevent WPEngine (or any other company) from using "WP" in their name, even if it is widely understood to be an abbreviation of WordPress.
- FireBeyond 2y ago

puppycodes 2y ago

abolish copyright and move on

amanzi 2y ago

I feel sad saying this, but at this point I hope Matt falls hard over this whole episode. He's wilfully oblivious to how wrong he is - I find it hard to believe he can come back from this.

amanzi 2y ago
Replying to myself to note that Matt deleted the blog post. Not sure if that's because he's gaining some self-awareness or if he's finally taking some outside advice?

nbittich 2y ago

I was pretty neutral,but man this guy just can't stop. It's not gonna end nicely for you bro, just enjoy your wealth instead of destroying your health and reputation by literally annoying the entire world

LordAtlas 2y ago

DHH has responded on Twitter: https://x.com/dhh/status/1845887043748221421 https://x.com/dhh/status/1845887043748221421

thrillgore 2y ago

I never thought Matt's unhinged behavior would make DHH look sane, and private equity look reasonable, but here we are. I guess it's a good thing I moved to Hugo a year ago.

reconnecting 2y ago

DHH has replied in his blog (14 Oct): https://world.hey.com/dhh/capture-less-than-you-create-c30e462e https://world.hey.com/dhh/capture-less-than-you-create-c30e4...

tmsh 2y ago

Isn't the nuance / difference that wordpress hosting between wp engine and wordpress.org are competitors v. creating a platform/environment like rails that is by default meant to be used to create other things? It would be more like if rails had an arm that made money and someone cloned it and also tried to make money? I.e., the whole company was about rails and rails hosting and not about creating things with rails (basecamp) and worrying about other people who create things with rails (shopify, etc.) - that's a very different thing. I can see how then there'd be more pressure to look at trademark differences when the service provided is more similar? Or am I missing something?

SLWW 2y ago

This is one of those moments where you make your opponent look really good and you're too blind to see it. I never took much issue with DHH and now I feel I just side with him. Talk about being out of touch with everything Matt.

Terretta 2y ago

> It's even more outrageous that Automattic has chosen trademarks as their method to get their "Al Capone" ... I give you a gift of code, you accept the terms of the license. There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations... Except there is a second set of obligations, specifically designed to help avoid business confusion: trademarks. It's not clear why trademarks are considered outrageous. Rails™ matters to DHH, WordPress™ matters to Matt.

neduma 2y ago

> DHH claims to be an expert on open source, but his toxic personality and inability to scale teams means that although he has invented about half a trillion dollars worth of good ideas, most of the value has been captured by others. Just wondering about ruby, linux, etc. Poor Linus.

deepfriedchokes 2y ago

“This is a respectful debate” in paragraph one. Okay that’s good. “DHH has a toxic personality” in paragraph three. Uh oh.

omar12 2y ago

Genuine question, is Matt ok? I hope nothing bad is happening in his personal life.

reconnecting 2y ago

This page in Matt blog is not exist anymore. (404)

c4u2024 2y ago

he removed it - bing still has it in cache: https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=https%3a%2f%2fma.tt%2f2024%2f10%2fon-dhh%2f&d=2423457656957&mkt=de-DE&setlang=de-DE&w=fS5mn636Jv5NRuuJD0ffsP4n7qwvB3UX https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=https%3a%2f%2fma.tt%2f2024...

big-chungus4 2y ago

Thats right! 3.. 2.. 1.. FIGHT!!! JUGGERNAUT KICK!!!