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Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork

465 points by impish9208 2y ago

maxk42 2y ago
He's now actively hostile to the principles of open source.
- that_guy_iain 2y ago
  Now?! The dude hijacked a plugin.
  - endofreach 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - mthoms 2y ago
      It was hostile because: (1) it was made under false pretences; Matt blocked the plugin authors from updating their code, and then used that fact to claim he needed to take it over because of a lack of security updates. Reason (2) is that he didn’t “fork” the code to create a new plugin as is customary. He took over the existing listing (and its install base of several million), renamed it, and then forced his version into everyone’s sites. So despite having installed “Advanced Custom Fields” by WPEngine people woke up to their sites running “Secure Custom Fields” by Automattic. If that happened via NPM or any other package manager there would be outrage. It’s a supply chain attack, plain and simple. Reason (3) is that he then took the paid version of that same plugin and released it for free, despite having official documented rules that he himself wrote against such a practice. Nulled plugins (as the community calls them) are explicitly not allowed in the repository. In summary, this wasn’t a fork as we all understand it. This was a hostile take over of an existing install base without consent and contrary to the rules he, himself created for the plugin repository. Oh, and one more thing. Automattic is currently suing someone for doing exactly what he did (redistributing paid plugins). In that case, his lawyers flat out lied to the Dutch court and claimed that the GPL doesn’t allow others to re-sell GPL code. He got caught and the judge was NOT impressed. Imagine calling “open source” your religion but then lying to a judge about what that actually means. The man is a greedy, egotistical, tyrant.
      - nchmy 2y ago
        Got a sauce for the Dutch case and him getting caught?
        mthoms 2y ago
        https://meta.festingervault.com/t/announcement-of-reopening-the-vault-we-need-your-support-now/106047 https://meta.festingervault.com/t/announcement-of-reopening-... To be clear: I’m no fan of what these guys are doing and I think they’ll probably be liable for TM infringement (but maybe not copyright infringement). All that aside, Automattic lying about what the GPL means in a court of law is truly disgusting. Especially since Matt loves to talk about the freedoms afforded by the GPL and how he is its biggest champion. The questions around reselling GPL code are well settled (anyone can sell GPL code). One just needs to read their FAQ to see that what Automattic’s lawyers argued in court is total bullshit.
      - endofreach 2y ago
        Great replay, thanks. Also i actually wanted to write more to explain my point. And in no way was i trying to say he isn't greedy, egotistical or a tyrant. My point was not about his methods nor his person. I believe if more people acted like him it wouldn't be as bad for (F)OSS compared to how it would be if (even) more companies base their whole existence on specific OSS but never give back or support. Not sure why i got flagged though. downvotes i expected, but flagged? Sure it wasn't you.
        mthoms 2y ago
        I didn't flag or downvote it FWIW.
        endofreach 2y ago
        Damn, now that i read my "sure it wasn't you" it seems as if it was meant sarcastically. Just to be clear: it was not. I really appreciate your reply & just wanted to make clear that i know you didn't flag me. I don't think a person responding that well & nicely would flag my kinda comment. Anyway, good day my friend in another universe!
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I haven’t followed this whole controversy closely but I don’t see a problem with this personally. It’s aggressive but this person spent most of their life building Wordpress to what it is, giving it dedicated focus for a couple decades. Why should WPEngine or others get to suck up the money from that?
- stonogo 2y ago
  I didn't know someone who worked on a piece software for a long time was entitled to every dollar everywhere associated with it! I'll have to send some emails; I think I've got some money inbound. It's ironic he's so terrified of someone forking Wordpress, since Wordpress itself is a fork.
  - mixdup 2y ago
    >I didn't know someone who worked on a piece software for a long time was entitled to every dollar everywhere associated with it! Parent comment OP must work for developer relations at Apple
- slyall 2y ago
  Suck up money from an open source project? Others making money from an open source project is kinda the point of open source. Also the people whose accounts are being deactivated have by definition contributed to the project in the past. It's not just one guy who created it all. This is a wordpress fork that will cost people to run and assuming WPEngine is supporting it it'll cost them money to support.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    > Others making money from an open source project is kinda the point of open source. It’s always interesting when people become personally offended when someone dares to make money off of the project they personally open sourced before. Why would you license your stuff with a license that explicitly allows that if you’re salty about the consequences later? Maybe chose a license you actually stand behind and can live with.
croemer 2y ago
techcrunch.com seems down across the board right now? [20:27 UTC]
- robocat 2y ago
  Here's the archive link to read the article: https://archive.is/1YKki https://archive.is/1YKki
  - croemer 2y ago
    Which I created to read the article in the end :)
- ValentineC 2y ago
  I wonder if there's some irony in how TechCrunch is hosted on Automattic's servers: https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/15/thanks-for-the-15-minute-break-wordpress/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/15/thanks-for-the-15-minute-b... https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/wordpress-vip-go-sites-are-experience-outages-yes-ours-included/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/wordpress-vip-go-sites-are...
  - croemer 2y ago
    Good find! I was briefly thinking what if techcrunch was using Automattic but quickly dismissed the thought.
- Implicated 2y ago
  Brave to post this considering their platform.
croemer 2y ago
https://archive.is/1YKki https://archive.is/1YKki
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: Aligning Automattic's Sponsored Contributions to WordPress https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138 WordPress: Joost/Karim Fork https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42662801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42662801
- itronitron 2y ago
  and also: Forking is Beautiful - WordPress News >> https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/ https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    The link to “open press” was a bit confusing since the website no longer mentions that name, boasting an open source knowledge graph for LLM agents now, but with a little jumping around I found the empty git repo with the feature list quoted in the blog https://github.com/OpenAgentsInc/openpress-orig https://github.com/OpenAgentsInc/openpress-orig
sneak 2y ago
People who don’t support forking don’t actually support the concept of open source/free software. Forking is essential.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Exactly. No one should care if matt is unpleasant when they can just fork and be done with him.
  - saaaaaam 2y ago
    That disregards the value and recognition of the Wordpress brand beyond people who understand the concept of forking. The problem is that the tens of thousands of small businesses who placed their trust in Wordpress will be damaged by this. I know - anecdotally - that many of those people like Wordpress “because it is free” (like both beer and speech) and because they know - even fuzzily - that because of that there’s lots of cool useful stuff that is available. Now, sure, a lot of that cool useful stuff will still work with a fork. But it splits the message and gradually - not overnight - people developing that cool and useful stuff may lose faith and do something else. What Millenweg is doing hits at the very heart of what open source means - and what community means - and is, as far as I can see, an absolutely cynical move made in the pursuit of profit and vanity.
    - TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
      I agree with you. I run a business that is invested in the WordPress ecosystem. It’s going to be a non-trivial endeavor to get a fork seriously running and reliably delivered. In the meantime the community has to suffer this clown’s further antics.
      - rtsil 2y ago
        Get the support of Cpanel for the fork and it will replace Wordpress. Cpanel powers a significant amount of Wordpress sites, possibly even the majority of them.
adamtaylor_13 2y ago
What the fork is he thinking? (Sorry I’ll see myself out)
gpm 2y ago
Huh, the injunction against "blocking, disabling, or interfering with WPEngine’s and/or its employees’, users’, customers’, or partners’ (hereinafter “WPEngine and Related Entities”) access to wordpress.org;" [0] is still in effect right? There's nothing on the docket saying otherwise... These contributors are "partners" under the common meaning of the word right? After all the tweet [1] that Matt links to from his own blog post [2] says > We are committed to working with Joost, Karim, and other respected voices in the community to ensure WordPress’s future is stronger than ever. That sounds like a partnership to me. [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.64.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... [1] https://x.com/wpengine/status/1870242287218790849 https://x.com/wpengine/status/1870242287218790849 [2] https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/
- that_guy_iain 2y ago
  That does not sound like a partnership at all. It sounds like an intent to work with the community.
  - gpm 2y ago
    Is "committed to working with" not a subset of the class of "partners" in your vernacular? What do you think is required to be "partners"? And it names the specific members of the community, Joost, Karim, who subsequently had their accounts deactivated, not just the community at large.
    - jcranmer 2y ago
      > What do you think is required to be "partners"? We're not working on vernacular definition here, we're working on legal definition. And while I'm not sure of the particular definition that's going to be in play, I strongly suspect that the actual definition is going to require some sort of "meeting of the minds" and (not necessarily written) partnership agreement to qualify as a "partner" for the purpose of the injunction. "We are committed to working with [...] We stand ready" isn't strong enough to actually constitute a partnership, I'm pretty sure--it is at best an expression of intent to make one.
ValentineC 2y ago
The TechCrunch headline is not accurate. As far as I understand, none of the people whose WordPress accounts were deactivated were planning a fork. The current top comment and discussion on this Reddit thread provide good context: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hylx50/matt_trolling_those_trying_to_maintain_wp_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hylx50/matt_tro...
- baobun 2y ago
  So it's actually worse and more scandalous than the clickbait headline claims. I guess that's an achievent on @photomatt's part.
- softwaredoug 2y ago
  Basically they discussed reorganizing governance of Wordpress, not necessarily forking.
itronitron 2y ago
"Collectively, de Valk and Marucchi contribute around 10 hours per week to various aspects of the WordPress open source project." Is that all it takes these days?
iambateman 2y ago
This is - without question - the best thing that could happen for their fork. It’s generating 100x the amount of attention they would’ve gotten otherwise. I’ve known about Joost for many years and have a ton of respect for his work. Best of luck making this happen!
- TehCorwiz 2y ago
  If they weren't planning a fork like one of the other comments suggests they totally should now because the have the media initiative, people will be looking for it. Strike while the iron is hot basically.
- mthoms 2y ago
  They never claimed to be starting a fork (at least not yet)[0]. They only called for reform to the existing governance structures.[1] Matt Mullenweg painted it as a fork to suit his narrative and pre-emptively poison the well (by implying they are incompetent) of a potential future fork.[2] He's done that a couple times now. He claims to support forks and says "I'll even promote them on WordPress.org" (paraphrase) but what he does is post before a fork is even ready or properly organized. Thereby sabotaging the effort and making everyone involved look bad. [3] It's truly evil. [0] https://x.com/jdevalk/status/1878210129914409063 https://x.com/jdevalk/status/1878210129914409063 [1] https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/ https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/ [2] https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ [3] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/ https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/ EDIT: Matt just posted another childish taunt in response to Joost's clarification. See https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815 https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815
legitster 2y ago
Oh man. This isn't just "some contributors". Joost is basically one of the founding fathers of the Wordpress ecosystem. Him getting deactivated is like Stalin assassinating Trotsky.
pessimizer 2y ago
> This post was updated to clarify that de Valk and Marucchi haven’t specifically said they have planned a fork, and that they were hoping to create mirrors for the plugins and themes repositories, while also offering to lead on the next release of WordPress. The plan was to scrape the site and set up an alternative, not to fork Wordpress. The headline was deliberately written to deceive. ----- edit: that being said, a distributed model would be best for all situations like this. I still can't get over the fact that Rust has a github dependency. And I'm sure they're not the only one. https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/326 https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/326
- saaaaaam 2y ago
  Messy Wordpress drama is messy Wordpress drama though, and that’s the problem, whatever the truth of one or another story. Have I unflinchingly recommends Wordpress to dozens of people over the years? Yes. Have they gone ahead and used it? Yes. Have I helped them get set up? Yes. Was it worth staking a little bit of my reputation on Wordpress saying “this will just work, and when it doesn’t there are loads of people who can help”? Yes. Will I continue to do that when there is this insane level of Mullenweg-induced teenage-boy-angst highschool drama surrounding Wordpress? Hell no. And that’s the problem. This nonsense kills the community goodwill around the software. And that’s really really sad, and all of Mullenweg’s making because his ego has run away with itself. It must be really tough being a “software celebrity” for your entire adult life. But it seems like his psyche has got stuck when he got “famous”. You see this with kids in bands who get too rich, too famous, too fast - and the fallout is similar: destroy everything in a bonfire of vanity.
  - acomjean 2y ago
    this. Wordpress was already in a precarious situaton with alternatives like squarespace and wix etc.. Wordpress was useful, because lots of people know it well enough. When your consultant can't be reached someone else can take it over and do ok. I even liked the Gutenberg page layout tool. >It must be really tough being a “software celebrity” for your entire adult l ife. I imagine it is hard. He didn't make the fortunes of others, but he had a pretty loyal and really nice community. One of the best. Its what made wordpress grow and be so successful. As a wordpress professional said at a recent meetup, its hard to recommend wordpress, when you know the client will Google it an all this nonsense comes up.
curiousgal 2y ago
[flagged]
saaaaaam 2y ago
This blogpost is astonishing. It’s like Mullenweg has been taking lessons from the Trump school of media relations. “Joost is a self-proclaimed leader in the SEO space, an industry known for making the web better… he was not effective at leading the marketing team or doing the work himself… Karim leads a small WordPress agency called Crowd Favorite which counts clients such as Lexus and ABC and employs ~50 people… In the meantime, on top of my day job running a 1,700+ person company with 25+ products, which I typically work 60-80 hours a week on…” It’s as if he’s saying “these little people are barely worthy of my attention and have achieved nothing, compare them to me I’m powerful, I’m important, you should respect my power and importance…”
diggan 2y ago
From Mullenweg (https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/): > To make this easy and hopefully give this project the push it needs to get off the ground, I’m deactivating the .org accounts of Joost, Karim, Se Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen. I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort. He seems to be justifying the deactivation by claiming it will 'help them', somehow?
- j45 2y ago
  It feels like a backhanded compliment and encouragement. If there wasn’t a threat perceived you could with them well and ask them to let you know them how they might need help.
- sd9 2y ago
  This post is wild. Mullenweg comes across as completely unstable, insecure, and appears to feel very threatened. He takes every opportunity he can to give a thinly veiled insult. Wordpress is a giant. If he’s as confident as he tries to present in this post, he could just do nothing and Wordpress would prove the more valuable software in the end. Instead, he’s accelerating progress on the fork. He could have done with taking a few deep breaths before publishing this post.
  - bdndndndbve 2y ago
    Have you followed this at all? The man has been in HN threads arguing about posts about himself for months. He's on some kind of scorched earth ego trip. His profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=photomatt https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=photomatt
    - mingus88 2y ago
      It feels like this decade or so is defined by people who just don't know when to fade out and retire with their legacies intact. Whether it be this guy, elderly politicians, or billionaires with social media addictions, everyone's lives would be far better, including their own, if they simply knew when to stfu and enjoy their success in peace.
LexiMax 2y ago
It's kind of wild that he's escalated from stalking ex-Tumblr users a year ago to...this. I guess when people show you who you they are, believe them.
GavinAnderegg 2y ago
In case anyone is looking for some background on this, I wrote this post before seeing the news today. Stuff's not been great in the WordPress community leading up to this point, and Mullenweg deciding to deactivate the accounts of folks who might start new forks certainly isn't helping matters. https://anderegg.ca/2025/01/11/wordpress-is-in-trouble https://anderegg.ca/2025/01/11/wordpress-is-in-trouble
- SSLy 2y ago
  also https://lwn.net/Articles/993895/ https://lwn.net/Articles/993895/
rmccue 2y ago
This isn’t unexpected; I’ve been deactivated on Slack since very early in this dispute, and later banned from the issue tracker as well. I’ve been contributing for 20 years to the project, am a committer, and built several large parts of WordPress including the REST API. Matt is banning anyone who speaks out at all, even when they agree with points he’s made. A large group of contributors felt they had to make an anonymous statement from fear of the same retribution I suffered: https://www.therepository.email/core-contributors-voice-concerns-over-mullenwegs-control-and-culture-of-fear-in-wordpress-community https://www.therepository.email/core-contributors-voice-conc... (I am a less active direct contributor these days, so I’m still able to contribute even while blocked - but many people’s livelihoods depend on it, as sponsored contributors.)
- wyclif 2y ago
  I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that Matt Mullenweg is in desperate need of an intervention. Seriously, the man should seek professional help.
  - Implicated 2y ago
    I've been saying this on twitter for months now. I don't believe this is a mentally healthy individual. His continued defence of his behavior with the whole "if you knew what was happening you would understand" style responses indicates he's lost in the sauce. If he's not having some sort of mental health crisis it really begs to question how we got here with someone like him running those organizations for this long. If he is, and he makes it out of this state, I feel for the emotions he's going to have to deal with when he sees (with a different perspective) what he's done to what is ultimately his life's work. It's sad. All the way around, truly just sad.
    - ookblah 2y ago
      I thought that too until you go down the rabbit hole and realize it's been this way since apparently the beginning. It's also interesting to note just how hard everyone was tearing the author apart in the comments only for it to basically become true a decade later. https://web.archive.org/web/20110117190122/http://wpblogger.com/matt-should-resign.php https://web.archive.org/web/20110117190122/http://wpblogger.... I guess money is just some force multiplier for negative aspects of someone's personality. Just never get to see it in the beginning.
freefaler 2y ago
I've been following the whole story and from what it looks Matt thinks that WordPress is his own property. When something goes open source even the creator needs to be wise enough to understand that it's not his property anymore. I've seen this in many "hybrid" startups that plan to solve the marketing/distribution/ecosystem problem with "partial open source". But the history shows where these frequently end up. You can't have full ownership of something that you've released to the world, but it takes balls to admit it to yourself.
- saaaaaam 2y ago
  It is still his property though because he still effectively owns and controls the trademark, despite making efforts to make it appear that he does not.
mthoms 2y ago
Joost clarified on Twitter he never asked for a fork. He was asking for reform of the current structures. Which is plain to see from his original post. Matt was the only to one to claim there was a fork forthcoming. He literally made it up. In case there was any question about the utter pettiness of Mr Mullenweg, here's something he JUST posted in response to Joost's clarification. https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815 https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815
dylan604 2y ago
I feel like Matt is one step away from hosting a telethon showing his "evidence". He's clearly a fan of the idea that the vast majority of the public does not care about anything other than what the loudest voice in the room is saying. Say it loud, say it often. Even if what is being said is contrary to evidence, most people are not going to look at it any further.
- nchmy 2y ago
  Absolutely. Despite overwhelming evidence against everything that he says, I continue to see many absolute half-wits defending him in various forums
- BeefWellington 2y ago
  Is that a wrong take though? The instability this is causing is, mostly from what I can tell, strictly tied to the OSS dev community. I haven't seen tonnes of users talking about it or even caring enough to see what the fuss is about. To be clear, I think what he's doing is bad in a variety of ways. I may be just jaded by years of watching corporations ignore the things that "should" matter and never being punished for it.
LeonB 2y ago
Mullenweg needs to be more careful doing this. The moment Mullenweg realises exactly what Mullenweg’s doing to WordPress, Mullenweg will deactivate Mullenweg’s account.
kalleboo 2y ago
Is this a correct interpretation of the timeline? 1. Matt announces that he's going to effectively stop contributing to WordPress for now https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-sponsored-contributions-to-wordpress/ https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-spons... 2. Others in the community say they'll pick up the torch in leading the next releases within the current WordPress project 3. Matt says "nuh-uh, I'm busy self-sabotaging my own project here in an attempt to prove how none of you can live without me, stop interfering and go become irrelevant in a fork somewhere instead" https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/
- curiousgal 2y ago
  0. He pathetically tries to extrot money and fails miserably.
plussed_reader 2y ago
As someone entirely on the outside looking in, WordPress is sounding like more drama than it's worth.
ookblah 2y ago
I know assholes like this exist everywhere, but it's the constant need to re-affirm that he's the "nice guy" while brazenly punching you in the face that unsettles me somehow. At least I know what I'm getting with certain politicians or tech moguls when they speak heh.
- softwaredoug 2y ago
  Some people thrive on the drama they create and feed on the outrage. I try to remember that when consuming content about certain personalities. The outrage they elicit is what they love. So I try to roll my eyes and not give it to them.
Havoc 2y ago
At this stage some sort of fork seems inevitable. This insanity is entirely unrecoverable on current trajectory
Aeolun 2y ago
Can’t someone just kick this block of lead around their legs out of whatever corporate structure Wordpress.com has? This is getting to comical proportions.
- RF_Savage 2y ago
  He owns 84% of Automattic, so likely not.
edoceo 2y ago
Looking forward to the summit in January 2026.
sa752 2y ago
Again, the problem with forking WP is wordpress.org. yes you can setup a new plugin/theme repository. The problem is how does someone who owns a plugin on .org validate their ownership on the new repository?
- gitaarik 2y ago
  Well, you can ask them to upload a particular file with a particular key to their plugin on WordPress.org. That way you can prove you have access, and you should be allowed ownership of the plugin on the fork.
- mysidia11 2y ago
  The existing plugin list typically list the author name with a link to their homepage for each plugin. One method would be for someone to scrape and cache the existing plugin list along with each known plugin author's contact/home page information. When authors sign up for an account on the new site: have the signup process provide the user a "hash code" to insert anywhere they want into the HTML code or as a HTML comment or header on their homepage to confirm author access to the plugin page on the new site.
ProofHouse 2y ago
total piece of work this dude, I abandon any and ALL things that even mention wordpress and will never touch again. Who knows what this guy will do next.
mmooss 2y ago
Many here complain about Mullenweg's boundary-crossing, counterproductive, acting out. Yet many are following Mullenweg's lead - the comments here seem like the worst HN behavior I've seen. Seriously, perhaps people can empathize with how Mullenweg came to behave this way. When people around you are doing it, it affects you; it subconsciously sets new norms, resets the boundaries in your mind. It impacts your emotions - you are drawn into their emotional state. And then you start acting like them. Many, many people I know and in the public eye professed extreme dislike for Trump's behavior, but my impression is that over the years, many of the same people act more and more like him. The trick is that when someone violates your values, you don't want to do the human thing and follow them - we're social creatures, we instinctively follow the crowd. You want to consciously be a leader, consciously remember your values and reset them, and lead the herd to a better place. That's why calm under fire, grace under pressure, dignity and composure are so important.
- gitaarik 2y ago
  Yeah if you like power (and subsequently lots of money, because that gives power) and you become more addicted to it, you lose more and more morals. You need more of it all the time to compensate for the shame about leaving your morals behind. If you see other people becoming like that too; they are starting their journey to power and addiction. But we're not all necessarily into that.
dbg31415 2y ago
Is this how open-source works now? Odd interpenetration of GNU.
ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
Stop me if you've heard this one: - Woman broaches the topic of changing the nature of her relationship with a man. - Man attacks woman for it. - Man cuts woman off from everything and slanders woman to all her colleagues. - Man says his abuse of woman is for her own good, and he's actually helping her. - Man has a track record of doing this to people who question him or who he otherwise doesn't like. Is this the archetypical spousal abuser? Someone showing all 3 of the dark triad (narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy)? Yes on both counts, and also business as usual for matt, CEO of a multimillion dollar company and head of the wordpress foundation. I guess money can't buy being a decent human. Seriously though, this kind of person who thinks their personal ends justify any means, is dangerous. I would not want to associate with or be physically near such an unstable, abusive person.
gitaarik 2y ago
Why hasn't the whole community moved to a Matt-free fork and host? Someone should just take the leadership in this and get everyone together. Come on, nobody wants to keep dealing with Matt, it's a useless fight, sooner or later the fork has to come anyway. I'm not into WordPress, but if I was one of the main contributers I would not wait any longer.
74gee 2y ago
What a fucking goon, he's totally lost the plot. I hope Mullenweg is finished now before he destroys it all - he's useless anyway.

465 points by impish9208 2y ago

maxk42 2y ago

He's now actively hostile to the principles of open source.

that_guy_iain 2y ago
Now?! The dude hijacked a plugin.
- endofreach 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mthoms 2y ago
    It was hostile because: (1) it was made under false pretences; Matt blocked the plugin authors from updating their code, and then used that fact to claim he needed to take it over because of a lack of security updates. Reason (2) is that he didn’t “fork” the code to create a new plugin as is customary. He took over the existing listing (and its install base of several million), renamed it, and then forced his version into everyone’s sites. So despite having installed “Advanced Custom Fields” by WPEngine people woke up to their sites running “Secure Custom Fields” by Automattic. If that happened via NPM or any other package manager there would be outrage. It’s a supply chain attack, plain and simple. Reason (3) is that he then took the paid version of that same plugin and released it for free, despite having official documented rules that he himself wrote against such a practice. Nulled plugins (as the community calls them) are explicitly not allowed in the repository. In summary, this wasn’t a fork as we all understand it. This was a hostile take over of an existing install base without consent and contrary to the rules he, himself created for the plugin repository. Oh, and one more thing. Automattic is currently suing someone for doing exactly what he did (redistributing paid plugins). In that case, his lawyers flat out lied to the Dutch court and claimed that the GPL doesn’t allow others to re-sell GPL code. He got caught and the judge was NOT impressed. Imagine calling “open source” your religion but then lying to a judge about what that actually means. The man is a greedy, egotistical, tyrant.
    - nchmy 2y ago
      Got a sauce for the Dutch case and him getting caught?
      - mthoms 2y ago
        https://meta.festingervault.com/t/announcement-of-reopening-the-vault-we-need-your-support-now/106047 https://meta.festingervault.com/t/announcement-of-reopening-... To be clear: I’m no fan of what these guys are doing and I think they’ll probably be liable for TM infringement (but maybe not copyright infringement). All that aside, Automattic lying about what the GPL means in a court of law is truly disgusting. Especially since Matt loves to talk about the freedoms afforded by the GPL and how he is its biggest champion. The questions around reselling GPL code are well settled (anyone can sell GPL code). One just needs to read their FAQ to see that what Automattic’s lawyers argued in court is total bullshit.
    - endofreach 2y ago
      Great replay, thanks. Also i actually wanted to write more to explain my point. And in no way was i trying to say he isn't greedy, egotistical or a tyrant. My point was not about his methods nor his person. I believe if more people acted like him it wouldn't be as bad for (F)OSS compared to how it would be if (even) more companies base their whole existence on specific OSS but never give back or support. Not sure why i got flagged though. downvotes i expected, but flagged? Sure it wasn't you.
      - mthoms 2y ago
        I didn't flag or downvote it FWIW.
        endofreach 2y ago
        Damn, now that i read my "sure it wasn't you" it seems as if it was meant sarcastically. Just to be clear: it was not. I really appreciate your reply & just wanted to make clear that i know you didn't flag me. I don't think a person responding that well & nicely would flag my kinda comment. Anyway, good day my friend in another universe!

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

I haven’t followed this whole controversy closely but I don’t see a problem with this personally. It’s aggressive but this person spent most of their life building Wordpress to what it is, giving it dedicated focus for a couple decades. Why should WPEngine or others get to suck up the money from that?

stonogo 2y ago
I didn't know someone who worked on a piece software for a long time was entitled to every dollar everywhere associated with it! I'll have to send some emails; I think I've got some money inbound. It's ironic he's so terrified of someone forking Wordpress, since Wordpress itself is a fork.
- mixdup 2y ago
  >I didn't know someone who worked on a piece software for a long time was entitled to every dollar everywhere associated with it! Parent comment OP must work for developer relations at Apple
slyall 2y ago
Suck up money from an open source project? Others making money from an open source project is kinda the point of open source. Also the people whose accounts are being deactivated have by definition contributed to the project in the past. It's not just one guy who created it all. This is a wordpress fork that will cost people to run and assuming WPEngine is supporting it it'll cost them money to support.
- echoangle 2y ago
  > Others making money from an open source project is kinda the point of open source. It’s always interesting when people become personally offended when someone dares to make money off of the project they personally open sourced before. Why would you license your stuff with a license that explicitly allows that if you’re salty about the consequences later? Maybe chose a license you actually stand behind and can live with.

croemer 2y ago

techcrunch.com seems down across the board right now? [20:27 UTC]

robocat 2y ago
Here's the archive link to read the article: https://archive.is/1YKki https://archive.is/1YKki
- croemer 2y ago
  Which I created to read the article in the end :)
ValentineC 2y ago
I wonder if there's some irony in how TechCrunch is hosted on Automattic's servers: https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/15/thanks-for-the-15-minute-break-wordpress/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/15/thanks-for-the-15-minute-b... https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/wordpress-vip-go-sites-are-experience-outages-yes-ours-included/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/wordpress-vip-go-sites-are...
- croemer 2y ago
  Good find! I was briefly thinking what if techcrunch was using Automattic but quickly dismissed the thought.
Implicated 2y ago
Brave to post this considering their platform.

croemer 2y ago

https://archive.is/1YKki https://archive.is/1YKki

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: Aligning Automattic's Sponsored Contributions to WordPress https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138 WordPress: Joost/Karim Fork https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42662801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42662801

itronitron 2y ago
and also: Forking is Beautiful - WordPress News >> https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/ https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  The link to “open press” was a bit confusing since the website no longer mentions that name, boasting an open source knowledge graph for LLM agents now, but with a little jumping around I found the empty git repo with the feature list quoted in the blog https://github.com/OpenAgentsInc/openpress-orig https://github.com/OpenAgentsInc/openpress-orig

sneak 2y ago

People who don’t support forking don’t actually support the concept of open source/free software. Forking is essential.

throwaway48476 2y ago
Exactly. No one should care if matt is unpleasant when they can just fork and be done with him.
- saaaaaam 2y ago
  That disregards the value and recognition of the Wordpress brand beyond people who understand the concept of forking. The problem is that the tens of thousands of small businesses who placed their trust in Wordpress will be damaged by this. I know - anecdotally - that many of those people like Wordpress “because it is free” (like both beer and speech) and because they know - even fuzzily - that because of that there’s lots of cool useful stuff that is available. Now, sure, a lot of that cool useful stuff will still work with a fork. But it splits the message and gradually - not overnight - people developing that cool and useful stuff may lose faith and do something else. What Millenweg is doing hits at the very heart of what open source means - and what community means - and is, as far as I can see, an absolutely cynical move made in the pursuit of profit and vanity.
  - TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
    I agree with you. I run a business that is invested in the WordPress ecosystem. It’s going to be a non-trivial endeavor to get a fork seriously running and reliably delivered. In the meantime the community has to suffer this clown’s further antics.
    - rtsil 2y ago
      Get the support of Cpanel for the fork and it will replace Wordpress. Cpanel powers a significant amount of Wordpress sites, possibly even the majority of them.

adamtaylor_13 2y ago

What the fork is he thinking? (Sorry I’ll see myself out)

gpm 2y ago

Huh, the injunction against "blocking, disabling, or interfering with WPEngine’s and/or its employees’, users’, customers’, or partners’ (hereinafter “WPEngine and Related Entities”) access to wordpress.org;" [0] is still in effect right? There's nothing on the docket saying otherwise... These contributors are "partners" under the common meaning of the word right? After all the tweet [1] that Matt links to from his own blog post [2] says > We are committed to working with Joost, Karim, and other respected voices in the community to ensure WordPress’s future is stronger than ever. That sounds like a partnership to me. [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.64.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... [1] https://x.com/wpengine/status/1870242287218790849 https://x.com/wpengine/status/1870242287218790849 [2] https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/

that_guy_iain 2y ago
That does not sound like a partnership at all. It sounds like an intent to work with the community.
- gpm 2y ago
  Is "committed to working with" not a subset of the class of "partners" in your vernacular? What do you think is required to be "partners"? And it names the specific members of the community, Joost, Karim, who subsequently had their accounts deactivated, not just the community at large.
  - jcranmer 2y ago
    > What do you think is required to be "partners"? We're not working on vernacular definition here, we're working on legal definition. And while I'm not sure of the particular definition that's going to be in play, I strongly suspect that the actual definition is going to require some sort of "meeting of the minds" and (not necessarily written) partnership agreement to qualify as a "partner" for the purpose of the injunction. "We are committed to working with [...] We stand ready" isn't strong enough to actually constitute a partnership, I'm pretty sure--it is at best an expression of intent to make one.

ValentineC 2y ago

The TechCrunch headline is not accurate. As far as I understand, none of the people whose WordPress accounts were deactivated were planning a fork. The current top comment and discussion on this Reddit thread provide good context: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hylx50/matt_trolling_those_trying_to_maintain_wp_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hylx50/matt_tro...

baobun 2y ago
So it's actually worse and more scandalous than the clickbait headline claims. I guess that's an achievent on @photomatt's part.
softwaredoug 2y ago
Basically they discussed reorganizing governance of Wordpress, not necessarily forking.

itronitron 2y ago

"Collectively, de Valk and Marucchi contribute around 10 hours per week to various aspects of the WordPress open source project." Is that all it takes these days?

iambateman 2y ago

This is - without question - the best thing that could happen for their fork. It’s generating 100x the amount of attention they would’ve gotten otherwise. I’ve known about Joost for many years and have a ton of respect for his work. Best of luck making this happen!

TehCorwiz 2y ago
If they weren't planning a fork like one of the other comments suggests they totally should now because the have the media initiative, people will be looking for it. Strike while the iron is hot basically.
mthoms 2y ago
They never claimed to be starting a fork (at least not yet)[0]. They only called for reform to the existing governance structures.[1] Matt Mullenweg painted it as a fork to suit his narrative and pre-emptively poison the well (by implying they are incompetent) of a potential future fork.[2] He's done that a couple times now. He claims to support forks and says "I'll even promote them on WordPress.org" (paraphrase) but what he does is post before a fork is even ready or properly organized. Thereby sabotaging the effort and making everyone involved look bad. [3] It's truly evil. [0] https://x.com/jdevalk/status/1878210129914409063 https://x.com/jdevalk/status/1878210129914409063 [1] https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/ https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/ [2] https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ [3] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/ https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/ EDIT: Matt just posted another childish taunt in response to Joost's clarification. See https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815 https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815

legitster 2y ago

Oh man. This isn't just "some contributors". Joost is basically one of the founding fathers of the Wordpress ecosystem. Him getting deactivated is like Stalin assassinating Trotsky.

pessimizer 2y ago

> This post was updated to clarify that de Valk and Marucchi haven’t specifically said they have planned a fork, and that they were hoping to create mirrors for the plugins and themes repositories, while also offering to lead on the next release of WordPress. The plan was to scrape the site and set up an alternative, not to fork Wordpress. The headline was deliberately written to deceive. ----- edit: that being said, a distributed model would be best for all situations like this. I still can't get over the fact that Rust has a github dependency. And I'm sure they're not the only one. https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/326 https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/326

saaaaaam 2y ago
Messy Wordpress drama is messy Wordpress drama though, and that’s the problem, whatever the truth of one or another story. Have I unflinchingly recommends Wordpress to dozens of people over the years? Yes. Have they gone ahead and used it? Yes. Have I helped them get set up? Yes. Was it worth staking a little bit of my reputation on Wordpress saying “this will just work, and when it doesn’t there are loads of people who can help”? Yes. Will I continue to do that when there is this insane level of Mullenweg-induced teenage-boy-angst highschool drama surrounding Wordpress? Hell no. And that’s the problem. This nonsense kills the community goodwill around the software. And that’s really really sad, and all of Mullenweg’s making because his ego has run away with itself. It must be really tough being a “software celebrity” for your entire adult life. But it seems like his psyche has got stuck when he got “famous”. You see this with kids in bands who get too rich, too famous, too fast - and the fallout is similar: destroy everything in a bonfire of vanity.
- acomjean 2y ago
  this. Wordpress was already in a precarious situaton with alternatives like squarespace and wix etc.. Wordpress was useful, because lots of people know it well enough. When your consultant can't be reached someone else can take it over and do ok. I even liked the Gutenberg page layout tool. >It must be really tough being a “software celebrity” for your entire adult l ife. I imagine it is hard. He didn't make the fortunes of others, but he had a pretty loyal and really nice community. One of the best. Its what made wordpress grow and be so successful. As a wordpress professional said at a recent meetup, its hard to recommend wordpress, when you know the client will Google it an all this nonsense comes up.

curiousgal 2y ago

[flagged]

saaaaaam 2y ago

This blogpost is astonishing. It’s like Mullenweg has been taking lessons from the Trump school of media relations. “Joost is a self-proclaimed leader in the SEO space, an industry known for making the web better… he was not effective at leading the marketing team or doing the work himself… Karim leads a small WordPress agency called Crowd Favorite which counts clients such as Lexus and ABC and employs ~50 people… In the meantime, on top of my day job running a 1,700+ person company with 25+ products, which I typically work 60-80 hours a week on…” It’s as if he’s saying “these little people are barely worthy of my attention and have achieved nothing, compare them to me I’m powerful, I’m important, you should respect my power and importance…”

diggan 2y ago

From Mullenweg (https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/): > To make this easy and hopefully give this project the push it needs to get off the ground, I’m deactivating the .org accounts of Joost, Karim, Se Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen. I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort. He seems to be justifying the deactivation by claiming it will 'help them', somehow?

j45 2y ago
It feels like a backhanded compliment and encouragement. If there wasn’t a threat perceived you could with them well and ask them to let you know them how they might need help.
sd9 2y ago
This post is wild. Mullenweg comes across as completely unstable, insecure, and appears to feel very threatened. He takes every opportunity he can to give a thinly veiled insult. Wordpress is a giant. If he’s as confident as he tries to present in this post, he could just do nothing and Wordpress would prove the more valuable software in the end. Instead, he’s accelerating progress on the fork. He could have done with taking a few deep breaths before publishing this post.
- bdndndndbve 2y ago
  Have you followed this at all? The man has been in HN threads arguing about posts about himself for months. He's on some kind of scorched earth ego trip. His profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=photomatt https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=photomatt
  - mingus88 2y ago
    It feels like this decade or so is defined by people who just don't know when to fade out and retire with their legacies intact. Whether it be this guy, elderly politicians, or billionaires with social media addictions, everyone's lives would be far better, including their own, if they simply knew when to stfu and enjoy their success in peace.

LexiMax 2y ago

It's kind of wild that he's escalated from stalking ex-Tumblr users a year ago to...this. I guess when people show you who you they are, believe them.

GavinAnderegg 2y ago

In case anyone is looking for some background on this, I wrote this post before seeing the news today. Stuff's not been great in the WordPress community leading up to this point, and Mullenweg deciding to deactivate the accounts of folks who might start new forks certainly isn't helping matters. https://anderegg.ca/2025/01/11/wordpress-is-in-trouble https://anderegg.ca/2025/01/11/wordpress-is-in-trouble

SSLy 2y ago
also https://lwn.net/Articles/993895/ https://lwn.net/Articles/993895/

rmccue 2y ago

This isn’t unexpected; I’ve been deactivated on Slack since very early in this dispute, and later banned from the issue tracker as well. I’ve been contributing for 20 years to the project, am a committer, and built several large parts of WordPress including the REST API. Matt is banning anyone who speaks out at all, even when they agree with points he’s made. A large group of contributors felt they had to make an anonymous statement from fear of the same retribution I suffered: https://www.therepository.email/core-contributors-voice-concerns-over-mullenwegs-control-and-culture-of-fear-in-wordpress-community https://www.therepository.email/core-contributors-voice-conc... (I am a less active direct contributor these days, so I’m still able to contribute even while blocked - but many people’s livelihoods depend on it, as sponsored contributors.)

wyclif 2y ago
I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that Matt Mullenweg is in desperate need of an intervention. Seriously, the man should seek professional help.
- Implicated 2y ago
  I've been saying this on twitter for months now. I don't believe this is a mentally healthy individual. His continued defence of his behavior with the whole "if you knew what was happening you would understand" style responses indicates he's lost in the sauce. If he's not having some sort of mental health crisis it really begs to question how we got here with someone like him running those organizations for this long. If he is, and he makes it out of this state, I feel for the emotions he's going to have to deal with when he sees (with a different perspective) what he's done to what is ultimately his life's work. It's sad. All the way around, truly just sad.
  - ookblah 2y ago
    I thought that too until you go down the rabbit hole and realize it's been this way since apparently the beginning. It's also interesting to note just how hard everyone was tearing the author apart in the comments only for it to basically become true a decade later. https://web.archive.org/web/20110117190122/http://wpblogger.com/matt-should-resign.php https://web.archive.org/web/20110117190122/http://wpblogger.... I guess money is just some force multiplier for negative aspects of someone's personality. Just never get to see it in the beginning.

freefaler 2y ago

I've been following the whole story and from what it looks Matt thinks that WordPress is his own property. When something goes open source even the creator needs to be wise enough to understand that it's not his property anymore. I've seen this in many "hybrid" startups that plan to solve the marketing/distribution/ecosystem problem with "partial open source". But the history shows where these frequently end up. You can't have full ownership of something that you've released to the world, but it takes balls to admit it to yourself.

saaaaaam 2y ago
It is still his property though because he still effectively owns and controls the trademark, despite making efforts to make it appear that he does not.

mthoms 2y ago

Joost clarified on Twitter he never asked for a fork. He was asking for reform of the current structures. Which is plain to see from his original post. Matt was the only to one to claim there was a fork forthcoming. He literally made it up. In case there was any question about the utter pettiness of Mr Mullenweg, here's something he JUST posted in response to Joost's clarification. https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815 https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815

dylan604 2y ago

I feel like Matt is one step away from hosting a telethon showing his "evidence". He's clearly a fan of the idea that the vast majority of the public does not care about anything other than what the loudest voice in the room is saying. Say it loud, say it often. Even if what is being said is contrary to evidence, most people are not going to look at it any further.

nchmy 2y ago
Absolutely. Despite overwhelming evidence against everything that he says, I continue to see many absolute half-wits defending him in various forums
BeefWellington 2y ago
Is that a wrong take though? The instability this is causing is, mostly from what I can tell, strictly tied to the OSS dev community. I haven't seen tonnes of users talking about it or even caring enough to see what the fuss is about. To be clear, I think what he's doing is bad in a variety of ways. I may be just jaded by years of watching corporations ignore the things that "should" matter and never being punished for it.

LeonB 2y ago

Mullenweg needs to be more careful doing this. The moment Mullenweg realises exactly what Mullenweg’s doing to WordPress, Mullenweg will deactivate Mullenweg’s account.

kalleboo 2y ago

Is this a correct interpretation of the timeline? 1. Matt announces that he's going to effectively stop contributing to WordPress for now https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-sponsored-contributions-to-wordpress/ https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-spons... 2. Others in the community say they'll pick up the torch in leading the next releases within the current WordPress project 3. Matt says "nuh-uh, I'm busy self-sabotaging my own project here in an attempt to prove how none of you can live without me, stop interfering and go become irrelevant in a fork somewhere instead" https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/

curiousgal 2y ago
0. He pathetically tries to extrot money and fails miserably.

plussed_reader 2y ago

As someone entirely on the outside looking in, WordPress is sounding like more drama than it's worth.

ookblah 2y ago

I know assholes like this exist everywhere, but it's the constant need to re-affirm that he's the "nice guy" while brazenly punching you in the face that unsettles me somehow. At least I know what I'm getting with certain politicians or tech moguls when they speak heh.

softwaredoug 2y ago
Some people thrive on the drama they create and feed on the outrage. I try to remember that when consuming content about certain personalities. The outrage they elicit is what they love. So I try to roll my eyes and not give it to them.

Havoc 2y ago

At this stage some sort of fork seems inevitable. This insanity is entirely unrecoverable on current trajectory

Aeolun 2y ago

Can’t someone just kick this block of lead around their legs out of whatever corporate structure Wordpress.com has? This is getting to comical proportions.

RF_Savage 2y ago
He owns 84% of Automattic, so likely not.

edoceo 2y ago

Looking forward to the summit in January 2026.

sa752 2y ago

Again, the problem with forking WP is wordpress.org. yes you can setup a new plugin/theme repository. The problem is how does someone who owns a plugin on .org validate their ownership on the new repository?

gitaarik 2y ago
Well, you can ask them to upload a particular file with a particular key to their plugin on WordPress.org. That way you can prove you have access, and you should be allowed ownership of the plugin on the fork.
mysidia11 2y ago
The existing plugin list typically list the author name with a link to their homepage for each plugin. One method would be for someone to scrape and cache the existing plugin list along with each known plugin author's contact/home page information. When authors sign up for an account on the new site: have the signup process provide the user a "hash code" to insert anywhere they want into the HTML code or as a HTML comment or header on their homepage to confirm author access to the plugin page on the new site.

ProofHouse 2y ago

total piece of work this dude, I abandon any and ALL things that even mention wordpress and will never touch again. Who knows what this guy will do next.

mmooss 2y ago

Many here complain about Mullenweg's boundary-crossing, counterproductive, acting out. Yet many are following Mullenweg's lead - the comments here seem like the worst HN behavior I've seen. Seriously, perhaps people can empathize with how Mullenweg came to behave this way. When people around you are doing it, it affects you; it subconsciously sets new norms, resets the boundaries in your mind. It impacts your emotions - you are drawn into their emotional state. And then you start acting like them. Many, many people I know and in the public eye professed extreme dislike for Trump's behavior, but my impression is that over the years, many of the same people act more and more like him. The trick is that when someone violates your values, you don't want to do the human thing and follow them - we're social creatures, we instinctively follow the crowd. You want to consciously be a leader, consciously remember your values and reset them, and lead the herd to a better place. That's why calm under fire, grace under pressure, dignity and composure are so important.

gitaarik 2y ago
Yeah if you like power (and subsequently lots of money, because that gives power) and you become more addicted to it, you lose more and more morals. You need more of it all the time to compensate for the shame about leaving your morals behind. If you see other people becoming like that too; they are starting their journey to power and addiction. But we're not all necessarily into that.

dbg31415 2y ago

Is this how open-source works now? Odd interpenetration of GNU.

ImPostingOnHN 2y ago

Stop me if you've heard this one: - Woman broaches the topic of changing the nature of her relationship with a man. - Man attacks woman for it. - Man cuts woman off from everything and slanders woman to all her colleagues. - Man says his abuse of woman is for her own good, and he's actually helping her. - Man has a track record of doing this to people who question him or who he otherwise doesn't like. Is this the archetypical spousal abuser? Someone showing all 3 of the dark triad (narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy)? Yes on both counts, and also business as usual for matt, CEO of a multimillion dollar company and head of the wordpress foundation. I guess money can't buy being a decent human. Seriously though, this kind of person who thinks their personal ends justify any means, is dangerous. I would not want to associate with or be physically near such an unstable, abusive person.

gitaarik 2y ago

Why hasn't the whole community moved to a Matt-free fork and host? Someone should just take the leadership in this and get everyone together. Come on, nobody wants to keep dealing with Matt, it's a useless fight, sooner or later the fork has to come anyway. I'm not into WordPress, but if I was one of the main contributers I would not wait any longer.

74gee 2y ago

What a fucking goon, he's totally lost the plot. I hope Mullenweg is finished now before he destroys it all - he's useless anyway.