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Mullenweg is a cuckoo. He did not create Wordpress and yet has managed to closely associate the product with his own persona and ever since has spent most of hi

Mullenweg is a cuckoo. He did not create Wordpress and yet has managed to closely associate the product with his own persona and ever since has spent most of his life wringing money out of Wordpress. He is now annoyed that someone else has been better at extracting profit from something that - going by what he says - he sees as his personal fiefdom. I really dislike WP Engine because they ruined Flywheel, one of the best companies I’ve ever dealt with (and to which I paid tens of thousands of dollars over my lifetime as a customer of Flywheel). But Mullenweg is coming off as completely unhinged.

that_guy_iain 2y ago
> Mullenweg is a cuckoo. He did not create Wordpress and yet has managed to closely associate the product with his own persona and ever since has spent most of his life wringing money out of Wordpress. The dude literally one of the top-ever contributors to WordPress. He's number 6 on the GitHub contributor graph with over 1000 commits. Him and Mark Little started WordPress. He's also the person who has funded most of the development either via his own private company or via Automattic. > He is now annoyed that someone else has been better at extracting profit from something that - going by what he says - he sees as his personal fiefdom. Another falsehood. Automattic makes more money than WP Engine. He's basically trying to force them to either contribute to WordPress to to pay Automattic. This latest move seems like a move to force WP Engine to fund a fork or help fund development of WordPress.
- throw646577 2y ago
  Whatever the latest move is, it's clearly a dick move. He is in a bad place, if he wins anything it is going to be a pyrrhic victory, and he needs to stop. If he really does still have Neal Katyal working on whatever the merits of his actual case are, I am gobsmacked that he is being allowed to behave this way. Katyal is not an idiot or a troll, and this picture does not make sense to me. Some of his bullshit has already been smacked down by the court: I don't get why he is still doing this. Matt: stop.
  - saaaaaam 2y ago
    I was pretty much blissfully unaware of Matt Mullenweg before this recent nonsense. I knew him as “the Wordpress guy” but beyond that I didn’t really care much. I now know far more than I would ever have liked to know about him, including his apparent sexual proclivities, how his mother allegedly talks to the staff, and goodness knows what else as his reputation is dragged through the courts. Did I prefer Wordpress before I became intimately acquainted - albeit secondhand - with Mullenweg’s reputation. Absolutely. Did I trust Wordpress more when I thought it was a community of developers rather than something dictated by the apparently unstable whims of a vain 40-something year old manchild? You bet I did. Do I think Wordpress will burn to the ground, dragged down by a capricious manchild? I’d lay even odds.
- saaaaaam 2y ago
  I don’t trust his commits, given how he’s acted recently. He’s funded the development via his own private company which profits from wordpress - and Automattic (also funded by profits from Wordpress - plus VC and private equity money derived from his relationship with Wordpress), which honestly seems to be a fairly autocratic vanity fiefdom primarily concerned with promoting Mullenweg’s interests. So yeah, he’s got lots of GitHub commits, but given his recent dealing with staff, I would not really be surprised if those were just proxy commits with the code written by others but cuckoo’d by him. That’s just speculation - but given how nosebleed-crazy he seems to be, I’d not be at all surprised. To clarify: I didn’t say WP Engine was making more money, just that they were better at extracting profit. “Better” in this context (from the Mullenweg view) likely means “a threat to Mullenweg’s vanity empire because they might pull customers to their business at the expense of his”. > He’s basically trying to force them to either contribute to Wordpress to to pay Automattic Even though (a) they don’t have to and (b) “contribution” can mean many things including driving awareness and adoption or “marketing contribution” or providing a visible and simple entry point that sustains usage and development or “ecosystem viability”contribution if you will. Mullenweg is pissed because they threatened his fiefdom. Plain and simple. His nonsense regarding the trademarks says it all. Edit: I say this as someone who has used Wordpress for two decades, and spent a significant amount of money on products and services related to Wordpress. I moved my Wordpress-based business off Wordpress a couple of years ago (because it was too messy), and I’ve never been so glad as I was when this nonsense started.
  - throw646577 2y ago
    ??? This is a fair bit of silliness now I'm afraid. Like him or loathe him (and he's making it so very easy to do the latter), Mullenweg was one of the only developers of WP for years back when it was starting. He wrote it part time, he actually quit his job to work on it full time, and he was still a teenager. His energies are why it exists. Has it all gone horribly wrong in the last couple of years? Yes. Has the money situation complicated things? Yes. But we can state these things without constructing an alternate, incorrect timeline. He's surely acting like this in part because he does so closely identify with something he risked his livelihood to build as a pretty prolific young developer. There are plenty of things he's done recently that are ridiculous and bogus enough that they can be criticised without imagining stuff. Focus on the actual issues.
- throw646577 2y ago
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  - saaaaaam 2y ago
    From the guidelines: > Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
    - throw646577 2y ago
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      - saaaaaam 2y ago
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        throw646577 2y ago
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        saaaaaam 2y ago
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- mthoms 2y ago
  Matt hasn't done a code commit since 2009. Matt himself has claimed that Automattic and WPEngine have similar revenue levels. Edit: "has" -> "hasn't" lol
  - that_guy_iain 2y ago
    >Matt himself has claimed that Automattic and WPEngine have similar revenue levels. Maybe for WordPress VIP or something but Automattic is at $700m while WP Engine is at $400m.
- rmccue 2y ago
  > Him and Mark Little started WordPress Nit: Mike Little was the other cofounder - you might be confusing him with Mark Jaquith, one of the lead developers and largest contributors early in the project. Also, with regards to contribution count, it’s important to look at “props” which are the credits given for commits. WordPress has a contribution system that predates things like git’s multiple author support, so users are given props via commit messages, and a system tracks this for attributing credit for each release.
  - that_guy_iain 2y ago
    > Nit: Mike Little was the other cofounder - you might be confusing him with Mark Jaquith, one of the lead developers and largest contributors early in the project. Started/founded are basically the same, no? > Also, with regards to contribution count, it’s important to look at “props” which are the credits given for commits. WordPress has a contribution system that predates things like git’s multiple author support, so users are given props via commit messages, and a system tracks this for attributing credit for each release. This is all way after he stopped contributing on a code level.
    - rmccue 2y ago
      > Started/founded are basically the same, no? My point was that his name is Mike, not Mark :)
      - that_guy_iain 2y ago
        AH, my bad.
throw646577 2y ago
> Mullenweg is a cuckoo. He did not create Wordpress and yet has managed to closely associate the product with his own persona and ever since has spent most of his life wringing money out of Wordpress. This is quite inaccurate. Sure, WP started as a fork of b2, but it's not true to say Mullenweg is a cuckoo. WordPress is something he personally did extensive development work on to evolve it to where it is today, and he hired many of the people who did most of the rest of it as it became commercially viable. Even early on it was a quite different product to b2, which was at best fledgling, and it is fully fair to say that he is one of its creators. He wrote loads of it at the beginning; it's his thing as much as it is any other developer's, if not more. We should not diminish that achievement by pretending he is just leeching off something that in fact he substantially built. Now, whether he is cuckoo is another matter; as you say, he appears unhinged. Something has happened to him such that the more self-absorbed tendencies that used to work quite well in a BFDL context have gone very wrong. He always used to be able to come across as the guy who could help sell this so it will all work for everyone in the ecosystem commercially, and could be likeable and encouraging as a community figure, but something has broken. I am sad for him because this kind of loss of control is ultimately humiliating him. It's time to take off all (or all but one) of the hats, and find something else in life. You are right about WP Engine: I am no fan having had considerably less than optimal customer service experiences with them. But this is fucked up.
- deleted 2y ago
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- cws_ 2y ago
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that_guy_iain 2y ago

> Mullenweg is a cuckoo. He did not create Wordpress and yet has managed to closely associate the product with his own persona and ever since has spent most of his life wringing money out of Wordpress. The dude literally one of the top-ever contributors to WordPress. He's number 6 on the GitHub contributor graph with over 1000 commits. Him and Mark Little started WordPress. He's also the person who has funded most of the development either via his own private company or via Automattic. > He is now annoyed that someone else has been better at extracting profit from something that - going by what he says - he sees as his personal fiefdom. Another falsehood. Automattic makes more money than WP Engine. He's basically trying to force them to either contribute to WordPress to to pay Automattic. This latest move seems like a move to force WP Engine to fund a fork or help fund development of WordPress.

throw646577 2y ago
Whatever the latest move is, it's clearly a dick move. He is in a bad place, if he wins anything it is going to be a pyrrhic victory, and he needs to stop. If he really does still have Neal Katyal working on whatever the merits of his actual case are, I am gobsmacked that he is being allowed to behave this way. Katyal is not an idiot or a troll, and this picture does not make sense to me. Some of his bullshit has already been smacked down by the court: I don't get why he is still doing this. Matt: stop.
- saaaaaam 2y ago
  I was pretty much blissfully unaware of Matt Mullenweg before this recent nonsense. I knew him as “the Wordpress guy” but beyond that I didn’t really care much. I now know far more than I would ever have liked to know about him, including his apparent sexual proclivities, how his mother allegedly talks to the staff, and goodness knows what else as his reputation is dragged through the courts. Did I prefer Wordpress before I became intimately acquainted - albeit secondhand - with Mullenweg’s reputation. Absolutely. Did I trust Wordpress more when I thought it was a community of developers rather than something dictated by the apparently unstable whims of a vain 40-something year old manchild? You bet I did. Do I think Wordpress will burn to the ground, dragged down by a capricious manchild? I’d lay even odds.
saaaaaam 2y ago
I don’t trust his commits, given how he’s acted recently. He’s funded the development via his own private company which profits from wordpress - and Automattic (also funded by profits from Wordpress - plus VC and private equity money derived from his relationship with Wordpress), which honestly seems to be a fairly autocratic vanity fiefdom primarily concerned with promoting Mullenweg’s interests. So yeah, he’s got lots of GitHub commits, but given his recent dealing with staff, I would not really be surprised if those were just proxy commits with the code written by others but cuckoo’d by him. That’s just speculation - but given how nosebleed-crazy he seems to be, I’d not be at all surprised. To clarify: I didn’t say WP Engine was making more money, just that they were better at extracting profit. “Better” in this context (from the Mullenweg view) likely means “a threat to Mullenweg’s vanity empire because they might pull customers to their business at the expense of his”. > He’s basically trying to force them to either contribute to Wordpress to to pay Automattic Even though (a) they don’t have to and (b) “contribution” can mean many things including driving awareness and adoption or “marketing contribution” or providing a visible and simple entry point that sustains usage and development or “ecosystem viability”contribution if you will. Mullenweg is pissed because they threatened his fiefdom. Plain and simple. His nonsense regarding the trademarks says it all. Edit: I say this as someone who has used Wordpress for two decades, and spent a significant amount of money on products and services related to Wordpress. I moved my Wordpress-based business off Wordpress a couple of years ago (because it was too messy), and I’ve never been so glad as I was when this nonsense started.
- throw646577 2y ago
  ??? This is a fair bit of silliness now I'm afraid. Like him or loathe him (and he's making it so very easy to do the latter), Mullenweg was one of the only developers of WP for years back when it was starting. He wrote it part time, he actually quit his job to work on it full time, and he was still a teenager. His energies are why it exists. Has it all gone horribly wrong in the last couple of years? Yes. Has the money situation complicated things? Yes. But we can state these things without constructing an alternate, incorrect timeline. He's surely acting like this in part because he does so closely identify with something he risked his livelihood to build as a pretty prolific young developer. There are plenty of things he's done recently that are ridiculous and bogus enough that they can be criticised without imagining stuff. Focus on the actual issues.
throw646577 2y ago
[flagged]
- saaaaaam 2y ago
  From the guidelines: > Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
  - throw646577 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - saaaaaam 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - throw646577 2y ago
        [flagged]
        saaaaaam 2y ago
        [flagged]
mthoms 2y ago
Matt hasn't done a code commit since 2009. Matt himself has claimed that Automattic and WPEngine have similar revenue levels. Edit: "has" -> "hasn't" lol
- that_guy_iain 2y ago
  >Matt himself has claimed that Automattic and WPEngine have similar revenue levels. Maybe for WordPress VIP or something but Automattic is at $700m while WP Engine is at $400m.
rmccue 2y ago
> Him and Mark Little started WordPress Nit: Mike Little was the other cofounder - you might be confusing him with Mark Jaquith, one of the lead developers and largest contributors early in the project. Also, with regards to contribution count, it’s important to look at “props” which are the credits given for commits. WordPress has a contribution system that predates things like git’s multiple author support, so users are given props via commit messages, and a system tracks this for attributing credit for each release.
- that_guy_iain 2y ago
  > Nit: Mike Little was the other cofounder - you might be confusing him with Mark Jaquith, one of the lead developers and largest contributors early in the project. Started/founded are basically the same, no? > Also, with regards to contribution count, it’s important to look at “props” which are the credits given for commits. WordPress has a contribution system that predates things like git’s multiple author support, so users are given props via commit messages, and a system tracks this for attributing credit for each release. This is all way after he stopped contributing on a code level.
  - rmccue 2y ago
    > Started/founded are basically the same, no? My point was that his name is Mike, not Mark :)
    - that_guy_iain 2y ago
      AH, my bad.

throw646577 2y ago

> Mullenweg is a cuckoo. He did not create Wordpress and yet has managed to closely associate the product with his own persona and ever since has spent most of his life wringing money out of Wordpress. This is quite inaccurate. Sure, WP started as a fork of b2, but it's not true to say Mullenweg is a cuckoo. WordPress is something he personally did extensive development work on to evolve it to where it is today, and he hired many of the people who did most of the rest of it as it became commercially viable. Even early on it was a quite different product to b2, which was at best fledgling, and it is fully fair to say that he is one of its creators. He wrote loads of it at the beginning; it's his thing as much as it is any other developer's, if not more. We should not diminish that achievement by pretending he is just leeching off something that in fact he substantially built. Now, whether he is cuckoo is another matter; as you say, he appears unhinged. Something has happened to him such that the more self-absorbed tendencies that used to work quite well in a BFDL context have gone very wrong. He always used to be able to come across as the guy who could help sell this so it will all work for everyone in the ecosystem commercially, and could be likeable and encouraging as a community figure, but something has broken. I am sad for him because this kind of loss of control is ultimately humiliating him. It's time to take off all (or all but one) of the hats, and find something else in life. You are right about WP Engine: I am no fan having had considerably less than optimal customer service experiences with them. But this is fucked up.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cws_ 2y ago
[flagged]