4 ms·

From his perspective, after everything he has done, others are getting the financial gains and many in the community turned on him and his company. It must be a

From his perspective, after everything he has done, others are getting the financial gains and many in the community turned on him and his company. It must be a horrible feeling.

frereubu 2y ago
I sort of get what you're trying to do here - an exercise in empathy - but the flip side of this is that he has been made enormously wealthy off the back of thousands and thousands of unpaid volunteer hours on an open source project. It's not only "others" who are getting the financial gains.
- electriclove 2y ago
  Good point and agreed. Do you think for him it is more an issue about how much money WP Engine is making compared to him or the relative influence they have?
  - frereubu 2y ago
    I'm not really sure to be honest! He could well be thinking exactly what you said, I was just pointing out the flip side of that argument if that is what he believes, because it would be doing a real disservice to the open source community around WordPress without which he would be nothing.
addisonj 2y ago
But... isn't that a core ethos of open-source? That you won't ever come even close to capturing the full value provided by a piece of software... but the nature of the problem is such that the value could never be created unless it was open. I like to think of this as a "reverse" faustian bargain. By sticking to some agreed upon "moral" agreement of this open contribution and communal governance, you create a huge market that you get to try and least capture a piece of. If you break that bargin, you risk the project. And it isn't like this is some theoretical bit... it has been shown again and again in different communities. I fundamentally don't understand how you can spend so long in open-source and think that this agreement doesn't apply to you. That may seem "cruel" in that someone else can profit from you... but that was always part of the bargain that made your business exist in the first place.
hooverd 2y ago
Or, he's loose off the vine juice.

From his perspective, after everything he has done, others are getting the financial gains and many in the community turned on him and his company. It must be a horrible feeling.

frereubu 2y ago

I sort of get what you're trying to do here - an exercise in empathy - but the flip side of this is that he has been made enormously wealthy off the back of thousands and thousands of unpaid volunteer hours on an open source project. It's not only "others" who are getting the financial gains.

electriclove 2y ago
Good point and agreed. Do you think for him it is more an issue about how much money WP Engine is making compared to him or the relative influence they have?
- frereubu 2y ago
  I'm not really sure to be honest! He could well be thinking exactly what you said, I was just pointing out the flip side of that argument if that is what he believes, because it would be doing a real disservice to the open source community around WordPress without which he would be nothing.

addisonj 2y ago

But... isn't that a core ethos of open-source? That you won't ever come even close to capturing the full value provided by a piece of software... but the nature of the problem is such that the value could never be created unless it was open. I like to think of this as a "reverse" faustian bargain. By sticking to some agreed upon "moral" agreement of this open contribution and communal governance, you create a huge market that you get to try and least capture a piece of. If you break that bargin, you risk the project. And it isn't like this is some theoretical bit... it has been shown again and again in different communities. I fundamentally don't understand how you can spend so long in open-source and think that this agreement doesn't apply to you. That may seem "cruel" in that someone else can profit from you... but that was always part of the bargain that made your business exist in the first place.

hooverd 2y ago

Or, he's loose off the vine juice.