Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
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Re: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
#2Related:
WP Engine is not WordPress
Re: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
#3> Additionally, it’s also ironic (hypocritical, I’d say) for him to complain about the lack of post revisions as something that undermines WordPress, while Automattic offers WordPress without access to plugins and all themes in its basic hosting plans, and makes Jetpack, a Trojan horse to upsell features (even the basics, like… stats), mandatory for all users.
It's absurd that they gate so many features behind their higher tiers.
Early this year I wanted to blog about something and was tired of my Ghost self-hosted blog. I decided that I was just going to pay someone else to host it and since I get like 100 visitors/week (if that) I really was put off by the pricing from so many blog providers that want to charge you based on visitors. Especially since my blog is read by normally either very few (I finally settled on wordpress.com, I've used Wordpress in some form or fashion for 15+ years and so I thought it would be a good choice. I went ahead and paid for 3 years at once for the savings (bad idea) but then started running into issues. Want to see analytics? You need to pay for Premium or above. Want to upload video? Need to pay for premium or above. Want plugins (you know, a /massive/ aspect of wordpress)? You need to pay for business or above (Starting at $25/mo). Yes, I could have worked around some of the issues but in the end I paid for Premium so I could get my stupid little blog up and running. I'm still bitter to be paying that much for a rounding error of traffic blog and still not have plugins but whatever.
I don't know what I'll do in 2 years but I know it won't be wordpress.com. I'd rather deal with self-hosting again than give them another penny.
Re: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
#4This is a really basic blog post and it doesn’t make any kind of convincing argument for the provocative title.
Towards the end it says:
> I really like WordPress, as I’ve stated many times, but Matt has become an irresponsible and damaging actor. He urgently needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership, or he risks undermining WordPress’ popularity and driving the community away.
But it makes at best, a really weak case for how he is “irresponsible” or a “damaging actor”. Sure there may be some minor controversies like this redirection thing it mentions, but that really doesn’t seem like a big deal or anywhere close to requiring anyone to step down. I find the accusation that Matt Mullenweg is doing something wrong by mixing in commercial interests to be ridiculous - he CREATED Wordpress. That was 20 years ago. Given its success and adoption, I think he deserves the commercial spoils of it.
> WP Engine was acquired by a private equity firm, Silver Lake.
It is hilarious that this blog post does not actually talk about Silver Lake or private equity at all. PE is a cancer on society - all they do is acquire assets and financially optimize them to squeeze money out at the expense of everyone else - employees, customers, society. They don’t actually add value to the product or affected people around the product. Silver Lake is one of the worst of them. This is a firm that was literally called evil by Wired magazine (https://www.wired.com/2011/06/skype-silver-lake-evil/), for firing employees right before the Skype sale in a purposeful scheme to rob hard working people who built the company of their equity. Why should anyone trust WP Engine or its leadership? Let’s start there, because it sounds a lot like Matt Mullenweg is right.
Re: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
#5This is a really basic blog post and it doesn’t make any kind of convincing argument for the provocative title. Towards the end it says: > I really like WordPress, as I’ve stated many times, but Matt has become an irresponsible and damaging actor. He urgently needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership, or he risks undermining WordPress’ popularity and driving the community away. But it makes at best, a really w…
Author here.
The main issue at play is that Matt used the blog of a GPLv2 project to attack a competitor of his own for-profit venture for playing by the rules — disabling revision posts is an official and documented WP feature. The point is: if Satan themselves decides to use and make a profit off based on WordPress, he is allowed as long as they follow GPLv2, which is the case with WP Engine. (Satan as an alternative example for a PE equity is not by coincidence, btw.)
This is unacceptable behavior for a FOSS project leader, not to mention his explicit conflict of interest by running a for-profit company rival to the one he tossed under the bus exploiting his power and position in the community.
If you can't see what's wrong here, I'm sorry, I can't make this clearer.
Re: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
#6> Additionally, it’s also ironic (hypocritical, I’d say) for him to complain about the lack of post revisions as something that undermines WordPress, while Automattic offers WordPress without access to plugins and all themes in its basic hosting plans, and makes Jetpack, a Trojan horse to upsell features (even the basics, like… stats), mandatory for all users. It's absurd that they gate so many features behind their…
Have you tried SSGs? For simple blogs, like mine (blog post author), it's so good: easy to maintain, to understand, and to manage. Way less features than a proper CMS, but for a simple blog they are enough. I use Jekyll, btw.
Re: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
#7This is a really basic blog post and it doesn’t make any kind of convincing argument for the provocative title. Towards the end it says: > I really like WordPress, as I’ve stated many times, but Matt has become an irresponsible and damaging actor. He urgently needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership, or he risks undermining WordPress’ popularity and driving the community away. But it makes at best, a really w…
Author here. The main issue at play is that Matt used the blog of a GPLv2 project to attack a competitor of his own for-profit venture for playing by the rules — disabling revision posts is an official and documented WP feature. The point is: if Satan themselves decides to use and make a profit off based on WordPress, he is allowed as long as they follow GPLv2, which is the case with WP Engine. (Satan as an alternati…
I dunno, I think its pretty acceptable for FOSS project leaders to call out behavior they don't like, even if it is technically legal. That's sort of the point of moral leadership, right? I do wonder to what extent this blog post is a preamble to a trademark lawsuit, which might be a bridge too far.
Re: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
#8The author should put the context which would help understand the situation better instead of a pitchfork.
> Couple days ago he [Matt] posted on X that wpengine has similar revenue to automattic, yet doesn’t contribute back to open source as much as they promised to (5 hour per week per employee or something like that). A wpengine employee replied to a post saying that management doesn’t allow them to contribute to Wordpress open source because it doesn’t align with KPI targets. That employee got fired the next day. That’s when Matt’s issue with wpengine escalated. [1]
Re: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here. The main issue at play is that Matt used the blog of a GPLv2 project to attack a competitor of his own for-profit venture for playing by the rules — disabling revision posts is an official and documented WP feature. The point is: if Satan themselves decides to use and make a profit off based on WordPress, he is allowed as long as they follow GPLv2, which is the case with WP Engine. (Satan as an alternati…
I dunno, I think its pretty acceptable for FOSS project leaders to call out behavior they don't like, even if it is technically legal. That's sort of the point of moral leadership, right? I do wonder to what extent this blog post is a preamble to a trademark lawsuit, which might be a bridge too far.
It could be if the leader didn't gained anything by pointing out a bad behavior in the ecosystem, which isn't the case for Matt. He runs a direct competitor to WP Engine.
Re: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
#10> Additionally, it’s also ironic (hypocritical, I’d say) for him to complain about the lack of post revisions as something that undermines WordPress, while Automattic offers WordPress without access to plugins and all themes in its basic hosting plans, and makes Jetpack, a Trojan horse to upsell features (even the basics, like… stats), mandatory for all users. It's absurd that they gate so many features behind their…
Have you tried SSGs? For simple blogs, like mine (blog post author), it's so good: easy to maintain, to understand, and to manage. Way less features than a proper CMS, but for a simple blog they are enough. I use Jekyll, btw.
Yeah, I played with SSGs a while back. I like them overall and might go in that direction again but I really enjoyed the WYSIWYG-type post-writing interface. Bottom line I got lazy. I wanted a way to publish some words that was easy and didn't send me down a programming hole every time I touched it (which I acknowledge is more of a "me" thing than a SSG-thing).