Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well said, I hope that there will be forum to discuss the ethos of these actions and see if there isn’t a better way to go about this, and how we can strengthen the community of open source. An interesting article was written by Dries (Drupal Founder) and others.
Link?
Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
541–550 of 717 posts
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#542What's sad here is that this dispute isn't likely to make Wordpress any better, but rather send money to lawyers and reduce enthusiasm for the OSS project.
Honestly there is no "better" for Wordpress anyways, it is mature software that is locked into it's tech debt.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#543Is there an ELI5 of the situation? I didn’t follow what happened. The court document has details but is the PoV of one of the parties, that makes it an unreliable summary for people like me who know nothing about the case
Long post, writing this for myself as well: The players - WordPress is open source, under GPLv2; a least since 2011; - WordPress is managed by the WordPress Foundation since 2010 with Matthew Charles Mullenweg as director; - Automattic is a private company that owns and runs WordPress.com, whose CEO and founder is Matthew Charles Mullenweg; - WP Engine is a separated company that uses Wordpress that makes money by ho…
Regarding: "WordPress is managed by the WordPress Foundation"
The Foundation doesn't actually manage anything though, does it? WordPress.org is managed and owned by Mullenweg personally.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#544This whole situation is a negative sum game, everyone is going to come out worse off - Matt/WP/WP Engine, the project and all the end users. It's such a shame. If there's a solid legal argument from either side, let dispassionate legal teams deal with it in a dignified manner. As someone who defaults to wordpress as the bedrock of new projects, this instability is a massive turn off.
Not everyone. The lawyers on both sides are going to get rich.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
> WPEngine is a hosted service and could make very simple changes to download updates from their own servers. This all kicked off when he publicly accused WP Engine of “butchering” WordPress for disabling revisions: > What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for i…
> Disabling revisions is a configuration change. This is the simplest possible change you could make, and it’s unacceptable in his eyes. Actually this is wrong. Yes the constant WP_POST_REVISIONS exists. But WP Engine has disabled this constant. They do in fact "butcher" WordPress in the sense that they remove a feature, you can't turn it back on by yourself, and you need to talk to their support to get a limited ver…
Are you able to name of the publishers that you say run massive WP installs?
I do know they exist of course, Sony being one.
I’m coding up a little something that I feel is more modern and superior compared to WP, and I’d like to learn what their business requirements and use cases are that keep them on WP.
Thanks in advance!
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
What proofreading? Just click the spellcheck button.
I hate spelling mistakes in professional work as much as anyone, but the spell-checker would not catch "principal" being used for "principle".
This is actually one of my favorite uses for contemporary AI technology. It very much can (and does) catch this type of spelling error. Google Docs does this for me quite often. It's not always right -- but it often prompts me to review exactly this type of situation. It's pretty amazing, really.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is 100% correct as a position of principle, but it's not a foregone conclusion that WPE was able to take the necessary steps here. To be very specific about at least one of the issues: * The URLs pointing to the WP plugin directory on wordpress.org are hardcoded into WordPress * If WPE forks WordPress to fix that, and continues to say they host WordPress, IANAL but they probably have a trademark violation proble…
> * The URLs pointing to the WP plugin directory on wordpress.org are hardcoded into WordPress But they can be changed via filters. I do that all the time to manage when certain request are being made (and making sure it's in a cron job and not a user-request). WP Engine does run their own plugin in the instances they host, though I assume it's not obligatory. Still, every site I ever had to look at that was on WPE h…
It's academic now, the mirroring has been a done deal since Oct 1. WPE operates their own mirror and API server now. Matt of course did not help at all in this effort.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#548Can someone ELI5 this whole topic?
Is the crux of the issue that WPE website use to say things like:
"Start creating on WordPress today"
"Power your creativity on the #1 platform for WordPress"
https://web.archive.org/web/20220105010059/https://wpengine....
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In comparison to other companies like Pressable that simply use marketing copy like:
"WordPress Hosting that Means Business"
Though this is also confusing, because Automattic acquired majority equity stake in Pressable. So Pressable is Automattic.
https://poststatus.com/automattic-pressable/
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There's so much happening with this story that I feel like I don't understand what the root issue is.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, this all feels like (and I'm not trying to be rude with this, I'm speaking from experience) a mental break. Or he's got some sort of vendetta that he feels burning everything down is worth it over. Some of his comments from the other day on reddit have already been used in this very lawsuit, you'd think he would know to shut the hell up at this point if it's #2.
My take is this is 100% someone sticking to a naive worldview because they are smart and logical (and I don't doubt that they are). But the world doesn't work like that. And as much as I hate to admit it, these WPE people are playing the game and just baiting and provoking a response from him. They're like schoolyard bullies that poke and wave hands inches from your face, then cry foul to principal Government when yo…
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Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but to do that they'd need to know they are about to be cut off, something which they were given zero warning about. Had they known they 100% would have ensured that customers didn't lose service. Matt chose to surprise them. It's a very nuanced thing. The world could be very different today. There would have been very little pushback against Matt's crusade if he'd just thought about making sure service to user…
> Sure, but to do that they'd need to know they are about to be cut off, something which they were given zero warning about According to Automattic they had been in discussions for 20 months. Your anger should be with WPEngine for taking your money while knowing full well their service depended on servers ran by a company they were on (best case) shaky terms with. Up until about 8 months ago, Bluehost (another big pa…
"WPEngine should have foreseen something that has never happened in the 20 years of the software's history".
I mean yeah, companies should have contingency plans for things that are extraordinarily rare but let's be reasonable about it. No one, including you, saw this coming.
I challenge you to find a single blog post, tweet or HN/Reddit comment that suggests Matt could one day shut off wp.org access to a single company running 1.5 million sites without any notice to that company, or the community members who will be affected. It's unconscionable. Or at least it was.
Be reasonable.