61–70 of 135 posts
> "WP Engine can hardly say the same" So much of Automattic's corpospeak drips with spite. Makes me understand why other companies are so "bland" — to protect themselves
That's because it's not corpospeak, it's Mattospeak.
Also I realized "Matt" is front and center in Automattic so that says a lot
From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same. Yes, that's why WordPress silently and secretly licensed back the WordPress trademarks to Matt's for-profit company without telling anybody. For the good of the customers. That's why they forced the new boondoggle editing UI that everyone hates. For the good of the customers. That's why the WordPress code is…
> That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers. Thats actually true. Backward compatibility was and still is the #1 thing in WP, and its why it won over the web: No small business or individual customer cares about 'better code' in the backend if those 'improvements' break their websites. This was what a lot of wordpress competitor…
Backwards compatibility is just the excuse Matt has been using from the beginning to justify how abysmally bad the code is.
[flagged]
Steve Jobs was famously mean, and had a 'flexible' relationship with the truth. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/5l3hys/commen...
I never really understood why he did that?! I suppose it was personal vendetta against his gf at the time.
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As I understand it the claimed trademark infringement is WPE saying they ‘provide WordPress hosting’. If they are successful can anyone built an opens source hosting business?
If WordPress won on the trademark infringement issue, it would be a fundamental rewriting of trademark law as it exists in the U.S. today. Companies even competitors are allowed to use trademarks when they are making factual statements, like "we provide Wordpress hosting" as long as they make it clear that they are not the trademark holder (i.e., confusing customers). Even before they revamped their website, WP Engin…
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I agree that it is of course smart to choose a lawyer you think can win, it's the public statement about the lawyer's track record that seems crazy to me, not the hiring decision.
Expressing confidence publicly just seems like a ‘stronger’ way of expressing it (as compared to doing so privately). Perhaps Automattic is trying to get WP Engine stakeholders to press for a settlement? What about this “seems crazy”?
That line in the blog post is aimed at public perception, not WP Engine's perception, and from a PR point of view there's not really any benefit to it only downside - I guess their thinking is that some members of public might think "the winning lawyer wouldn't join the losing team so Automattic must be in the right here", but it actually makes them look like their legal defence is weak enough that they need to resort to trying to win through legal skills rather than business facts.
When I call it "crazy" I'm talking from the point of view of someone who has drafted a couple of announcements quite similar to this one, and many others that weren't related to defending legal cases but were still walking tricking lines in PR/comms, and I just can't imagine a line like that being suggested by anyone I've worked with and can't imagine letting it slip into a release I was involved in.
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That's because it's not corpospeak, it's Mattospeak.
Automattic apparently has 1800 employees (LOL). Surprised they don't have a board, HR, comms, and other teams? Also I realized "Matt" is front and center in Automattic so that says a lot
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> That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers. Thats actually true. Backward compatibility was and still is the #1 thing in WP, and its why it won over the web: No small business or individual customer cares about 'better code' in the backend if those 'improvements' break their websites. This was what a lot of wordpress competitor…
No, the spaghetti code has always been bad for customers. Security exploits, hacked-together functionality that can't be improved until Matt decides to make the breaking change that forcibly breaks hundreds of plugins, etc., random bugs that nobody understands, poor performance requiring expensive and extensive modifications to achieve basic levels of responsiveness that makes even Java look like a speedster. Backwar…
Never ever seen one single non-technical website owner or user complain about 'spaghetti code'. As for 'code quality affecting other things', that's our (programmers') exaggeration:
> Security exploits, hacked-together functionality that can't be improved
NASA, White House, CNN, Reuters, Techcrunch and a thousand other gigantic organizations use Wordpress and they arent getting hacked.
Neither any of the small to medium businesses that use wp for their own websites, marketing sites or ecommerce sites - as long as they keep their site and plugins updated.
> poor performance requiring expensive and extensive modifications to achieve basic levels of responsiveness
I dont know where you are pulling that out from. Default wp can do 1.5 seconds load time from start to finish and get 99, 100, 99 scores in google page speed. Even with a good theme, its still as fast.
> Backwards compatibility is just the excuse
Its not the excuse. Its the #1 concern of small and medium businesses and individuals, and whenever it was violated WP or any plugin, droves of them left the WP ecosystem or stopped using such plugins.
Really, what we concern ourselves as programmers and what the overwhelming majority of users on the internet concern themselves with, have a huge chasm in between them.
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I agree that it is of course smart to choose a lawyer you think can win, it's the public statement about the lawyer's track record that seems crazy to me, not the hiring decision.
Expressing confidence publicly just seems like a ‘stronger’ way of expressing it (as compared to doing so privately). Perhaps Automattic is trying to get WP Engine stakeholders to press for a settlement? What about this “seems crazy”?
> "Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case." I don't think I have ever before seen, in an official public statement, a "The lawyer we just hired always beats the lawyer they just hired!" boast, and it seems ridiculous - it's almost even hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer rather than that their case should win on merit.
> Neal has taken on sloppy Quinn Emanuel many times, many many times, and each case he has won BIGLY. WP ENGINE IS THE ENEMENY OF THE PEOPLE!
https://venturebeat.com/business/apple-nokia-win-2m-after-sa...
Lol
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Expressing confidence publicly just seems like a ‘stronger’ way of expressing it (as compared to doing so privately). Perhaps Automattic is trying to get WP Engine stakeholders to press for a settlement? What about this “seems crazy”?
A sentiment that a lawyer is so good they will overcome this challenge rather than conveying that the lawyer will prove the questions of law and fact resolve it in their favor... it just... well... seems like the kind of shit that's for a TV show where it's not about contesting facts and law.