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Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"

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Re: Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"

#82

> “WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it, That just reads like petty tyrantry to me. Stop me if I'm wrong here but isn't wordpress itself just some PHP on top of a database? The value that he's gatekeeping here is actually the contributions of _other open source developers_? Stop me if I…

Technically, Facebook is just some PHP on top of a database :)

Re: Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"

#83

> Last week, Mullenweg announced that he’d given Automattic employees a buyout package, and 159 employees, or roughly 8.4 percent of staff, took the offer. “I feel much lighter,” he wrote. Wow, that's telling. 8.4% of his company decided he was acting in enough bad faith to quit without another job lined up in this economy? And he takes it as a good sign? Wow...

> 8.4% of his company decided he was acting in enough bad faith No, they just took the offer. Some probably for that reason, some for other. You'd need to interview them to know their actual views.

And I very much doubt the other 91.6% are onboard with his actions. People just need their income.

Re: Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"

#85

> “WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it, That just reads like petty tyrantry to me. Stop me if I'm wrong here but isn't wordpress itself just some PHP on top of a database? The value that he's gatekeeping here is actually the contributions of _other open source developers_? Stop me if I…

By his logic, WordPress itself, being a fork, is bastardized version of the original.

Re: Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"

#86
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no dog in this race, but the behavior does seem ill-advised even if you look at it through a pure legal lens. WP Engine's lawyers must be having a field day with this stuff. Is he just totally ignoring his own lawyers? He has to be, because no lawyer who charges more than $20 an hour would tell him any of this is advisable.

He's appeared in several of related threads here on HN. He is always asked about his lawyers, and he repeatedly claims that they're cool with his behavior.

That's obviously a lie. And one of his lawyers - the fool that he is - literally confirmed it earlier today in another thread

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41784343

"Despite our sometimes fervent wishes, lawyers don't control clients. We are not puppeteers"

Re: Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"

#87
post #82

> “WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it, That just reads like petty tyrantry to me. Stop me if I'm wrong here but isn't wordpress itself just some PHP on top of a database? The value that he's gatekeeping here is actually the contributions of _other open source developers_? Stop me if I…

Technically, Facebook is just some PHP on top of a database :)

Yep. And the value they have is _your data_. It'd be a similar situation if Zuckerberg was playing "fealty games" with who could and couldn't get an API key.

Re: Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"

#88
“WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it"

Does anyone know what the context about this is? What did WP-Engine change which Matt disliked?

As I understand they were disabling page revision history (but would enable it if you asked) and only because they had some other proprietary to wp-engine method of versioning and rollbacks but this seems like a massive overreaction to that.

Re: Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"

#89
Looks like the word "denounce" is not used in the right sense here, at least based on what I know, and on a quick google, although it may have another meaning that matches what was intended by the writer of the article.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/denounce

Re: Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"

#90
This whole bit of drama really makes me glad I never invested time/energy in WordPress. It's like Real Housewives of Computer Nerds level of whining, and feels just as fake. Regardless of right/wrong, the whole thing has just turned into a 80s made for TV type of situation. There was a much better way at handling this, but somebody had access to social media and the wheels promptly fell off.
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