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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"

#161

Post by throw16180339 »

solarkraft wrote: post #24

Matt really wants to dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole, huh? There’s still something entertaining to this for sure, but it also hurts so much. Wordpress used to be a respectable project, Automattic a respectable company and Matt a respectable person. Maybe it was too good to last. The only way any of this (already serve) damage can somewhat be undone is Matt stepping back (as a sudden change of mind seems unl…

> There’s still something entertaining to this for sure, but it also hurts so much. Wordpress used to be a respectable project, Automattic a respectable company and Matt a respectable person. Maybe it was too good to last.

This was a mask off moment, but he's always been like this. He had a similar blow up in February when he harassed trans users on Tumblr (https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-transphobia-matt-mullenw...) (https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/told_you_so).

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

#162

Post by dylan604 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #104
i_am_jl wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress doesn't like products/orgs that offer services related to WordPress using "WP" in their name to imply affiliation with WordPress. WordPress has recently updated their terms of use to reflect this. Matt is also on record criticizing WP Engine for never having donated to the WordPress Foundation. This is all coming to light after the breakdown of licensing negotiations between Automattic and WPEngine EDIT: ht…

> Matt is also on record criticizing WP Engine for never having donated to the WordPress Foundation. Donate, perhaps. Sponsor? The Foundation event where Matt "went nuclear" last month was sponsored by WP Engine to the tune of $75,000. And was one of many donations this year. (Adding insult to injury, the "independent" Foundation banned WP Engine from attending the event they were sponsoring... because they were in d…

There's a difference between sponsoring an event and donating to the operations of the core project. I know nothing about the specifics on the event, but I've done events where $75,000 would almost cover the cost of the stage. I've also seen events where the cost of the event was covered by sponsors many times over.

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

#163

Post by dylan604 »

EFreethought wrote: post #127
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/ and https://x.com/photomatt/status/1838502185879167069 I believe that WPEngine disabling the admin news feed that displayed his posts directly to WPEngine's customers was the tipping point for calling it a hacked up, bastardized simulacra

I run a couple of WP instances on a shared hosting service (not WPEngine), and honestly I have no need for the admin news feed. If I knew how to turn it off I would. That is a weird thing to get upset about.

Is it? I don't know Matt, but it sounds just like Musk forcing his feeds to the top of everyone, or everyone forced to being Tom's friend.

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

#164

Post by mingus88 »

bigiain wrote: post #135
Zak wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing is it's GPL, so the founder/owner can't just take his ball and go home. It's also widely-used/important enough that it will get forked if leadership problems start to make it unusable for too many people.

The problem though, for people who want to use WordPress, is that WP sites fundamentally rely on wordpress.org for downloading and installing plugins and themes, and critically for security updates to plugins and themes. (You can install/update manually, but the standard admin dashbord is set up to make wordpress.org integration by far the best way to do so.) Yeah, you've got your GPL copy of all the source code. But…

The update issue doesn’t sound like a big deal. What’s stopping WP Engine from setting up their own mirror system?

CentOS did this to Redhat for decades. They literally stripped out the trademarks and distributed the OS to anyone with no contracts at all. Patches were available same day that RH published them, and were applied from CentOS update servers.

The endgame for WP seems to be that they give up this fight or close their source and act like a real licensed software company. You can’t play GPL until it no longer suits you, then start making insane demands about revenue sharing and all this nonsense.

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

#165

Post by frowm »

throw16180339 wrote: post #161
solarkraft wrote: post #24

Matt really wants to dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole, huh? There’s still something entertaining to this for sure, but it also hurts so much. Wordpress used to be a respectable project, Automattic a respectable company and Matt a respectable person. Maybe it was too good to last. The only way any of this (already serve) damage can somewhat be undone is Matt stepping back (as a sudden change of mind seems unl…

> There’s still something entertaining to this for sure, but it also hurts so much. Wordpress used to be a respectable project, Automattic a respectable company and Matt a respectable person. Maybe it was too good to last. This was a mask off moment, but he's always been like this. He had a similar blow up in February when he harassed trans users on Tumblr ( https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-transphobia-matt-mullen…

[dead]

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

#166

Post by lioeters »

johnklos wrote: post #117

The title literally made me laugh out loud. What drama! What intrigue! Can't wait to see what happens next. Honestly, I have no horse in the race, so to speak. I think the people responsible for Wordpress code still suck because they still, in 2024, want the software itself to be able to write to where the software itself lives and runs, which is just bananas. It violates the first two rules of anything and everythin…

Indeed it's completely insane that any plugin can create a file in the site folder, and a public URL will execute it. And a site can have a dozen (or dozens in some cases) of plugins from various authors. It's a security nightmare, and I don't know of any (modern) language that allows such a situation other than PHP.

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

#167

Post by bigiain »

mingus88 wrote: post #164
bigiain wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem though, for people who want to use WordPress, is that WP sites fundamentally rely on wordpress.org for downloading and installing plugins and themes, and critically for security updates to plugins and themes. (You can install/update manually, but the standard admin dashbord is set up to make wordpress.org integration by far the best way to do so.) Yeah, you've got your GPL copy of all the source code. But…

The update issue doesn’t sound like a big deal. What’s stopping WP Engine from setting up their own mirror system? CentOS did this to Redhat for decades. They literally stripped out the trademarks and distributed the OS to anyone with no contracts at all. Patches were available same day that RH published them, and were applied from CentOS update servers. The endgame for WP seems to be that they give up this fight or…

WPEngine do have their own mirrors. This is what a test theme upgrade this morning tells me:

Downloading update from https://theme-updates.wpengine.com/twentysixteen/twentysixte...

The risk I need to address is what's stopping Matt denying WPE access to that place where all the plugins and themes are published? Where does plugin-updates.wpengine.com get its content from, and how soon is Matt gonna block that? And an arms race of WPE needing to use proxies or other workarounds is not a business grade answer.

As I see things, either

1) the "WordPress community" that Matt thinks he's fighting for step up and tells him "No thanks, we absolutely do not want you to fight this fight" and removes him from power,

2) WPE wins the court case and a judge tells Matt "Nope, you're wrong about trademark law and you're wrong about the GPL and you are going to be held to the claims you made in the past about WordPress the software and WordPress the foundation and wordpress.org the software distribution and update service."

or

3) We are witnessing the start of the end of WordPress being trusted to run almost half of the internet.

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

#168

Post by unsnap_biceps »

dylan604 wrote: post #163
EFreethought wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a couple of WP instances on a shared hosting service (not WPEngine), and honestly I have no need for the admin news feed. If I knew how to turn it off I would. That is a weird thing to get upset about.

Is it? I don't know Matt, but it sounds just like Musk forcing his feeds to the top of everyone, or everyone forced to being Tom's friend.

I think the key difference is that Twitter or MySpace wasn't GPL software. Matt is complaining that someone modified "his" GPL software, as the license he's using grants them the privilege to do.

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

#169

Post by mtndew4brkfst »

threeseed wrote: post #120
dylan604 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that essentially what caused this kerfuffle? Someone forked it and the original guy got upset about the how/why of the fork?

It’s more that WP Engine is successful and hasn’t meaningfully contributed back to the Wordpress project. Which I can sympathise with. But this isn’t what open source is about both legally and morally. And there are better ways to achieve this goal than by making a mockery of the Wordpress foundation and harming end users.

Hearsay tells me they maintain a small fleet of Wordpress plugins, sponsor conferences, etc. Are those not meaningful contributions to the ecosystem?
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