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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"

#221

Post by anon7000 »

inlined wrote: post #154
wkat4242 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly half isn't enough to trigger antitrust. Especially because that nearly half is only mom and pop shops and not the ones doing the real big business. So I wouldn't be too worried about that.

Mom and pop are the consumers/victims here. And if 46% of all websites are WordPress, it’s probably likely that it has a monopoly on sites in its domain (e.g. blogging, commerce)

I don’t see how that’s even remotely possible. There are so many WP competitors it’s not even funny. Being OSS, it’s very easy to export your data from WordPress. So you could easily move from one of Matt’s hosting companies to somewhere else (or self host!) if that was important.

For competitors, on the small scale side, you have Wix/Squarespaxe/Weebly. Or just Shopify for e-commerce. For enterprise, Adobe experience manager is huge. Loads of places just write their own website and have their own CMS solution.

So no, it doesn’t even come close to having a monopoly on anything. And even if WordPress did, no individual company does. There are a huge number of different companies competing in the WordPress hosting space. Automattic doesn’t even host that much (https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ho-automattic)

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

#222

Post by anon7000 »

inlined wrote: post #130

Do you want antitrust investigations? Because this is how you get antitrust investigations. Wordpress is nearly half of the Internet. There’s a pretty compelling argument that Matt is using his market power to prevent competition in violation of the Sherman act.

I mentioned this deeper in the comment chain, but WordPress the OSS software is used by a lot of people. But there are many WordPress hosting companies, so no single legal entity would come anywhere close to a monopoly.

By that logic, Linux has a monopoly on cloud web servers or something? But there’s no one company making that happen.

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

#224

Post by johnisgood »

edanm wrote: post #185

What. The. Hell. Just to get this straight. If you are in the business of creating websites for clients, and most of them are hosted on Wordpress.com, but a few are hosted on WPEngine, you are now forced to no longer use Wordpress.org and can't participate in the community? Our company website is hosted on WPEngine, and has been there for years because we don't really touch it much. I literally log in once a year or…

Can't you choose either way (check or not) without any repercussions? I would think that you do considering Matt's answer "I can't decide it for you [whether or not you are affiliated]".

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

srmarm wrote: post #79
danielfoster wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't Wordpress open source? WPE is under no obligation to contribute source code or money. If WP is unhappy with the outcome, they should have released their product under a different license.

I'd argue there is a moral obligation to support open source projects if you rely on them as a cornerstone of your business. However it's not a legal one. Open source is based on idealistic and community based mindset and modern tech is now based around extracting the dollars. The two aren't really compatible and it's really quite sad to see. That being said this the most stupid way to go about it.

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by Suppafly »

FireBeyond wrote: post #213
bigiain wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 The issue with this is that it absolutely will require a fork: The WordPress Foundation President is Matt. There are only two other board members, only one of whom is active, and both were appointed by Matt unilaterally. The WordPress Foundat…

>The WordPress Foundation President is Matt. There are only two other board members, only one of whom is active, and both were appointed by Matt unilaterally.

The thing is, once you organize a foundation as a non-profit with the government, you lose some of your ability to make decisions that are contrary to whatever charter and goals and such you specified when it was created. Matt may have screwed himself over by putting the stuff he wants to profit off of into ownership of the non-profit.

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

#228

Post by johnisgood »

dylan604 wrote: post #143

So what happens if you are not affiliated when you log in while also clicking the "remember me" option, but later become affiliated? Seems like there's a loophole available for those inclined in being subversive

I would go further than that - does this checkbox serve any real function, or is it just dead code / no-op? Are there any repercussions for lying?

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

#229

Post by Suppafly »

nchmy wrote: post #156
threeseed wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The wordpress foundation has never been anything BUT a mockery. It doesnt do anything - it is a shell for Matt's trademark schemes and tax fraud

>The wordpress foundation has never been anything BUT a mockery. It doesnt do anything - it is a shell for Matt's trademark schemes and tax fraud

It does kinda seem that way as an outsider looking in. There definitely seems to be some legal shenanigans going on when he's using his for-profit company Automattic to complain about stuff happening to the non-profit Wordpress Foundation. They should be legally separate enough that what he's doing shouldn't be possible.

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

#230

Post by [deleted] »

lioeters wrote: post #166
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.

[deleted]
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