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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"

#241

Post by robertoandred »

stevenicr wrote: post #219
robertoandred wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A WordPress fork without Gutenberg doesn't really work as an alternative for sites built in the last five years or so.

I'd like you to expand on reasons for this? I can think of a few for some cases.. However I have around 50 websites or so that are running just fine without Gutenberg.. and if you count the number of updates WP and plugins and themes have rolled out since Gutenberg and multiple that by 50, most of these updates have been an annoying use of time. That being said, Gutenberg stuff today is pretty mature and I do recomme…

As you said Gutenberg (and now FSE) are in core and the default for developing and authoring WordPress sites. For ClassicPress to be an alternative, you would've had to have intentionally veered from what WordPress gave you.

Sure, some sites may have chosen to use a site builder or Classic Editor with ACF, but those that didn't are left out in the cold by ClassicPress's decisions.

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

#242

Post by bigiain »

belorn wrote: post #199
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…

As a customer and user of WPEngine, what role do you see wordpress in that relationship? Generally when I buy things I try to take some consideration of the sub-contractors and suppliers to the supplier of service, but I am aware that I do not have a direct relationship with them. I doubt the courts will demand that WordPress foundation must provide servers and bandwidth indefinite and free of charge to anyone, espec…

> The more easy path forward would be for WPEngine to switch dependency. Debian has a reliable repository.

Yeah, but.

Do we trust Matt now to not required the Debian packagers to, as he says, "choose sides" before giving Debian access to the wordpress.org infrastructure to download updated WordPress core and plugins/themes? I can _easily_ see him escalating like that.

> As a customer and user of WPEngine, what role do you see wordpress in that relationship?

The same role as I always used to see WordPress (the project, including WordPress core and the entire 1st and 3rd party plug/theme community) has with other companies that have a WordPress installation capability like cPanel and Plesk, and with every other hosting company that makes is easier to deploy WordPress than starting from a bare Linux VM - like GoDaddy or Dreamhost or practically any SMB oriented web hosting vendor.

And I think Matt is being entirely disingenuous, probably to the point I'd be happy to accuse him of outright lying, when he says WPEngine don't contribute back to the WordPress community. WPE have listed out the support they provide to the community which is in the form of conference sponsorship and development of open of the important plugins (ACF). While they obviously _could_ do more, I think the blackmail tactic Matt's using to extort them into paying 8% of revenue (at many million dollars a year) not to "the WordPress Community", but into a company (Automatic) that's directly owned by Matt, and that is a direct competitor in the WordPress hosting space.

And the recent news the the WordPress Foundation has applied to trademark "Wordpress Hosting" and "Managed WordPress" is totally off the charts punching "the WordPress Community" in the face. In my experience, by far the most common WordPress user acquisition channel is people using $5/month GoDaddy or similar hosting with a one click WP install, and sooner or later outgrowing that level of over subscribed web hosting and moving on to more dedicated WordPress hosting either through a digital agency or consultant, or going directly to WPEngine (often on recommendation from people just like me).

If Matt gets _any_ traction in enforcing 8% revenue (or more, as he's threatened) from WPEngine for using the word "WordPress" on it's website, how quickly do you think the lawyers at low margin/low cost of entry vendors like GoDaddy will say "Just take down every single mention of WordPress _anywhere_ and stop offering it to customers."

As I said, absent some adult supervision over Matt's tantrums, I believe we are witnessing the start of the end of WordPress.

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

#243

Post by bigiain »

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 issue with this is that it absolutely will require a fork

Perhaps?

There is a significant group of people Automattic relies on to make the WordPress project and community a thing. While Matt probably can afford to pay enough devs to maintain WP core, I doubt he's wanting to pay to do all the maintenance for all the OSS/GPL plugins and themes on wordpress.org that are a big part of what makes WP attractive over other free and OSS CMS/blog alternatives.

Those people could probably mount a campaign that'd threaten Automattic's financial bottom line, which since Matt's extortion show that for him this is all about money that someone else has that he wants, perhaps that'd be "enough"?

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

#244

Post by freeAgent »

nchmy wrote: post #86
joshtynjala wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

That makes me doubt it’s his lawyer. Lawyers shouldn’t publicly discuss their clients in a manner that paints them in a negative light. Fire the client first.

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

#245

Post by belorn »

mthoms wrote: post #209
belorn wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a customer and user of WPEngine, what role do you see wordpress in that relationship? Generally when I buy things I try to take some consideration of the sub-contractors and suppliers to the supplier of service, but I am aware that I do not have a direct relationship with them. I doubt the courts will demand that WordPress foundation must provide servers and bandwidth indefinite and free of charge to anyone, espec…

"The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the software projects we support" https://wordpressfoundation.org That's not only on their website, it's also stated in their 501c3 filings with the IRS. Another thing to note is that "wordpress.org" is hardcoded into several places in the source code, and Matt has outright refused to make it more directly configurable. There are even more issue…

The free software movement and FSF in particular has always been very clear that free in this context does not mean that projects can't sell CD's with software on it. It is also this interpretation that allow for paid support, which would otherwise also not be "free". It is possible that courts would make a different interpretation, or that free access to software will be interpreted as not free software, but instead about free access to a distribution channel, Which mean wordpress could go proprietary under that statement (free access to download would says nothing about freedom to run it). The distinction gets generally refereed as "free as in speech, not free as in beer".

Regarding Debian, I don't know if the Debian package has anything hardcoded to wordpress.org. The generally recommended update path is to use debian package manager rather than internal updating mechanics. Debian maintainers often patch thing or change defaults as part of the packaging in order to make software behave nicely with the debian eco-system.

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

#246

Post by lolinder »

freeAgent wrote: post #244
nchmy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

That makes me doubt it’s his lawyer. Lawyers shouldn’t publicly discuss their clients in a manner that paints them in a negative light. Fire the client first.

Matt is the GP post, there's no way he didn't see that comment, and yet he isn't chiming in to say that that isn't actually his lawyer.

Maybe photomatt is also a hacked account and real Matt just hasn't noticed yet?

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

#247

Post by lolinder »

unsnap_biceps wrote: post #33
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #25

To see the requirement for the non-affilation goto https://login.wordpress.org/ EDIT (to save having a 2nd post). Looking at the HTML tags for the requirement it has the class "login-lawsuit", so guessing this is tried to the suit WPE are bringing against WordPress/Matt. On one hand, I personally feel like Matt is trying to speed run burning all the goodwill of the wordpress project, on the other hand if you are bein…

Generally the recommendation is to freeze current ties with said entity until the court case gets worked out. By aggressively targeting the employees of said other organization, you're risking it being used against you in the ongoing court cases. Regardless, .org and .com are claimed to be separate legal entities, so there is no lawsuit against .org. This is just an escalation out of a sense of moral righteousness.

.org is not the WordPress Foundation, it's just a domain that Matt personally owns and that is managed under the umbrella of Automattic.

Yes, it's confusing.

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

#248

Post by dylan604 »

bigiain wrote: post #242
belorn wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a customer and user of WPEngine, what role do you see wordpress in that relationship? Generally when I buy things I try to take some consideration of the sub-contractors and suppliers to the supplier of service, but I am aware that I do not have a direct relationship with them. I doubt the courts will demand that WordPress foundation must provide servers and bandwidth indefinite and free of charge to anyone, espec…

> The more easy path forward would be for WPEngine to switch dependency. Debian has a reliable repository. Yeah, but. Do we trust Matt now to not required the Debian packagers to, as he says, "choose sides" before giving Debian access to the wordpress.org infrastructure to download updated WordPress core and plugins/themes? I can _easily_ see him escalating like that. > As a customer and user of WPEngine, what role d…

"if Matt" "do we trust Matt" "blah blah yeah but Matt"

So why isn't this thing forked yet? It seems like WP Engine has the resources and now the motivation to do it. Advertise as a 100% compatible drop in replacement. MariaDB did it.

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

#249

Post by [deleted] »

anon7000 wrote: post #218
linotype wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that a good thing to want though? Something easy to use if you only care about content?

I mean does it matter if whether it’s a good thing to want? WordPress powers 40% of the web because it was convenient, powerful, and easy for someone with basic web skills to hack around with. The same things that people complain about today made it so popular! Besides, read-only file systems can be used to handle massive sites that need better security (like nasa.gov). And those types sites are either writing their…

[deleted]

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

#250

Post by manuelmoreale »

pembrook wrote: post #202
manuelmoreale wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not entirely sure why you’re comparing Kirby to Webflow. They’re completely different tools built with completely different target audiences in mind. Also “many clients sites are now dead because their web host didn’t want to support old PHP versions anymore” Isn’t the solution to that as simple as upgrading your CMS?

The comment I was responding to was criticizing the idea of having to provide hosting support for other CMS's. That fact that you constantly have to upgrade Kirby and pay new licensing fees (and bill your customers for this) because no web host wants to support an old version of PHP...betrays the idea that Kirby is a way out of this. Sure it doesn't have a database to hassle with like Wordpress so it's better in that…

> If you're on a cloud subscription platform you're completely hands off (no upgrades necessary)

Sure you’re just letting someone else do the job but at a significant higher price. It’s a trade off like everything else. In some situations a cloud solution is probably good. But in other cases it might be way too expensive in the long run. So it’s a balance and every situation is different.

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