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My WordPress Slack Ban

linuxjedi.co.uk

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Re: My WordPress Slack Ban

#21
post #15

For me, the fact he tried to compel the WPE CEO to work for him or else he would expose that she was in negotiations with him is the most unhinged thing I’ve ever heard in a hiring process. Quite literally an affront to freedom. My most charitable guess at what is going on is severe mental illness.

"Quite literally an affront to freedom"? Really? Say more.

Americans relating everything back to “freedom” is so jarring for literally everyone else.

Re: My WordPress Slack Ban

#22
Wait. From TFA I’m to understand that this Matt person, posting as Wordpress.org, tweeted:

> We’re still getting lots of questions about this [checkbox]. What if an agency is part of your affiliate program[…]?

…addressing the WP Engine firm whose users he’s been weirdly bullying with all this?

He attempted to frame his own ambiguously menacing checkbox-cum-loyalty-oath as somehow being of its target’s making? What?

Is that type of… duplicitous? dissociative? schizophrenic?… tactic common these days in twitter kinds of spheres?

Re: My WordPress Slack Ban

#24

Matt has handled this whole thing so poorly. I wanted to be on his side but everything that has come out is just not a great look. He could have had basically the entire internet on his side just by laying out the facts: "They use our product for free, generate hundreds of millions in revenue, and don't contribute back. It's just not fair. Please contribute more." Instead this tantrum has turned a bunch of people tha…

This sums up the situation nicely. Though the part where Matt tried to extort wp engine into paying him personally an absurd sum didn't help put him on the right foot.

It seems like every step Matt makes just makes the whole situation worse.

Re: My WordPress Slack Ban

#25
so tl;dr this is like redis/amazon thing where $CONGLOMO takes open source and bleeds it dry and doesn't contribute enough back to the open source project? i'm so disappointed in open source. there has to be a better way for projects to get something out of the deal.

Re: My WordPress Slack Ban

#26
Expect to see this kind of drama happening regularly and frequently as the gazillion dollar commercial industry continues to subvert every ideal of the original open source ethos.

Some of the best and now most commercially critical open source software started a long time ago, by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future.

Turns out, we did not arrive in that future.

We arrived in the one where both $xxxB companies and their countless cargo cultists explot every means possible to profit from open source software, making angry demands on volunteers and small teams, while giving back as little as possible.

It's essentially a test to find every open source developer's breaking point. Recently, we found Matt's. Next month, it'll be someone else's.

Re: My WordPress Slack Ban

#27
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Quite literally an affront to freedom"? Really? Say more.

Work for me or I will publicly shame you, try to damage your reputation, and make your employees potentially question your loyalty. Threatening people if they don’t take a job with you is in the most literal way a challenge to your autonomy as a human being.

I think a lot of this whole saga is easier to understand if you just remember that WordPress is a major open source project and a company, so you get to see a lot of the stuff every company --- almost none of whom run major open source projects --- does in the ordinary course of business.

Anyways, if you thought there was any freedom or purity to the tech job market, bad news for you.

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