To me, WordPress used to be the thing you used if you wanted a website that was easy to put together but was full of third party php spaghetti code and security holes.
Now, it's completely radioactive.
WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
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Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
#92Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the plugin had Pro options* then are those closed source and so not available to Wordpress in their fork of the codebase? It's not clear. Because WordPress is licensed under the GPL, all plugins must be licensed under GPL-compatible licenses. This applies to ACF Pro as well.
As far as I've understood, the copyleftness of the Wordpress's GPL tainting themes and plugins is or at least has been controversial (I'm not in the WP community, but have read stuff regarding this drama). Wordpress itself uses React and other non-GPL licensed software in the core that yes, may be GPL-compatible but doesn't enforce everything to be GPL'd. When it comes to themes and plugins, I'd consider that userspa…
In Linux, not even in user space: ZFS is developed as a kernel module rather than mainline Linux kernel because of its incompatible with GPL license. Or Nvidia's Linux driver aren't even open sourced. Well AMD has proprietary Linux drivers too, but they have an open sourced one also.
Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
#94Wow, the WordPress name is being ploughed into the ground with this sort of behaviour.
Well, they banned Wpengine from updating their package in the repository. Then the package maintainers found security problems - which they can’t fix with an update because they’re locked out.
It makes a weird sort of sense. Ie, wp.org backed themselves into a corner where they needed to close the security hole. And to do that, they needed to patch it themselves, which in turn requires them taking over the package.
It’s shocking, yeah. But it would probably be worse if they just left the (known, publicised) security vulnerabilities in.
Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
#95You make an opensource project, provide hosting services, then others take your project, modify it for their needs, cut into your hosting market share and then you try to get rid of them. ...What was the end game plan?
I don’t think this is a reasonable argument. The landscape when Wordpress was released was wildly wildly different to how it is today, and we shouldn’t begrudge someone for not foreseeing how this would unfold from the landscape in the mid 2000’s.
We should judge for how it’s being handled now.
Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
#96Honestly I don't get the backlash Mullenweg is getting - a corp is trying to freeload on OSS community, GPL let's them have the code - but I'm all in favor of kicking then off of everything else.
It’s a bit two faced. He’s clearly abusing his position, annd every time this topic comes up (see elasticsearch, terraform, redis from recent memory) HN has clearly been on the side of the open source license. But, that’s not why he’s getting backlash. He’s getting backlash because he does what the “other side” did in all of these scenarios - invent reasons that are unrelated to the license dispute to cause the split…
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Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
#97Honestly I don't get the backlash Mullenweg is getting - a corp is trying to freeload on OSS community, GPL let's them have the code - but I'm all in favor of kicking then off of everything else.
It’s a bit two faced. He’s clearly abusing his position, annd every time this topic comes up (see elasticsearch, terraform, redis from recent memory) HN has clearly been on the side of the open source license. But, that’s not why he’s getting backlash. He’s getting backlash because he does what the “other side” did in all of these scenarios - invent reasons that are unrelated to the license dispute to cause the split…
Yep. And they’ve gone 0-to-100 within days.
I think he has a fair point - I’d be totally comfortable with a standing expectation in a community like Wordpress for companies to pay their way (or be looked down on & excluded from taking part in community events).
But the expectations have to be a fair & transparent, and ideally communicated from the start, so people and companies can make informed choices about how they want to be involved. Not suddenly enforced with no lead time, with demands of money amounts seemingly made up on the spot, and “scorched earth” tactics when the demands aren’t met.
As a rule of thumb, bikes can start and stop fast. Cars should be more predictable on the roads. And trucks should accelerate and turn more slowly still.
If you’re big and powerful (government, standards body, maintainer of a huge opensource project, etc) you need to telegraph your moves and act slowly and predictably so other people can react to you. This is not how you do that.
Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
#98The appropriate twist here would be to have WPEngine find a trusted third party (one or more), start a foundation together and successfully fork wordpress.
Didn't this whole thing start because Automattic was complaining that WPEngine wasn't contributing much to the Wordpress development but competing with them for free?
That one of Matts claims. Personally I suspect the actual trigger was WPE removing Automattic's affiliate key from WooCommerce and costing them $m/y of revenue.
Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
#99Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't this whole thing start because Automattic was complaining that WPEngine wasn't contributing much to the Wordpress development but competing with them for free?
That one of Matts claims. Personally I suspect the actual trigger was WPE removing Automattic's affiliate key from WooCommerce and costing them $m/y of revenue.
Our attempts at resolving trademark issues with WPE predate our discovery of the attribution removal.