If this were Reddit, where purging the “community” was obviously going to lead to a more successful company I’d get it.
But the Wordpress community produces. I suppose that’s the trick. They’ll produce afterwards as well.
WordPress retaliation impacts community
21–30 of 152 posts
Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community
#22I've been trying to wrap my head around why this feels so wrong. If the project had been run like this from the beginning, in an opinionated way that prioritizes what the few creators of the project think are important, then that's one thing. But it seems like Wordpress has generally been the stable, boring, slow-moving project that isn't run like a personal fiefdom, and Mullenweg is trying to force it from the one m…
In 2021 Automattic, the company that effectively owns Wordpress, has a valuation of $7.5 billion in 2021, and revenue of $750M in 2024. It's big money.
Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community
#23> Mullenweg had also asked Automattic employees to pick a side, shortly after banning WP Engine from WordPress.org. He wrote on October 3 that Automattic had extended an ""Alignment Offer"" to its employees. The company provided a buyout package of $30,000 or six months of salary (whichever was higher) to employees who wanted to leave because they disagreed with Mullenweg's actions. Employees who accepted the buyout…
I suppose he could have Damore’d everyone out instead. Perhaps that is more palatable.
Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People don't like being involved in drama, Which is kind of a weird thing, as people sure do love to sit back with their popcorn and watch the drama. There's entire TV networks dedicated to banality just like this.
Oh yeah, this is a fantastic thing to sit back and munch popcorn to. It's when the people involved are demanding that you stop munching the popcorn and start throwing knives at someone that the fun stops.
Yep, I’m browsing this topic with popcorn right now, with no skin in the game. It’s great fun!
Sorry if this is your livelihood, folks, but I can’t do anything to actually help. So I’ll just enjoy the fireworks and try to apply any lessons learned to other OSS communities.
Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community
#25One of the most recent losses to the WordPress community is bluesix, a former r/Wordpress mod, and arguably one of the most altruistic members of the community:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g5fn36/uhhh_wha...
Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community
#26Nice detailed article. However, in these two places it doesn't seem clear that it was just the Slack account that was deactivated. Here:
> Javier Casares shared that his account was deactivated after he asked a series of questions in a Slack thread started by Colin Stewart.
And here, referring to Terence Eden:
> He later reported on Mastodon that his account was deactivated.
Another thing – with that headline, I was hoping for some more info on how it impacts community like how many migrated away from WordPress or even a change in market share. However I'm not sure where that's available on a daily or weekly basis.
Edit: here's one that does a report once a month. Not sure how accurate it is: https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_ma...
Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community
#27> Mullenweg had also asked Automattic employees to pick a side, shortly after banning WP Engine from WordPress.org. He wrote on October 3 that Automattic had extended an ""Alignment Offer"" to its employees. The company provided a buyout package of $30,000 or six months of salary (whichever was higher) to employees who wanted to leave because they disagreed with Mullenweg's actions. Employees who accepted the buyout…
IMO this is different from discriminating based on political opinions because it's the employee who decides whether they want to leave. Similarly, if you build a company and are very vocal on Twitter supporting a presidental candidate, you will probably mostly attract people who support the same — but again, it's the choice of the employee. Very different from asking candidates about who they voted for and then tossing resumés based on that.
It's asymmetric, but laws should generally be in favor of the employees, because the employers already have most of the power on their side.
Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community
#28My mother has a WordPress site talking about hedgehogs and at this point it seems like it's only a matter of time before Matt's vendetta shows up in her site footer.
curious, whats that hedgehog website?
Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community
#29I hope that one positive outcome of this whole debacle will be people realising that the Wordpress Foundation board is apparently three Matt Mullenwegs in a trenchcoat: https://www.pluginvulnerabilities.com/2024/09/24/who-is-on-t... (I exaggerate, slightly.)
This is clearly not what an independent foundation with the interests of the open source project in mind looks like.
If this mess creates pressure to put more separation between the Foundation and Automattic, I think that can only be a good thing.
Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community
#30One of the most recent losses to the WordPress community is bluesix, a former r/Wordpress mod, and arguably one of the most altruistic members of the community: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g5fn36/uhhh_wha...
Worth noting that this was entirely the fault of the /r/wordpress users though, not Matt. The users threw wild accusations and conspiracy theories at the moderators and apparently threats in PM. The level of madness in the sub really reached embarrassing levels.