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My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

aldavigdis.dev

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Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#31

Post by brtkdotse »

egeozcan wrote: post #2

> ...how it (the Wordpress community) has been made to depend on Matt’s leadership at Automattic’s infrastructure. And how that is a very bad thing. > This post is best read while listening to Know Your Enemy by Rage Against the Machine. (There’s a jazzy cover if you are so inclined.) Well, I hope nobody needs to listen to "(This is what you asked for,) Heavy Is the Crown" when listening to the future developments :)…

Is WordPress even used for blogging anymore? In my view it’s more akin to Emacs or Jira - a platform to build whatever you want that out of the box just happens to be configured as a blog/text editor/bug tracker.

I’d say this is the golden moment for Ghost to shine.

Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#32

Post by nikdoof »

LordAtlas wrote: post #6

Judging from this post, it seems there are lots of regulatory holes in the way Automattic operates in the EU. Mullenweg needs to be careful that the eye of the EU doesn't turn its gaze towards him and his company, or he could be in some trouble. But I can't say I'm surprised by his belief that he only answers to US laws and jurisdiction.

The mention of the self-employed employees could be interesting to HRMC in the UK, if they are skirting around IR35 it could end up with them being handed a large tax bill.

Also their UK branch is called "MINISTRY OF AUTOMATTIC"... really.

Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#33

Post by g-b-r »

belorn wrote: post #21

> I can’t see how Matt’s recent ideas on the rights to use the WordPress logo, the name or the wordmark requiring companies that he doesn’t like to pay up are in compliance with the GPL license. Trademarks and logos are not attached to the software license. The Linux kernel has a trademark page ( https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/the-linux-mark ) which is separated from the gplv2 license. Python has their own tra…

I wouldn't take Mozilla's handling of trademarks as an example to follow.

They were the first to be so drastic in the open source world, and they were and probably still are despised for that

Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#34

Post by thimabi »

rjmunro wrote: post #14
thimabi wrote: post #3

This whole affair has been a disaster for everyone involved. Just a ton of dirty laundry being aired in public… Time is ripe for a new publishing ecosystem — more secure, with less cruft, and preferably better governance. But I imagine WordPress is far from being displaced, even after everything that has been going on.

There's already Drupal, Joomla, Ghost and many more. What I'd like to see is a CMS that uses git as a data store and renders to a static site. Something that can render to S3, Google pages, Cloudflare pages or a random FTP server. Ideally I could run it locally in Electron or similar, but also be able to have it hosted somewhere online that isn't the same place as the website being managed. I haven't seen a good offe…

> There's already Drupal, Joomla, Ghost and many more.

None of these have gained as much traction as WordPress, so much that I don’t consider them as drop-in replacements for the general public.

Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#35

Post by csomar »

briandear wrote: post #16

Can someone explain the whole drama of all of this? I have heard of “Wordpress” and I have heard of “WP Engine” and I have heard that .com and .org are apparently not the same thing. But other than that this feels like walking into someone else’s family argument halfway through it. I don’t know what “side” to be on, nor what those “sides” even are.

I think this is the first instance of a big "open source company" where it's getting competed by another company using its very own product. That's essentially the gist of it. Matt/Automattic made WordPress and (ehm) using open source as a distribution strategy. WPEngine is trying to profit from the product (the license does permit it). As they got too big, Matt now wants to get them out of the market.

Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#36

Post by fiala__ »

rjmunro wrote: post #14
thimabi wrote: post #3

This whole affair has been a disaster for everyone involved. Just a ton of dirty laundry being aired in public… Time is ripe for a new publishing ecosystem — more secure, with less cruft, and preferably better governance. But I imagine WordPress is far from being displaced, even after everything that has been going on.

There's already Drupal, Joomla, Ghost and many more. What I'd like to see is a CMS that uses git as a data store and renders to a static site. Something that can render to S3, Google pages, Cloudflare pages or a random FTP server. Ideally I could run it locally in Electron or similar, but also be able to have it hosted somewhere online that isn't the same place as the website being managed. I haven't seen a good offe…

Astro pretty much does exactly this.

Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#37

Post by belorn »

g-b-r wrote: post #33
belorn wrote: post #21

> I can’t see how Matt’s recent ideas on the rights to use the WordPress logo, the name or the wordmark requiring companies that he doesn’t like to pay up are in compliance with the GPL license. Trademarks and logos are not attached to the software license. The Linux kernel has a trademark page ( https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/the-linux-mark ) which is separated from the gplv2 license. Python has their own tra…

I wouldn't take Mozilla's handling of trademarks as an example to follow. They were the first to be so drastic in the open source world, and they were and probably still are despised for that

I would not claim which project has the best trademark policy to emulate. My comment is mostly to illustrate how a software license is handled separated from trademark agreements and that practically every major free software project and non-profit foundation has a trademark policy. The FSF/OSI guides are also very illustrative in how those communities view trademark law compared to copyright law.

The Mozilla trademark dispute is mostly an example of a non-profit free software community being in a trademark dispute with an other non-profit free software community, and which initial solution was simple and direct. Changing the name and icon resolved the disputed until 10 years later where Mozilla lawyers decided that the Debian version was close enough to Mozilla version that it could be argued as being identical, in which the package returned to using the trademarks owned by Mozilla. I am not sure if people really despise Mozilla for it, but I recall that people found it a major waste of time. There is just so much energy that people will spend arguing about a name and an icon.

Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#38

Post by georgehotelling »

egeozcan wrote: post #2

> ...how it (the Wordpress community) has been made to depend on Matt’s leadership at Automattic’s infrastructure. And how that is a very bad thing. > This post is best read while listening to Know Your Enemy by Rage Against the Machine. (There’s a jazzy cover if you are so inclined.) Well, I hope nobody needs to listen to "(This is what you asked for,) Heavy Is the Crown" when listening to the future developments :)…

The thing about listening to a song as you read the post is a jab at Mullenweg's "This post should be read while listening to Wish by Joshua Redman. The writing is synchronized to the music reading speed." on https://ma.tt/2024/09/ecosystem-thinking/

Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#39

Post by ahumanoverhere »

bullenweg wrote: post #29
ndheebebe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Jetpack play into that? Wordpress.anything in general must be a data juristional nightmare. Every plugin has access to UGC and could be sending bits of that anywhere.

Jetpack the plugin does not send end-user data home, only Jetpack the paid service does that, the customer base of Jetpack is small. If a plugin's theoretical access to user data is enough to cause GDPR responsibilities for the developer that would have broad ramifications across the world of open-source, as code written by some developer in their free time is being used by every company.

This is factually incorrect. Jetpack, even the free version, sends all sorts of data over to Automattic. Automattic has access to the details of any site running Jetpack. This may have changed with the shift to modularized separate plugins but prior to 2022, there was a ton of data being sent to Automattic.

Re: My experiences with Automattic: Part 3

#40

Post by aldavigdis »

ndheebebe wrote: post #17
bullenweg wrote: post #11

> WordPress and Automattic as Subject to EU Legislation I'm loath to defend Mullenweg but WordPress.com is not 43% of the internet. WordPress (the software) is used by 43% of websites, WordPress.com is used by a few million, making it smaller than Wix, Squarespace and even other WordPress hosts like WPEngine.com. Automattic has no relationship with a meaningful amount of end-user data.

How does Jetpack play into that? Wordpress.anything in general must be a data juristional nightmare. Every plugin has access to UGC and could be sending bits of that anywhere.

Author here. I know how the sausage is made.

The thing is that when you set up Jetpack and authenticate, you sync your self-hosted site with a clone that resides on the WordPress.com infrastructure. This is to facilitate the backend services that Jetpack provides.

This is needed for things like the Elasticsearch index and all sorts of things.

So, say you do your best to make your site compatible with your local privacy regs because you may be taking medical appointments or if you are selling adult toys on your WooCommerce site and some genius installs Jetpack, personally identifiable information makes to non-EU controlled and hosted infrastructure.

We may go as far as saying that Automattic is pushing the liability from themselves to you as a site owner. (In other words, you are responsible for your own customers' data but not them.)

There are certain requirements for GDPR compliance that I still have a hard time seeing as being fulfilled. (And I did work in GDPR compliance projects before moving over to Automattic and have discussed this with people in the data privacy and security scene that have raised their eyebrows over the whole thing.)

It is very strange to go from being proud of working on this and then not being able to recommend using it for much other than the CDN that doesn't require the sync process.

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