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WordPress retaliation impacts community

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Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#141

Post by jmb99 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #131
primitivesuave wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called freedom of association, a foundational principle of capitalism and free markets.

Within limits. Because it also allows all sorts discrimination against folks that as a society we have decided not to allow. The question then becomes where to draw the line, not allegiance to the principle at all cost.

In this case though, the “discrimination” is against people who don’t want to work for the company by offering them 6 months’ salary to no longer work for the company. I don’t really see how that really falls under discrimination.

Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#142

Post by Brian_K_White »

kergonath wrote: post #133
spiderfarmer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are all Linux distro profiting off Linus’ brand? Those aren't forks. Full forking the Linux kernel and rebranding it would be hard for the same reasons as forking and rebranding Wordpress. > Publishing free software is a decision. You cannot come years later to say “no, actually you need to pay”, or “yeah, it’s free but not like that”. That's not my point. My point is: if they want to fork it, it will be expensive.…

The context is getting a bit murky, so let’s start with this: > That's not my point. My point is: if they want to fork it, it will be expensive. That was your second point, and I don’t disagree with it. Now, for the rest of your post. > Those aren't forks. I am not sure what point you are making here. Forking has nothing to do with either ripping off anyone or trademarks. The possibility to fork software is a fundame…

WPEngine do not profit off of Wordpress brand any more (or less) than a shoe store selling Nike shoes.

WPEngine are profiting off of the service they provide, which is hosting software, which happens to be Wordpress.

Wordpress can't say anything about contributing to wordpress core when Wordpress the supposedly seperate foundation in fact only serves the purposes of Automattic, and inhibits or rejects prs that Matt and Automattic don't want, ie anything that works against their paid addons and services. No one should volunteer 5 minutes of their time to wordpress untill wordpress is actually a community-serving project rather than just a Matt-serving product.

Same goes for the plugin updates. They can't cry that anyone else is using them as a free distribution service when they actively work to keep it that way themselves.

Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#143

Post by immibis »

Gud wrote: post #134
immibis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They CAN, but capital interests ARE. Speculation: labour interests care about making enough money to get by, while capital interests care about making maximum money and are therefore insatiable.

What makes you think most labour are interested in “getting by”? In my experience, they aren’t.

How often do you ask your boss for a raise or go job hunting?

1. When your money's running low or your job feels shitty, or

2. Constantly whenever you think you can get a raise or a better job

Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#144

Post by Brian_K_White »

anon7000 wrote: post #103
ookblah wrote: post #2

Been randomly thinking about it since this whole thing started, and beyond the drama it's clear that whether legal or not, Matt intends to use the trademark as a weapon to serve his purposes. If you just look at the timeline and even that response to DHH it feels to me that he has much resentment against others using the software and him not being able to be the largest beneficiary of it. The examples to Shopify bein…

Yeah the DHH post is an example or projection… Automattic is hosting a lot of WordPress sites but not making anywhere near as much money as the WP Engines and Go Daddy’s of the ecosystem. (And yet automattic contributes the most to the project.) So it’s definitely a point of frustration to the business.

They only contribute the most because they reject anyone else's contributions.

Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#145

Post by labster »

cdaringe wrote: post #136
labster wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m the president of an internet nonprofit (miraheze.org) and we have five active directors with an annual budget of ~$10k. We have elections for community appointed directors as well. This stuff is not hard. By comparison, the WordPress Foundation is just embarrassing. One of the biggest OSS projects in the world operating as a vanity project for Matt instead of being a stakeholder group, or doing much of anything.

I wanted to learn more about your vision, how you operate, etc, so i clicked your about link: > There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, search the related logs, or create this page.

Thanks for the report. It’s a wiki farm so most of us go directly to the RecentChanges page instead of the landing page. I will change the link to point here instead: https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/FAQ

Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#146

Post by CodeWriter23 »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #122
kergonath wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They profit off Wordpress' brand for free. What the hell are you on about? Wordpress is GPL. Are all Linux distro profiting off Linus’ brand? There is a very simple thing you can do if you don’t want people to do this: use a different license. You cannot eat your cake and keep having it. > Maintaining a fork and building a new brand will be expensive. Publishing free software is a decision. You cannot come years la…

> Are all Linux distro profiting off Linus’ brand? Those aren't forks. Full forking the Linux kernel and rebranding it would be hard for the same reasons as forking and rebranding Wordpress. > Publishing free software is a decision. You cannot come years later to say “no, actually you need to pay”, or “yeah, it’s free but not like that”. That's not my point. My point is: if they want to fork it, it will be expensive.…

> That's not my point. My point is: if they want to fork it, it will be expensive.

I specifically said it would not be easy. But as the difficulty factors go, WPEngine is in the best position to pull it off. They have an existing customer base, probably many of whom are concerned that their websites may be "updated" in undesirable ways. And for those unaware, the magical appearance of SCF in their install(s) will let them know. Beyond the pale IMO, messing with my website in a surprise way like that... Giving these folks a clean off-ramp is a no brainer, and they may well be able to charge extra for the peace of mind.

It's an easy idea to test. Do you actually work at a startup?

And you are overplaying the branding thing a bit IMO. I sit down the hall from a team of five guys that crank out a new brand in about 2-3 days. All the time. And their work is pretty damn good. And I mean all of it, graphics, brand names, websites and product renders. Videos do take longer.

Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#147

Post by Gud »

immibis wrote: post #143
Gud wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think most labour are interested in “getting by”? In my experience, they aren’t.

How often do you ask your boss for a raise or go job hunting? 1. When your money's running low or your job feels shitty, or 2. Constantly whenever you think you can get a raise or a better job

I don’t see how that is relevant? Switching job is a fairly painful process. Doesn’t mean I’m not in it for the money.

Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#148

Post by aldanor »

slimsag wrote: post #22
dovin wrote: post #4

I'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.

What's the net though?

Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#149

Post by primitivesuave »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #131
primitivesuave wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called freedom of association, a foundational principle of capitalism and free markets.

Within limits. Because it also allows all sorts discrimination against folks that as a society we have decided not to allow. The question then becomes where to draw the line, not allegiance to the principle at all cost.

You're right that there are limits (just as there are limits on free speech), and I don't think any sensible person is advocating for freedom of association on the basis of religion/race/gender. The original comment was proposing that merely holding an ideological position should afford some sort of legal protection - this is akin to firing someone for political affiliations, which is allowable in most cases for private enterprise, with greater latitude for political activity afforded to government employees.

Re: WordPress retaliation impacts community

#150

Post by sirolimus »

I honestly dont see the problem. Wp-engine should and must pay some trobute to the open source maintainers considering their revenue of over half a billion dollars. Matts decision has no effect of people wanting to run wordpress free on their own server.
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