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WordPress Is in Trouble

anderegg.ca

241–250 of 457 posts

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#241

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpr…

Or perhaps is suffering from realization that there's no free lunch on this planet and sometimes it is paid for with drama and even very very rare one may get to be the one who calls the shots. Question is whether one is in position to pull it up when one needs to take the credit back.

He seems do be doing fine, though, perhaps also is having the time of his life, nothing wrong from perspective of other for-profit projects. Wonder who promised this and how was it guaranteed it'd not happen at some point?

Besides LLMs be soon spitting 'wordpress retold' with Cursor and all, and he may have just realized it.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#242
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principal use of Wordpress IME experience is so people can add content without learning markdown and git and so on

With AI that is now possible without wordpress

Ai is less useful for those people because they cant tell if its right or wrong output

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#243

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpr…

My personal take on this has to do entirely with how the decision to block WP Engine access to WordPress.org, unless they were willing to pay for it, was arrived at. And this is a critical detail that I'm fuzzy on. If anyone has context (even links with further info) I'd be very much appreciative. I have since read the WP Engine complaint. I understand what they are alleging. I'm just not 100% clear on the nitty and…

>My personal take on this has to do entirely with how the decision to block WP Engine access to WordPress.org, unless they were willing to pay for it, was arrived at.

Matt would be allowed to charge for access to Wordpress.org. It's his property. What you can't do is:

make a service publicly available and then threaten a company that it needs exclusive terms

In the lawsuit the judge asked Automattic to come up with a price for access to Wp.org and Matt did not provide an estimate.

>we think we're going to need either ask that you setup local mirrors, or we can maybe arrange a pay as you go deal.

In the lawsuit Automattic asked the judge to force WPengine to shut down their mirrors. They want control over the system. Which is also legit, but legally you can't offer public terms for all and then threaten a company with "the nuclear option" unless they agree to a separate set of terms for 8% of revenue.

Wordpress.org could have terms that allow companies to setup mirrors, but they explicitly don't want this, and wordpress.org is hardcoded into Wordpress Core.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#244

Sorry I switched to hugo my https://gioorgi.com and it was easier than expected. Initially, I only followed the ‘drama’ tangentially, also because I have always considered myself a mere "end user" of Wordpress, even if long-time one (I used it for about 20 years). For me, the fact that Wordpress.com sold a service based on an "extended" version of Wordpress.org was never a particular problem, but I never thought it w…

Hugo is by no stretch of the imagination a drop in replacement for wordpress in my understanding. I understand the average joe uses wordpress for the UI and huge ecosystem, rather than it's technical capabilities (there are a million cms). Yes, technically speaking there is nothing preventing you from reimplementing everything in hugo, nothing except many months of labor

Said differently, the person who will successfully and painlessly migrate wordpress to hugo is not an average case, but a minority.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps more indicative of late stage capitalism where rent seekers try to extract more and more value and consolidate more and more power.

How is this unique to "late stage capitalism"? That same sentence can be used mad lib style for any human endevor. >Perhaps more indicative of ________ where rent seekers try to extract more and more value and consolidate more and more power Feudal Europe Roman patrician class British Raj Ming dynasty bureaucrats Latin American drug cartels etc Point being that the "late stage capitalism" people lack rigor and don't…

Don't argue with me about definitions, I'm trying to explain what I think the GP meant and why `the "late stage capitalism" people lack rigor and don't add to the conversation` is incorrect.

Capitalism-imperialism: a system based on endless growth and expansionism, where the proletariat in the imperial core is pacified by the crumbs the capitalist give it from the plunder of the colonies; the crumbs also allow the proletariat to buy the goods and services, thus maintaining demand, sort of.

Late stage capitalism-imperialism: the entire planet in conquered, the "low-hanging" resources have been consumed, there is nowhere left to expand, except inward, so the capitalists start cannibalizing the proletariat in the imperial core by giving it less and less crumbs, in order to achieve even higher rates of profit; to remain in power, while the masses see their quality of life decline / starve, they need to consolidate more and more power. More than the absolute monarchs ever had.

> the entire planet in conquered, the "low-hanging" resources have been consumed

that same sentence canNOT be used to describe any human endeavor in any other epoch. We are in the anthropocene now.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#246

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpr…

I don't think it's a mental breakdown, I think this is a (poorly executed) long pivot into Matt's companies having tighter control over the ecosystem and keeping more of the profits from hosting, plugin and theme sales. He's burning down "the community" on purpose. In a couple years, it'll be run more like Shopify, where the theme store and app store only list products that run their billing through Shopify and give…

One thing to keep in mind, WordPress being open source was an afterthought. It inherited a GPL from b2/cafelog.

If Matt woke up one morning and decided he wanted to make WordPress closed source, he couldn't. But what he could do is force everyone to pay a license fee for the name, and anyone who did not pay he publicly makes hell for them. You could also pretend to encourage them to fork, knowing full well they would be bound by a GPL just like him.

This is actually a very successful business strategy and even has a name: racketeering.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#248
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more like a two stage tea made of an MAOI (the first type of antidepressant developed) and psychoactive tryptamines. Eight ball yoda says… bad trip sitter he did seek, hmm?

interesting. So what does that tea do to people? I’ve read some things and claims and that it’s popular among tech C suit.

The best primary source is the Erowid trip reports vault: https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Ayahuasca.shtml

First it makes people purge (vomit profusely) because the MAO enzymes normally break down the psychoactives in the stomach, and it reacts violently when the enzymes are inhibited with MAOIs. It's likely a reaction to something else in the plant because the psychoactives absorb into the stomach before they throw up.

The technical name for what happens next is "full disassociation" which can best be described as the brain disconnecting from the sensor organs and then hallucinating whatever it wants in their place. The actual experience people have varies all over the place. Lots of trip reports of people seeing god, or aliens, or seeing their life flash before their eyes.

It's popular among the Silicon Valley crowd in general from my experience, but specifically the ritualistic experience in the Amazon. Freebasing DMT isn't as popular.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has investors to answer to. He has an over evaluation that unless he grows the value of his company he’s screwed. He’s trying to pull in revenue and he’s destroying a competitor to take their customers.

> unless he grows the value of his company he’s screwed What are the consequences, exactly?

I suspect they gave him a timeline to IPO and/or sell or he's kicked out as CEO. His recent actions are those of a man with a deadline and nothing to lose.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#250

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpr…

If was running a major site that depends on Wordpress , or am an agency that makes use of Wordpress extensively I would be very concerned. Irrespective of who is right/wrong, Matt’s actions come across as rash, irrational , and reactive.

Definitely not the type of leader I would want to be leading an open source project I depend on.

From a risk analysis perspective, this would make me question if wp is fit for my company. If the ceo/leader can behave in this way , what are the risks he pulls similarly self destructive moves that jeopardises my sites?

I am have no bone in this fight, I dropped wp back In 2010, due to the multitude of issues with plugins, themes and security. It was easier(and more secure) to roll an app with django/rails.

Though, I think if you are using Wordpress. Either look for alternatives , or look to a fork with better governance.

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