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WordPress Is in Trouble

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Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#261

Post by harikb »

vasco wrote: post #251
dangrossman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you may have a point about what will happen, but that can happen at the same time as a mental breakdown. How do you justify something like this https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/17/pineapple-on-pizza-is-deli... if you only believe in the power play? How does this fit in?

Here is an alternate possibility

1. They introduced a checkbox for "users to confirm that they are not affiliated with WP Engine"

2. A court ordered Automattic to reverse course

3. Developer thought it was easy to quickly just change the text rather than make code changes.

Let us not say people are crazy when there are alternate narratives

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#262

Post by InsomniacL »

graeme wrote: post #243
gspencley wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Automattic and Mullenweg argued that WP Engine should be required file a bond of $1.6 million to ensure that they are compensated for potential costs and damages if it’s later found that the preliminary injunction was granted without sufficient basis.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/judge-sides-with-wp-engi...

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#263

Post by [deleted] »

mfer wrote: post #227
wordofx wrote: post #212

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.

According to crunchbase, Automattic has taken just shy of $1B in funding. Yes, that's a B as in billion. I wonder where those investors are on returns on that investment and the kinds of changes they want to get them.

[deleted]

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#264

Post by tylershuster »

akadruid1 wrote: post #254
tylershuster wrote: post #196

I don't understand how (if?) WordPress has popularity among serious professionals. Extending it without plugins, many of which are paid, is a nightmare. Adding custom fields is laborious, configuring post type display modes is a slog as well. HN seems to grumble about Drupal but even if your only requirement is a PHP server with a MySQL database connect, Drupal (8+) is just as simple to set up as WordPress and infini…

Wordpress is clunky but it never broke backwards compatibility. HN grumbles about Drupal because many got burnt by picking the wrong horse. Drupal was the biggest CMS in the world and like a safe bet until they told their users they would have to rewrite their 7 code to go to 8 and their users decided they would rewrite to WordPress[1]. Drupal never regained the trust they lost. They extended the life of d7 over and…

That's a fair argument. Maybe I'm just biased because I started with Drupal 8.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#265

Post by threeseed »

kedean wrote: post #218
dangrossman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He's doing it in a way that feels suspiciously like a breakdown to me. The latest "we're restricting our contributions to 45 hours a week to match WPEngine" is the the reaction of a college student who is mad at their lab partner, not of an establish business that helped build the internet as we know it.

But there is every possibility that they were always going to do this.

Wouldn't be the first time a commercial/open source company dedicated the majority of their resources to the commercial side.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#266

Post by lupire »

harikb wrote: post #261
vasco wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have a point about what will happen, but that can happen at the same time as a mental breakdown. How do you justify something like this https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/17/pineapple-on-pizza-is-deli... if you only believe in the power play? How does this fit in?

Here is an alternate possibility 1. They introduced a checkbox for "users to confirm that they are not affiliated with WP Engine" 2. A court ordered Automattic to reverse course 3. Developer thought it was easy to quickly just change the text rather than make code changes. Let us not say people are crazy when there are alternate narratives

That's likely to corrupt the database backend, which now appears to store old "non WP Engine" affirmations in the same location as new "pineapple pizza" affirmations. How will they be able to distinguish?

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#267

Post by tootie »

tylershuster wrote: post #196

I don't understand how (if?) WordPress has popularity among serious professionals. Extending it without plugins, many of which are paid, is a nightmare. Adding custom fields is laborious, configuring post type display modes is a slog as well. HN seems to grumble about Drupal but even if your only requirement is a PHP server with a MySQL database connect, Drupal (8+) is just as simple to set up as WordPress and infini…

It's the same way products like salesforce become popular. Network effects. As much it's an architectural nightmare, it is a thing that everyone is familiar with. When you are looking at ecommerce tools, email marketing, analytics, etc they all have some kind of one-click integration with wordpress. If you need developers, wordpress freelancers are a dime a dozen. It's just the thing everybody knows.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#268

Post by satvikpendem »

kedean wrote: post #218
dangrossman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He's doing it in a way that feels suspiciously like a breakdown to me. The latest "we're restricting our contributions to 45 hours a week to match WPEngine" is the the reaction of a college student who is mad at their lab partner, not of an establish business that helped build the internet as we know it.

Lots of executives at big companies can be petty though, it's nothing new when one is in power and surrounds themselves with yes men. It doesn't mean they're necessarily having a breakdown at all.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#269

Post by Suppafly »

greggman7 wrote: post #158
jjk7 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just CGI. You could theoretically do the same with any other language, but PHP is just the most popular.

PHP integrates with the server. It does not have the spawn a new process per request like CGI

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#270

Post by lupire »

legitster wrote: post #246
dangrossman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Using the GPL is not racketeering. Why would any user expect more rights than a contributor?
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