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WordPress Is in Trouble

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Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#411

Post by elendee »

graeme wrote: post #399
elendee wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't he within legal rights in fact to take away certain public services whenever he does want? Assuming that's the case (and that is an assumption), the fact that WPEngine went all in on a half billion dollar business model dependent on Matt is a big risk they took; I would think it would be absolutely top priority on their part to understand the nuts and bolts of the ecosystem they depend on.

It's very complicated and beyond my ability to analyze accurately. The court filing is here if you'd like to have a look. Some california law around anticompetitive behaviour applies. I thought of trying to summarize but don't wish to be inaccurate. Obviously this is under litigation so it remains to be seen which headings they win on if any. But it definitely isn't as simple as being able to selectively withdraw a p…

I've read some of it and it's actually compelling reading but it bogs down pretty quick in spin, for example wpe claims they invested hundreds of millions "to serve the community". But the community they are referencing is their own customers. They did not invest millions in core maintenance to my knowledge.

I'm more interested in the colloquial understanding than the legalese. The dev community will probably have a more relevant opinion than the judge imho. As I see it, WP core is free and the "public utility" you mention. But the infrastructure running the plugins has very little precedent it seems, and that's the important part. That's what Matt's pissed about. I don't think there is a good analogy in the Linux ecosystem or anywhere else as to such a massive undertaking as WP that is simultaneously non profit and for profit. And that's where I think it's kind of foolhardy to go head to head with the guy who's managed to staple it all together while they're still standing on it.

The thing he withdrew is their plugin repo access which is not a public service afaik. I can see why Matt is going crazy running servers for hundreds of millions of downloads and people treat it like he's legally obligated to do that. It's an ambitious enterprise and people should be sensitive to the fact that they probably work extremely hard keeping that going.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#412

Post by Sharlin »

adolph wrote: post #167
greggman7 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would replace it? PHP is unique in that it makes sharing a server trivial and low-resource compared to almost every other solution. A simple example might be that you can run 100s of PHP forums on a single machine low memory machine but if you want to use discourse (not written in PHP), it requires 10x 20x the resources for a single forum. This is true about almost every other solution AFAICT.

> [PHP] makes sharing a server trivial Is that still a thing? Why would an application on a server share anything other than the kernel?

Because containers don't really solve any problems in this use case (or many others, honestly) and instead make everything more difficult.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#413

Post by gtsop »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #360

Sometimes my friends ask me why I don't use a CMS for my personal site instead of just writing articles as pages on a Ruby on Rails site. Aside from finding CMSes to be overly heavy and restrictive, this is why. You never know when they're gonna go off the rails (pun intended). If I can't just do everything in vim/notepad++ and a terminal I'm not super interested. Same reason why I'm skeptical of game toolkits like U…

This argument can't hold, how do you know rails isn't going to flip, how do you know linux won't flip. How do you know vim won't flip? I'm sure you have tens if nit hundreds of technologies in your stack that are open source and you never imagined they were going to flip. I have rearly used wp for clients, but i was never under the impression it could go sideways just like most stable software i use.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#414

Post by prepend »

eslaught wrote: post #389
prepend wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can certainly be hacked, just like any static site. Web servers have vulnerabilities. And the files can certainly be edited as they aren’t immutable. They are less resource intensive and easier to maintain, but aren’t immune. (Running mostly static sites converted from Wordpress sites, but also running 10 year old+ word press sites that haven’t been changed in forever)

Other siblings have piled on this, but let me just add: Your source of truth for a static site will never be the deployed contents of the server (even if you do go that route). It will be your local Git repo or possibly your upstream Git forge. Even in the rare case that such a simple case gets you hacked, you can throw away your entire setup and start over quite easily. Whereas all of the Wordpress/Drupal/etc/etc. o…

I understand all this. I didn’t say that static sites are easy to hack or valuable, I responded to GP’s claim “They cannot be hacked”

I think static sites are a good technique that has vastly improved security over dynamic sites, but thinking that using them makes you invincible is faulty.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#415

Post by MrSkelter »

dangrossman wrote: post #86
beshrkayali wrote: post #64

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…

There is no “we” here. It’s a man making arbitrary decisions about pineapple on pizza. There is no plan and the watch and drawn out nature is indicative of someone reacting to events rather than implementing a plan.

I have 20 years in WP and B2. This is tragic. He needs to be removed or the platform will die making a huge repository of knowledge valueless.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#416

Post by MiddleEndian »

gtsop wrote: post #413
MiddleEndian wrote: post #360

Sometimes my friends ask me why I don't use a CMS for my personal site instead of just writing articles as pages on a Ruby on Rails site. Aside from finding CMSes to be overly heavy and restrictive, this is why. You never know when they're gonna go off the rails (pun intended). If I can't just do everything in vim/notepad++ and a terminal I'm not super interested. Same reason why I'm skeptical of game toolkits like U…

This argument can't hold, how do you know rails isn't going to flip, how do you know linux won't flip. How do you know vim won't flip? I'm sure you have tens if nit hundreds of technologies in your stack that are open source and you never imagined they were going to flip. I have rearly used wp for clients, but i was never under the impression it could go sideways just like most stable software i use.

That's a fair counterargument.

The biggest thing in that category was Mysql "flipping" with the Oracle purchase. But people quickly migrated to postgres (which more-or-less is the same for smallish projects) and MariaDB as a Mysql fork exists as well. And I'm sure some people just kept using Mysql as well without having to do anything.

For all the tech I listed here, I think Rails is the one that would be hardest to a drop-in replacement for. Everything else is "generic." Text editors (not that I particularly care if a text editor is updated frequently (or at all most of the time)) and nix-like environments are basically hot swappable.

But IME when something has some sort of custom environment and that's the only way to deal with it (dashboard, special IDE, etc.) that's when you have the biggest risk of having a bad time.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#417

Post by wink »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #110
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 reason that Reddit's API changes killing the best clients was so poisonous is that the resulting non-exodus showed other companies that they can take user-hostile actions with impunity. A big enough mass of passive and undiscerning users will stay no matter what. Hence there being more freedom to take a strategy like this.

You're making it sound like Reddit was unusable without API/client in the past though. I'd never used a Reddit client before I started using it at all on mobile. I bet a good chunk of users (esp casually browsing, or frequenting exactly one niche subreddit) just used the web.

Not saying it wasn't user hostile or sucked, it just doesn't match the experience I had (or when I talked to some people).

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#418

Post by wink »

encom wrote: post #216
Suppafly wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's weird is the subs that will ban you for simply commenting in another sub, especially for just one comment, even if your comments are contrary to the theme of the sub.

When r/thedonald was around, I would debate misconceptions americans had about politics in Denmark from time to time (no we're not socialist). And of course I would get banned left and right (but mostly left), and would get the "you post in thedonald, ergo I win"-line regularly. Reddit was a trash heap then, and it's gotten exponentially worse since. Why anyone go there voluntarily is beyond me. It contains nothing o…

That subreddit could basically not be further from the ones I frequent. There are some ok cycling ones, relatively low traffic, not many people, good content - and especially not only typical computer nerds.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#419

Post by perks282 »

moshegramovsky wrote: post #219
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…

Well said. I think Matt Mullenweg has every right to take the action he's taking. It really seems like many companies are perfectly happy to exploit open source products. In this case, it seems like one company makes a lot of money using the Wordpress codebase and doesn't want to make equal contributions. Then they use the money they're making to turn around and sue Wordpress for standing up for themselves. If I were…

Tens of thousands of us depend on WP directly for our livelihood, and millions more depend on it for their businesses and connections with the world. We all need confidence in the stability of WP or an alternative to use and recommend it. WP was right to sanction WPE. It's spilling over to all of us now though.
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