Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

therepository.email

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 63 posts

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#11

Post by AnonEM00se »

kstrauser wrote: post #4

Ok, I think Matt’s goofy for various reasons. From just what this article says, I think he’s right on this one. This is my understanding of it: * The dev team has a disagreement about putting one of the company’s own projects on the available plugins carousel or whatever inside their main product. * They eventually decide not to. * The CEO says “this has been an important part of our product for 20 years. It’s silly…

Leaving out the optics and personalities and internal politics, the biggest issue I see is that they added this during the RC phase, which is against their policy. It should have been pushed to 7.1.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#12

Post by AlienRobot »

saghm wrote: post #5

It says a lot about what's been going on in the Wordpress ecosystem lately that I had never heard of Mullenweg before maybe a year or two ago, and now I immediately see his name and think "What's he done this time?" Probably very frustrating for many people who actually use the platform, but as someone who doesn't, it's almost morbidly fascinating watching the continued drama and wondering if and when any of it ends…

But what did he do this time, though? I don't understand it very well, but it sounds like they made an anti-spam solution the default? That is good, right? WP gets a lot of spam.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#14

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

AnonEM00se wrote: post #11
kstrauser wrote: post #4

Ok, I think Matt’s goofy for various reasons. From just what this article says, I think he’s right on this one. This is my understanding of it: * The dev team has a disagreement about putting one of the company’s own projects on the available plugins carousel or whatever inside their main product. * They eventually decide not to. * The CEO says “this has been an important part of our product for 20 years. It’s silly…

Leaving out the optics and personalities and internal politics, the biggest issue I see is that they added this during the RC phase, which is against their policy. It should have been pushed to 7.1.

Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#15

Post by stackghost »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #14
AnonEM00se wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving out the optics and personalities and internal politics, the biggest issue I see is that they added this during the RC phase, which is against their policy. It should have been pushed to 7.1.

Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.

>Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.

This bush league kind of attitude is why people insinuate that most software development is not "real engineering".

When Boeing or NASA lets making money get in the way of good engineering practice, people die.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#16

Post by textrunmax »

drcongo wrote: post #3

What is a "connector" in this context?

The Connectors API is a framework for managing connections to services like AI, anti-spam, etc. It was introduced on March 18, 2026 with WordPress 7.0 at https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/18/introducing-the-c... and the PR at https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75833.

It introduces a new prominent page in your wordpress settings that recommends popular services to you. All other services are behind a link that says "Find more connectors in the plugin directory" and are less visible.

See image https://developer.wordpress.org/news/files/2026/03/image-1.j..., which is the second image on "What’s new for developers?" at https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2026/03/whats-new-for-d...

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#17

Post by mooreds »

stackghost wrote: post #15
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.

>Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money. This bush league kind of attitude is why people insinuate that most software development is not "real engineering". When Boeing or NASA lets making money get in the way of good engineering practice, people die.

> most software development is not "real engineering".

Most software development doesn't have anywhere near the real world impact of the Boeing/NASA engineering you reference.

Good engineering practice recognizes the risks and scales the effort to match it.

A CRUD app for internal users has a different set of requirements than a revenue generating SaaS app, just like a backyard fence has different building criteria than a highway bridge.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#18

Post by brobinson »

stackghost wrote: post #15
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.

>Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money. This bush league kind of attitude is why people insinuate that most software development is not "real engineering". When Boeing or NASA lets making money get in the way of good engineering practice, people die.

"died in a blogging accident"

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#19

Post by kstrauser »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #14
AnonEM00se wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving out the optics and personalities and internal politics, the biggest issue I see is that they added this during the RC phase, which is against their policy. It should have been pushed to 7.1.

Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.

> Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict

This is an excellent way to get stuck with only the engineers sucky enough to have to put up with that, which is not the norm.

However, in this specific case, it looks like engineers were making a product decision, not an engineering one, and management decided to make a different product decision. That feels categorically different than "mauve has more RAM".

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#20

Post by luckylion »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #14
AnonEM00se wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving out the optics and personalities and internal politics, the biggest issue I see is that they added this during the RC phase, which is against their policy. It should have been pushed to 7.1.

Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.

Business is wordpress.com, this is wordpress.org -- explicitly not part of Automattic but an "independent" open source project.

Obviously it isn't, but that's what Matt likes to pretend.

Post reply on HN