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Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

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Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#301

Matt is a very good person who has done a ton for open source, the internet, and the arts. As a founder, this type of board action would be incredibly emotionally difficult, especially given you've worked with these people for decades and built the company from nothing. While you may disagree to his reactions to particular issues, I don't really understand rooting against him or the negativity against him personally…

> The situation is obviously more complex than any of us know, and I'd encourage everyone to be a bit more positive and supportive of a fellow founder and builder.

What is your basis for this claim? His actions and behavior are publicly visible, and I can't even imagine a hidden context that would justify how he has acted.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#303
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but that is part of this long rolling episode that started with the WP Engine thing, which is really when he began to act in an unhinged way. That is really when the sudden shift in his public manner happened. It has been going on that long. He should have stepped back as either Automattic CEO or Wordpress BFDL at least a year ago IMO; the ACF/SCF debacle settled it. WP and the community around it would have be…

When crooks are stealing from you and no justice can be found? He is right to be unhinged.

WP Engine were not 'crooks' stealing from him.

WP was the community's, apparently, not Matt's. Unless it suited him, in which case it was his.

WP was open source, and WP Engine followed the license. What crookery?

Oh, they misrepresented themselves as being WP affiliated, like the claimed "independence" of WP.com (Matt's for profit entity, not the open source app)? Why was one okay not the other?

Let's not discuss that Matt, and Automattic, while pushing press releases saying that WP was forever an unencumbered open source app for the community, that very same day issued WP.com an exclusive, free, unlimited, irrevocable commercial license... didn't tell anyone about that, it came out in the lawsuit.

Or that the WP community board was effectively Matt and a friend, and a largely absent third friend.

Crooks, stealing? WP Engine contributed to the OSS app with thousands of developer hours a year - not as many as Matt "felt" they should. And only them, not other WP hosters.

Crooks, stealing? WP Engine donated six digits a year to sponsor and support WP community events, including the one where Matt went on stage and spent 45 minutes slandering them - after disinviting them, and refusing to return their sponsorship or donation. He made WP Engine effectively pay to give him a stage to talk shit about them.

Crooks, stealing? Like Matt taking software packages that WP Engine wrote, doing a search/replace on Copyright, license, authorship, and replacing their entries (with all their accumulated community reviews, ratings, followership and traction) with his wholesale-copied variants?

Matt was unhinged. I think "right to be" is "debatable, at best".

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#305
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He is surely very evidently mentally ill. I agree and upvoted your post. But can I just say that it is super-reddit to diagnose someone based on your B- undergrad psych classes. We should go back to the classics like "he went off his rocker!", or "he's totally unhinged!" or "completely delulu!" (of course the people who know, know, and they shouldn't tell you.)

> it is super-reddit to diagnose If I see a person with a broken bone protruding from their arm, I don't need an undergrad med-terms class to know "this person needs medical attention" even if I am not qualified to render it. Similarly, there are certain thresholds of human behavior that indicate mental illness -- you don't have to be licensed to treat it in order to recognize that there is a serious problem.

I wonder if GP would change his mind if he had witnessed Matt posting through the lawsuit in this very own website.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#306

Who uses WP outside of legacy installs? I used to love it 15 or so years ago for side hustle work, but over time it gained weight and vulnerabilities, whack-a-mole. Plug-ins were nice, but that inlining wasn't. I don't hate PHP, the things were just clumsy and messy inside the loop and I wasn't smart enough. What's the replacement these days in case I need to set up something simple quickly? Not Square Space or Shopi…

A huge chunk of the web is WP.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#307
post #101

I am so curious why now, what changed? The WPEngine saga was started two years ago.

Probably back room deal between Wordpress board/management and WPEngine board/management. It's a safe bet that WPEngine was destroying Wordpress legally simply because their CEO doesn't suffer from verbal diarrhea and actually shuts up when the lawyers tell him to. If you get Matt out of the way, you can ink a deal and resolve everything so that even if Matt pulls something else, there are contracts in place that can…

This is a completely reasonable take and I'm stunned you're getting downvoted for it.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#308

Anyone could have forked WordPress at any time or spun up their own multi tenant instances if they were truly concerned, this just seems personal. It’s a bad day for founders IMO.

Look, a brand new account taking photomatt's side. Neat.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#310
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but that is part of this long rolling episode that started with the WP Engine thing, which is really when he began to act in an unhinged way. That is really when the sudden shift in his public manner happened. It has been going on that long. He should have stepped back as either Automattic CEO or Wordpress BFDL at least a year ago IMO; the ACF/SCF debacle settled it. WP and the community around it would have be…

When crooks are stealing from you and no justice can be found? He is right to be unhinged.

What crooks?
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