Earlier quoted context omitted.
Checkmatte? But seriously if I had to recommend something, not escalating seems best for everyone involved.
Aftermatt
New-mattic (pneumatic)?
Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
321–330 of 351 posts
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#322[dead]
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#323He's really tweeting through it today: https://xcancel.com/photomatt/with_replies From a quick scan of his recent tweets, https://www.therepository.email/matt-mullenwegs-messages-wen... might answer the "why now?" of this.
Man, in a thread he links to his tweet from 2024 that mentions using disappearing messages on Signal which the WPEngine lawyers are now using against him.
So many people (including DannyBee, himself a lawyer) were telling him on HN how opposing counsel would be analyzing every post looking for any kind of angle to give them an edge, and it was very much in his best interest to step away from his computer. But, in reply he said his own lawyers said it was fine so no big deal...
EDIT: also his bright pink X profile image is abusing HDR to make it extra annoyingly bright and the rest of my screen dim on my phone. Very off-putting behavior but pretty on character.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#324> One person speculated that the timing may have something to do with Mullenweg’s annual trip to the Burning Man festival, after which he tends to return “with ideas.” This line is so perfectly on the nose it could be in a McSweeney's article and yet here it is in reality. We are truly on the weirdest timeline.
Many Burning Man guides, including the original arctic monkey guide that I first read about 20 years ago, specifically warn against making any life altering decisions for weeks after Burning Man. Decompression is a bitch when coming down from half a dozen psychedelics.
For me, it's a big task just decompressing from a "normal" fun weekend convention where I've done nothing more than light drinking.
I imagine decompressing from something like Burning Man would be even more intense... even without psychedelics.
(I know psychedelics are obviously a thing at Burning Man, but I don't know if it's 25% or 50% or 75% or 99.99% of people using them...)
As a side note, I know somebody who permanently changed their gender identity after a mushroom trip revelation. I've always wondered how long they waited after the trip to "finalize" their decision.
(FWIW, that was years ago and it seems like it was indeed the right choice for them)
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#325[deleted]
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
A CMS that can only run on one hosting provider?
It can be deployed to a node.js server with sqlite https://docs.emdashcms.com/deployment/nodejs/ Not as simple as wp, but not tied to one hosting provider.
But then ... WP is not tied to one hosting provider. There are no shortage of hosting companies out there to which you can deploy WP. In fact, many make it so easy it is ridonc.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open to correction here, but I understand it to be like this: the kernel of the contention is about the use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks, not the software itself. Essentially, WP Engine is a commercial entity profiting from the use of the trademark. Regardless of how it has been handled, it does not seem to be a frivolous claim.
They were using the trademark on the website to describe WordPress the software project under nomitative fair use in the same way many, many hosting providers have been doing for decades. He openly admitted in online comments to trying (and failing) to extort their CEO in private to give Automattic huge payments, and if they declined that he'd destroy their valuation by cutting off their access and buy them for penni…
And the part that is being litigated is whether that is, in fact, fair use, correct?
I like the comparison to Chrome and Chromium. I don't know the timeline of the whole wordpress IP. At this most it has arguably undergone genericization. That's why I think it's complicated enough that there is merit to arguments on either side.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide some examples of these errors? Asking genuinely.
The biggest one was probably 2 years back, the dispute with WP Engine, a hosting provider for WordPress. He used WordPress infrastructure to force all instances hosted there to break, then removed the extensions they built from the plugin store, and then replaced them under the exact same name and identifier with his own. He then went on this site, and placed incriminating comments under posts discussing that, withou…
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Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#329I’ve been at Automattic since 2018. Reading this thread, I wanted to share a story. In 2022, Matt supported me and my work on WordPress Playground [1]. Playground was in its early days and most people were still questioning whether it did anything useful. I got skepticism from peers, social media, even from my direct lead at the time. Not from Matt. He encouraged me, promoted Playground, created an environment where…
Thanks for sharing your story. How do you feel about the more recent behavior, though - the WP engine lawsuit, the buyout, etc.? Does that align with the person you saw and knew back then?
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Satisfaction? It’s about truth and justice, investors deserve to know about executive malfeasance
Weird to see so many posters suddenly pop up that are anxious to protect investors (who have the access and means to protect themselves) at the expense of harming employees and workers. Glad to see you all getting into the ultra-capitalist spirit of Hacker News I guess?
Bad companies who do bad things should fail. Why are you so obsessed with protecting criminals from consequences? If an exec is sexually harassing employees should they still be protected? What if the bad behavior is abusing workers and committing wage theft? Should that still be swept under the rug? Forgive me for not really caring about the stock grants of people who are in the top 10% of earners. Actual working class people aren’t getting equity