111–120 of 149 posts
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Way too many progressive people proclaim the virtues of free and open and then when others take them for their word. If you want compensation of any kind you must stipulate them before the fact.
But is Matt progressive in any sense of the word?
Mullenweg just keeps digging. He is the only person I have ever seen interacting in such a petty manner that he made a company backed by Private Equity look like a victim. If Trademark was the issue, why did it take him over a decade ? Why is he not going after all the other gazillion WP providers that use similar phrase on their website ? We all know the answer. The only company (WP Engine) that beat his for profit…
> He is the only person I have ever seen interacting in such a petty manner that he made a company backed by Private Equity look like a victim Right. At the very start of this I was automatically on wordPress' side because yeah, kick back if you make a mint off free code. It's the morally correct thing to do. The rest is just.. wtf. I hope I never mullenweg a project this badly.
"I hope I never mullenweg a project this badly."
That is the only good thing I've seen come out of this whole debacle. This needs to become standard tech/OSS lexicon, and Matt's enduring legacy.
Mullenweg just keeps digging. He is the only person I have ever seen interacting in such a petty manner that he made a company backed by Private Equity look like a victim. If Trademark was the issue, why did it take him over a decade ? Why is he not going after all the other gazillion WP providers that use similar phrase on their website ? We all know the answer. The only company (WP Engine) that beat his for profit…
Jason Cohen understood the tradeoffs of using private equity versus bootstrapping. He goes into the decision in more depth elsewhere, but at 44s into this video about avoiding private equity he alludes to his decision:
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> and even tweeting out the private handles of the user he was beefing with. While I think Matt's current behaviour is abhorrent, my understanding is the linked article buries the lede a bit. The user claimed they were banned due to bigotry and that Tumblr was lying about them having NSFW content. Things continued to escalate until Matt shared a list of their NSFW accounts. https://www.threads.net/@samhenrigold/post/…
Why does a CEO even get involved in something like that? No matter who is in the right?
There's plenty of reasons to dislike Matt without stirring up petty drama that's exaggerated or misleading.
Mullenweg just keeps digging. He is the only person I have ever seen interacting in such a petty manner that he made a company backed by Private Equity look like a victim. If Trademark was the issue, why did it take him over a decade ? Why is he not going after all the other gazillion WP providers that use similar phrase on their website ? We all know the answer. The only company (WP Engine) that beat his for profit…
What you've said is completely true, but I still can't detect any bad behavior here. He stopped supporting a company that was threatening (not unfairly) his company with his software. Why would he be obligated to justify that? If you built your business next to mine, and I shared e.g. my water infrastructure with you for free or for a nominal fee, then one day your business got large enough to threaten my business, a…
Seems totally fair, right? WordPress is 100% reliant on PHP and getting updates, new features, and security fixes for free, none of which the PHP project is obligated to provide?
Surely Automattic, a company valued at over 7 billion with annual revenues of over 700mil is happily paying Rasmus 50 odd million a year?
No? Why not? Are the rules different for WPEngine and Silver Lake compared to Automattic and Blackrock/Alta Park?
And, you know what? You can't run Wordpress without Linux, Windows, macOS, and maybe a few *BSD operating systems to run it on. I guess Matt's owes Linus and Bill and Tim, and a bunch of BSD project leads another $50mil.
One important people to keep in mind as they read this post, the linked Google Doc, and tweets from the past day where a bunch of people are receiving unsolicited DMs[1] from Automattic with grammar that matches Matt's: - Matt, under various guises, is shifting blame to different entities that are effectively himself. - Automattic is Matt. Matt is the CEO of Automattic. - The WordPress Foundation is, effectively, Mat…
Whether he's "right" or "wrong", this is a list of Adderall side effects that seem to match Mullenweg's behavior:
* Increased Sociability: More outgoing and talkative.
* Risk-Taking Behavior: Engaging in impulsive or risky actions.
* Reduced Inhibition: Less self-consciousness, more expressive.
* Improved Confidence: Greater willingness to take on challenges.
* Euphoria: Feelings of happiness and pleasure.
* Potential for Overindulgence: Risky behaviors may increase.
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Well, he's not right about WP Engine. Wordpress is an open source project. If he's "right" about WP Engine, then he's "right" about basically every user of every open source project, and there ceases to be any such thing. OS is take-it-or-leave-it, if he wants contributions back, put it in the licence and also offer support.
Way too many progressive people proclaim the virtues of free and open and then when others take them for their word. If you want compensation of any kind you must stipulate them before the fact.
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Wordpress can't because it was a fork of b2/cafelog. You can't un-GPL code you didn't own in the first place.
How much of that code is still left? I’d think the bigger problem is that they’d have to get everyone who ever contributed to it not as an Automattic employee to agree to a re-license.
As an open source creator, I can understand Matt's position to some extent and the frustration behind seeing some competitor profiting from his work. He is clearly eccentric. The part about him asking WP Engine for revenue-sharing in exchange for changing words in his speech made me chuckle. What I don't understand is why he cares so much. He is probably one of the wealthiest OSS people of all time so it seems petty…
I think when you're rich you'd rather give charity to the needy than to other rich guys.
If he is just suing that company, it's really about himself and his interests. He is right to notice the moral incongruence but he can't expect other people to support him in his personal quest to get justice just for himself.
What he sees as gross abuse is just day-to-day reality for the vast majority of open source developers. Many of whom struggle to get by and struggle to find jobs.
Companies which refuse to even extend OSS devs a job interview are making out like bandits on top of their work while simultaneously using VC funds to raise entry barriers and ad costs so that the OSS devs cannot even compete in their own industry which they contributed to. The typical skilled OSS dev ends up with no jobs, no funding, no opportunities.
OSS devs can't even afford legal representation so legal precedents are meaningless to them.
My tinfoil hat - this is all semi-intentional self-sabotage. WordPress is itself a fork of a previous open-source GPL license. Meaning Mullenweg couldn't make it close source even if he wanted to. He makes it pretty clear that he thinks all of WordPress should belong to him. So he's intentionally closing out the ecosystem by making it as hostile to third-parties as possible. As some like to say, "the cruelty is the p…
There is much more to be made for him scorching the earth and either directing them to his company or taking a cut of competitors. I guess the logic is who cares if the overall system suffers as long as he has the biggest piece of the pie.