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Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

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Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#131

Post by lolinder »

preommr wrote: post #129
lolinder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, did you read Matt's blog post? The one that said this? > DHH claims to be an expert on open source, but his toxic personality and inability to scale teams means that although he has invented about half a trillion dollars worth of good ideas, most of the value has been captured by others. And this? > Rails, finally some open source! Looks like ~943k lines of code, 143k from Basecamp org. Automattic publishes 6.…

> he's talking about open source as a vehicle for developing personal wealth. He made his point poorly, but ultimately it's about OSS projects making more money and not running on people's generosity until they get burnt out because they have to do the OSS work and their real job to pay the bills. That it's a single maintainer or a group of people that get rich is irrelevant, to the real issue and only got brough up…

> he has invented about half a trillion dollars worth of good ideas, most of the value has been captured by others.

You can't tell me with a straight face that this line is talking about paying the bills? "Most of the value has been captured by others"?

The man thinks about open source in terms of value captured rather than value contributed. He seriously thinks that success in open source is measured by the market cap of the attached for profit.

This is as transparent a window into Matt's psyche as I hope we'll ever get, and if you're still buying his lies after reading this I don't know what else to tell you.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#132

Post by throwawaymaths »

lolinder wrote: post #121
ceejayoz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But until the last few weeks the Wordpress site enthusiastically endorsed its use by third parties. It wasn’t “we really wish you wouldn’t”.

Yep. This is what it said on September 19, the day before Matt launched his nuclear war: > The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. It was changed to its current spiteful text on September 25. http://web.archive.org/web/20240919043912/https://wordpressf...

Doesn't this serve as evidence that my speculation that Matt is frustrated with the behavior of WP engine? Please and spiteful language is not legally binding.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#133

Post by mjburgess »

didgetmaster wrote: post #90
mjburgess wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am confused. Is WordPress trying to change the open source license to a more restrictive one? Suddenly trying to enforce some terms of the existing license that they never did in the past? Or is it an old fashioned legal dispute where each party says the terms of the contract mean something different?

He's (pretending) to operate under an alternative history where wordpress requires contributions to its ecosystem proportionate to your revenue, and forbids any use of its trademarks or any related terms.

He's actually engaged in rich-vs-rich corp warfare and playing the open source community like puppets on a string.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#134

Post by davidandgoliath »

codegeek wrote: post #23

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…

I do think it's worth noting Automattic has raised ~$984M (via PE/other investors), whereas WP Engine has raised far less & is somehow doing far better with less headcount.

What's really telling is ~9 of Automattic's 46 own investments were inside the WordPress ecosystem, vs. 100% of WP Engine's. Things like Beeper for $124M in April of 2024 just seem awkward in light of the recent complaints about WP Engine not doing enough.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#135

Post by easyThrowaway »

legitster wrote: post #49

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…

Yep. Feels like they're getting ready for an IPO, and they see the open source ecosystem around them as potential future competitors rather than an advantage.

At the end of the day having half of the web running their platform is a nice idea, but having even 5% of that exclusively on Wordpress.com, or Wordpress VIP is way better for the wallet.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#136

Post by rsynnott »

There was a shift at some point in the tech industry from CEO-as-professional-career-administrator-type to CEO-as-visionary-weirdo-founder-type. I think over the last few years, we are increasingly seeing the consequences of this.

(Not that the previous model was foolproof, but they were usually a lot easier to get rid of when they went rogue; for instance see Léo Apotheker.)

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#137

Post by rsynnott »

KerrAvon wrote: post #68
codetrotter wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a boon for competitors I suppose I would think so too, but it’s not guaranteed. Everyone thought for sure that Twitter would die with what Elon Musk has been doing to it, but somehow it seems to still be alive. Likewise, everyone thought there would be a total exodus of users from Reddit to Lemmy or Kbin. And while those platforms did get a lot of new users, it feels like it didn’t reach the level of significa…

Twitter is dead, it just hasn't stopped twitching yet. Turns out network effects are extremely durable. There is no time like the present to move to BlueSky if you haven't already.

I mean, I think it probably depends on your use case, but yeah, it is, at the very least, dying. I haven't felt the need to use my dormant account for just under two years (with the latest AI nonsense I should probably just delete it; I'd been holding off until now because, well, it's 18 years old, and I have some sentimental attachment).

Mastodon's been a largely acceptable replacement.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#138

Post by acdha »

philistine wrote: post #118
acdha wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seeing how Matt has acted in the last couple of days, I wouldn't be surprised if they're just going to yank the license from under the project, and just wait for the lawsuits.

True. I’ve never seen someone destroy a multi-decade open source community so effectively.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#139

Post by vundercind »

nfRfqX5n wrote: post #50
jeltz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you are contrarian just to be contrarian? That is a very lazy thing to be, arguably even lazier than blindly following the masses. It is a way to feel superior without having to think. Why don't you read up and form your own opinion? It is just like 15-30 minutes of research.

My opinion is both parties are in the wrong, but everyone is piling on this guy and calling him mentally ill

Missed the thread where he was posting over, and over, and over, in here, including some stuff that looked materially interesting for a lawsuit, while everyone was either begging him to both talk to his lawyers and listen to them when they told him to STFU, or else toasting marshmallows over his self-immolation? It was not well behavior, and that's just stuff visible in his comments on this site, let alone others.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#140

Post by ceejayoz »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #132
lolinder wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. This is what it said on September 19, the day before Matt launched his nuclear war: > The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. It was changed to its current spiteful text on September 25. http://web.archive.org/web/20240919043912/https://wordpressf...

Doesn't this serve as evidence that my speculation that Matt is frustrated with the behavior of WP engine? Please and spiteful language is not legally binding.

I don't think "Matt is frustrated with WP Engine" is speculation. That much is abundantly clear.

What's not clear is if they did anything wrong to deserve it.

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