221–230 of 416 posts
I've brought this up in another thread, but what's stopping Automattic from going after anyone making a profit in the WP community? Website developers, plugin makers, theme designers, etc. Everyone is using the Wordpress trademark to promote their service and the plugins library to keep their services updated. If that's the legal precedent being used now, Automattic winning the lawsuit implies that nearly the entire…
I've brought this up in another thread, but what's stopping Automattic from going after anyone making a profit in the WP community? Website developers, plugin makers, theme designers, etc. Everyone is using the Wordpress trademark to promote their service and the plugins library to keep their services updated. If that's the legal precedent being used now, Automattic winning the lawsuit implies that nearly the entire…
The "Wordpress era" has gone on a really long time.
That longevity makes it easy to forget how quickly these things can change; remember Movable Type was the king of the blogging systems for a good while, until THEY (if I recall correctly) did a gross moneygrab and WP filled the gap.
How quickly MT became a footnote should be something Matt keeps in mind.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting remote jobs in general is tricky if you're not from certain countries. I'm from Algeria, Automattic was one of the few companies that hired there. Every other country would ask you to be in the US, or US timezone, or in a certain European country. Not all remote is built equal.
This actually makes me really suspicious about Automattic. Companies generally don't refuse to hire outside of certain countries just to be jerks, they do it because complying with international tax obligations while paying employees in dozens of countries is complex and expensive. Given that, and the behavior we've seen from Matt and Automattic so far, what are the odds that they've actually got a bunch of really gr…
You’re also talking without concrete knowledge. We work as international contractors, we handle our own local taxes. Automattic pays us the gross salary and it’s up to you.
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This was more generous than both the Basecamp and Coinbase buyout offers, I'm curious why you say I'm a petty tyrant. I can be a little ASD so sometimes my written communication doesn't come through the best.
> I'm curious why you say I'm a petty tyrant. For the reasons I gave in that same paragraph. I agree that you made more lucrative offers than Basecamp, but they presented their offers (publicly, at least) in a way that feels more professional and respectful of their employees.
Or perhaps that's not what you are saying at all, but are just a poor communicator yourself? If that's the case, I am surprised you are not more sympathetic to the folly of interpreting such statements without other context. Dunning-Krueger effect strikes again, I suppose.
> In a blog post, Mullenweg said the package offered $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher, but the employees who took it would not be eligible to be re-hired by Automattic. Like never eligible? That seems kind of petty. I would understand some timeframe, like "not eligible for 3/4/5 years", but a permanent ban seems weird.
Why would you want to go back there anyway? The whole reason you are leaving is because you think the CEO is worse at adulting than a grade-schooler. I completely agree it’s petty, but it’s entirely in line with their behavior over the past few weeks. I guess at least it’s better than Musk?
That doesn't make sense to me. People stay in jobs they don't like all the time, with leadership they don't agree with all the time. Here's the reason: it's because they pay you to go to work. Like, money. If everyone just pulled up stakes every time the thought occurred to them that their CEO might be a petty tyrant, there would be tumbleweeds blowing through every Slack channel in the world.
I suspect it was the 6 months salary rather than any major philosophical agreement.
It seems like a great deal at any company, if you're confident you can find a new job within six months. This plus the extortion makes me wonder if Automattic is strapped for cash?
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It seems like a great deal at any company, if you're confident you can find a new job within six months. This plus the extortion makes me wonder if Automattic is strapped for cash?
The only rational reason to lay off 159 employees and demand millions of dollars from your competitors, ruining your reputation in the process and losing all your customers, is if not doing that results in an even worse outcome.
Is this Matt being a mercurial, megalomaniacal jerk, or is there some darker motivation that makes his behavior here borderline-rational?
It kinda doesn't matter, but it would be interesting to know. OTOH, I'm well past being surprised when some super wealthy tech bro shows his ass, so...
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What is bad about overcast?
Could be the redesign that was launched a couple of months ago that still some folks seem to dislike.
I am a bit out of the loop does any one have a summary of what is happening with automattic and wpengine ?
We have no idea, really. Based on public posts only, Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, founder of Wodpress completely lost his mind and went into war against WPEngine for unclear reasons (many suspect it's money pressure perhaps from investors). He claims they don't contribute to Wordpress and WPEngine says while they don't contribute to the core product they contribute aplenty to plugins, sponsor camps and document…
This is the big one. I believe his argument was that when WPE customers updated they were using WP.org bandwidth for free.
That's a reasonable point.
But...doesn't that also apply to nearly everyone else who is running WP somewhere other than via a paid plan on WP.com?
If I download the install zip from WP.org and install WP on my own server, won't it get updates from WP.org?
If I get shared hosting at one of the zillion shared hosting companies that include cPanel or something similar, and click the button to set up WP, won't that then get its updates from WP.org?
What about if I use the Wordpress docker image from docker.com? That comes configured by default to just do the initial install from the WP that is included in the image and then update that as needed, so it seems that if I go that way and don't explicitly change it to be static (and then do updates by redeploy when new images are available) I'm going to be hitting WP.org.
Do I need to be worrying that if I use WP in any of those ways I'm going to be cut off from updates because WP.org isn't getting paid when I update?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting remote jobs in general is tricky if you're not from certain countries. I'm from Algeria, Automattic was one of the few companies that hired there. Every other country would ask you to be in the US, or US timezone, or in a certain European country. Not all remote is built equal.
This actually makes me really suspicious about Automattic. Companies generally don't refuse to hire outside of certain countries just to be jerks, they do it because complying with international tax obligations while paying employees in dozens of countries is complex and expensive. Given that, and the behavior we've seen from Matt and Automattic so far, what are the odds that they've actually got a bunch of really gr…
(Just hiring people as contractors, as it sounds like Automattic does, is another option.)