Way too early to tell, but the way everyone is piling on this guy and saying he has mental problems makes me believe he will end up being in the right on this
Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
31–40 of 149 posts
Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
#32Mullenweg 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…
Well charitably I would suspect that for the first question, he probably didn't want to rock the open source community too much. Look at the trouble the rust foundation got into for trademark enforcement, and it hasn't really been a decade. In general, there's no good time to start flexing on your trademark.
For your second question, Matt claims that it's partly because WP engine disabled core features of WordPress. I can imagine a world where you are inundated with complaints that your software doesn't do X basic thing (because the top provider has disabled it) but ITS BEEN THERE THIS WHOLE FUCKING TIME TIME STOP COMPLAINING (put a smile on and explain calmly). You get my point. And then you snap.
No idea if that's what is in his mind but I have some sympathy for Matt. In principle. (This is me steelmanning Matt)
Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
#33Last year, I was contacted out of the blue by an Automattic recruiter who encouraged me to apply for an engineering position there. I was intrigued for a few minutes because I recognized the company and knew they did some really terrific open source work once upon a time. But then I regained my senses... I don't have any kind of reputation or extensive proof of accomplishments or character outside of my resume and re…
Cold outreaches from an employer's recruiters can be from sourcers doing dumb keyword searches.
But can also be because your name was put in the hat by someone at the company (either because they know you, or because they saw something you said online).
Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
#34Matt’s response to DHH was really some of the pettiest stuff I’ve seen from a major public figure in the tech world Maybe its a newfound persona, maybe its a new marketing angle, or maybe its just someone going a little unhinged. But all isn’t right in the WordPress world
It is petty, but I find myself on Matt's side.
I think he's right about the movement, right about better monetization for open source, right about the trademark issues, and while rude, his comments are harsh truths about DHH and his work in OSS.
Obviously, they way he's handled everything has been bad - very valid to ask why he didn't act sooner about the trademark issue. And, snide comments about DHH not donating enough to charity are irrelevant. But he is right about a the core issues.
Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
#35One 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…
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Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
#36Last year, I was contacted out of the blue by an Automattic recruiter who encouraged me to apply for an engineering position there. I was intrigued for a few minutes because I recognized the company and knew they did some really terrific open source work once upon a time. But then I regained my senses... I don't have any kind of reputation or extensive proof of accomplishments or character outside of my resume and re…
Automattic's recruitment process is also... "involved": > Write a thoughtful cover letter, and thorough responses to application questions. I've seen these kind of application questions before. These are not from Automattic but comparable to what I saw from them: "Describe in detail, including the metrics, KPIs and reasoning you used when you launched your previous 0 to 1 product to ensure a good fit to your customer…
> Code Test for engineers - We expect the code test will take no more than a couple of days, and this is done asynchronously over the course of approximately a week
Doesn't that run foul of minimum wage laws and social security laws? At that point you're doing unpaid work.
Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
#37What I am not seeing in any of the discussions about this is the connection with various database products that used to be Open Source but then changed their licenses because they didn’t like AMZN and the like offering hosted versions of their products without paying anything. It’s a similar situation.
Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
#38One 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…
"Maybe he's right about WP Engine, but the way he has and continues to handle everything has been disastrous." This is the best single line distillation of the current lunacy. I mean with every passing day, it all becomes more and more unhinged, and I see no good outcome in the long term. The overall damage to the ecosystem I think begins it's death spiral now. It's a boon for competitors I suppose, but that's about…
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.
Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
#39Mullenweg 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…
Well charitably I would suspect that for the first question, he probably didn't want to rock the open source community too much. Look at the trouble the rust foundation got into for trademark enforcement, and it hasn't really been a decade. In general, there's no good time to start flexing on your trademark. For your second question, Matt claims that it's partly because WP engine disabled core features of WordPress.…
Disabling/limiting revisions is built in to WordPress.
All WP Engine did is add:
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );
to their configs.
Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?
#40Way too early to tell, but the way everyone is piling on this guy and saying he has mental problems makes me believe he will end up being in the right on this
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.