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Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

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Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#31

Post by graemep »

luckylion wrote: post #20
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.

Business is wordpress.com, this is wordpress.org -- explicitly not part of Automattic but an "independent" open source project. Obviously it isn't, but that's what Matt likes to pretend.

This is something people seem to miss. His position as CEO of Automattic creates a huge conflict of interest with his position at the non-profit foundation.

This is an example: the foundation's code gives special treatment to an Automattic product.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#32

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Bro really needs an assistant to write his e-mails/comments for him. Every time he talks, people like his company less.

This is also more proof that open source owned by a company will never do what a community wants. Sure you can patch a bug if you fork the code, but nobody wants to do that, so it's not much different than using a proprietary product. Better to use open source not owned by a company, as the incentives are aligned with functionality rather than corporate profit.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#33

Post by ookblah »

kstrauser wrote: post #4

Ok, I think Matt’s goofy for various reasons. From just what this article says, I think he’s right on this one. This is my understanding of it: * The dev team has a disagreement about putting one of the company’s own projects on the available plugins carousel or whatever inside their main product. * They eventually decide not to. * The CEO says “this has been an important part of our product for 20 years. It’s silly…

goofy is a pretty nice way of say he has a history of dressing up his shenanigans by literally... lying lol. the fact that wpengine debacle was framed as a defense of OSS should tell you a lot, probably don't even need to look at the details to know that it's usually him trying to profit while framing it as something moral.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#34

Post by neya »

Maybe the right to time to Ask HN: are you ready for a high performance bullshit-free Wordpress replacement yet? One that has everything batteries included so you don't need plugins for the most part? I would love to hear your thoughts on what your non-negotiables are from a CMS in 2026 and what features are important to you.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#35

Post by gmays »

kstrauser wrote: post #4

Ok, I think Matt’s goofy for various reasons. From just what this article says, I think he’s right on this one. This is my understanding of it: * The dev team has a disagreement about putting one of the company’s own projects on the available plugins carousel or whatever inside their main product. * They eventually decide not to. * The CEO says “this has been an important part of our product for 20 years. It’s silly…

Agree. And the meta point, after reading through to the core committer channel on the WP slack is that it's clear he's now more involved in the project again and making decisions. I haven't been involved for years, but while I was it seems he had other priorities (understandable).

But the rapid changes from AI are an existential threat to the long-term viability of WP. Rather than bike shedding about something relatively trivial, they need to focus on the bigger issues, which it's apparent he's trying to do.

Interestingly, the culture that sustained WP over the last 2 decades may now be working against it. Culture is really hard to change, but he now seems to have his 'wartime CEO' hat on trying to do it, which is the right move.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#36

Post by zephen »

stackghost wrote: post #30
mooreds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most software development is not "real engineering". Most software development doesn't have anywhere near the real world impact of the Boeing/NASA engineering you reference. Good engineering practice recognizes the risks and scales the effort to match it. A CRUD app for internal users has a different set of requirements than a revenue generating SaaS app, just like a backyard fence has different building criteria t…

Sure, I understand the stakes are lower for blog plugins than for aircraft. But being a professional means you do the thing even when the stakes are low. You don't decide to cut corners because you feel like it, or because it's more profitable. Mullenweg is not professional.

> But being a professional means you do the thing even when the stakes are low.

Being a professional means that you adjust what things you do according to the stakes.

For example, in software dev, you usually have tests for the code. Do you have tests for the tests? No? Why not? Why aren't you doing "the thing?"

In chip development, I usually had tests for the tests, because the stakes were higher. But I didn't usually have tests for the tests for the tests.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#37

Post by [deleted] »

kstrauser wrote: post #19
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.

> Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict This is an excellent way to get stuck with only the engineers sucky enough to have to put up with that, which is not the norm. However, in this specific case, it looks like engineers were making a product decision, not an engineering one, and management decided to make a different product decision. That feels categorically differe…

[deleted]

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#38

Post by tomnipotent »

stackghost wrote: post #30
mooreds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most software development is not "real engineering". Most software development doesn't have anywhere near the real world impact of the Boeing/NASA engineering you reference. Good engineering practice recognizes the risks and scales the effort to match it. A CRUD app for internal users has a different set of requirements than a revenue generating SaaS app, just like a backyard fence has different building criteria t…

Sure, I understand the stakes are lower for blog plugins than for aircraft. But being a professional means you do the thing even when the stakes are low. You don't decide to cut corners because you feel like it, or because it's more profitable. Mullenweg is not professional.

What does cutting corners have anything to do with the topic at hand? The situation isn't about devs getting the time to do something right, it's about programmers making a non-engineering decision that was overruled by the business in the businesses best interest. That's perfectly reasonable.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#39

Post by luckylion »

saghm wrote: post #29
AlienRobot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what did he do this time, though? I don't understand it very well, but it sounds like they made an anti-spam solution the default? That is good, right? WP gets a lot of spam.

This one certainly does seem to require a bit more direct knowledge of WP to interpret than I have compared to some of the others. It sounds like the strongest argument against it that is that he previously has been against plugins being listed in the default page and that he doesn't seem particularly open to having published guidelines for what merits being there by default, which means that what belongs there essen…

I think the less charitable and more honest reading is: he wouldn't have allowed such a commit if it wasn't an Automattic product that benefits. He's been making very clear business decisions and forcing them into the foundation (which he controls) for a while (gutenberg was about wordpress.com's goal of competing with wix.com etc, not about wordpress.org), this is just one of the more aggressive ones, which is why it stands out.

His usual response is "but we're also sponsoring .org with developers" ... yeah, that's true, with developers who do Automattic's bidding and ensure that .org is pursuing .com's needs. He'd have to pay those developers either way, but this way he can call it a charitable donation.

Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

#40

Post by fontain »

neya wrote: post #34

Maybe the right to time to Ask HN: are you ready for a high performance bullshit-free Wordpress replacement yet? One that has everything batteries included so you don't need plugins for the most part? I would love to hear your thoughts on what your non-negotiables are from a CMS in 2026 and what features are important to you.

There are endless examples of very good CMS software out there already. WordPress is the plugins, WordPress is a website builder that is ubiquitous because of the plugins.

If you don’t need WordPress, you can choose from thousands of other options.

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