While all of this is very bad, I still dislike the post. „Since 2011“, for example. The plugin was sold two times in the last two years and ended up in the hands of WPEngine in the end. Since then, it has been a bumpy road with ACF, even before this (hugely unsettling!) incident.
ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
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Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
#42While all of this is very bad, I still dislike the post. „Since 2011“, for example. The plugin was sold two times in the last two years and ended up in the hands of WPEngine in the end. Since then, it has been a bumpy road with ACF, even before this (hugely unsettling!) incident.
I don't know what you mean by "bumpy road". ACF has been solid for years, and has received excellent care and updates since moving to Delicious Brains and then WP Engine.
Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
#43Oh god, this gave me a minor heart attack. We are using over 20 ACF fields for 150+ sites. I thought it was completely out of the WordPress ecosystem. I am glad they have the zip download and continuing auto updates. EDIT: I confirm our ACF plugins on sites are all switched to secure custom fields. This is so shady, it broke our snippets because we are using prepend and append texts to wrap our field values. Now they…
pass the bill to matt when you finish fixing those broken wp.
He will reply that go has just “contributed their fair share of man-hours” /s
Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
#44Oh god, this gave me a minor heart attack. We are using over 20 ACF fields for 150+ sites. I thought it was completely out of the WordPress ecosystem. I am glad they have the zip download and continuing auto updates. EDIT: I confirm our ACF plugins on sites are all switched to secure custom fields. This is so shady, it broke our snippets because we are using prepend and append texts to wrap our field values. Now they…
> it broke our snippets because we are using prepend and append texts to wrap our field values
Did they also rename filters and functions? I thought it was only the name and mentions of ACF in the docs. What did you rely on?
Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
#45Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
#46Long time WordPress agency owner here.
At the heart of this - if you consider it generously - is a principle that we can possibly all sign up to, namely that "large commercial entities" should (should from a moral, not legal standpoint) "pay back" to the open source software that makes them money.
The principle however has been totally undermined by MM's actions, which have been completely out of line. His behaviour has been abhorrent. I've been shocked (possibly naively) that a single individual could have such huge power over an open source project that they could literally turn it off (referring here to the update mechanism that WPEngine was using).
I've been even more shocked and appalled by this plugin takeover. ACF is a central piece of pretty much all WP developers' / agencies toolkit. Those of us who have been in this game a long time remember WP before it, and the breath of fresh air that it was to finally be able to define complex relationships between posts and provide our users with a GUI that actually worked well for complicated sites. ACF have pushed and supported this technology for years and years - firstly under the expertise of Elliot Condon, now under the aegis of WPEngine. I know some of the developer team at ACF personally - they're excellent people, making brilliant code, and most of them are putting huge efforts into WP as an open source project even aside from their efforts in maintaining and extending ACF.
The forking of a plugin is one thing. A fair way to do this would be to fork it, and start from zero installs. Automattic could have done that, promoted the hell out of "SCF" and got users in a way that was at least slightly (?) fair.
Simply switching the name and keeping the slug - and thus the 2+million sites - should be thought of as theft. It's outrageous, it's totally petty, and I so far haven't seen a single person being supportive of this (probably?) unilateral action by one - apparently increasingly unhinged - individual.
The wider problem of course is the effect this has on the vibrant WP ecosystem which as someone else in this thread has pointed out is a critical (erstwhile) open cornerstone of the web.
I am still hoping that this will subside into history and it'll all sort but it has left me and many WP devs I know with a pretty bitter taste.
Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
#47Wow, this is a big deal. Matt Mullenweg taking over ACF like that? Not cool. It's not just about messing with years of hard work, but think about all those WordPress sites now running code the ACF team didn't approve. Kinda scary when you think about it. Hope this doesn't become a trend in the open-source world.
And this is different from WP Engine modifying Wordpress exactly how?
Um, no: WP Engine changed a variable in wp-config
Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
#48While all of this is very bad, I still dislike the post. „Since 2011“, for example. The plugin was sold two times in the last two years and ended up in the hands of WPEngine in the end. Since then, it has been a bumpy road with ACF, even before this (hugely unsettling!) incident.
There's been nothing "bumpy" about ACF. It has been solidly supported, developed and documented for years.
Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
#49Long time WordPress agency owner here. At the heart of this - if you consider it generously - is a principle that we can possibly all sign up to, namely that "large commercial entities" should (should from a moral, not legal standpoint) "pay back" to the open source software that makes them money. The principle however has been totally undermined by MM's actions, which have been completely out of line. His behaviour…
> Simply switching the name and keeping the slug - and thus the 2+million sites - should be thought of as theft.
He probably is trying to make a point what WPEngine is doing (based on his own perspective)
Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
They replaced ACF with a forked version so the functionality is still there. That doesn't excuse it but the situation is not so dire for users.
Asking for a friend... What's the migration path to a different plugin look like? Seamless? Better be duckin seamless