41–50 of 149 posts
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
What 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.
One 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…
Matt has a history of doing this. There was a similar blowup at Tumblr (owned by Automattic) earlier this year [1] where Matt did the same thing, DM'ing users criticizing him and even tweeting out the private handles of the user he was beefing with. 1: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-...
While I think Matt's current behaviour is abhorrent, my understanding is the linked article buries the lede a bit.
The user claimed they were banned due to bigotry and that Tumblr was lying about them having NSFW content. Things continued to escalate until Matt shared a list of their NSFW accounts.
It doesn’t matter what he thinks he’s doing (my belief is that he’s just frustrated that someone else is profiting more than he thinks is “fair” and is using everything else as a cover, but maybe he does actually believe WPE is causing harm).
But here’s the problem I have with the whole position he’s taken. If this were actually about “Wordpress the project/community” the payment would be to the non profit not his personal for-profit company. If it was about trademarks, he should not have made the prior claims that the trademarks were not the property of his for profit when they functionally are. He would have not misrepresented the non profit as an independent entity (a fiction demonstrated clearly by the requirement to compensate his for profit).
if WPEngine is not contributing a “fair” amount to an open source project that sucks, but that’s always a risk if you want to build a for profit business on an OSS basis. But you can’t then unilaterally and retroactively change the rules later on, and act like it’s a “protecting the community” nonsense. You sure as shit don’t get to just engage in explicit extortion.[1]
Again, maybe wpengine was not contributing a fair share back to “the community”, but that’s just how OSS works, not everyone is a contributor.
[1] something I’ve found myself wondering about: my understanding is that under the law a contract signed under duress is not valid. Given the threats Matt was making, if WPE had signed it, would they be able to then go to court and say it was not enforceable due to the threat being leveled at them?
But, obviously, this is currently looking like a disaster of PR and community.
So, hopefully they can figure out:
* solutions to the open source sustainability challenges,
* a solution to the harm done by recent mistakes, and
* how to try to prevent mistakes like that from happening again.
Last 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…
The Google doc linked in this post is theoretically a way for a corporation to harvest the Google usernames of people accessing it. They probably wouldn’t be able to see IPs but that doesn’t prohibit Google from writing your username into their audit logs for them. Use appropriate precautions when accessing.
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 point".
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
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.