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WordPress Is in Trouble

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Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#421

Post by shaded2 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #272
legitster wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to keep in mind, WordPress being open source was an afterthought. It inherited a GPL from b2/cafelog. If Matt woke up one morning and decided he wanted to make WordPress closed source, he couldn't. But what he could do is force everyone to pay a license fee for the name, and anyone who did not pay he publicly makes hell for them. You could also pretend to encourage them to fork, knowing full well they would…

I don't understand your point about forking, yes they'd have the GPL but so what? They can control their fork from then on, it doesn't matter if they have to continue open sourcing contributions, in fact it'd be preferable to whatever Matt is doing.

I think you underestimate the work it takes to maintain and more importantly grow such a large open source project. If wp engine can barely contribute today, what are the chances they want to take on the whole thing. Nope they just want to get rich off open source. That's understandable , they are a for profit after all. But at what point does it make sense to give back in terms of either money or time to make improvements to the ecosystem that you depend on.

I agree with Matt's ideals but not the actions. The reality is theres not a whole lot he can do without looking like spoilt kid taking his ball away from the game.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#422

Post by BlueTemplar »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #366
BlueTemplar wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the issue with CGI ?

CGI is fine, but it’s a rather awkward API, and about the worst way to publish a Web site. I mentioned writing CMSes, and one of them was in Perl (using CGI). I still wake screaming, sometimes, and that was probably 25 years ago.

Yeah, I roughly got that, but in which specific way is it bad ?

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#423

Post by pluc »

einpoklum wrote: post #83

Could someone link to a higher-level history of the WordPress situation, going further back? For the benefit of those of us that don't know much beyond the fact that it's an established blogging and website-building platform?

https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#424

Post by cies »

Volundr wrote: post #371
cies wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not for you to decide, but for Automattic to decide how much contribution is needed for them to allow you to use their services. the code of WP is free software. free-as-in-freedom. the services are not, and never were... they were free-as-in-beer. RMS taught us about this, and it comes in handy again.

I don't recall voicing an opinion either way. In fact I specifically said I don't know if it's enough, but saying they contribute nothing is factually incorrect. And no lack of contribution would justify taking over ACF in what is essentially a supply chain attack like they did.

The contribute to the ecosystem, a little to the WP code, but use for free the services that Automattic provides.

It's the services that they got cut-off from. They are separate things that to the layman are seen as "wordpress".

> I don't recall voicing an opinion

Well, you mention they contribute to the ecosystem. If it is not your supply chain, you cannot dictate how it is run. You call it an attach, they call it a commercial endeavour.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#425

Post by tylershuster »

i_have_an_idea wrote: post #345
tylershuster wrote: post #196

I don't understand how (if?) WordPress has popularity among serious professionals. Extending it without plugins, many of which are paid, is a nightmare. Adding custom fields is laborious, configuring post type display modes is a slog as well. HN seems to grumble about Drupal but even if your only requirement is a PHP server with a MySQL database connect, Drupal (8+) is just as simple to set up as WordPress and infini…

I don't understand how `serious professionals` continue to try to trash WordPress using superficial and often uneducated arguments, completely ignoring the fact that it has huge flexibility, a rich ecosystem, many options for using modern development practices and 40%+ global market share.

I worked in exclusively WordPress for many years. "Flexibility" doesn't mean jack if it doesn't adhere to modern development practices itself. "Many options," yes but the core is just cobbled together by amateurs. It has nothing to do with modern PHP development practices; it's basically just a collection of functions. It doesn't use composer; most of the development stacks I've seen are tricks to basically gut its dependency management and rewrite it themselves.

As for a "rich ecosystem" and "40%+ global market share" — popularity has nothing to do with quality.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#426

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #422
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CGI is fine, but it’s a rather awkward API, and about the worst way to publish a Web site. I mentioned writing CMSes, and one of them was in Perl (using CGI). I still wake screaming, sometimes, and that was probably 25 years ago.

Yeah, I roughly got that, but in which specific way is it bad ?

It looks like you are wanting to argue on some specifics. I probably won't be able to give you what you are looking for.

With me, it had to do with the languages I wrote (C and Perl), that required CGI to publish. CGI did fine, but it's fairly primitive. Just another system text pipe (which, TBH, is pretty much what is going on, under a Webserver).

But for most folks, CGI is unapproachable. That's what PHP gives people. It was so easy to use, that anyone that could edit an HTML file, could also write powerful programs in PHP. It was integrated into the Webserver, not the system (as far as the user was concerned).

At the time I first encountered PHP, ColdFusion was an industry standard for that kind of thing, but it was a commercial product, locked to a single vendor. PHP gave hosting companies a fairly simple package (for free) they could compile into their Webserver, that would give their customers that power.

Nerds have no issue, using things like CGI, but most folks aren't nerds, and we sometimes have a real hard time, understanding that. Nerds that do, often become rich.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#427

Post by gspencley »

graeme wrote: post #243
gspencley wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal take on this has to do entirely with how the decision to block WP Engine access to WordPress.org, unless they were willing to pay for it, was arrived at. And this is a critical detail that I'm fuzzy on. If anyone has context (even links with further info) I'd be very much appreciative. I have since read the WP Engine complaint. I understand what they are alleging. I'm just not 100% clear on the nitty and…

>My personal take on this has to do entirely with how the decision to block WP Engine access to WordPress.org, unless they were willing to pay for it, was arrived at. Matt would be allowed to charge for access to Wordpress.org. It's his property. What you can't do is: make a service publicly available and then threaten a company that it needs exclusive terms In the lawsuit the judge asked Automattic to come up with a…

Thanks! Your reply added some missing context. Particularly the part about Automatic not wanting WP Engine to host their own mirrors. That definitely casts doubt and suspicion on Matt and Automatic's motivations and helps put into perspective all of the Matt/Automatic "haters" who are siding with WP Engine. Without context like that, it sounds like people are asking others to float the bill for them. But if they are being denied the option to "self-serve" then yeah, there's obviously way more to it.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#428

Post by gspencley »

InsomniacL wrote: post #237
gspencley wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal take on this has to do entirely with how the decision to block WP Engine access to WordPress.org, unless they were willing to pay for it, was arrived at. And this is a critical detail that I'm fuzzy on. If anyone has context (even links with further info) I'd be very much appreciative. I have since read the WP Engine complaint. I understand what they are alleging. I'm just not 100% clear on the nitty and…

> But being a jerk isn't a crime and doesn't forfeit your rights. The court case isn't about Matt being a jerk, it's about crime. > WordPress.org has to pay for their servers Wordpress.org was sold to volunteers as a community asset owned by the foundation not Matt and even Matt's lawyer made public statements to that effect. Volunteers spent their time building it up, developing in to WordPress core reliance on w.or…

> > But being a jerk isn't a crime and doesn't forfeit your rights.

> The court case isn't about Matt being a jerk, it's about crime.

If we're going to get that pedantic, and ignore the "spirit" in which that statement of mine was intended, then it's equally fair for me to point out that no, the legal case is not anything to do with a "crime." It is a civil dispute.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#429

Post by whimsicalism »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #395
troad wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what "rent seeking" means. Rent seeking is the term for manipulating institutions, customs or laws for the purpose of extracting money without creating anything.

I think the distinction is generally about not creating anything that's broadly useful, putting up a tollbooth but then not using any of the collected toll to improve the road, say. [1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking#Examples

the reason the rent seeking concept isn’t popular in contemporary classical economics (beyond the partisan association) is that it is pretty ill-defined.

but i think you would be hard pressed to find a scenario where Automattic is the rent-seeker and WP engine is not, given that Automattic both contributed to WP and is actively using their revenue to improve WP, whereas WP engine… isn’t.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#430

Post by InsomniacL »

gspencley wrote: post #428
InsomniacL wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But being a jerk isn't a crime and doesn't forfeit your rights. The court case isn't about Matt being a jerk, it's about crime. > WordPress.org has to pay for their servers Wordpress.org was sold to volunteers as a community asset owned by the foundation not Matt and even Matt's lawyer made public statements to that effect. Volunteers spent their time building it up, developing in to WordPress core reliance on w.or…

> > But being a jerk isn't a crime and doesn't forfeit your rights. > The court case isn't about Matt being a jerk, it's about crime. If we're going to get that pedantic, and ignore the "spirit" in which that statement of mine was intended, then it's equally fair for me to point out that no, the legal case is not anything to do with a "crime." It is a civil dispute.

> WordPress.org has to pay for their servers and WP Engine is a for-profit company that is using WordPress.org's services, free of charge, for their own gain. Mutual consideration here seems warranted.

WPEngine allege

> > "As part of the WordPress community, WPE has contributed tens of millions of dollars in ongoing support "

> going to get that pedantic

I didn't think i was being pedantic, sorry.

I don't understand the US Court system but from what i gather, at least Attempted Extortion and breaches of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act are crimes.

COMPLAINT FOR:

(1) Intentional Interference with Contractual Relations;

(2) Intentional Interference with Prospective Economic Relations;

(3) Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030 et seq.;

(4) Attempted Extortion;

(5) Unfair Competition, Cal. Bus. Prof. Code § 17200, et seq.;

(6) Promissory Estoppel;

(7) Declaratory Judgment of Non-Infringement;

(8) Declaratory Judgment of Non-Dilution;

(9) Libel;

(10) Trade Libel; and

(11) Slander.

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