Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think anyone but Matt is missing the significance of that.
People do not know about it. Look at the current top rated comment on this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824925
I wrote that comment.
Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
51–60 of 63 posts
Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not what being a professional means at all. You adjust your approach depending on the stakes. That shouldn't be a controversial take. You're using "cutting corners" as a pejorative, but ultimately if the stakes are low, you may -- perfectly reasonably -- decide to allocate less time/resources to particular activities, and more to others. You can call that "cutting corners", and you'd be right, but there's noth…
>You adjust your approach depending on the stakes. That shouldn't be a controversial take. At no time have I suggested that one cannot adjust one's approach. That's a straw man you invented. I'm refuting the point that business considerations should always trump engineering considerations because profit.
Sure, but in this case, the engineering consideration was whether a specific plugin should be added to the list of other suggested plugins. It was literally just a business decision of whether to configure it to be one of the featured options users might want to install.
Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Notice the distinct lack of me sticking up for him outside this very specific case.
[deleted]
Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
#54Akismet makes money for Automattic / Matt. Comment spam is terrible and will continue to get worse. Decent alternatives exist. Increasing the visibility of Akismet should help increase revenue. This is 100% a financial move.
What are those decent alternatives to Akismet? I went looking earlier this year and found nothing even close to Akismet on a price-to-effectiveness basis.
Oopspam
Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
#55Earlier 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. This bush league kind of attitude is why people insinuate that most software development is not "real engineering". When Boeing or NASA lets making money get in the way of good engineering practice, people die.
"died in a blogging accident"
Although humorous, this also leads to a provocatively interesting line of thought which is completely tangential to the engineering discussion.
Blogging accidents, usually involving tik-tok videos, selfie sticks, and rugged terrain or wild predators, get all the attention, but probably pale in comparison to medical or mental health issues faced by the average blogger.
For comparison, studies of police officers in the US have found that heart disease, cancer, and suicide are the leading causes of deaths.
Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
#56His explanation seems pretty reasonable, no?
> He pointed out that the Connectors page featured OpenAI and Anthropic, two companies that hadn’t contributed to the WordPress project and nobody had complained about their inclusion. He said Google had contributed in the past but had stopped. > “… how ridiculous is it attacking Akismet, and Automattic, and blocking the thing the person who is our [release] lead asked for,” Mullenweg wrote.
Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
#57Earlier 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.
Some people have a view of open source contributors as some sort of amorphous mass of strangers, and that leads to unrealistic suppositions. The contributors aren't really amorphous, they exist, they're knowable, they have personalities and jobs.
A project such as wordpress(.org) depends very strongly on those who do the work. And in the case of Wordpress, that's some spare-time volunteers, some employees of other companies, but the biggest group is Automattic employees. If you do most of the work, as Automattic does, the project depends on you and you get to call the shots.
Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
People do not know about it. Look at the current top rated comment on this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824925
I wrote that comment.
Oops, sorry, did not notice.
Were you aware of it and its relevance to this decision at the time you wrote the comment? My interpretation of your defence of it as just the CEO making a product decision was that you did not know. If you did know it seems to miss the point which is that he made a decision that was better for his company but worse for Wordpress.
It would be fine if Wordpress was developed by Automattic, but its not.
Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Some people have a view of open source contributors as some sort of amorphous mass of strangers, and that leads to unrealistic suppositions. The contributors aren't really amorphous, they exist, they're knowable, they have personalities and jobs. A project such as wordpress(.org) depends very strongly on those who do the work. And in the case of Wordpress, that's some spare-time volunteers, some employees of other co…
I understand that point, but I disagree. Automattic controls the process, which keeps a lot of initiatives out because there's no reasonable expectation of improvement unless it aligns with Automattic.
I don't believe the project would fold were Automattic to quit -- there's a lot activity outside of the core that is alienated by Matt's behavior. Might well be an improvement if the focus of .org isn't about what .com needs, but about what .org wants to offer to users.
Re: Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote that comment.
Oops, sorry, did not notice. Were you aware of it and its relevance to this decision at the time you wrote the comment? My interpretation of your defence of it as just the CEO making a product decision was that you did not know. If you did know it seems to miss the point which is that he made a decision that was better for his company but worse for Wordpress. It would be fine if Wordpress was developed by Automattic,…
I was aware of it, but as an outsider, this actually seemed like a reasonable decision. Wordpress sites that allow external comments need some kind of comment moderation, lest they become instant spam cesspits. The CEO said hey, we're adding this section to feature suggested plugins, and we should add this long-time anti-spam plugin to it. In a vacuum, that looks fine to me. I'd rather see them emphasizing comment moderation than talking up a commercial add-on. Sure, this is a subscription they sell to businesses, so it's not a charitable work. It's one of the more defensible subscriptions I can think of, though.
And I really don't see it as worse for Wordpress. It's the kind of thing I think they should be recommending because it benefits the whole ecosystsem.
To be super clear, I am far, far from a Matt/Automattic (same thing) fanboy. I think this was a good decision in spite of my opinion of him, not because of it.