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ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

advancedcustomfields.com

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Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

#61

Post by _cenw »

hello_moto wrote: post #49
dmje wrote: post #46

Long 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)

This is the same person that plasters the 4 freedoms of free software on his about page like they're the core of his personal credo.

https://wordpress.org/about/

There are certain implied rules to FOSS:

1. Free software is an ideological battleground, and as long as you abide by the license you're fine. Most GNU packages.

2. Open Source without a single backing entity is a meritocracy (or tries, sometimes a little too hard) and you can help improve it for everyone. Like the Kernel.

3. Open Source from a single backing entity is an insurance policy against that company failing or overcharging - at least in principle - if that works is often up to adoption, see the state of various Hashicorp products and their forks. You'll also never get your PR merged if it isn't critical, you aren't a customer or the PR misaligns with the company's strategy. I've even seen this happen on an Apache project, so that's not a guarantee of being group 1 or 2.

Matt has always pretended he belongs to group 1 with incidentally aligned commercial interest, but it turns out WordPress is group 3 with a server dependency twist. He wouldn't even approve a config constant to change the default update/catalog endpoints.

Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

#62

Post by system2 »

jnd10 wrote: post #53
system2 wrote: post #9

Oh 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…

Install the official free plugin from the advanced custom fields website and remove the SCF version. You won’t need to change any existing code then, and future updates will come from the plugin dev for ACF.

That's where the Sunday goes. I am trying to create an FTP script to mass update all wp-content plugins for this single package. It was on my mind but I was not expecting to have something bizarre happening from WordPress for one of the most crucial plugins in WordPress' existence.

Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

#63

Post by mldevv »

mgkimsal wrote: post #17
odo1242 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WP engine never modified WordPress. They took stock Wordpress and edited a configuration file to disable revisions. They didn’t actually change any code.

I thought they'd also modified revisions to have a limit, instead of unlimited. Even when 'enabled', it's not how the rest of the wp installs would behave (iirc). Likely there was some code change there to enable that restriction.

They use the parts of wordpress that are specifically built in to make modifications, as any other site maintainer would hosting their own install.

You are mistaken.

Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

#64

Post by system2 »

luckylion wrote: post #44
system2 wrote: post #9

Oh 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?

We use ACF with WP Code auto insert. ACF has prepend and append (in presentation tab) and this can be used to wrap the value with classes or other tags such as IDs, JS or others. When the ACF name changed, the prepend and append broke because prepend/append text showing must be configured in functions.php like this:

add_filter('acf/format_value/name=mysnippet1', 'mysnippet1acf', 20, 3);

function mysnippet1acf ($value, $post_id, $field) {

   if(!empty($value)){

  $value = trim($field['prepend'].''.$value.''.$field['append']);

   }else{

  $value='';

 }

 return $value;
}

Long story short, if you are using ACF with advanced features, including logic and presentation, this hostile takeover breaks it.

Doesn't even matter if you use prepend/append for the fields, our logic-based ACF fields are also broken.

Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

#65

Post by mldevv »

rasso wrote: post #41

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.

My opinion as well as many as my peers is that ACF could have been rolled into core or bought by Matt long long before it was acquired by WPE, which most of us found as a good thing, being that its a critical plugin and gained long term support.

Plugins have bumps, that's part of the growth, and some of the changes ACF have made as of recent years, even the ones I disagree with, seem well intentioned and not malicious. I can't say the same for what is happening right now.

Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

#67

Post by throw16180339 »

chx wrote: post #32
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They added a checkbox to the wordpress.org login page https://login.wordpress.org/ stating "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.", you can't login to the site without checking it.

And very importantly: no one knows what that checkbox means and what are the consequences of checking it.

Matt also bans anyone who asks about it.

Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

#68

Post by sgdfhijfgsdfgds »

noapologies wrote: post #54
wmf wrote: post #31

Earlier 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.

There are examples of things breaking in this very comment section [1]. Given how widely used ACF is, it wouldn't be surprising to learn that a lot of weekends were ruined by the "fork". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41830709

Looking at the code, it's not clear to me how much has broken because of the fork, and how much has broken because of the "secure context" security patch that ACF have apparently also applied in their own version.

That is, I think some of these things might have broken even with the real ACF.

The main change appears to be that if a developer has used a built-in wordpress function as a filter hook (rather than a user-defined one), that has been blocked. (This has never been a good idea, anyway; developers should not do it.) Also a filtered version of the POST variables has been passed to the callback. These are both seemingly to stop CSRF attacks.

This patch was necessary; it prevents CSRF and potentially other nasties.

I don't mean to excuse any of the other bullshit; I'm just saying that if there are "breakages" here, they are likely to do with the necessary patch that is hidden inside the gaslighting.

Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

#69

Post by andix »

I guess the only way forward for now is forking WordPress and creating a new plugin registry.

This should be rather easy, because all WordPress plugins are GPL-licensed because of the Copyleft.

I don't care about the current dispute, but wordpress.org can't be trusted any more.

Re: ACF Plugin no longer available on WordPress.org

#70

Post by FireBeyond »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #13
denislour wrote: post #3

Wow, 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?

Let's be really, really clear here.

Matt might pontificate about "bastardizing and messing with" WordPress, but this is what he is actually referring to:

A. Single. Configuration. Option.

A. Changed. Default.

Post revisions are a configuration option in the admin panel. They are enabled by default. Some hosting providers (and I expect WPE is not the only one) set it to disabled by default.

That's it.

This is not remotely comparable.

Even without the ACF situation, Matt's description of WPE bastardizing the fundamental offering of WordPress is asinine at best, actively deceptive at worst (and that's where we seem to be, so far).

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