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Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

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Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#61

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #39
throwawaymaths wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well charitably I would suspect that for the first question, he probably didn't want to rock the open source community too much. Look at the trouble the rust foundation got into for trademark enforcement, and it hasn't really been a decade. In general, there's no good time to start flexing on your trademark. For your second question, Matt claims that it's partly because WP engine disabled core features of WordPress.…

Disabling/limiting revisions is built in to WordPress. All WP Engine did is add: define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', false ); to their configs.

Which is also something done by his own hosting companies (unsure if it's in all cases, but at least some).

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#62

Post by corobo »

codegeek wrote: post #23

Mullenweg just keeps digging. He is the only person I have ever seen interacting in such a petty manner that he made a company backed by Private Equity look like a victim. If Trademark was the issue, why did it take him over a decade ? Why is he not going after all the other gazillion WP providers that use similar phrase on their website ? We all know the answer. The only company (WP Engine) that beat his for profit…

> He is the only person I have ever seen interacting in such a petty manner that he made a company backed by Private Equity look like a victim

Right. At the very start of this I was automatically on wordPress' side because yeah, kick back if you make a mint off free code. It's the morally correct thing to do.

The rest is just.. wtf. I hope I never mullenweg a project this badly.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#64

Post by markdown »

richbell wrote: post #44
segasaturn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

> and even tweeting out the private handles of the user he was beefing with. 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. https://www.threads.net/@samhenrigold/post/…

Good on him for doing so.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#65

Post by bityard »

caekislove wrote: post #3
bityard wrote: post #2

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…

Heh, like that old joke "I'd never join a club that would have me as a member"!

Hah, I was literally thinking of that as I was writing the comment.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#66

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #14

Matt’s response to DHH was really some of the pettiest stuff I’ve seen from a major public figure in the tech world Maybe its a newfound persona, maybe its a new marketing angle, or maybe its just someone going a little unhinged. But all isn’t right in the WordPress world

> Matt’s response to DHH was really some of the pettiest stuff I’ve seen from a major public figure in the tech world

ElonM Has Entered the Chat

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#67

Post by bityard »

neilv wrote: post #33
bityard wrote: post #2

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…

Cold outreaches from an employer's recruiters can be from sourcers doing dumb keyword searches. But can also be because your name was put in the hat by someone at the company (either because they know you, or because they saw something you said online).

Sure, I've had that happen too. In this case, I didn't know anyone at Automattic.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#68

Post by KerrAvon »

codetrotter wrote: post #59
zeruch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Maybe he's right about WP Engine, but the way he has and continues to handle everything has been disastrous." This is the best single line distillation of the current lunacy. I mean with every passing day, it all becomes more and more unhinged, and I see no good outcome in the long term. The overall damage to the ecosystem I think begins it's death spiral now. It's a boon for competitors I suppose, but that's about…

> It's a boon for competitors I suppose I would think so too, but it’s not guaranteed. Everyone thought for sure that Twitter would die with what Elon Musk has been doing to it, but somehow it seems to still be alive. Likewise, everyone thought there would be a total exodus of users from Reddit to Lemmy or Kbin. And while those platforms did get a lot of new users, it feels like it didn’t reach the level of significa…

Twitter is dead, it just hasn't stopped twitching yet. Turns out network effects are extremely durable. There is no time like the present to move to BlueSky if you haven't already.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#69

Post by segasaturn »

richbell wrote: post #44
segasaturn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

> and even tweeting out the private handles of the user he was beefing with. 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. https://www.threads.net/@samhenrigold/post/…

The accounts were empty and didn't have any NSFW content on them. The only explicit thing was the usernames of the accounts, which doesn't violate any rules. Posting the user's private account names was just meant to smear them as a sex-pervert.

Re: Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

#70

Post by markdown »

legitster wrote: post #54
ankleturtle wrote: post #6

The article update links to a Google Doc in which Matt takes issue with the following remark from the article: > he's a wealthy CEO of a for-profit corporation that is attacking a competitor Matt responds: > WP Engine is a “competitor”, but so is every other web host in the world. Automattic and WordPress.org have had good relations with all the others for 21 years. WordPress.org recommends a number of hosts. It seem…

> WordPress.org recommends a number of hosts. It's worth pointing out that, of the hosts Wordpress.org just promoted ( https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/wp-engine-promotions/ ) 3 are owned by Automattic and the other 2 pay Automattic licensing/service fees.

Thanks. Good to know that there are decent hosts to choose from, that help support WP by paying licensing/service fees.
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