Live data from Hacker News

WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction

404media.co

61–67 of 67 posts

Re: WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction

#61

This situation is tragic, wish Matt was handling this better, and WPEngine is a parasite.

WPEngine is no more a parasite than just about every business using Linux or Chrome without offering material support. Parasites drain their host but does WPEngine hurt or drain Wordpress? In fact, doesn't WPEngine just make WordPress more popular as a business solution?

Exactly. A parasite would be a company that adopts an open-source solution, then "extends" it in an incompatible way, pushing their own proprietary extension that no one else is allowed to use.

Re: WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WP Engine is definitely using the open source to make money, and is a big competitor to wordpress, but Matt is going scorched earth in a way that seems both embarrassing and ineffective. It would be better if WP Engine contributed more to the open source project that they make so much money from, but it's not illegal or immoral. Maybe Amoral at worse?

It's really weird for matt to say they don't contribute while simultaneously taking over one of the most popular plug-ins that they contributed .

And blocking core contributors with their stupid “Affiliated Checkbox”.

Unfortunately outright lying and saying that “I personally don’t think they voluntarily contribute enough” is “contributes nothing” seems to have been partially successful in seeding the idea.

Re: WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction

#63

"In October, Mullenweg announced that he’d given Automattic employees a buyout package, and 159 employees, or roughly 8.4 percent of staff, took the offer. “I feel much lighter,” he wrote. But shortly after, he reportedly complained that the company was now “very short staffed.”" The jokes write themselves.

And what’s even more hilarious is the 8.4% probably represented the top talent as they’re generally more mobile and have other prospects.

Re: WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're motte-and-baileying here, since you began with "WordPress has been built by people employed by Matt either via Automattic or via his other entities", and are now writing "WordPress would not be where it is today if it depended on free labour." The second sentence is unquestionably true, but doesn't mean that "every piece of Wordpress was produced by paid labour".

> You're motte-and-baileying here,

I disagree. They're fundamentally the same at the core. The argument at hand is whether or not Matt is where he is because of free labour. And the answer to that is a clear no. Automattic would not be a multi-billion dollar company because WordPress powers so much of the internet that Automattic gets lots of hosting customers. WordPress has such a big market share because Matt has invested heavily in the open-source version of WordPress.

And since the argument is based on wether of not Matt is where he is because of free labour the other person needs to prove that he is. I can't prove a negative. I can prove that nearly all the top contributors to the project have been paid by an entity related to Matt.

While you've attempted to frame the argument as something else, I believe that would be considered a strawman fallacy.

Re: WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're motte-and-baileying here, since you began with "WordPress has been built by people employed by Matt either via Automattic or via his other entities", and are now writing "WordPress would not be where it is today if it depended on free labour." The second sentence is unquestionably true, but doesn't mean that "every piece of Wordpress was produced by paid labour".

> You're motte-and-baileying here, I disagree. They're fundamentally the same at the core. The argument at hand is whether or not Matt is where he is because of free labour. And the answer to that is a clear no. Automattic would not be a multi-billion dollar company because WordPress powers so much of the internet that Automattic gets lots of hosting customers. WordPress has such a big market share because Matt has i…

[deleted]

Re: WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction

#66
As someone who was around before WordPress existed, and witnessed all the proprietary CMS systems of the day, as well as personally building custom CMS systems professionally, it disappoints me to watch this unfold.

I used to see WordPress as an example of how open-source can be good business. Being open-source, and comparatively better then other proprietary options at the time, made WordPress an attractive option, and its user base grew rapidly. Blogging was also more popular then, although people still blog.

I think as of today there are better options then WordPress, and blogging is not the same as in the past. I think because of peoples history with products like WordPress, many people have gravitated towards static site generators.

Early on Automattic seemed like a place I might want to work, but obviously a lot that has changed since WordPress first launched. I can't see myself wanting to work there now, or wanting to use WordPress again. Not to mention I moved on from PHP a long time ago.

Re: WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction

#67
Is there any possibility, that he could stop self-sabotage, and continue maintain WordPress, so there would not be a need to migrate 43.7% of all websites from WordPress to different CMS, or different update URLs for everything?

But I don't know actually what this is all about, is there any possibility.

I hope all the best for him anyway.

Post reply on HN