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Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

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Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#71

Post by acdha »

MyFedora wrote: post #67
phoe-krk wrote: post #3

> As you may have heard, I’m legally compelled to provide free labor and services to WP Engine thanks to the success of their expensive lawyers, so in order to avoid bothering the court I will say that none of the above applies to WP Engine, so if they need to bypass any of the above please just have your high-priced attorneys talk to my high-priced attorneys and we’ll arrange access, or just reach out directly to me…

> He can't prevent WP Engine from getting access to Automattic services, so he acts out his revenge on the rest of the world instead? Not a fan of Mullenweg either, but let's be realistic. For anyone who isn't completely detached from reality, dealing with lawsuits is draining, emotionally and mentally. It's easy to point fingers and assume motives, but unless you're in the trenches, it's hard to truly know what's go…

The lawsuit exists because he repeatedly chose to force it into existence. He will almost certainly lose it because he repeatedly made bad choices which had to have been against his lawyers’ counsel. He is likely going to lose the foundation’s non-profit status because he repeatedly made bad choices.

I’m sorry for the other people affected and am amazed that he was willing to trash a reputation and business decades in the making, but it was his repeated choice to do so.

Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#72

Post by solarkraft »

MyFedora wrote: post #67
phoe-krk wrote: post #3

> As you may have heard, I’m legally compelled to provide free labor and services to WP Engine thanks to the success of their expensive lawyers, so in order to avoid bothering the court I will say that none of the above applies to WP Engine, so if they need to bypass any of the above please just have your high-priced attorneys talk to my high-priced attorneys and we’ll arrange access, or just reach out directly to me…

> He can't prevent WP Engine from getting access to Automattic services, so he acts out his revenge on the rest of the world instead? Not a fan of Mullenweg either, but let's be realistic. For anyone who isn't completely detached from reality, dealing with lawsuits is draining, emotionally and mentally. It's easy to point fingers and assume motives, but unless you're in the trenches, it's hard to truly know what's go…

My brother in christ, he made this happen.

Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#73

Post by jcarrano »

gustavorg wrote: post #27

After reading all these comments, I started to worry and even panic because it seemed to me that I was on the wrong side. HN, which side are we on?

If you run a business on open source, you have to expect that some actors will contribute less than you would like. It is the price to pay for the advantages open source provides (contributions, widespread adoption etc).

The matter is that this "freeloading" is subjective as the GPL license does not really place any contribution requirements. Matt says it is about trademarks but the court stated TMs were not violated either. Dura lex sed lex, he will have to deal with it.

Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#74

Post by phoe-krk »

MyFedora wrote: post #67
phoe-krk wrote: post #3

> As you may have heard, I’m legally compelled to provide free labor and services to WP Engine thanks to the success of their expensive lawyers, so in order to avoid bothering the court I will say that none of the above applies to WP Engine, so if they need to bypass any of the above please just have your high-priced attorneys talk to my high-priced attorneys and we’ll arrange access, or just reach out directly to me…

> He can't prevent WP Engine from getting access to Automattic services, so he acts out his revenge on the rest of the world instead? Not a fan of Mullenweg either, but let's be realistic. For anyone who isn't completely detached from reality, dealing with lawsuits is draining, emotionally and mentally. It's easy to point fingers and assume motives, but unless you're in the trenches, it's hard to truly know what's go…

I'm not criticizing his personal decision of taking a break. I'm criticizing the fact that he pulled wordpress.org's functionality along with him, as if those functionalities depeneded on him personally, and the way in which that break was announced - namely, by spending most of his announcement criticizing WP Engine instead of talking about breaks.

Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#75

Post by belorn »

poisonborz wrote: post #53
gustavorg wrote: post #27

After reading all these comments, I started to worry and even panic because it seemed to me that I was on the wrong side. HN, which side are we on?

I think views are mostly uniform around here. Matt had a few valid points but they are overall meritless. WPE would have been nice to contribute more, but they are absolutely not required to. Rug-pulling an open-source project and making defamation like this is a very dangerous example, and as we will see, also illegal. Would be interested in your arguments, I haven't read much if any in his support.

Does google just have that much better lawyers that they can get away with Rug-pulling products and services? I know several examples, from youtube plugins to search optimization, that had their company being pulled from existence because google decided to remove or change their free services or api's. The google graveyard sits alongside a much larger graveyard of companies who got caught when the rug was pulled.

Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#76

Post by josefresco »

xnx wrote: post #48

Through all of this, has there been discussion about how WordPress is "freeloading" off of PHP, MySQL, etc.?

Yes, and as a result of that public shaming effort Automattic increased their contributions to the PHP Foundation by 2.5x: https://x.com/ThePHPF/status/1853390265429508427

Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#77

Post by acdha »

frereubu wrote: post #34

I run a WordPress agency and I'm absolutely horrified by all of this. It's not cutting through to our clients yet, but building on WordPress suddenly feels incredibly risky when one person can throw their toys out of the pram - the pineapple checkbox is just fucking ridiculous - and derail an entire ecosystem. I really wish there was some kind of mechanism to cut Matt entirely out of WordPress because he deserves to…

I wish he had someone who he trusted who could help him get therapy. So many people have benefited from his project but now anyone with a business is going to ask whether he’s about to do something wild, which is a tragic end for such a popular open source project.

Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#78

Post by nolok »

notfooled wrote: post #6

Does he really believe he can convince people that the Matt Mullenweg who owns wordpress.com is a different Matt Mullenweg from the Matt Mullenweg who owns wordpress.org? They even look the same.

At this point I am pretty sure he convinced HIMSELF of that. Which would explain the whole ongoing fiasco.

Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#79

Post by acdha »

altairprime wrote: post #26
varun_chopra wrote: post #8

Damn, reading all this makes me feel terrible. I wonder what goes on in somebody’s mind to make them self-sabotage their lives like Matt has over the past couple of weeks.

It’s not about success or failure, it’s about investing your ego so deeply into your business that morality and sanity end up seeming like reasonable currencies to spend as a last resort to viewing yourself as a failure. He is the Matt in the company name Auto-Matt-ic, so of course he’s taking it poorly. There are serious downsides to Cult of Personality meets Cult of Infinite Annual Growth. Honestly, though, the wei…

I think part of it is that corporations tend to be lawful evil, not chaotic. We shouldn’t forgive that but it’s not as dramatic when Oracle or Broadcom jacks up their prices because they don’t target one company with unhinged rants like they kicked the CEO’s dog, and it follows a legal contract process.

That boring grind just isn’t going to get attention the way an exploding dumpster does even though it’s more extractive.

Re: Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions

#80

Post by nolok »

belorn wrote: post #75
poisonborz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think views are mostly uniform around here. Matt had a few valid points but they are overall meritless. WPE would have been nice to contribute more, but they are absolutely not required to. Rug-pulling an open-source project and making defamation like this is a very dangerous example, and as we will see, also illegal. Would be interested in your arguments, I haven't read much if any in his support.

Does google just have that much better lawyers that they can get away with Rug-pulling products and services? I know several examples, from youtube plugins to search optimization, that had their company being pulled from existence because google decided to remove or change their free services or api's. The google graveyard sits alongside a much larger graveyard of companies who got caught when the rug was pulled.

It doesn't need that much better lawyer to begin with. You just can't come out an say straight up "I'm doing this specifically to screw company X", which is what Matt did, essentially.

Eg Apple is kinda screwing with Spotify and claim it's their general rules, and it's a long complicated case. But if Apple came out and said "yeah, we do this specifically because we don't like Spotify and to hurt them in particular", that case would be open and shut.

That's why it's so obvious Matt is not listening to the lawyers. Everything in this case is because he said it, putting it in writing when no one asked him to.

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