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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

#91

Post by bookofjoe »

acdha wrote: post #77
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.

The problem is that paranoids trust NO ONE, so this is impossible. Same reason rock stars implode from time to time: the money, fame, and ALL ACCESS pass to drugs create a solipsistic world view.

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

#92

Post by bookofjoe »

altairprime wrote: post #20
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.

My working theory is that investors are pulling up ladders now that interest rates are VC-unprofitable, and so either he finds a way to increase growth in profit y-o-y or they bail and let him crash like TypePad did years ago. (Except TypePad had paying customers, so their bandwidth bills weren’t anywhere near the looming threat WP is presumably facing.)

I've been with Typepad for my blog since 2004 and though it's clunky and glitchy, it still works!

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

#93

Post by ffsm8 »

Zealotux wrote: post #5

I wish for his sake he had a good friend to take that shovel away from his hands and take him on a long, contemplative, peaceful hike. Money truly can't buy everything.

It mostly can, but you need to be willing to actually buy it ( 人 •͈ ᴗ •͈ )

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

#96

Post by kemayo »

Gud wrote: post #95

I’m so happy this drama came now and not later. I was in the process of setting up a simple Wordpress site for my wife’s business, to replace the Adobe portfolio she is currently using… so thanks, I guess?

He timed the initial meltdown perfectly, because it was just before the domains I'd transferred to WordPress.com's registrar when Google Domains got sold were up for renewal. So the net effect there was that Matt bought me a free year of domain hosting, and drove me away just in time for me to not start paying him.

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

#97

Post by kemayo »

dools wrote: post #30

[flagged]

It's not really editorializing, since that means adding opinions. The HN title is currently a factual summary of the situation, without any particular flavoring. It's not "Matt throws a tantrum, takes toys and goes home" or anything like that.

In cases like this where the original post title is pretty useless, I'm in favor of expanding it a bit.

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

#98

Post by kemayo »

thanksgiving wrote: post #40
Sebb767 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a faceted issue where both sides have valid points. Also, HN is not a single entity.

Personally, I am now clear that both sides, matt and wp engine are wrong. Matt is more wrong than wp engine but that doesn't mean wp engine is right. This is just my personal opinion.

I think it's that WP Engine might arguably have been being a jerk, albeit in a way completely allowed by WordPress' licensing and directed entirely at extracting some benefit specifically from Automattic's work.

...whereas Matt's being a jerk in a way that involves collateral for the general community of people who use WordPress. So everyone is more concerned about him, because he's threatening a lot more people.

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

#99

Post by belorn »

nolok wrote: post #80
belorn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is a much better description than practically every other take I have seen on this issue. The legal issue is not about removing access, pulling the rug, or changing policy. It is all about the intention and making public statements.

If they wanted to legally stop WPE from accessing their servers then adding a policy to the effect of limiting how much traffic a single company is allowed to do without a explicit contract would do that. Many companies has similar conditions added to their TOS at some point after an unconditional free-for-all. They might want to allow small companies to continue use their service for free, but start demanding payment from large companies who can afford to pay and who also have real impact on server and network costs. They don't explicitly write who those large companies are.

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

#100

Post by grvdrm »

nolok wrote: post #12
tanepiper wrote: post #7

Why has no one intervened on what is clearly a mental breakdown of one man?

He was here saying his lawyer validated everything he was saying when anyone with any little amount of experience with lawyers and B2B legal case could immediately tell no actual decent lawyer would have validated any of that. And what he said here on HN ended up being used against him in the injuction ... So either he stopped listening to the people around him (including lawyer in a legal case), or the people around…

You said it best: sounds like he surrounds himself with people (and lawyers) that tell him what he wants to hear.

Have worked for someone like that before - it is not fun.

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