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WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

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Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#4
> Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.”

In my experience, WordPress itself could be called a Cancer to the Web.

The amount of new clients I've picked up who needed help rescuing broken and malware ridden WordPress sites is... well, it's more than I'd like as I really do not enjoy WordPress LOL

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#5
post #4

> Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” In my experience, WordPress itself could be called a Cancer to the Web. The amount of new clients I've picked up who needed help rescuing broken and malware ridden WordPress sites is... well, it's more than I'd like as I really do not enjoy WordPress LOL

And yet, reality is that for many companies, an off-the-shelf CMS is all they need, and all they can afford, and all they can figure out without hiring IT.

Which means, if we want to kill WordPress, we need to offer a better solution. Not just for WordPress, but a coherent system that also reimplements the top hundred or so plugins.

If anyone wants to join me rewriting it in Laravel so we could add a WSL-like layer for WordPress cancer plugins… I don’t know. I wish someone would have the conversation. I don’t even care whether it’s Rust.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#8
post #4

> Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” In my experience, WordPress itself could be called a Cancer to the Web. The amount of new clients I've picked up who needed help rescuing broken and malware ridden WordPress sites is... well, it's more than I'd like as I really do not enjoy WordPress LOL

I wonder to what extent that can be attributed to its ubiquity versus its quality. I've never worked with WordPress.

For example, I notice that most of the automated "attacks" on my server are WordPress related. Is its defect rate significantly higher than other systems', or is it just that if you're going fishing you should bait for the most common fish? PHP and Apache come up a lot too.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#9
post #7

Without additional context the letter does read as persuasive. Is there significant additional context? Having looked at Matt's comments in the speech I'm not seeing any actual substance of what's wrong with WP Engine.

It’s kind of perverse of Matt considering:

A. He accuses “WP Engine” for being confusing branding. He literally owns WordPress.com; which confuses tens of thousands of people on a daily basis. (“Are you on the WordPress login page?” “I swear that I am!”)

B. He complains about the post revisions not being limitless. But until recently, WordPress.com had a limit of 25.

C. If post revisions matter, surely plugins matter, right? WordPress.com requires going up two tiers to use any unapproved plugins.

D. Matt was an investor in WP Engine, and even appeared on their podcast last year, even though this revisions system limitation has been in place for a decade?

E. This is the same Matt who wrote the WordPress Bill of Rights, complete with specifically saying “The freedom to run the program, for any purpose” and “The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.”

F. The same Matt who wrote in the WordPress trademark policy that “WP” is not a WordPress trademark and anyone may use it however they wish?

G. The same Matt who forked B2, and if B2 was still around, would be quite vulnerable to B2 potentially complaining about Matt’s lack of contribution to them?

It goes on. I hate to say it, but every sign points to Matt being a hypocrite. Even an extortionist.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#10
post #7

Without additional context the letter does read as persuasive. Is there significant additional context? Having looked at Matt's comments in the speech I'm not seeing any actual substance of what's wrong with WP Engine.

It’s kind of perverse of Matt considering: A. He accuses “WP Engine” for being confusing branding. He literally owns WordPress.com; which confuses tens of thousands of people on a daily basis. (“Are you on the WordPress login page?” “I swear that I am!”) B. He complains about the post revisions not being limitless. But until recently, WordPress.com had a limit of 25. C. If post revisions matter, surely plugins matter…

Not to mention his text messages. It's clear that if they were willing to pay, he was willing to not even mention them in his keynote. It looks quite clear that he wanted money and was willing to let everything slide if they got it.
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