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tptacek10/01/20244 repliesview on HN

This is a pretty one-sided summary of the situation and, despite citing the Theo Browne interview, leaves out from it that WPE and WordPress and Automattic have apparently been in protracted negotiations about this for over a year. Users are understandably shocked by this outcome, but it seems implausible to claim that WPE was.

I think it's also useful to note that Mullenweg wasn't demanding 8% of WPE's revenue, but rather an allocation of WPE revenue to WordPress ecosystem development (by staff members on WPE's own team), with the revenue to Automattic (or whoever, I forget) as an in-kind payment option.† That is a much more reasonable-sounding ask than simply forking over cash to Mullenweg's own business.

I'm not following this closely enough to vouch for the way Mullenweg is handling any of this (though: at this point I assume/hope he has counsel reviewing what he's saying!) but it would be weird to me at this point to see WPE cast as the "good guys" here. This seems like another one of those "it's just a bunch of guys" scenarios.

This is according to Mullenweg, of course, but he had Theo Browne reading emails to WPE off his laptop during the interview to back the claim up.


Replies

bawolff10/01/2024

> I think it's also useful to note that Mullenweg wasn't demanding 8% of WPE's revenue, but rather an allocation of WPE revenue to WordPress ecosystem development (by staff members on WPE's own team), with the revenue to Automattic (or whoever, I forget) as an in-kind payment option.† That is a much more reasonable-sounding ask than simply forking over cash to Mullenweg's own business.

I think the question is, in exchange for what?

I think the reason that all this is controversial, is it feels a bit like a shake-down. Give us some resources, otherwise, while, that is a nice wordpress business you have there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.

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jcranmer10/02/2024

I think at this point three things are true. The first is that Mullenweg sincerely believes that WPE should be contributing more than it is to the development of WordPress. The second is that they have no legal obligation to do so, which gives Mullenweg very little leverage to force them to do anything. The final thing is that the setup of WordPress and Automattic and Mullenweg's role in both makes any attempts to apply social pressure to achieve his aims at best a case of bad optics and at worst a saunter through a legal minefield with some hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane strapped to his back.

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aimazon10/01/2024

"Negotiation" invokes visions of term sheets and boardrooms but what Matt actually meant by "negotiation" (as revealed in the interview) was emails in which he expressed displeasure at the lack of contribution from WP Engine, and only in the days before WordCamp did any sort of terms arrive at the table (the 8% demand). Matt has acknowledged he escalated things in the space of days, not years. The emails read out are birthday party invites, not term sheets.

I agree that WP Engine cannot be characterised as "good guys" given it's a bottom-line driven machine that will chew up and spit out all in its path, and Matt has earned credibility through decades of community-minded WordPress stewardship, but let's not pretend this is some business deal that went sour, it's Matt using every inch of leverage he has to cause WP Engine pain because of his moral objections to the private-equity machine taking money away from his community-minded company.

Obviously WP Engine were never going to pay Automattic tens of millions of dollars per year, Matt knows that, we know that, it's a side show. He was just saying things to ruin their day. Just like the millions of dollars per year in costs incurred running WordPress.org that Matt has wheeled out to justify causing WP Engine pain by cutting them off from plugin updates (Cloudflare have offered to host WordPress.org for free; Matt has not accepted the offer).

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ankleturtle10/02/2024

He demanded either 8% of their gross revenue, the equivalent in development time for employees who would be directed by WordPress.org, or some combination thereof.

He also demanded auditing of WP Engine by their direct competitor, Automattic.

0. https://automattic.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/term-sheet...

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