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Expect to see this kind of drama happening regularly and frequently as the gazillion dollar commercial industry continues to subvert every ideal of the original open source ethos.
Some of the best and now most commercially critical open source software started a long time ago, by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future.
Turns out, we did not arrive in that future.
We arrived in the one where both $xxxB companies and their countless cargo cultists explot every means possible to profit from open source software, making angry demands on volunteers and small teams, while giving back as little as possible.
It's essentially a test to find every open source developer's breaking point. Recently, we found Matt's. Next month, it'll be someone else's.
Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41791369 - Oct 2024 (240 comments)
WordPress contributor banned for asking about new checkbox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704 - Oct 2024 (8 comments)
The checkbox on WordPress.org is such a bad look, and is dragging the theoretically non-commercial parts of WordPress into this big (stupid) licensing fight.
It continues to reinforce that the entire WordPress.org / Foundation / Automattic cluster has turned out to just be Matt's personal fiefdom... which worked out okay when he was pretty chill, but is terrible when he decides to burn it all down.
In psychiatry, the concept of insight is used to describe an individual's ability to view their actions, beliefs and overall situation with what would be considered a normal perspective. It's probably best exemplified in popular culture by the movie "A Beautiful Mind". In the movie, a loss of insight is shown as one characteristic of schizophrenia, but it is by no means limited to that disorder.
I'm just a rando on the internet, and this isn't a diagnosis, and you shouldn't diagnose either, kids; but given the relatively sudden onset of Mr. Mullenweg's public situations, and the associated seeming complete loss of insight, I can't help but wonder if there is a known or unknown mental health challenge in the background underlying all of his actions. Such things are invariably complicated by a person being "post-economic", with the lack of the usual checks and balances that come with that state of privilege.
For me, the fact he tried to compel the WPE CEO to work for him or else he would expose that she was in negotiations with him is the most unhinged thing I’ve ever heard in a hiring process. Quite literally an affront to freedom.
My most charitable guess at what is going on is severe mental illness.
Can't wait for Matt to show up in the comments here saying how he isn't a bad guy and banning people who ask questions is actually for the benefit of WordPress.
Wait. From TFA I’m to understand that this Matt person, posting as Wordpress.org, tweeted:
> We’re still getting lots of questions about this [checkbox]. What if an agency is part of your affiliate program[…]?
…addressing the WP Engine firm whose users he’s been weirdly bullying with all this?
He attempted to frame his own ambiguously menacing checkbox-cum-loyalty-oath as somehow being of its target’s making? What?
Is that type of… duplicitous? dissociative? schizophrenic?… tactic common these days in twitter kinds of spheres?
This is stunning.
Once a dedicated user of WordPress, I never thought I would ever say this, but here it is -- I hope WordPress dies as soon as possible and gets replaced by something else. Well, a better outcome would be Matt goes away, but I don't see that happening.
He's been in ego preservation mode since at least February and he really, really needs to get the hell off the internet for six months and possibly heal. It's a spiral and it's painful to watch.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-...
This checkbox will absolutely not look good in front of a jury. It's petty at best.
The word affiliate is so loose that it could mean anything. IANAL but I recommend everyone read that word with the tightest of definitions. That means you are not an affiliate if: you are not wpengine, you are not their employee, you are not doing work for wp engine, you are not owned by wpengine, nor do you work for any wpengine companies, and you don't have any ownership in organizations or companies that wpengine also has ownership or control in. And none of wpengine's board of directors or any of the board of directors of any companies wpengine has ownership or control in are your employees or managers.
Effectively, they want to ensure wpengine is not interfacing with wordpress.org through undisclosed ways like shady shell companies. That is the reason for the checkbox.
If you are selling stuff on wpengine or being paid by wpengine for selling stuff on there, you are not an affiliate. you are a seller. if you are selling wpengine subscriptions, you are not an affiliate; just a seller. if you are advertising wpengine services, you are not an affiliate. you are an advertiser.
Small discussion (27 points, 2 days ago, 8 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704
It's not enough for some people to be rich beyond all needs and comfort, they also want to be richer than their peers and be influential and be well liked.
Why is Wordpress(TM) not open source ?
Like under Apache foundation or something
The checkbox is so outrageous I thought it was just a meme the first time I saw a screenshot of it. This will result in WordPress being forked.
I saw an interesting tweet from DHH to Matt that seems relevant:
> I have nothing but the out-most respect for what you've built with WordPress. It's an incredible achievement, and you're been justly rewarded for that accomplishment. No need to squeeze the lemon that hard. It's undermining open source as a whole. [1]
A lot of folks had compared it to DHH/Basecamp because of the voluntary severance. But for the most part, those issues did not spill into Rails like this. I think if anyone can talk Matt down from the ledge, it would be another "Benevolent Dictator".
That said, I think DHH misses something: lots of people built Wordpress, not just Matt. And we are slowly seeing the most engaged people, some who do it for the love of Wordpress instead of the money, either back away or get forced out. THAT is what will kill the ecosystem that has been built. Any harm that WP Engine may have been doing cannot compare with the harm that's happening right now from their own spiteful actions.
Threadreader of the linked twitter thread with all the Slack discussion (since X was completely not working for me): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1843963052183433331.html
...Matt doesn't come across well in it. Lots of refusing to state what he thinks the checkbox that he added means.
Dear Matt,
Resign.
Matt is just burning WordPress down with one dumb move after another.
Is there a TL;DR on this story? I feel like I missed the start of it and am now hopelessly behind on the drama-du-jour.
so tl;dr this is like redis/amazon thing where $CONGLOMO takes open source and bleeds it dry and doesn't contribute enough back to the open source project? i'm so disappointed in open source. there has to be a better way for projects to get something out of the deal.
This is a plague on both houses. People want stability and reliability, not drama. And what they're getting feels and awful lot like drama.
Matt has handled this whole thing so poorly. I wanted to be on his side but everything that has come out is just not a great look.
He could have had basically the entire internet on his side just by laying out the facts: "They use our product for free, generate hundreds of millions in revenue, and don't contribute back. It's just not fair. Please contribute more."
Instead this tantrum has turned a bunch of people that would be in his camp against him and he's dragged Wordpress.org into the mud.
Single handedly destroying a legacy.