This is just getting petty at this point. What kind of normal person or business operates this way - especially during an ongoing lawsuit.
I can't see how anybody who knows a bit about the situation would ever want to continue to be affiliated with Wordpress knowing this guy could go over the top at any moment.
I have no dog in this race, but the behavior does seem ill-advised even if you look at it through a pure legal lens. WP Engine's lawyers must be having a field day with this stuff.
Is he just totally ignoring his own lawyers? He has to be, because no lawyer who charges more than $20 an hour would tell him any of this is advisable.
He's appeared in several of related threads here on HN. He is always asked about his lawyers, and he repeatedly claims that they're cool with his behavior.
> He is always asked about his lawyers, and he repeatedly claims that they're cool with his behavior.
Even there he's inconsistent. He spent a day or so talking about how his lawyer said "If you're in the right, talk all you like!", then a few days after that made an announcement about how he'd retained a lawyer just that day.
I’m somewhat doubting that actually is his lawyer, though no one appears to be denying that it is.
It just feels so very odd. Why would Matt’s lawyer care what people say here? He doesn’t have to convince of us anything. The PR folks would like to convince us of stuff and I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed up, but why legal?
And what kind of lawyer says that about a client in an ongoing case on a public forum using an account in their own name?! It’s a level of unprofessionalism that I struggle to believe a reputable lawyer would engage in. If Matt is unreasonable to the point of needing to make a public comment, Neil should have just forced him to find new council and quit.
I’ll likely never have need for this specific type of council, but if I do there’s a brand new list of people I won’t hire with only a single name on it.
Just read the article that the guy wrote about the trademark and you'll have no choice but to conclude that he got his law degree from an internet college.
The article is also far more PR-y than I would have expected; the only law-related item is basically just a very long explanation of consideration and an assertion that what they’ve done counts as consideration. I have no idea if it does or not, but putting a lawyers name at the top doesn’t convince me it’s correct any more than if PR wrote it.
The whole thing is strange, and I can’t figure out why anyone would tie their ship to Matt in this storm. He’s a liability not just to himself, but to everyone supporting him as his antics start to reflect on his supporters. Even if people did support his position, Matt is preventing them from doing so publicly without also looking insane.
That makes me doubt it’s his lawyer. Lawyers shouldn’t publicly discuss their clients in a manner that paints them in a negative light. Fire the client first.
Is there really nobody in the Wordpress.org organization who can provide a check on this kind of behavior? Or do they really collectively share this Matt character’s attitude toward professionalism?
Wordpress is free as in owned by Matt Mullenweg. He has control of the Wordpress foundation, owns wordpress.org, etc. There aren't any adults who can put a leash on him, although I wonder WTF Automattic's board of directors is doing.
Ridiculously petty. I genuinely wonder how the fuck Matt and Automattics lawyers are gonna argue him out of this shit, because this is pretty much just giving free arguments to your opposition when it comes to arguing that Automattic is self-dealing.
They've already made their argument: WordPress.org has nothing to do with WordPress, Automattic or the WordPress Foundation. It's owned and operated by Matt privately solely out of the kindness of his heart and his love for open-source.
Ignoring direct monetary costs, if WordPress.org is wholly owned by Matt (not Automattic) and he's directing Automattic resources to maintain the site, is that not some kind of violation of fiduciary duty to Automattic? He's using company resources to maintain a personal project.
What's the risk? You own the code, and you aren't pre-committed to updating to any new versions in the future. You can just take it and use it on your own forever. Many people do. What's their risk?
WordPress 3.7, which introduced automatic updates, received security backports all the way to 3.7.41. From 2013 to 2022. 4.1 and above are all still receiving them.
Doesn't WordPress officially only support the two latest minor version release though ? I can't find an official source at the moment but a quick googling seems to confirm that.
> The only current officially supported version is the last major release of WordPress. Previous major releases before this may or may not get security updates as serious exploits are discovered.
> …
> Security updates will be backported to older releases when possible, but there are no guarantee and no timeframe for older releases. There are no fixed period of support nor Long Term Support (LTS) version such as Ubuntu’s. None of these are safe to use, except the latest series, which is actively maintained.
What is going on here? I understand that open source companies have a free rider problem, and will naturally take steps to deal with that, but some of the recent activities seem… strange.
I’m thinking part of the problem is that the software itself is GPL and so is it’s ecosystem, which means that the standard next step of changing the license (followed by an inevitable fork) is infeasible.
It's not that at all. Matt wants money to flow to his commercial entity, or if they donate developers to the project, he still gets to see everything about their books. It's an invasive agreement designed to give his commercial entity a competitive advantage.
I don't even think this is about money anymore. Matt may have started this cruzade for money, but at this point is just pettiness and refusal to backpedal.
Fee. In exchange for the License Grant, WP Engine shall do one of the following:
(a) Pay Automattic a royalty fee equal to 8% of its Gross Revenue on a monthly basis, within fifteen days
of the end of each month. "Gross Revenue" means all revenue generated by WP Engine from the
sale of its services, calculated without deductions for taxes, refunds, or other costs. WP Engine will
also provide Automattic a detailed monthly report of its Gross Revenue within fifteen days of the
close of each calendar month, including a product line breakdown of all revenues generated.
Automattic will have full audit rights.
(b) Commit 8% of its revenue in the form of salaries of WP Engine employees working on WordPress
core features and functionality to be directed by WordPress.org. WP Engine will provide Automattic
a detailed monthly report demonstrating its fulfillment of this commitment. WordPress.org and
Automattic will have full audit rights, including access to employee records and time-tracking.
> It's an invasive agreement designed to give his commercial entity a competitive advantage.
Given how much they sunk into the boat anchor that is Tumblr, and how well Tumblr is doing right now, I'm not surprised they need any competitive advantage they can get.
It is mandatory, and one of the CSS classes used is "login-lawsuit." Incredibly unprofessional, I would be mortified to push something like that into production.
There’s a thread on X here with screenshots of the WordPress Slack, where Mullenweg seems deliberately vague when people ask him what counts as “affiliated in any way”. It seems like he wants to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about what can get you banned. People who have been asking him awkward questions in the Slack have started to get banned from there as well.
This is shunning, which is literally one of the hallmarks of a cult. If you are associated in any way with a suppressive person (WP Engine), you now cannot be a member of the WordPress.org community. Members of the community have to decide whether to shun WP Engine or be excommunicated themselves. He’s trying to use the community as a weapon.
It also seems a fertile ground to claim tortious interference. He’s trying to sever relationships between WP Engine and everybody they interact with.
I mean he already made sure his entire company were entirely yes-men who agreed with his behaviour. It's not a stretch to say he'd like to do the same with the community, especially given his actions of basically begging WPEngine to create an alternate ecosystem he is removed from. Nuts.
Telling someone to "Please consult an attorney" when they ask if you can check the box if you pay for ACF Pro sure qualifies as inserting FUD into the ecosystem to my non-lawyer mind.
And from Javier's thread, Matt is gaslighting people by telling them to consult attorneys to decide the meaning of "affiliated" in a checkbox HE introduced.
Can we now agree that Matt has lost his marbles and his ego is leading him to burn the entire Wordpress ecosystem down? These are megalomaniacal and dictatorial actions.
WPE is the most profitable business in the WordPress space, and they haven't changed a single line of code in WordPress or so much as contributed a dime. So if you're eager to volunteer to be their free labor, be my guest.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't Wordpress open source? WPE is under no obligation to contribute source code or money. If WP is unhappy with the outcome, they should have released their product under a different license.
How would you feel about Google if they used things like Linux and never contributed anything to open source? As the most profitable entity in the WordPress space, WPE has a duty to give something back. What Matt is asking for isn't unreasonable.
I would hope Google would help out, but I would also realize that it's ultimately their own choice if the license allows them to use it without donating time/money.
When Google contribute to open source, they often do it to scratch their own itch. That's how most open source organizations works.
What Automattic wants from WPE as laid outs in their term sheet is to dictate what WPE contributes and audit their accounting. Not exactly on the same playing field as other corporate contributions to open source projects. Not to mention the non-forking clause.
Maybe setting up a proper independent governance of the WordPress project would encourage more independent contributions.
I am very erratic on agreement with DHH's screeds, but this one hits the mark.
Among all the more visible issues with this whole situation, he calls out a few things that I think need more awareness:
1. Matt decries Private Equity as leeches and freeloaders on free software, open source, and their community.
2. Automattic invested in WPE in the early days. In fact, Silver Lake, the PE firm that owns WPE, bought Automattic's share! Automattic sold to PE.
3. The WP Foundation has three members, two of whom show any sign of activity: Matt himself, and another person that Matt personally appointed who is... drum roll... the Managing Partner of a Private Equity firm.
Somewhat ironic for someone who shit talks their competitors and Private Equity so vocally.
I'd argue there is a moral obligation to support open source projects if you rely on them as a cornerstone of your business. However it's not a legal one.
Open source is based on idealistic and community based mindset and modern tech is now based around extracting the dollars. The two aren't really compatible and it's really quite sad to see.
That being said this the most stupid way to go about it.
I agree. If Matt was smart, he would have spent the last ten years maintaining his advantage rather than ignoring the problem. Now that he's backed into a corner and forced to get real nasty to survive, I can't believe how much tech people are falling over themselves to shill for the slimy salesman organization. Only tech is like this. Folks like union workers would lay down their lives before crossing a picket line. But the concept of solidarity is completely lost on tech workers. No one turns against their own like us.
I'd argue there is an even greater moral obligation to honor what your contracts say and don't say, and thus keep your word. Doing what you say is pretty key to the concept of integrity, which outweighs Matt's driving desire for more money.
The moral obligation to not screw over a million innocent users also outweighs Matt's driving desire for more money.
Several of the most popular plugins are maintained by WPEngine.
WPEngine donates/sponsors hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to WordPress community events. Indeed, the convention where Matt went "nuclear" was sponsored by WPE to the tune of $75,000 (and despite these all being supposedly independent entities, somehow WPE was banned from attending by the Foundation. No refund, though).
> So if you're eager to volunteer to be their free labor, be my guest.
Matt is demanding that WPE provide his for-profit company, Automattic, free labor, to be directed as Automattic see fit. Not the Foundation, not the open source project.
You'd be entirely wrong, then. That event was WordCamp, "the largest annual gathering in the U.S. of WordPress users", an event started by Matt Mullenweg:
> WordCamps come in all different flavors, based on the local communities that produce them, but in general, WordCamps include sessions on how to use WordPress more effectively, beginning plugin and theme development, advanced techniques, security, etc. To get an idea of the types of sessions typically seen at WordCamps, check out the WordCamp channel at WordPress.tv.
Yeah, that's unfortunate, but... how many companies contribute back to Next? React? Node? PHP? Postgres? Linux?
They don't get secretly blackmailed and publicly shamed for failure to do so. There are a lot of other WP hosts too (Pantheon, Cloudways, etc.) and they also don't get this same treatment, unless they all silently paid up and we just didn't know...?
Sure, there's a gentleman's understanding that companies with resources should contribute back to the projects they use, but it's not a hard and fast moral or legal code.
It's disturbing and frankly terrifying for all downstream WordPress companies and users for Matt to blow this so out of proportion to the actual crime of "failing to contribute back to open source", which so many of us are guilty of every single day.
project was forked a while back in a semi-big way (classicPress) and I was super excited about it.
Some years later I believe the story I saw said that they had less than $200 / month being donated to the project to keep it going.
Now I LOVE the idea of a wordpress minus gutenberg, with all the code quality and security updates and modern themes and plugins all working together..
Do I think this is legit going to be sustainable with hardly anyone chipping in time and money - well, for an open source hobby site, $200 a year put into security might be fine..
Some of the more important websites using wordpress as a backend might want to rethink all of that.
Which is funny, because essentially that is what Matt is saying in the first place - for those who profit from it and can afford to, please donate so we can keep on keeping on.
I'd like you to expand on reasons for this? I can think of a few for some cases..
However I have around 50 websites or so that are running just fine without Gutenberg.. and if you count the number of updates WP and plugins and themes have rolled out since Gutenberg and multiple that by 50, most of these updates have been an annoying use of time.
That being said, Gutenberg stuff today is pretty mature and I do recommend it and use it projects launched post 2024, partially because it's mature at this point, but not insignificantly because it is built into core.
I railed long ago that Matt and co should develop Gutenberg, but do it as an optional add-in.
I would still build sites today without it if it wasn't baked into core..
altough I will say that as of today, core gutenberg and default theme with FSE is a fine way to build,
it's different in many ways, sometimes confusing especially for those who are not used to navigating around FSE differently - but it can be decent to look at on the front end with default tools, and it's lean as far as size and page speed / load time (comparatively speaking).
But depending on the use case, and what tooling one may already have at hand, I still feel it could be fine to build without Gutenberg completely.. astra / spectra and stuff from brainstorm force for example would be decent to build with the past few years with not guten needed..
other page builders like siteorigin's were already doing most the things without the delays in development, and removal of standard long standing features like the menus screen and hiding the custom css option..
As you said Gutenberg (and now FSE) are in core and the default for developing and authoring WordPress sites. For ClassicPress to be an alternative, you would've had to have intentionally veered from what WordPress gave you.
Sure, some sites may have chosen to use a site builder or Classic Editor with ACF, but those that didn't are left out in the cold by ClassicPress's decisions.
It may not be apparent now, but I believe the main point of classic press was that so many people did not want Gutenberg and they were forcing it in anyway - that classicPress - the whole point of the project is to build with gutenberg and not have the bloat 'from what WordPress gave you'
I don't think it's just 'some sites' choosing to use other builders and reject Gutenberg. the plugin repo shows that the 'classic editor' plugin has over 10 million active installations.
(classic editor removes gutenberg from the backend screens) - so it's not being left out in the cold, it's keeping things running fine without Gutenbloat.
So there was/is a huge need for ClassicPress - it's just that there is an easier way to get a very similar result with WordPress and that is install an extra plugin to remove the 'new plugin' of Gutengerg -
and since it's so easy to get back the functionality with a few clicks, may people are leaving many websites without the performance boost of leaner WP and getting the same classic backend..
If autaomattic had not put the classic editor in the repo, many more would of sought out the fork and classicPress would be dealing with more than 10 million sites relying on it.
This has been a pretty big issue for some time now, and only very recently would I start to lean into Gutenberg being a mature enough replacement that I start to advocate for it's use.
But really there is no need for it - if you wanted a page builder years ago there were plenty, and still are.
The great thing about it has been the pulling in other aspects like performance issues and reusable styles and such - so it has helped make WP better in other areas along the way, so now I am okay with it.
Being left out in the cold without Guten just means a leaner site that loads faster unless you get into elementor or some other heavy bloatware to have click/drag GUI - but it's not the only option now or back then.
Matt really wants to dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole, huh?
There’s still something entertaining to this for sure, but it also hurts so much. Wordpress used to be a respectable project, Automattic a respectable company and Matt a respectable person. Maybe it was too good to last.
The only way any of this (already serve) damage can somewhat be undone is Matt stepping back (as a sudden change of mind seems unlikely). Please don’t keep making it worse.
> There’s still something entertaining to this for sure, but it also hurts so much. Wordpress used to be a respectable project, Automattic a respectable company and Matt a respectable person. Maybe it was too good to last.
EDIT (to save having a 2nd post).
Looking at the HTML tags for the requirement it has the class "login-lawsuit", so guessing this is tried to the suit WPE are bringing against WordPress/Matt.
On one hand, I personally feel like Matt is trying to speed run burning all the goodwill of the wordpress project, on the other hand if you are being sued by an entity its pretty much recommended to cut ties with said entity and only deal with them via your lawyers so I can see why they would put in such a requirement.
Generally the recommendation is to freeze current ties with said entity until the court case gets worked out. By aggressively targeting the employees of said other organization, you're risking it being used against you in the ongoing court cases.
Regardless, .org and .com are claimed to be separate legal entities, so there is no lawsuit against .org. This is just an escalation out of a sense of moral righteousness.
I've been using WordPress non-stop since 2005. I even hoped to someday work for Automattic. I applied and got through the initial process, but with a young child and a full-time job, I couldn't make time for the laborious "trial" part of the interview, so my application was put on indefinite pause. It pains me to watch this unfolding series of unforced errors. I hope WordPress survives.
They won't need to fork WP itself (though they're totally free to do that, WP started as a fork after all), but it sounds like they may need to quickly focus on creating their own plugin and theme marketplaces, and other services that WordPress.org provided to WordPress CMS users but is not denying to WPEngine.
Let this be a lesson to all of us - if you rely on a service provided by another organization external to your organization, get an SLA! Get a contract that guarantees you the provision of services you depend on.
> if you rely on a service provided by another organization external to your organization, get an SLA! Get a contract that guarantees you the provision of services you depend on.
Getting "takers" to pay for SLAs/licences is pretty much what Automattic or whoever's behind WordPress dot org wants.
The whole divergence of this kerfuffle into the resource usage of WPE hosted WP sites against the WP.org site is a distraction and an ex post facto justification. Matt got twisted when WPE wouldn't pay Automatic and is lashing out. If he wanted them to cover costs for WP.org, that would have been a totally different conversation.
Even crying foul over WP.org costs is disingenuous though. It's not WPE consuming the resources, it's the sites they host for customers. It'd be like Matt demanding 8% of AWS revenue because so many sites are hosted by them and accessing WP.org resources. Simply collecting the hosting of multiple WP sites under one provider should in no way obligated the provider directly. Either it's a freely accessable resource for WP sites or it's not. It should not be subject to the whims of a single person and used as a tool in their personal crusade.
Given that it's clear that WP.org is not actually a freely available resource, it's imperative that the WP codebase be adjusted to not use that resource anymore.
As I've said in most of my posts on this, I'm not involved in the WP world and have no ties to any party to this debacle.
Could be advice from a legal counsel to limit access since they have filed a suit against you?
I imagine if I had a company that asked someone to chip to help cover bandwidth and server resources, and they refused to pony up, I would say you are going to be limited in your access - and this would be another way to limit it.
If someone setup a system to steal all youtube videos and republish them, would it be reasonable for Google to add a captcha and demand that they not use thier bandwidth or content in way they don't like? Would it be cool to have a login system similar if detected?
This is more about access to a site and those servers than it is about being able to clone and use WP code imho.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 266 ms ] threadhttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1843963052183433331.html
I can't see how anybody who knows a bit about the situation would ever want to continue to be affiliated with Wordpress knowing this guy could go over the top at any moment.
Is he just totally ignoring his own lawyers? He has to be, because no lawyer who charges more than $20 an hour would tell him any of this is advisable.
Even there he's inconsistent. He spent a day or so talking about how his lawyer said "If you're in the right, talk all you like!", then a few days after that made an announcement about how he'd retained a lawyer just that day.
Hilariously bad look all around.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41784343
"Despite our sometimes fervent wishes, lawyers don't control clients. We are not puppeteers"
It just feels so very odd. Why would Matt’s lawyer care what people say here? He doesn’t have to convince of us anything. The PR folks would like to convince us of stuff and I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed up, but why legal?
And what kind of lawyer says that about a client in an ongoing case on a public forum using an account in their own name?! It’s a level of unprofessionalism that I struggle to believe a reputable lawyer would engage in. If Matt is unreasonable to the point of needing to make a public comment, Neil should have just forced him to find new council and quit.
I’ll likely never have need for this specific type of council, but if I do there’s a brand new list of people I won’t hire with only a single name on it.
The whole thing is strange, and I can’t figure out why anyone would tie their ship to Matt in this storm. He’s a liability not just to himself, but to everyone supporting him as his antics start to reflect on his supporters. Even if people did support his position, Matt is preventing them from doing so publicly without also looking insane.
Maybe photomatt is also a hacked account and real Matt just hasn't noticed yet?
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262232/matt-mullenweg-w...
This isn't a static website we're talking about — WordPress is probably one of the most attacked web software in the world given its footprint.
WordPress doesn't do LTS releases or backports either.
> The only current officially supported version is the last major release of WordPress. Previous major releases before this may or may not get security updates as serious exploits are discovered.
> …
> Security updates will be backported to older releases when possible, but there are no guarantee and no timeframe for older releases. There are no fixed period of support nor Long Term Support (LTS) version such as Ubuntu’s. None of these are safe to use, except the latest series, which is actively maintained.
I’m thinking part of the problem is that the software itself is GPL and so is it’s ecosystem, which means that the standard next step of changing the license (followed by an inevitable fork) is infeasible.
From https://automattic.com/2024/wp-engine-term-sheet.pdf:
Fee. In exchange for the License Grant, WP Engine shall do one of the following:
(a) Pay Automattic a royalty fee equal to 8% of its Gross Revenue on a monthly basis, within fifteen days of the end of each month. "Gross Revenue" means all revenue generated by WP Engine from the sale of its services, calculated without deductions for taxes, refunds, or other costs. WP Engine will also provide Automattic a detailed monthly report of its Gross Revenue within fifteen days of the close of each calendar month, including a product line breakdown of all revenues generated. Automattic will have full audit rights.
(b) Commit 8% of its revenue in the form of salaries of WP Engine employees working on WordPress core features and functionality to be directed by WordPress.org. WP Engine will provide Automattic a detailed monthly report demonstrating its fulfillment of this commitment. WordPress.org and Automattic will have full audit rights, including access to employee records and time-tracking.
(c) Some combination of the above two options.
I’ve seen subsidies where hourly totals are required ‘employee records’?
Why does money go to Automattic instead of the Foundation?
Matt wants Automattic to get the money and he controls both of them.
Given how much they sunk into the boat anchor that is Tumblr, and how well Tumblr is doing right now, I'm not surprised they need any competitive advantage they can get.
https://x.com/javiercasares/status/1843963052183433331
This is shunning, which is literally one of the hallmarks of a cult. If you are associated in any way with a suppressive person (WP Engine), you now cannot be a member of the WordPress.org community. Members of the community have to decide whether to shun WP Engine or be excommunicated themselves. He’s trying to use the community as a weapon.
It also seems a fertile ground to claim tortious interference. He’s trying to sever relationships between WP Engine and everybody they interact with.
https://x.com/JavierCasares/status/1843963074904227945
* https://x.com/xwolf/status/1842548019289338346
* https://x.com/rmccue/status/1843967630585311595
* https://x.com/jonoalderson/status/1843985559745921046
* https://x.com/LinuxJedi/status/1843966957495939093
And from Javier's thread, Matt is gaslighting people by telling them to consult attorneys to decide the meaning of "affiliated" in a checkbox HE introduced.
Is paying for WPEngine hosting "affiliated"? https://x.com/LucP/status/1843926970763227255
Can we now agree that Matt has lost his marbles and his ego is leading him to burn the entire Wordpress ecosystem down? These are megalomaniacal and dictatorial actions.
Maybe setting up a proper independent governance of the WordPress project would encourage more independent contributions.
>"it's free but only until the project owners deem you too successful and then you'll have to pay 8% of your revenues to support the project".
https://world.hey.com/dhh/automattic-is-doing-open-source-di...
Among all the more visible issues with this whole situation, he calls out a few things that I think need more awareness:
1. Matt decries Private Equity as leeches and freeloaders on free software, open source, and their community.
2. Automattic invested in WPE in the early days. In fact, Silver Lake, the PE firm that owns WPE, bought Automattic's share! Automattic sold to PE.
3. The WP Foundation has three members, two of whom show any sign of activity: Matt himself, and another person that Matt personally appointed who is... drum roll... the Managing Partner of a Private Equity firm.
Somewhat ironic for someone who shit talks their competitors and Private Equity so vocally.
He chose to use an open source license and benefit from all that open source entails.
You can’t turn around and ignore the terms of the license just because it doesn’t suit you.
Open source is based on idealistic and community based mindset and modern tech is now based around extracting the dollars. The two aren't really compatible and it's really quite sad to see.
That being said this the most stupid way to go about it.
The moral obligation to not screw over a million innocent users also outweighs Matt's driving desire for more money.
Several of the most popular plugins are maintained by WPEngine.
WPEngine donates/sponsors hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to WordPress community events. Indeed, the convention where Matt went "nuclear" was sponsored by WPE to the tune of $75,000 (and despite these all being supposedly independent entities, somehow WPE was banned from attending by the Foundation. No refund, though).
> So if you're eager to volunteer to be their free labor, be my guest.
Matt is demanding that WPE provide his for-profit company, Automattic, free labor, to be directed as Automattic see fit. Not the Foundation, not the open source project.
> WordCamps come in all different flavors, based on the local communities that produce them, but in general, WordCamps include sessions on how to use WordPress more effectively, beginning plugin and theme development, advanced techniques, security, etc. To get an idea of the types of sessions typically seen at WordCamps, check out the WordCamp channel at WordPress.tv.
If a 'company' is just digital landlordism it's not surprising makers don't want to subsidize your free ride...
They don't get secretly blackmailed and publicly shamed for failure to do so. There are a lot of other WP hosts too (Pantheon, Cloudways, etc.) and they also don't get this same treatment, unless they all silently paid up and we just didn't know...?
Sure, there's a gentleman's understanding that companies with resources should contribute back to the projects they use, but it's not a hard and fast moral or legal code.
It's disturbing and frankly terrifying for all downstream WordPress companies and users for Matt to blow this so out of proportion to the actual crime of "failing to contribute back to open source", which so many of us are guilty of every single day.
Some years later I believe the story I saw said that they had less than $200 / month being donated to the project to keep it going.
Now I LOVE the idea of a wordpress minus gutenberg, with all the code quality and security updates and modern themes and plugins all working together..
Do I think this is legit going to be sustainable with hardly anyone chipping in time and money - well, for an open source hobby site, $200 a year put into security might be fine..
Some of the more important websites using wordpress as a backend might want to rethink all of that.
Which is funny, because essentially that is what Matt is saying in the first place - for those who profit from it and can afford to, please donate so we can keep on keeping on.
However I have around 50 websites or so that are running just fine without Gutenberg.. and if you count the number of updates WP and plugins and themes have rolled out since Gutenberg and multiple that by 50, most of these updates have been an annoying use of time.
That being said, Gutenberg stuff today is pretty mature and I do recommend it and use it projects launched post 2024, partially because it's mature at this point, but not insignificantly because it is built into core.
I railed long ago that Matt and co should develop Gutenberg, but do it as an optional add-in.
I would still build sites today without it if it wasn't baked into core..
altough I will say that as of today, core gutenberg and default theme with FSE is a fine way to build,
it's different in many ways, sometimes confusing especially for those who are not used to navigating around FSE differently - but it can be decent to look at on the front end with default tools, and it's lean as far as size and page speed / load time (comparatively speaking).
But depending on the use case, and what tooling one may already have at hand, I still feel it could be fine to build without Gutenberg completely.. astra / spectra and stuff from brainstorm force for example would be decent to build with the past few years with not guten needed..
other page builders like siteorigin's were already doing most the things without the delays in development, and removal of standard long standing features like the menus screen and hiding the custom css option..
Sure, some sites may have chosen to use a site builder or Classic Editor with ACF, but those that didn't are left out in the cold by ClassicPress's decisions.
I don't think it's just 'some sites' choosing to use other builders and reject Gutenberg. the plugin repo shows that the 'classic editor' plugin has over 10 million active installations.
(classic editor removes gutenberg from the backend screens) - so it's not being left out in the cold, it's keeping things running fine without Gutenbloat.
So there was/is a huge need for ClassicPress - it's just that there is an easier way to get a very similar result with WordPress and that is install an extra plugin to remove the 'new plugin' of Gutengerg -
and since it's so easy to get back the functionality with a few clicks, may people are leaving many websites without the performance boost of leaner WP and getting the same classic backend..
If autaomattic had not put the classic editor in the repo, many more would of sought out the fork and classicPress would be dealing with more than 10 million sites relying on it.
This has been a pretty big issue for some time now, and only very recently would I start to lean into Gutenberg being a mature enough replacement that I start to advocate for it's use.
But really there is no need for it - if you wanted a page builder years ago there were plenty, and still are.
The great thing about it has been the pulling in other aspects like performance issues and reusable styles and such - so it has helped make WP better in other areas along the way, so now I am okay with it.
Being left out in the cold without Guten just means a leaner site that loads faster unless you get into elementor or some other heavy bloatware to have click/drag GUI - but it's not the only option now or back then.
Today, it's fine either way.
There’s still something entertaining to this for sure, but it also hurts so much. Wordpress used to be a respectable project, Automattic a respectable company and Matt a respectable person. Maybe it was too good to last.
The only way any of this (already serve) damage can somewhat be undone is Matt stepping back (as a sudden change of mind seems unlikely). Please don’t keep making it worse.
This was a mask off moment, but he's always been like this. He had a similar blow up in February when he harassed trans users on Tumblr (https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-transphobia-matt-mullenw...) (https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/told_you_so).
EDIT (to save having a 2nd post). Looking at the HTML tags for the requirement it has the class "login-lawsuit", so guessing this is tried to the suit WPE are bringing against WordPress/Matt.
On one hand, I personally feel like Matt is trying to speed run burning all the goodwill of the wordpress project, on the other hand if you are being sued by an entity its pretty much recommended to cut ties with said entity and only deal with them via your lawyers so I can see why they would put in such a requirement.
Regardless, .org and .com are claimed to be separate legal entities, so there is no lawsuit against .org. This is just an escalation out of a sense of moral righteousness.
Yes, it's confusing.
Let this be a lesson to all of us - if you rely on a service provided by another organization external to your organization, get an SLA! Get a contract that guarantees you the provision of services you depend on.
Getting "takers" to pay for SLAs/licences is pretty much what Automattic or whoever's behind WordPress dot org wants.
Even crying foul over WP.org costs is disingenuous though. It's not WPE consuming the resources, it's the sites they host for customers. It'd be like Matt demanding 8% of AWS revenue because so many sites are hosted by them and accessing WP.org resources. Simply collecting the hosting of multiple WP sites under one provider should in no way obligated the provider directly. Either it's a freely accessable resource for WP sites or it's not. It should not be subject to the whims of a single person and used as a tool in their personal crusade.
Given that it's clear that WP.org is not actually a freely available resource, it's imperative that the WP codebase be adjusted to not use that resource anymore.
As I've said in most of my posts on this, I'm not involved in the WP world and have no ties to any party to this debacle.
how to get me never to recommend or use your software or services ever again, 101
get fucked, wordpress
Care to share?
I imagine if I had a company that asked someone to chip to help cover bandwidth and server resources, and they refused to pony up, I would say you are going to be limited in your access - and this would be another way to limit it.
If someone setup a system to steal all youtube videos and republish them, would it be reasonable for Google to add a captcha and demand that they not use thier bandwidth or content in way they don't like? Would it be cool to have a login system similar if detected?
This is more about access to a site and those servers than it is about being able to clone and use WP code imho.