The saga continues. Surprise surprise, it's almost like he never cared about open-source in the first place otherwise he'd actually support the idea of forking. I've heard WordPress itself is...
The saga continues. Surprise surprise, it's almost like he never cared about open-source in the first place otherwise he'd actually support the idea of forking. I've heard WordPress itself is actually a fork?
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, some of whom have been spearheading a push to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project.
Initially I kinda didn't care about this whole thing. I only sorta followed it out of curiosity. But at this point, I'm wondering if I should keep using Wordpress for my personal blog. This has to...
Initially I kinda didn't care about this whole thing. I only sorta followed it out of curiosity. But at this point, I'm wondering if I should keep using Wordpress for my personal blog. This has to be doing damage to the brand. If that's who's "leading" WP, why would people want to associate with that? Since this whole thing is clearly about money, should we expect -- Sorry to those who are are tired of this word -- enshitification of WP?
Now I get that WP is more than just the actual platform itself. People have created whole careers out of hosting WP sites, managing the sites, designing templates, writing plugins, SEO, etc. It's a field onto itself. So it's not going away soon. But it's not like WP is the only game in town. Never has been. It's the most popular, but there are tons of easy to stand up and use CMSs and even proprietary options like WIX or Squarespace.
Seems like a very dangerous game Mullenweg is playing here.
In some cases it really does feel like the only game in town. At my old job we had talked with marketers about making content for our website to improve our search engine rankings and pretty much...
In some cases it really does feel like the only game in town. At my old job we had talked with marketers about making content for our website to improve our search engine rankings and pretty much everyone balked at our static site and only wanted to deal with Wordpress, to the point where my boss was starting to think that there was some magical property about it that made Google like it better. That’s just how much mindshare the platform has.
You do you, friend, but this isn't even close to denting WordPress. 501 Million web sites. 43% of all sites on the internet. Matt has had more money than he could spend in his lifetime for over 20...
You do you, friend, but this isn't even close to denting WordPress. 501 Million web sites. 43% of all sites on the internet. Matt has had more money than he could spend in his lifetime for over 20 years. He's an actual billionaire, and as far as I can tell one of the few decent ones (I choose to believe it's possible for them to exist).
I don't believe this is about money. While it may sound tinfoil-hatty, I sincerely believe this is about power, control, and ideology. Someone else in this thread called Matt the "Elon of WordPress" and I found that about as ironic as possible.
WPEngine is trying to position themselves AS "WordPress". That's what their actions are pointing at them trying to achieve ultimately as things evolve.
And as we continue this degradation of information access freedoms, and when entrenched power structures are on your side, and the top item on the agenda is to get publishing back under control since the internet upended it, things get weird. Internet heroes become villains.
They definitely aren't. This is the sort of thing Matt has been accusing them of with little evidence. But given the rest of your comment, it seems like you might mean to refer to Matt's company...
WPEngine is trying to position themselves AS "WordPress". That's what their actions are pointing at them trying to achieve ultimately as things evolve.
They definitely aren't. This is the sort of thing Matt has been accusing them of with little evidence. But given the rest of your comment, it seems like you might mean to refer to Matt's company Automattic instead?
I did not, I said he's modeling himself after Musk and personality wise he comes off very similar. Edit: Ah, that was @0x29A If the shoe fits, don't act like the man if you don't want to be...
I did not, I said he's modeling himself after Musk and personality wise he comes off very similar.
The saddest part about this whole saga, for those of us that aren't invested in the WP ecosystem, is that the popularity of WordPress has been a huge net positive for the internet. The early...
The saddest part about this whole saga, for those of us that aren't invested in the WP ecosystem, is that the popularity of WordPress has been a huge net positive for the internet.
The early popularity created a niche market for WP design/hosting/development/support that in turn made it a low barrier to entry way for people to publish on the web. Somehow that popularity has survived the commodification of DIY publishing and retail by companies like SquareSpace, Medium, Shopify, et al. It's exactly how open source is supposed to work.
I don't like to think of a web without WP holding up evidence that corporate platforms aren't the only choice. So it's sad to see Matt persistently trying to damage the brand in ways that seem to make no sense. I hope it survives in spite of him, and ideally without him, even if that might be too much to hope for.
There is a whole bunch of history here that you might not be aware of. Matt’s been trying to get, and been promised WPEngine would make contributions to WP since at least 2018 - and has the emails...
There is a whole bunch of history here that you might not be aware of.
Matt’s been trying to get, and been promised WPEngine would make contributions to WP since at least 2018 - and has the emails to show it.
Matt used to be a part owner in WPEngine.
WPEngine has recently been bought by private equity and has become an even worse actor in the business since.
Anyone can make negative assumptions without all the information. I’m even guilty of this in this situation - assuming to worst of Silver Lake and giving Matt the benefit of the doubt. The...
Anyone can make negative assumptions without all the information. I’m even guilty of this in this situation - assuming to worst of Silver Lake and giving Matt the benefit of the doubt.
The difference is that I’ve seen Matt act in the best interests of keeping the WordPress codebase open and try his best to keep a large community of developers from imploding and pass up money for the sake of the whole thing.
You write as though what’s been build around WordPress is just like all other businesses. It’s not.
Passing up money matters little to someone who is post-economic, and his actions over the past year can only be described as repeatedly throwing lit bombs into the development community he...
The difference is that I’ve seen Matt act in the best interests of keeping the WordPress codebase open and try his best to keep a large community of developers from imploding and pass up money for the sake of the whole thing.
Passing up money matters little to someone who is post-economic, and his actions over the past year can only be described as repeatedly throwing lit bombs into the development community he supposedly prizes. He doesn't seem to care in the slightest about the problems he's causing, either.
His recent erratic behavior is also not limited to just Wordpress, but instead fits a pattern of abusive behavior in other contexts as well.
It's been many years, but I'd bet $5 there is a story somewhere about Matt being offered a ton of money for all or some component of the WordPress ecosystem prior to him being "post economic". He...
It's been many years, but I'd bet $5 there is a story somewhere about Matt being offered a ton of money for all or some component of the WordPress ecosystem prior to him being "post economic". He was talked about as a hero for a long long time, and that doesn't happen for no reason.
in other contexts as well
That was a bit of a disappointing screed. Look, I'm an ally. I have trans acquaintances (used to be friends, but... geography), booked fundraisers with trans entertainers... I won't list all my bonafides on how I've done the work here, but I've done the work and continue to (because that's part of it).
I very much hope I'm not inadvertently justifying bigoted actions from Matt here. But that's just it - after reading that article I have little to no actual evidence of how exactly he transgressed. I'm genuinely trying to see something more that jerk behavior.
It's because I'm an ally that I'm annoyed by the article. IMO it loses credibility not only with hyperbole, but also by assuming ignorance of the reading audience. They construct a tonally strong and emotional argument that intentionally or not obfuscates significant portions of the argument - the weak points. It piles on instead of giving clarity to injustices.
IMO It leaves out and (IMO) obfuscates a triangulation component in the bigotry. It seems to attempt to attribute bigotry from the tumblr user base to Matt... And now we're into a whole different argument. Instead of being clear about exactly how and where Matt's transgressed, the author glosses over this pretty major component.
One big red flag (about Matt) and question the article raised for me was whether or not Matt actually used his access to dox them. There's a HUGE difference between fighting publicly (and social media is public) with someone and doing a deep dive on you to bring up issues relevant to the argument (though I guess this could approach stalking) and one side using their superuser server privileges to log into a platform and discover anonymous accounts and dox you. That would have been damning, but I don't know that this happened - and what's worse - because of the hyperbole it's lost in the emotive damnation. I'm left to assume the author could only insinuate it - which further weakens their case.
Fighting with someone and then having them follow you to a different platform to keep fighting- well... I frankly kind of shrug at it. It's been done to me. If you're on solid ground It's generally NBD.
I would ask some of you to try on this context: maybe this article is a situation where one side is punching in a fight, and I'd wager they (Matt) believe they are in a fair fight... but on the other side there's a whole audience that's watching and seeing someone with a lot of power punching down.
I sure would have liked to know more about that instead of having it vaguely tossed into the middle of that screed with zero evidence or details. edit: "have" to "having" typo.
I don't know that this happened - and what's worse - because of the hyperbole it's lost in the emotive damnation. I'm left to assume the author could only insinuate it - which further weakens their case.
I sure would have liked to know more about that instead of having it vaguely tossed into the middle of that screed with zero evidence or details.
To summarize, you can have multiple blog names which are not linked publicly to each other. Matt published all the blogs this person had, something that requires his access.
Sorry for the long post, but we’re talking open web stuff, and I’ve been following this and have worked with WordPress on and off since 2004 or so? Also, you will once again see I have a strong...
Sorry for the long post, but we’re talking open web stuff, and I’ve been following this and have worked with WordPress on and off since 2004 or so? Also, you will once again see I have a strong opinion below, though I’ve tried to balance it and be about as fair as I’m willing to be.
I’m inclined to believe Matt when he says (and has said) there is an orchestrated smear campaign against him. WP engine and all of its customers are being incredibly vocal because there’s a lot of money and entire businesses on the line with this conflict. It’s also pretty complicated and nuanced with history and unusual business models and dependencies (not even counting the usual software kind).
I’m also inclined to side with Matt on this because I have watched him pass up hundreds of millions of dollars to not sell out the WordPress developer community in the last 2 decades. It’s that stalwart OSS stewardship that made WP what it is (and by extension, the modern open web).
It was never the fastest or newest or bleeding-edge. It was easy, stable, open, and free. You could always build anything with it (maybe not well) and never be locked in. All hosting providers kind of had to provide if not service for WP sites, then at minimum on-ramps and off-ramps for data portability. IMO WP is the primary reason most site owners have the ability to change hosts.
That said, Matt has pulled some wild moves. No doubt about it, but it is his baby. He got fed up with some industry leeches and did something about it. That’s freaked out a whole bunch of people suddenly faced with the fact that their opportunistic glass house of a business model is built on a deck of cards.
(I say opportunistic because they’re running a web business in the absolute cheapest and most knowledge-poor way possible - a WordPress site on the cheapest managed hosting package available.)
I don’t trust WP engine or their vocal customer base as far as I could throw them. My limited experience with WPE-hosted clients is that they are pretty shark infested waters.
Nearly all of the clients I’ve had that were on WPEngine were either cheap, a slow-pay, or sadly just a general rolling disaster in way over their heads. Usually they were just cheap fast-talkers though.
At the same time, several of them will say behind closed doors that WPE itself is pretty terrible to deal with, and that was before private equity bought and started gutting it.
Maybe Matt has lost the plot here. Deactivating Joost & Co. does seem like he’s lashing out. But, then again, a TechCrunch story on 4 users locked out their WP.org login smells funny to me too. Sure, there’s a bit of silly drama, but anyone can fork WP any time, and anyone willing to foot the bill to host a mirror of the theme & plugin repos is free to do so as well. All I’d suggest is you scrape the repos very slowly so as to not hit their servers hard. (Yes, I’ve done this, shhh.)
Sorry I posted this then edited it massively. I got distracted.
Thank you for respectfully laying out your viewpoint, even though it's not the "popular" one. The world's complicated. Matt can simultaneously have been a net positive for OSS and Internet...
Thank you for respectfully laying out your viewpoint, even though it's not the "popular" one.
The world's complicated. Matt can simultaneously have been a net positive for OSS and Internet publishing over the last two decades—while also being the wrong steward of the project for the next few decades.
Same goes for WPE. Are they saints? No. Do they have a financial interest? Yeah. But that doesn't mean they're incorrect in criticizing Matt's recent swings in leadership.
That's fine. You have your views and I have mine and with everything that's transpired, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'd ever remotely side with Matt on this and I hope this moves...
That's fine. You have your views and I have mine and with everything that's transpired, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'd ever remotely side with Matt on this and I hope this moves people to abandon Wordpress altogether. A petty child that needs to step down and move on otherwise everyone else should abandon him instead. The Elon of WP
I don't disagree that WPEngine may be no shining completely innocent party, but Matt's repeated absolutely asinine behavior betrays any actual point he may have had. Even if he was even partially right to begin with- all goodwill for him should be buried forever at this point.
No amount of any points on his behalf justify his behavior, which has clearly shown despite his claims, he is anti-open-source and customer-hostile, among other things.
There is zero chance that I'd ever want to use or recommend WP ever again. He has clearly shown via his actions, even completely leaving WPEngine's own claims out of the picture altogether, that he is unfit to continue on in any kind of stewardship of anything Wordpress.
If someone else enters the picture in his stead and discusses publicly their continued displeasure at WPEngine's supposed minimal open-source contributions back to Wordpress, but in a professional way that doesn't abuse their power and cause collateral damage, by causing harm to users, vendors, and others that rely on Wordpress, then sure. But for Wordpress's future, Matt should be out of the picture. Even just for the sake of those that rely on Wordpress not seeing the instability such behavior portrays. We gotta stop having man-children in charge of tech companies.
I don't use WordPress and have zero dogs in the fight but since his behavior here matches his behavior with Tumblr, while I fully believe he's claiming a smear campaign, I'm literally just...
I don't use WordPress and have zero dogs in the fight but since his behavior here matches his behavior with Tumblr, while I fully believe he's claiming a smear campaign, I'm literally just listening to the stuff he says/posts and can come to the conclusion he's an asshole.
This exactly (long time Tumblr user here, been gone for years at this point though). This isn't new behavioral territory for Matt, and my displeasure with him throughout this whole saga has been...
This exactly (long time Tumblr user here, been gone for years at this point though). This isn't new behavioral territory for Matt, and my displeasure with him throughout this whole saga has been based on his own behavior and words.
If there's anyone running a smear campaign against Matt, it's Matt.
God I hate that sort of thing "everyone is talking about how shitty I am! It's a smear campaign" No my dude you just keep being shitty. Over and over and over.
God I hate that sort of thing "everyone is talking about how shitty I am! It's a smear campaign"
No my dude you just keep being shitty. Over and over and over.
I don’t know about the tumblr thing. I do know he shouldn’t be out front. His writing and speaking style is completely off putting. He totally sounds like an entitled asshole. I’m just pretty sure...
I don’t know about the tumblr thing. I do know he shouldn’t be out front. His writing and speaking style is completely off putting. He totally sounds like an entitled asshole. I’m just pretty sure he’s in the right Re: WPEngine.
He definitely needs to reorganize Automattic so people can stop complaining about the perceived conflicts of interest. He definitely needs to be hiding behind PR people. He probably should stop doing interviews.
You're excusing him acting like an asshole because it's his baby and saying he needs to have PR people in front of him. He acted like an asshole with Tumblr after Automattic bought it, behaving...
You're excusing him acting like an asshole because it's his baby and saying he needs to have PR people in front of him. He acted like an asshole with Tumblr after Automattic bought it, behaving like a random with power rather than a CEO who doesn't throw hissy fits when someone says they hate the CEO.
He posted about "what drama he could start" on reddit, and then when someone quits over it he fires the whole team and ends the Slack with puke emojis? I mean Elon Musk is not generally considered to be a role model and that seems to be the type of asshole Matt wants to be.
Aren't you really saying that he shouldn't be in charge if he can't be trusted to do the job of CEO, which includes being the public face of the company?
Listen to people when they tell you who they are. This guy's been clear and proud of it. Idgaf about WP or WPengine or whatever. He should be fired, despite that being impossible I'm sure.
One major difference. Matt actually made WordPress and the business model it runs on. That never existed before he created it. Both the for profit arm (.com), the open source project (.org), as...
One major difference. Matt actually made WordPress and the business model it runs on. That never existed before he created it. Both the for profit arm (.com), the open source project (.org), as well as the plug-in and theme repos and the businesses they created. He took a fledgling abandoned project, forked it, helmed the project and took all the heat from the community and has been doing it since the beginning. He literally made an entire industry. He actually made it. It’s his life’s work. He’s been there from the beginning.
It’s the opposite of Musk in kind of every important way. In fact, IMO, part of the issue here is that Matt’s faced so many years of whining that he’s destroying WordPress from devs that he can’t tell when he’s actually out of line anymore.
Is he a mercurial petty asshole? Sure. But he’s not a fraud. Musk is.
You give him permission to be that petty asshole because of "whining." What was his excuse as head of Tumblr? I think you brush that aside because you don't have noble justification - he's so worn...
In fact, IMO, part of the issue here is that Matt’s faced so many years of whining that he’s destroying WordPress from devs that he can’t tell when he’s actually out of line anymore.
You give him permission to be that petty asshole because of "whining." What was his excuse as head of Tumblr? I think you brush that aside because you don't have noble justification - he's so worn down by bad actors, his assholery is understandable! - for harassing a trans user who said something mean about "him."
He founded something, he's still a bad CEO for the thing. That's why I said I'm sure it was impossible for him to get fired, despite having earned it multiple times over. Being a "real founder" and similar to Musk only in pettiness and assholery is not a compliment nor a point in his favor. If he's miserable to work for, and is bad at PR, documents his own extortion attempts and isn't even making great business decisions based on the legal analysis from the lawsuits filed... What's he bringing to the table again? He's a bad CEO and should be fired.
You can keep defending his honor, I haven't seen any of the arguments you're making except from him. Everything I know about the man is because he cannot keep his mouth shut. He's got Zero credibility with me. If you happen to have some articles/analysis from outside parties that suggest he's justified due to all the "whining" or whatever, or that can substantiate the specific claims of how bad WPEngine is, I'd be happy to read them. Well, happy isn't the word. And I dont mean bad to work with, that they're actually doing things worthy of the weird ass shit Mullenberg is doing.
I just think he's an asshole because that is what comes out of his mouth, and it doesn't matter to me if he cured cancer, it wouldn't justify his behavior to his customers or his staff. I don't care that Musk is "worse" it doesn't make this guy "good."
Look, I don’t know him personally. I don’t even care for his presentation style, and I wouldn’t want to work for him just based on that. My gut tells me yes, he’s probably an ass. I know nothing...
Look, I don’t know him personally. I don’t even care for his presentation style, and I wouldn’t want to work for him just based on that. My gut tells me yes, he’s probably an ass.
I know nothing about the tumblr thing. It sounds like he’s a transphobe and that’s a bummer and another mark against him.
But i have watched WordPress go from this little blog project into what it is today - an entire industry - and he was the guy that made it happen. Mostly the way that happened was by putting developers first. That’s why the developer community lionized him and enshrined him. They didn’t do that for no reason.
There aren’t articles praising him because most of what he did was kind of thankless and boring and turning down money and saying no to things for the sake of keeping the open source project and community on the rails. You don’t get good press or make friends for saying no a lot.
Matt has a TON of power. He’s made a lot of decisions that cost people money and made grudges and enemies, without a doubt.
That 20 years of context will do what it does to anyone- creates a giant ego and lots of enemies and lots of bad press. The WordPress ecosystem is incredibly noisy and dramatic. For a generation it’s attracted type-A business owners who are loud and open and public. Often on social media. It’s low hanging fruit for bad press.
And as time went on, the kind of mind-bogglingly large industry built on WordPress eclipses the open source platform and Automattic’s paid products by orders of magnitude I can’t imagine and is frankly unknown (to my knowledge).
There are marketing agencies that started as WordPress shops. They give away WP sites for cheap in order to run the clients’ marketing. Online schools and classes? Mostly WordPress. E-commerce? Mostly WordPress. The size of the entire ecosystem is kind of both unknown and unfathomable and frequently dips into the shady.
Wix is white labeled WordPress.
The immense amount of business running on this open source project is a success, right?
I’m not sure. In some ways it’s kind of messed up. There are a ton of businesses mixed in of all stripes - but that’s not Matt’s fault. It’s a function of greed.
Much of this thread has thoughts and ideas about what he could and should do or have done differently. Some of it I agree with. I’m trying hard to not be just a Matt fanboy because he has definitely hoarded power when he should have put in firewalls and delegated, and said some terrible things.
But Matt has always put WordPress first. Even before his own mouth or ego because it’s his legacy.
So I don’t believe for one second that with the way the rest of the internet has been moving in the last several years, if Matt gets ousted things won’t get immeasurably worse. I don’t know exactly how, but I feel it in my bones and from my vantage point the shrill vocal Matt hate seems just like confirmation of how badly some people want and need him gone.
Edit to make that last sentence correct, not be the opposite of what I meant.
I don't love being called shrill, but I assure you, I "hate" the guy for who he is portraying himself to be not because I want him out of power for personal gain. Maybe he's the asshole we need,...
I don't love being called shrill, but I assure you, I "hate" the guy for who he is portraying himself to be not because I want him out of power for personal gain. Maybe he's the asshole we need, not the asshole we deserve, but it's amazing to me how much water we'll carry for the "great men" of history.
Like your saying there's zero positive media coverage of him because that stuff is thankless and boring. But like, really, zero? Zero coverage of all of this shitty stuff the other parties are allegedly doing? I mean, not even praising him for standing up to the woke mob or something?
I think that's as telling as everything else. I would personally love to go back to never hearing about him again, but I expect he is who will make that impossible.
Apologies - I was referring to the whole and entire WP/Matt media circus and drama as "shrill" -not you personally. And maybe not a great word choice - especially if we've changed topics from WP...
Apologies - I was referring to the whole and entire WP/Matt media circus and drama as "shrill" -not you personally. And maybe not a great word choice - especially if we've changed topics from WP hosting models to trans rights - an area I'm way less versed in, but trying to be a good human about.
Like your saying there's zero positive media coverage of him because that stuff is thankless and boring. But like, really, zero? Zero coverage of all of this shitty stuff the other parties are allegedly doing? I mean, not even praising him for standing up to the woke mob or something?
Sort of, assuming everyone's in on it. But it's also what happens when someone makes themselves absolutely unlikeable and does shitty stuff on repeat. And usually someone out there will defend or...
That's kind of what a smear campaign is?
Sort of, assuming everyone's in on it. But it's also what happens when someone makes themselves absolutely unlikeable and does shitty stuff on repeat. And usually someone out there will defend or try to "be reasonable" about the shitty person.
I'm hard pressed to take the word of someone I've seen do shitty stuff and in lieu of some sort of reporting otherwise, I don't know how I'd change my mind on the grounds of "he just does shitty things because he cares so much"
I totally see how that's starting to look/sound like abuser behavior. I'm kind of judging the situation like: "Everyone at WordPress is afraid to get involved because... Matt". and "Everyone in...
I totally see how that's starting to look/sound like abuser behavior.
I'm kind of judging the situation like:
"Everyone at WordPress is afraid to get involved because... Matt".
and
"Everyone in WPEngine's corner is super noisy because their business depends on it".
And then there may or may not be all the quiet shadowy parties that are hunting for the chaos of 40% of internet sites suddenly being untenable as a result of Matt going and who knows what happening after.
The people I've seen discussing the case the most are the lawyers I follow on Bluesky, who mostly think the extortion and the muddling of who owns and has licenses to what are an absolute...
The people I've seen discussing the case the most are the lawyers I follow on Bluesky, who mostly think the extortion and the muddling of who owns and has licenses to what are an absolute nightmare and that Matt sounds like he sucks, thank God he's not my client, let's do a live read of these filings because he's fucked.
I think assuming that critics are likely somehow financially invested is a mistake. Some of us are probably not fully informed - that's why I'd love to read some kind of in-depth reporting that gives more of his perspective but isn't just him speaking about how unfair this is - but I mean I can read a legal filing and read his extortion texts and read his history and think that if everyone is against him that he's probably earned the vast majority of it at this point. (WP employees being afraid to speak especially because being fired by Matt is the biggest risk rn, isn't a point in his favor)
ahh, I'm obviously NAL - but I am kind of sympathetic to the "extortion" thing. The WP world has morphed and grown in some areas and not in others and the landscape has changed. I think Matt's got...
ahh, I'm obviously NAL - but I am kind of sympathetic to the "extortion" thing. The WP world has morphed and grown in some areas and not in others and the landscape has changed. I think Matt's got a pretty valid point in that WP.org has been running essentially two gigantic profitless stores for decades while all the other web hosts have been benefiting. He sees (like most in the biz) more and more shifts away from collaboration (how WP came to be) and toward just what's legal and profitable. The business grew up, but it also got much less... I don't know.... fun? collaborative? cooperative? altruistic? fair? Fully acknowledging this is just an old web-head complaining about "the good old days" to some extent - it's also not one bit unfair to say that WP.org has been stuck holding the ball re: plugin and theme distribution with no way to pay for it.
It grew up that way and I'm sure Matt's been trying to find a solution forever. I think it's not unreasonable for him to expect some give from the big players - they sure would have way back when companies were aping each other's theme templates without much more than a twitter squabble. I think he probably right or wrongfully got to a point where he said to himself "Well, nobody's been doing anything but lip service on this for years now, so I guess I "have to go nuclear". I think it was probably more strategic, more unexpected, and behind closed doors (hopefully?) more effective than is being written about.
I'm not suggesting those lawyers don't know what they're talking about. I'm sure they do. All I'm saying is the situation actually is pretty unique and complicated, not the "shakedown" people are writing it off as, and that there's a giant difference between the US Legal system and what's actually just.
I mean at this point you're kind of agreeing he's an asshole you just think he's justified. He's basically Robin Hood, because the people he's extorting are bad and the laws he may be breaking...
I mean at this point you're kind of agreeing he's an asshole you just think he's justified. He's basically Robin Hood, because the people he's extorting are bad and the laws he may be breaking aren't just ones! That feels a stretch.
If he wasn't someone you admired, would you be so willing to look at this guy being an asshole and assume this is just because he's been pushed too far by outside actors?
genuine question - has he broken laws? I'll go try and find what you're referencing. Instead of Robin Hood, I'd describe it more like guy who's been storing, documenting, providing infrastructure...
genuine question - has he broken laws? I'll go try and find what you're referencing.
Instead of Robin Hood, I'd describe it more like guy who's been storing, documenting, providing infrastructure for (metadata, reviews, versioning etc.), and distributing things for the entire industry (themes and plugins) during and through incredible growth for an entire industry that greatly eclipses his own house - and now he needs to charge rent.
Most importantly though - there is no previous legal pathway or business model to follow to implement that. Extortion is how WPEngine is framing it of course - but that doesn't make it so.
I don't know enough to know if the commingling of for profit and NFP is at any point a broken law vs regulation vs conflict of interest, etc. I read the texts he sent, and I would have felt...
I don't know enough to know if the commingling of for profit and NFP is at any point a broken law vs regulation vs conflict of interest, etc.
I read the texts he sent, and I would have felt extorted. Whether it meets the legal definition, I don't know. I said "may be" for that reason. I feel like your picture of him is one of someone whose wrongs can all be accounted for and that he bears little to no responsibility because "they" made him act that way.
I felt that he was extorting them before the other side filed their suit and told their perspective fwiw. "If you don't agree to my deal I'll go nuclear and announce all this publicly" with a decreasing time limit... If I got that sort of message from a person I'd probably have called the police.
Once again, it falls at least into being an asshole. And maybe the other guys are assholes too, but if I just look at the things he says and does, without anyone else's commentary, he's still being an asshole. And that's the part I don't understand with the "it's everyone else's portrayal of him that's wrong." His words convince me how much he sucks.
I'm not trying to convince you, I just don't like what feels like the excusing of abusive shitty behavior. People don't "make" other people act abusive. It's a choice. And even if he was "driven" to it, he still chose to be awful. Great power, great responsibility and all. I don't get defending that, personally.
Fair. I've been at this thread long enough to get banned and to question my sanity, but definitely didn't want to depart without some kind of olive branch to you in particular. I like and agree...
Fair.
I've been at this thread long enough to get banned and to question my sanity, but definitely didn't want to depart without some kind of olive branch to you in particular. I like and agree with so much of what you write on here that I've been second-guessing myself on this topic. So - I appreciate your participation and hanging in there with me.
Have a good night and apologies if any of this had you rankled.
No I continued the conversation because I'm not upset. So no worries there. I'm definitely also willing to admit that his behavior mimics that of abusers and well known shitty people in a manner...
No I continued the conversation because I'm not upset. So no worries there. I'm definitely also willing to admit that his behavior mimics that of abusers and well known shitty people in a manner that makes me less inclined to see him favorably, it's why I would be interested in reporting that gives him perhaps a fairer shake, but am not particularly inclined to just take someone's word for who he is besides the abusive behavior, if that distinction makes sense.
I will be happy if I never have to hear about him again but I'm not mad we kept talking. Have a good one, I appreciated your perspective
It's not about transphobia, it's about how he treats people when he has power or leverage over them. It is brought up because you can make direct equivocations between his behavior then and now. I...
I know nothing about the tumblr thing. It sounds like he’s a transphobe and that’s a bummer and another mark against him.
It's not about transphobia, it's about how he treats people when he has power or leverage over them. It is brought up because you can make direct equivocations between his behavior then and now.
But Matt has always put WordPress first.
I don't see this as being magnanimous. WordPress itself was open source not only out of necessity, but because businesses have learned to treat Open Source like a loss leader - giving away a product for free in return for developer mindshare and labor without paying them, not even giving them a meaningful say in the direction of the product.
The problem is that Matt is now learning that such a strategy only works so long as there isn't a bigger fish in the sea who can simply out-scale you. Having a loss leader like Wordpress fail to adequately translate into profits for the business isn't a requiem for a community. Matt just wasn't as business-savvy as he thought he was, and now he's panicking.
More than one thing can be true. You can be a great leader for a massive ecosystem, a terrible CEO, and a jerk. And a biggot (if true). And an abuser (as some are speculating). I think there's...
More than one thing can be true. You can be a great leader for a massive ecosystem, a terrible CEO, and a jerk. And a biggot (if true). And an abuser (as some are speculating). I think there's evidence for at least some of those things. You could also argue that Matt has power over just about anyone with a computer, so I'm not sure how one defends against that argument.
As for Open Source - business and open source is way more complicated than "as a loss leader". Here's an interesting thought exercise: what if the internet itself is open source? It started as a military project that was built on by hackers. It was never monetized directly. Most of the operating systems powering it (servers) are and have always been open source. Most of the programming languages as well. It's the financial wild west in some ways to this day.
WordPress themes generate $50million+ annually. I'm sure the commercial plugin market is orders of magnitude bigger but I couldn't find a figure handily. Both of those are built on top of and wouldn't exist without WordPress - one single project licensed under the LEAST business-friendly license in existence. That license - the GPL - is so maligned there's a consensus building to not use it anymore at all.
IMO OSS is why the world is so topy-turvy right now. It is the engine upon which so much power has been democratized over the last generation that we're in a giant backlash currently.
Arguably nearly every explosive innovation in the last 30 years is standing on the shoulders of open source in some way shape or form, including MacOS. It's kind of the only place innovation is still even possible because otherwise you're stepping on someone's IP.
That's the kind of power we're talking about, and why I begin to sound a bit crazy and paranoid when it seems like some really big fundamental things are being eroded away by manipulated markets, sliding Overton windows, heated rhetoric, and all the rest.
Maybe I'm crazy or paranoid for thinking there's orchestrated scandal and press aimed at Mullenweg. But what if I'm not?
If there was, I would find it difficult to find even a crumb of sympathy for Mullenweg. Heck, I don't even feel that much sympathy for WPEngine either. I feel sorry for clients and developers who...
Maybe I'm crazy or paranoid for thinking there's orchestrated scandal and press aimed at Mullenweg. But what if I'm not?
If there was, I would find it difficult to find even a crumb of sympathy for Mullenweg. Heck, I don't even feel that much sympathy for WPEngine either. I feel sorry for clients and developers who have to put up with this BS.
To me, this isn't about David vs Goliath, it's more like Game of Thrones - a bunch of business nincompoops vying for a crown at the expense of the rest of us. The good guy isn't the one who stops the wheel with themselves on top, the good guy is the one who breaks the wheel, and nobody involved seems willing to do that.
Nope. Not a customer of either. Never have used WPEngine. Have used Wordpress in the past for my own personal use and discussed it with some local businesses back when I was doing web design/dev...
Nope. Not a customer of either. Never have used WPEngine. Have used Wordpress in the past for my own personal use and discussed it with some local businesses back when I was doing web design/dev stuff as a hobby. These days I'm just a tech-interested (at least for now, though I can feel it starting to leave my body) person observing what's going on in the tech space and personally very sick of the kind of people that run a lot of the companies and just all the shitty stuff we see on a day-to-day in the space.
So, just a regular person that has followed tech in one way or another for decades that has opinions. I don't have any stake in the situation.
If anything, bloat/misuse of WP and my love of small-web stuff these days aside, I would have probably leaned pro-WP more than anything before this whole saga, but mostly neutral or benignly indifferent ("I don't love the software but I don't mind the company and it's the right solution for certain needs probably")
I’m right there with you. I’ve been out of the WP biz for about 3 years. While Matt’s definitely pissed some people off, he really kind of spearheaded this kind of OSS/commercial software model...
I’m right there with you. I’ve been out of the WP biz for about 3 years.
While Matt’s definitely pissed some people off, he really kind of spearheaded this kind of OSS/commercial software model that I think has been the antithesis of the software “enshittifiers”.
You can’t execute on product lock-in if everyone is using an open platform that has built-in data portability.
Matt’s always stood on certain OSS principles to my knowledge.
What this comes down to for me is: Are WP Engine violating the license provided with the WordPress source code? If no, then Matt is completely in the wrong here. If yes, then this should be a...
What this comes down to for me is: Are WP Engine violating the license provided with the WordPress source code?
If no, then Matt is completely in the wrong here.
If yes, then this should be a lawsuit - not temper tantrums, bans, and public rants. So Matt is still in the wrong.
When you release software with an open source license (permissive or otherwise) you always run the risk that someone will come along and "do it better". If you want to have a little fiefdom and ultimate control over the source code then don't make it open source, or release it with a more restrictive license such as GPLv3 or AGPL.
It doesn't really matter if WP Engine is "helping the community" or not. Arguably Matt has done more damage to the community in the last year compared to WP Engine.
Forking an open source project should generally be considered a good thing and intended behavior. It's a significant part of the reason for open source software.
I don't use WP, so I could be missing a ton of context but I'm definitely not a fan of either company. This is just not how to run an open source project. Retaliating against users, including...
I don't use WP, so I could be missing a ton of context but I'm definitely not a fan of either company. This is just not how to run an open source project. Retaliating against users, including competitors, that are following the letter of the license is just an optically bad strategy. If he wanted different behavior then he should've used a different license. At best this is a bad look that makes me glad to not be part of his community.
He went after WPE over copyright - he didn’t violate the GPL. And, yes, the copyright claim was a stretch- but it was retaliation because WPEngine had a product and was refusing to rebrand...
He went after WPE over copyright - he didn’t violate the GPL. And, yes, the copyright claim was a stretch- but it was retaliation because WPEngine had a product and was refusing to rebrand something literally called “Open WordPress”.
IMO that’s just gross misrepresentation and trying to leech off the brand and project in a way that deserves and is worth going to war over.
I looked for anything related to "Open WordPress" and couldn't find anything related to that, so could you please provide a source? Everything I've been able to find, such as...
I looked for anything related to "Open WordPress" and couldn't find anything related to that, so could you please provide a source? Everything I've been able to find, such as https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/27/24256361/wordpress-wp-engine-drama-explained-matt-mullenweg, is trademark, not copyright, and is just about them using the word WordPress at all. A rather flimsy trademark claim at that by suggesting that products aren't even allowed to tell the customers the name of their underlying technologies even though that is generally covered under descriptive fair use protection for trademarks.
I probably can’t. Maybe somewhere in the internet archive? WPEngine understandably immediately pulled the product offering and called it something else, because it was so far over the line. THAT’s...
I probably can’t. Maybe somewhere in the internet archive? WPEngine understandably immediately pulled the product offering and called it something else, because it was so far over the line.
THAT’s the kind of aggressiveness that put Matt over the edge and what kicked off the narrative “Look, Matt’s unhinged!”
edit: I went looking in the wayback machine and couldn't find it, but IMO even offering "Core WordPress" as a hosting package (which they currently do) is pretty shady and kind of deliberately conflating themselves with WordPress as a project itself.
edit 2: my bad - you're right - it was trademark, not copyright. This thing has so many twists and turns I can't even keep the language right.
Well, they already are, in a way, and Mullenweg has his hands in that mess too. IIRC, that's what the for-profit "Wordpress dot com" is, basically, and part of this whole saga has been Mullenweg...
Well, they already are, in a way, and Mullenweg has his hands in that mess too. IIRC, that's what the for-profit "Wordpress dot com" is, basically, and part of this whole saga has been Mullenweg being pissy in ways that seem aimed at specifically benefiting their own hosting platform at the expense of competitors, and the big conflict of interest that is Mullenweg having control over all of the various "areas" of Wordpress- for-profit, open-source, etc.
This continues to be an extremely in-depth ongoing documentation of the situation.
The entire situation started with Automattic (for-profit company headed by Mullenweg) demanding a license from WPEngine that in no way was necessary for WPEngine to have, and said license would basically funnel a percentage of their revenue to Automattic, and essentially decided to very pettily and angrily retaliate after WPEngine didn't agree to this after it being prompted on them out of nowhere and has since been incredibly petty, childish, and devoid of all self-awareness / ability to look critically at himself, just burning bridges left and right and taking his frustrations out in very unstable ways
Naa. WPE would just like you to believe this. They did do some things under the hood years back with PHP to make it faster and easier to scale… but that’s since been replicated everywhere you see...
Naa. WPE would just like you to believe this.
They did do some things under the hood years back with PHP to make it faster and easier to scale… but that’s since been replicated everywhere you see “enterprise WP hosting”.
They’re cheap and they can scale. That’s why. It’s not out of love for them. They do a very good job of being very clear about what they can and can’t do… but sometimes their clients find this out...
They’re cheap and they can scale. That’s why. It’s not out of love for them. They do a very good job of being very clear about what they can and can’t do… but sometimes their clients find this out down the road.
It’s one of those situations where you don’t know what you don’t know… until you’re into them a ways and then you find out.
I heard a very different story. One where Matt had been trying to negotiate with WPE some contribution back to the project (money or man hours) for years. When it became clear via increasingly...
I heard a very different story. One where Matt had been trying to negotiate with WPE some contribution back to the project (money or man hours) for years.
When it became clear via increasingly aggressive branding and marketing and silence behind closed doors, he went public.
To me, this is the heart of the issue. In general, we avoid conflicts of interest for many reasons, but one is to demonstrate purity of motive. He may be defending WP from pure motives, but he is...
To me, this is the heart of the issue. In general, we avoid conflicts of interest for many reasons, but one is to demonstrate purity of motive. He may be defending WP from pure motives, but he is being an asshole about it, and he has a conflict of interest that prevents me (and apparently a lot of people) from believing that his motives are pure.
I am inclined to accept that WPEngine is fanning the flames caused by his misbehavior in reaction to their actions. So sure, a smear campaign in that it is intentional and systematic, but really not a traditional smear campaign because they aren't lies or out of context. WPE is provoking and amplifying his shitty behavior, and they have a profit motive to do so as well. So I don't buy the justice part here either.
He should move on and entrust the open source component to practical idealists who can control themselves. He's an OSS warrior who has become power-addled, ego-fragile, and is in over his head at this point.
Just my outside take from being an open source lurker for 25 years.
The saga continues. Surprise surprise, it's almost like he never cared about open-source in the first place otherwise he'd actually support the idea of forking. I've heard WordPress itself is actually a fork?
WordPress is a fork of the B2 blogging tool. After the author stopped updating it, it diverged into WordPress and b2evolution.
Initially I kinda didn't care about this whole thing. I only sorta followed it out of curiosity. But at this point, I'm wondering if I should keep using Wordpress for my personal blog. This has to be doing damage to the brand. If that's who's "leading" WP, why would people want to associate with that? Since this whole thing is clearly about money, should we expect -- Sorry to those who are are tired of this word -- enshitification of WP?
Now I get that WP is more than just the actual platform itself. People have created whole careers out of hosting WP sites, managing the sites, designing templates, writing plugins, SEO, etc. It's a field onto itself. So it's not going away soon. But it's not like WP is the only game in town. Never has been. It's the most popular, but there are tons of easy to stand up and use CMSs and even proprietary options like WIX or Squarespace.
Seems like a very dangerous game Mullenweg is playing here.
In some cases it really does feel like the only game in town. At my old job we had talked with marketers about making content for our website to improve our search engine rankings and pretty much everyone balked at our static site and only wanted to deal with Wordpress, to the point where my boss was starting to think that there was some magical property about it that made Google like it better. That’s just how much mindshare the platform has.
You do you, friend, but this isn't even close to denting WordPress. 501 Million web sites. 43% of all sites on the internet. Matt has had more money than he could spend in his lifetime for over 20 years. He's an actual billionaire, and as far as I can tell one of the few decent ones (I choose to believe it's possible for them to exist).
I don't believe this is about money. While it may sound tinfoil-hatty, I sincerely believe this is about power, control, and ideology. Someone else in this thread called Matt the "Elon of WordPress" and I found that about as ironic as possible.
WPEngine is trying to position themselves AS "WordPress". That's what their actions are pointing at them trying to achieve ultimately as things evolve.
And as we continue this degradation of information access freedoms, and when entrenched power structures are on your side, and the top item on the agenda is to get publishing back under control since the internet upended it, things get weird. Internet heroes become villains.
That's what really concerns me.
They definitely aren't. This is the sort of thing Matt has been accusing them of with little evidence. But given the rest of your comment, it seems like you might mean to refer to Matt's company Automattic instead?
I did not, I said he's modeling himself after Musk and personality wise he comes off very similar.
Edit: Ah, that was @0x29A
If the shoe fits, don't act like the man if you don't want to be compared. Ignoring his behavior isn't serving him or WP
The saddest part about this whole saga, for those of us that aren't invested in the WP ecosystem, is that the popularity of WordPress has been a huge net positive for the internet.
The early popularity created a niche market for WP design/hosting/development/support that in turn made it a low barrier to entry way for people to publish on the web. Somehow that popularity has survived the commodification of DIY publishing and retail by companies like SquareSpace, Medium, Shopify, et al. It's exactly how open source is supposed to work.
I don't like to think of a web without WP holding up evidence that corporate platforms aren't the only choice. So it's sad to see Matt persistently trying to damage the brand in ways that seem to make no sense. I hope it survives in spite of him, and ideally without him, even if that might be too much to hope for.
There is a whole bunch of history here that you might not be aware of.
Matt’s been trying to get, and been promised WPEngine would make contributions to WP since at least 2018 - and has the emails to show it.
Matt used to be a part owner in WPEngine.
WPEngine has recently been bought by private equity and has become an even worse actor in the business since.
Anyone can make negative assumptions without all the information. I’m even guilty of this in this situation - assuming to worst of Silver Lake and giving Matt the benefit of the doubt.
The difference is that I’ve seen Matt act in the best interests of keeping the WordPress codebase open and try his best to keep a large community of developers from imploding and pass up money for the sake of the whole thing.
You write as though what’s been build around WordPress is just like all other businesses. It’s not.
Passing up money matters little to someone who is post-economic, and his actions over the past year can only be described as repeatedly throwing lit bombs into the development community he supposedly prizes. He doesn't seem to care in the slightest about the problems he's causing, either.
His recent erratic behavior is also not limited to just Wordpress, but instead fits a pattern of abusive behavior in other contexts as well.
It's been many years, but I'd bet $5 there is a story somewhere about Matt being offered a ton of money for all or some component of the WordPress ecosystem prior to him being "post economic". He was talked about as a hero for a long long time, and that doesn't happen for no reason.
That was a bit of a disappointing screed. Look, I'm an ally. I have trans acquaintances (used to be friends, but... geography), booked fundraisers with trans entertainers... I won't list all my bonafides on how I've done the work here, but I've done the work and continue to (because that's part of it).
I very much hope I'm not inadvertently justifying bigoted actions from Matt here. But that's just it - after reading that article I have little to no actual evidence of how exactly he transgressed. I'm genuinely trying to see something more that jerk behavior.
It's because I'm an ally that I'm annoyed by the article. IMO it loses credibility not only with hyperbole, but also by assuming ignorance of the reading audience. They construct a tonally strong and emotional argument that intentionally or not obfuscates significant portions of the argument - the weak points. It piles on instead of giving clarity to injustices.
IMO It leaves out and (IMO) obfuscates a triangulation component in the bigotry. It seems to attempt to attribute bigotry from the tumblr user base to Matt... And now we're into a whole different argument. Instead of being clear about exactly how and where Matt's transgressed, the author glosses over this pretty major component.
One big red flag (about Matt) and question the article raised for me was whether or not Matt actually used his access to dox them. There's a HUGE difference between fighting publicly (and social media is public) with someone and doing a deep dive on you to bring up issues relevant to the argument (though I guess this could approach stalking) and one side using their superuser server privileges to log into a platform and discover anonymous accounts and dox you. That would have been damning, but I don't know that this happened - and what's worse - because of the hyperbole it's lost in the emotive damnation. I'm left to assume the author could only insinuate it - which further weakens their case.
Fighting with someone and then having them follow you to a different platform to keep fighting- well... I frankly kind of shrug at it. It's been done to me. If you're on solid ground It's generally NBD.
I would ask some of you to try on this context: maybe this article is a situation where one side is punching in a fight, and I'd wager they (Matt) believe they are in a fair fight... but on the other side there's a whole audience that's watching and seeing someone with a lot of power punching down.
Does that change anything?
The information Matt published about one of the Tumblr users is inaccessible to the public. He necessarily abused his access.
I sure would have liked to know more about that instead of having it vaguely tossed into the middle of that screed with zero evidence or details.
edit: "have" to "having" typo.
Here's an article with a bit more of the information I recall than I'm seeing in the linked blog post:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-with-trans-user-over-account-ban-revealing-private-account-names-in-the-process/
To summarize, you can have multiple blog names which are not linked publicly to each other. Matt published all the blogs this person had, something that requires his access.
Sorry for the long post, but we’re talking open web stuff, and I’ve been following this and have worked with WordPress on and off since 2004 or so? Also, you will once again see I have a strong opinion below, though I’ve tried to balance it and be about as fair as I’m willing to be.
I’m inclined to believe Matt when he says (and has said) there is an orchestrated smear campaign against him. WP engine and all of its customers are being incredibly vocal because there’s a lot of money and entire businesses on the line with this conflict. It’s also pretty complicated and nuanced with history and unusual business models and dependencies (not even counting the usual software kind).
I’m also inclined to side with Matt on this because I have watched him pass up hundreds of millions of dollars to not sell out the WordPress developer community in the last 2 decades. It’s that stalwart OSS stewardship that made WP what it is (and by extension, the modern open web).
It was never the fastest or newest or bleeding-edge. It was easy, stable, open, and free. You could always build anything with it (maybe not well) and never be locked in. All hosting providers kind of had to provide if not service for WP sites, then at minimum on-ramps and off-ramps for data portability. IMO WP is the primary reason most site owners have the ability to change hosts.
That said, Matt has pulled some wild moves. No doubt about it, but it is his baby. He got fed up with some industry leeches and did something about it. That’s freaked out a whole bunch of people suddenly faced with the fact that their opportunistic glass house of a business model is built on a deck of cards.
(I say opportunistic because they’re running a web business in the absolute cheapest and most knowledge-poor way possible - a WordPress site on the cheapest managed hosting package available.)
I don’t trust WP engine or their vocal customer base as far as I could throw them. My limited experience with WPE-hosted clients is that they are pretty shark infested waters.
Nearly all of the clients I’ve had that were on WPEngine were either cheap, a slow-pay, or sadly just a general rolling disaster in way over their heads. Usually they were just cheap fast-talkers though.
At the same time, several of them will say behind closed doors that WPE itself is pretty terrible to deal with, and that was before private equity bought and started gutting it.
Maybe Matt has lost the plot here. Deactivating Joost & Co. does seem like he’s lashing out. But, then again, a TechCrunch story on 4 users locked out their WP.org login smells funny to me too. Sure, there’s a bit of silly drama, but anyone can fork WP any time, and anyone willing to foot the bill to host a mirror of the theme & plugin repos is free to do so as well. All I’d suggest is you scrape the repos very slowly so as to not hit their servers hard. (Yes, I’ve done this, shhh.)
Sorry I posted this then edited it massively. I got distracted.
Thank you for respectfully laying out your viewpoint, even though it's not the "popular" one.
The world's complicated. Matt can simultaneously have been a net positive for OSS and Internet publishing over the last two decades—while also being the wrong steward of the project for the next few decades.
Same goes for WPE. Are they saints? No. Do they have a financial interest? Yeah. But that doesn't mean they're incorrect in criticizing Matt's recent swings in leadership.
That's fine. You have your views and I have mine and with everything that's transpired, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'd ever remotely side with Matt on this and I hope this moves people to abandon Wordpress altogether. A petty child that needs to step down and move on otherwise everyone else should abandon him instead. The Elon of WP
I don't disagree that WPEngine may be no shining completely innocent party, but Matt's repeated absolutely asinine behavior betrays any actual point he may have had. Even if he was even partially right to begin with- all goodwill for him should be buried forever at this point.
No amount of any points on his behalf justify his behavior, which has clearly shown despite his claims, he is anti-open-source and customer-hostile, among other things.
There is zero chance that I'd ever want to use or recommend WP ever again. He has clearly shown via his actions, even completely leaving WPEngine's own claims out of the picture altogether, that he is unfit to continue on in any kind of stewardship of anything Wordpress.
If someone else enters the picture in his stead and discusses publicly their continued displeasure at WPEngine's supposed minimal open-source contributions back to Wordpress, but in a professional way that doesn't abuse their power and cause collateral damage, by causing harm to users, vendors, and others that rely on Wordpress, then sure. But for Wordpress's future, Matt should be out of the picture. Even just for the sake of those that rely on Wordpress not seeing the instability such behavior portrays. We gotta stop having man-children in charge of tech companies.
I don't use WordPress and have zero dogs in the fight but since his behavior here matches his behavior with Tumblr, while I fully believe he's claiming a smear campaign, I'm literally just listening to the stuff he says/posts and can come to the conclusion he's an asshole.
IDC if the other guys aren't angels, he sucks.
This exactly (long time Tumblr user here, been gone for years at this point though). This isn't new behavioral territory for Matt, and my displeasure with him throughout this whole saga has been based on his own behavior and words.
If there's anyone running a smear campaign against Matt, it's Matt.
God I hate that sort of thing "everyone is talking about how shitty I am! It's a smear campaign"
No my dude you just keep being shitty. Over and over and over.
I don’t know about the tumblr thing. I do know he shouldn’t be out front. His writing and speaking style is completely off putting. He totally sounds like an entitled asshole. I’m just pretty sure he’s in the right Re: WPEngine.
He definitely needs to reorganize Automattic so people can stop complaining about the perceived conflicts of interest. He definitely needs to be hiding behind PR people. He probably should stop doing interviews.
You're excusing him acting like an asshole because it's his baby and saying he needs to have PR people in front of him. He acted like an asshole with Tumblr after Automattic bought it, behaving like a random with power rather than a CEO who doesn't throw hissy fits when someone says they hate the CEO.
He posted about "what drama he could start" on reddit, and then when someone quits over it he fires the whole team and ends the Slack with puke emojis? I mean Elon Musk is not generally considered to be a role model and that seems to be the type of asshole Matt wants to be.
Aren't you really saying that he shouldn't be in charge if he can't be trusted to do the job of CEO, which includes being the public face of the company?
Listen to people when they tell you who they are. This guy's been clear and proud of it. Idgaf about WP or WPengine or whatever. He should be fired, despite that being impossible I'm sure.
One major difference. Matt actually made WordPress and the business model it runs on. That never existed before he created it. Both the for profit arm (.com), the open source project (.org), as well as the plug-in and theme repos and the businesses they created. He took a fledgling abandoned project, forked it, helmed the project and took all the heat from the community and has been doing it since the beginning. He literally made an entire industry. He actually made it. It’s his life’s work. He’s been there from the beginning.
It’s the opposite of Musk in kind of every important way. In fact, IMO, part of the issue here is that Matt’s faced so many years of whining that he’s destroying WordPress from devs that he can’t tell when he’s actually out of line anymore.
Is he a mercurial petty asshole? Sure. But he’s not a fraud. Musk is.
You give him permission to be that petty asshole because of "whining." What was his excuse as head of Tumblr? I think you brush that aside because you don't have noble justification - he's so worn down by bad actors, his assholery is understandable! - for harassing a trans user who said something mean about "him."
He founded something, he's still a bad CEO for the thing. That's why I said I'm sure it was impossible for him to get fired, despite having earned it multiple times over. Being a "real founder" and similar to Musk only in pettiness and assholery is not a compliment nor a point in his favor. If he's miserable to work for, and is bad at PR, documents his own extortion attempts and isn't even making great business decisions based on the legal analysis from the lawsuits filed... What's he bringing to the table again? He's a bad CEO and should be fired.
You can keep defending his honor, I haven't seen any of the arguments you're making except from him. Everything I know about the man is because he cannot keep his mouth shut. He's got Zero credibility with me. If you happen to have some articles/analysis from outside parties that suggest he's justified due to all the "whining" or whatever, or that can substantiate the specific claims of how bad WPEngine is, I'd be happy to read them. Well, happy isn't the word. And I dont mean bad to work with, that they're actually doing things worthy of the weird ass shit Mullenberg is doing.
I just think he's an asshole because that is what comes out of his mouth, and it doesn't matter to me if he cured cancer, it wouldn't justify his behavior to his customers or his staff. I don't care that Musk is "worse" it doesn't make this guy "good."
Look, I don’t know him personally. I don’t even care for his presentation style, and I wouldn’t want to work for him just based on that. My gut tells me yes, he’s probably an ass.
I know nothing about the tumblr thing. It sounds like he’s a transphobe and that’s a bummer and another mark against him.
But i have watched WordPress go from this little blog project into what it is today - an entire industry - and he was the guy that made it happen. Mostly the way that happened was by putting developers first. That’s why the developer community lionized him and enshrined him. They didn’t do that for no reason.
There aren’t articles praising him because most of what he did was kind of thankless and boring and turning down money and saying no to things for the sake of keeping the open source project and community on the rails. You don’t get good press or make friends for saying no a lot.
Matt has a TON of power. He’s made a lot of decisions that cost people money and made grudges and enemies, without a doubt.
That 20 years of context will do what it does to anyone- creates a giant ego and lots of enemies and lots of bad press. The WordPress ecosystem is incredibly noisy and dramatic. For a generation it’s attracted type-A business owners who are loud and open and public. Often on social media. It’s low hanging fruit for bad press.
And as time went on, the kind of mind-bogglingly large industry built on WordPress eclipses the open source platform and Automattic’s paid products by orders of magnitude I can’t imagine and is frankly unknown (to my knowledge).
There are marketing agencies that started as WordPress shops. They give away WP sites for cheap in order to run the clients’ marketing. Online schools and classes? Mostly WordPress. E-commerce? Mostly WordPress. The size of the entire ecosystem is kind of both unknown and unfathomable and frequently dips into the shady.
Wix is white labeled WordPress.
The immense amount of business running on this open source project is a success, right?
I’m not sure. In some ways it’s kind of messed up. There are a ton of businesses mixed in of all stripes - but that’s not Matt’s fault. It’s a function of greed.
Much of this thread has thoughts and ideas about what he could and should do or have done differently. Some of it I agree with. I’m trying hard to not be just a Matt fanboy because he has definitely hoarded power when he should have put in firewalls and delegated, and said some terrible things.
But Matt has always put WordPress first. Even before his own mouth or ego because it’s his legacy.
So I don’t believe for one second that with the way the rest of the internet has been moving in the last several years, if Matt gets ousted things won’t get immeasurably worse. I don’t know exactly how, but I feel it in my bones and from my vantage point the shrill vocal Matt hate seems just like confirmation of how badly some people want and need him gone.
Edit to make that last sentence correct, not be the opposite of what I meant.
I’m gonna go touch snow now.
I don't love being called shrill, but I assure you, I "hate" the guy for who he is portraying himself to be not because I want him out of power for personal gain. Maybe he's the asshole we need, not the asshole we deserve, but it's amazing to me how much water we'll carry for the "great men" of history.
Like your saying there's zero positive media coverage of him because that stuff is thankless and boring. But like, really, zero? Zero coverage of all of this shitty stuff the other parties are allegedly doing? I mean, not even praising him for standing up to the woke mob or something?
I think that's as telling as everything else. I would personally love to go back to never hearing about him again, but I expect he is who will make that impossible.
Apologies - I was referring to the whole and entire WP/Matt media circus and drama as "shrill" -not you personally. And maybe not a great word choice - especially if we've changed topics from WP hosting models to trans rights - an area I'm way less versed in, but trying to be a good human about.
That's kind of what a smear campaign is?
Sort of, assuming everyone's in on it. But it's also what happens when someone makes themselves absolutely unlikeable and does shitty stuff on repeat. And usually someone out there will defend or try to "be reasonable" about the shitty person.
I'm hard pressed to take the word of someone I've seen do shitty stuff and in lieu of some sort of reporting otherwise, I don't know how I'd change my mind on the grounds of "he just does shitty things because he cares so much"
I totally see how that's starting to look/sound like abuser behavior.
I'm kind of judging the situation like:
"Everyone at WordPress is afraid to get involved because... Matt".
and
"Everyone in WPEngine's corner is super noisy because their business depends on it".
And then there may or may not be all the quiet shadowy parties that are hunting for the chaos of 40% of internet sites suddenly being untenable as a result of Matt going and who knows what happening after.
The people I've seen discussing the case the most are the lawyers I follow on Bluesky, who mostly think the extortion and the muddling of who owns and has licenses to what are an absolute nightmare and that Matt sounds like he sucks, thank God he's not my client, let's do a live read of these filings because he's fucked.
I think assuming that critics are likely somehow financially invested is a mistake. Some of us are probably not fully informed - that's why I'd love to read some kind of in-depth reporting that gives more of his perspective but isn't just him speaking about how unfair this is - but I mean I can read a legal filing and read his extortion texts and read his history and think that if everyone is against him that he's probably earned the vast majority of it at this point. (WP employees being afraid to speak especially because being fired by Matt is the biggest risk rn, isn't a point in his favor)
ahh, I'm obviously NAL - but I am kind of sympathetic to the "extortion" thing. The WP world has morphed and grown in some areas and not in others and the landscape has changed. I think Matt's got a pretty valid point in that WP.org has been running essentially two gigantic profitless stores for decades while all the other web hosts have been benefiting. He sees (like most in the biz) more and more shifts away from collaboration (how WP came to be) and toward just what's legal and profitable. The business grew up, but it also got much less... I don't know.... fun? collaborative? cooperative? altruistic? fair? Fully acknowledging this is just an old web-head complaining about "the good old days" to some extent - it's also not one bit unfair to say that WP.org has been stuck holding the ball re: plugin and theme distribution with no way to pay for it.
It grew up that way and I'm sure Matt's been trying to find a solution forever. I think it's not unreasonable for him to expect some give from the big players - they sure would have way back when companies were aping each other's theme templates without much more than a twitter squabble. I think he probably right or wrongfully got to a point where he said to himself "Well, nobody's been doing anything but lip service on this for years now, so I guess I "have to go nuclear". I think it was probably more strategic, more unexpected, and behind closed doors (hopefully?) more effective than is being written about.
I'm not suggesting those lawyers don't know what they're talking about. I'm sure they do. All I'm saying is the situation actually is pretty unique and complicated, not the "shakedown" people are writing it off as, and that there's a giant difference between the US Legal system and what's actually just.
I mean at this point you're kind of agreeing he's an asshole you just think he's justified. He's basically Robin Hood, because the people he's extorting are bad and the laws he may be breaking aren't just ones! That feels a stretch.
If he wasn't someone you admired, would you be so willing to look at this guy being an asshole and assume this is just because he's been pushed too far by outside actors?
genuine question - has he broken laws? I'll go try and find what you're referencing.
Instead of Robin Hood, I'd describe it more like guy who's been storing, documenting, providing infrastructure for (metadata, reviews, versioning etc.), and distributing things for the entire industry (themes and plugins) during and through incredible growth for an entire industry that greatly eclipses his own house - and now he needs to charge rent.
Most importantly though - there is no previous legal pathway or business model to follow to implement that. Extortion is how WPEngine is framing it of course - but that doesn't make it so.
I don't know enough to know if the commingling of for profit and NFP is at any point a broken law vs regulation vs conflict of interest, etc.
I read the texts he sent, and I would have felt extorted. Whether it meets the legal definition, I don't know. I said "may be" for that reason. I feel like your picture of him is one of someone whose wrongs can all be accounted for and that he bears little to no responsibility because "they" made him act that way.
I felt that he was extorting them before the other side filed their suit and told their perspective fwiw. "If you don't agree to my deal I'll go nuclear and announce all this publicly" with a decreasing time limit... If I got that sort of message from a person I'd probably have called the police.
Once again, it falls at least into being an asshole. And maybe the other guys are assholes too, but if I just look at the things he says and does, without anyone else's commentary, he's still being an asshole. And that's the part I don't understand with the "it's everyone else's portrayal of him that's wrong." His words convince me how much he sucks.
I'm not trying to convince you, I just don't like what feels like the excusing of abusive shitty behavior. People don't "make" other people act abusive. It's a choice. And even if he was "driven" to it, he still chose to be awful. Great power, great responsibility and all. I don't get defending that, personally.
Fair.
I've been at this thread long enough to get banned and to question my sanity, but definitely didn't want to depart without some kind of olive branch to you in particular. I like and agree with so much of what you write on here that I've been second-guessing myself on this topic. So - I appreciate your participation and hanging in there with me.
Have a good night and apologies if any of this had you rankled.
No I continued the conversation because I'm not upset. So no worries there. I'm definitely also willing to admit that his behavior mimics that of abusers and well known shitty people in a manner that makes me less inclined to see him favorably, it's why I would be interested in reporting that gives him perhaps a fairer shake, but am not particularly inclined to just take someone's word for who he is besides the abusive behavior, if that distinction makes sense.
I will be happy if I never have to hear about him again but I'm not mad we kept talking. Have a good one, I appreciated your perspective
It's not about transphobia, it's about how he treats people when he has power or leverage over them. It is brought up because you can make direct equivocations between his behavior then and now.
I don't see this as being magnanimous. WordPress itself was open source not only out of necessity, but because businesses have learned to treat Open Source like a loss leader - giving away a product for free in return for developer mindshare and labor without paying them, not even giving them a meaningful say in the direction of the product.
The problem is that Matt is now learning that such a strategy only works so long as there isn't a bigger fish in the sea who can simply out-scale you. Having a loss leader like Wordpress fail to adequately translate into profits for the business isn't a requiem for a community. Matt just wasn't as business-savvy as he thought he was, and now he's panicking.
More than one thing can be true. You can be a great leader for a massive ecosystem, a terrible CEO, and a jerk. And a biggot (if true). And an abuser (as some are speculating). I think there's evidence for at least some of those things. You could also argue that Matt has power over just about anyone with a computer, so I'm not sure how one defends against that argument.
As for Open Source - business and open source is way more complicated than "as a loss leader". Here's an interesting thought exercise: what if the internet itself is open source? It started as a military project that was built on by hackers. It was never monetized directly. Most of the operating systems powering it (servers) are and have always been open source. Most of the programming languages as well. It's the financial wild west in some ways to this day.
WordPress themes generate $50million+ annually. I'm sure the commercial plugin market is orders of magnitude bigger but I couldn't find a figure handily. Both of those are built on top of and wouldn't exist without WordPress - one single project licensed under the LEAST business-friendly license in existence. That license - the GPL - is so maligned there's a consensus building to not use it anymore at all.
IMO OSS is why the world is so topy-turvy right now. It is the engine upon which so much power has been democratized over the last generation that we're in a giant backlash currently.
Arguably nearly every explosive innovation in the last 30 years is standing on the shoulders of open source in some way shape or form, including MacOS. It's kind of the only place innovation is still even possible because otherwise you're stepping on someone's IP.
That's the kind of power we're talking about, and why I begin to sound a bit crazy and paranoid when it seems like some really big fundamental things are being eroded away by manipulated markets, sliding Overton windows, heated rhetoric, and all the rest.
Maybe I'm crazy or paranoid for thinking there's orchestrated scandal and press aimed at Mullenweg. But what if I'm not?
If there was, I would find it difficult to find even a crumb of sympathy for Mullenweg. Heck, I don't even feel that much sympathy for WPEngine either. I feel sorry for clients and developers who have to put up with this BS.
To me, this isn't about David vs Goliath, it's more like Game of Thrones - a bunch of business nincompoops vying for a crown at the expense of the rest of us. The good guy isn't the one who stops the wheel with themselves on top, the good guy is the one who breaks the wheel, and nobody involved seems willing to do that.
I hope this isn’t out-of-line, but do you have money on the line in this? Are you a WPEngine customer?
Nope. Not a customer of either. Never have used WPEngine. Have used Wordpress in the past for my own personal use and discussed it with some local businesses back when I was doing web design/dev stuff as a hobby. These days I'm just a tech-interested (at least for now, though I can feel it starting to leave my body) person observing what's going on in the tech space and personally very sick of the kind of people that run a lot of the companies and just all the shitty stuff we see on a day-to-day in the space.
So, just a regular person that has followed tech in one way or another for decades that has opinions. I don't have any stake in the situation.
If anything, bloat/misuse of WP and my love of small-web stuff these days aside, I would have probably leaned pro-WP more than anything before this whole saga, but mostly neutral or benignly indifferent ("I don't love the software but I don't mind the company and it's the right solution for certain needs probably")
I’m right there with you. I’ve been out of the WP biz for about 3 years.
While Matt’s definitely pissed some people off, he really kind of spearheaded this kind of OSS/commercial software model that I think has been the antithesis of the software “enshittifiers”.
You can’t execute on product lock-in if everyone is using an open platform that has built-in data portability.
Matt’s always stood on certain OSS principles to my knowledge.
What this comes down to for me is: Are WP Engine violating the license provided with the WordPress source code?
If no, then Matt is completely in the wrong here.
If yes, then this should be a lawsuit - not temper tantrums, bans, and public rants. So Matt is still in the wrong.
When you release software with an open source license (permissive or otherwise) you always run the risk that someone will come along and "do it better". If you want to have a little fiefdom and ultimate control over the source code then don't make it open source, or release it with a more restrictive license such as GPLv3 or AGPL.
It doesn't really matter if WP Engine is "helping the community" or not. Arguably Matt has done more damage to the community in the last year compared to WP Engine.
Forking an open source project should generally be considered a good thing and intended behavior. It's a significant part of the reason for open source software.
I don't use WP, so I could be missing a ton of context but I'm definitely not a fan of either company. This is just not how to run an open source project. Retaliating against users, including competitors, that are following the letter of the license is just an optically bad strategy. If he wanted different behavior then he should've used a different license. At best this is a bad look that makes me glad to not be part of his community.
He went after WPE over copyright - he didn’t violate the GPL. And, yes, the copyright claim was a stretch- but it was retaliation because WPEngine had a product and was refusing to rebrand something literally called “Open WordPress”.
IMO that’s just gross misrepresentation and trying to leech off the brand and project in a way that deserves and is worth going to war over.
I looked for anything related to "Open WordPress" and couldn't find anything related to that, so could you please provide a source? Everything I've been able to find, such as https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/27/24256361/wordpress-wp-engine-drama-explained-matt-mullenweg, is trademark, not copyright, and is just about them using the word WordPress at all. A rather flimsy trademark claim at that by suggesting that products aren't even allowed to tell the customers the name of their underlying technologies even though that is generally covered under descriptive fair use protection for trademarks.
I probably can’t. Maybe somewhere in the internet archive? WPEngine understandably immediately pulled the product offering and called it something else, because it was so far over the line.
THAT’s the kind of aggressiveness that put Matt over the edge and what kicked off the narrative “Look, Matt’s unhinged!”
edit: I went looking in the wayback machine and couldn't find it, but IMO even offering "Core WordPress" as a hosting package (which they currently do) is pretty shady and kind of deliberately conflating themselves with WordPress as a project itself.
edit 2: my bad - you're right - it was trademark, not copyright. This thing has so many twists and turns I can't even keep the language right.
i don’t like wordpress, but why isn’t WP building essentially the same thing as WPEngine, putting them out of business the old fashioned way?
Well, they already are, in a way, and Mullenweg has his hands in that mess too. IIRC, that's what the for-profit "Wordpress dot com" is, basically, and part of this whole saga has been Mullenweg being pissy in ways that seem aimed at specifically benefiting their own hosting platform at the expense of competitors, and the big conflict of interest that is Mullenweg having control over all of the various "areas" of Wordpress- for-profit, open-source, etc.
This continues to be an extremely in-depth ongoing documentation of the situation.
The entire situation started with Automattic (for-profit company headed by Mullenweg) demanding a license from WPEngine that in no way was necessary for WPEngine to have, and said license would basically funnel a percentage of their revenue to Automattic, and essentially decided to very pettily and angrily retaliate after WPEngine didn't agree to this after it being prompted on them out of nowhere and has since been incredibly petty, childish, and devoid of all self-awareness / ability to look critically at himself, just burning bridges left and right and taking his frustrations out in very unstable ways
They're both run by Automattic and both offer hosted Wordpress sites.
Naa. WPE would just like you to believe this.
They did do some things under the hood years back with PHP to make it faster and easier to scale… but that’s since been replicated everywhere you see “enterprise WP hosting”.
They’re cheap and they can scale. That’s why. It’s not out of love for them. They do a very good job of being very clear about what they can and can’t do… but sometimes their clients find this out down the road.
It’s one of those situations where you don’t know what you don’t know… until you’re into them a ways and then you find out.
Yeah seems like one is more enterprise-focused and the other is more personal-focused I guess? Idk
I heard a very different story. One where Matt had been trying to negotiate with WPE some contribution back to the project (money or man hours) for years.
When it became clear via increasingly aggressive branding and marketing and silence behind closed doors, he went public.
They have and they do and they are. That’s part of the “conflict of interest”.
To me, this is the heart of the issue. In general, we avoid conflicts of interest for many reasons, but one is to demonstrate purity of motive. He may be defending WP from pure motives, but he is being an asshole about it, and he has a conflict of interest that prevents me (and apparently a lot of people) from believing that his motives are pure.
I am inclined to accept that WPEngine is fanning the flames caused by his misbehavior in reaction to their actions. So sure, a smear campaign in that it is intentional and systematic, but really not a traditional smear campaign because they aren't lies or out of context. WPE is provoking and amplifying his shitty behavior, and they have a profit motive to do so as well. So I don't buy the justice part here either.
He should move on and entrust the open source component to practical idealists who can control themselves. He's an OSS warrior who has become power-addled, ego-fragile, and is in over his head at this point.
Just my outside take from being an open source lurker for 25 years.
What an ass. I hope he stubs his pinky toe.