He could have had basically the entire internet on his side just by laying out the facts: "They use our product for free, generate hundreds of millions in revenue, and don't contribute back. It's just not fair. Please contribute more."
Instead this tantrum has turned a bunch of people that would be in his camp against him and he's dragged Wordpress.org into the mud.
Single handedly destroying a legacy.
It seems like every step Matt makes just makes the whole situation worse.
Some of the best and now most commercially critical open source software started a long time ago, by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future.
Turns out, we did not arrive in that future.
We arrived in the one where both $xxxB companies and their countless cargo cultists explot every means possible to profit from open source software, making angry demands on volunteers and small teams, while giving back as little as possible.
It's essentially a test to find every open source developer's breaking point. Recently, we found Matt's. Next month, it'll be someone else's.
The problem with Open Source as a movement isn't just the megacorps using it, it's also that paying for the project's ongoing development stopped being the goal for many monetization efforts—making the shareholders or the maintainers themselves (or in this case both) wealthy (or in this case even more wealthy) has become the new goal.
That is why it's such a problem that these companies don't "give back". Having the software in the world doing its job is no longer the primary goal of starting an open source project, and the "takers" are encroaching on the founders' market cap.
If you care what someone else does with free software beyond making the source available, that is a you problem.
He's just mad someone else is also making money.
Closed source (but open data formats) may be the new open source.
WordPress was a fork of B2 and quickly intended to make money.
Matt and Automattic bought into WPE. They were the ones who sold their shares to the Private Equity firm that now owns it!
The only other board member of the Foundation is ... drum roll ... the Managing Partner of another Private Equity firm, that Matt himself appointed.
All his hand wringing about PE is to distract from the simple fact that he has repeatedly been an asshole through this process, and it's not because he "reached his breaking point" as an open source developer. This is so apologistic it's not funny.
He reached a breaking point as a CEO, because he made a horrible business decision to buy Tumblr, which has been nothing but a money pit, ever since.
Since then, MATT's for profit business has had this boat anchor around it, so he's looking for extra cash.
That's why he demanded their royalties be paid to Automattic, his for profit company, not the open source project.
> by people buying into RMS-like visions of the future.
Horseshit. People with RMS-like visions for the future don't see the commercial potential for an open source project, immediately spin up a Foundation with themselves as President, and immediately grant their own for-profit company a perpetual, exclusive and irrevocable commercial use license for said open source project. (They may however release self-congratulatory press releases talking about how they are champions of open source for assigning ownership of the project to their Foundation while neglecting to mention the licensing that they[1] signed off on, that very same day.)
You have apparently fully bought into the narrative.
> making angry demands on volunteers and small teams
What "angry demands" has WPEngine made of the project? I'd love to hear of at least one.
[1] I say 'they' but really, the licensing was signed for the Foundation by "Matt Mullenweg, President", and for Automattic by "Matt Mullenweg, President and CEO".
WordPress contributor banned for asking about new checkbox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41788704 - Oct 2024 (8 comments)
It continues to reinforce that the entire WordPress.org / Foundation / Automattic cluster has turned out to just be Matt's personal fiefdom... which worked out okay when he was pretty chill, but is terrible when he decides to burn it all down.
I'm just a rando on the internet, and this isn't a diagnosis, and you shouldn't diagnose either, kids; but given the relatively sudden onset of Mr. Mullenweg's public situations, and the associated seeming complete loss of insight, I can't help but wonder if there is a known or unknown mental health challenge in the background underlying all of his actions. Such things are invariably complicated by a person being "post-economic", with the lack of the usual checks and balances that come with that state of privilege.
I am reminded of Kayne West. I think some people latched on to what he said in a literal sense instead of just ignoring it outright as the rants of a diagnosed bipolar person. To be sure what he said was deplorable at face value in a public space. But behind all the dialogue, the entire event might have been nothing more significant than the inevitable progression of a disease, one which leaves consciousness just intact enough to keep one recognizable, yet also compels one to say the most polarizing things.
Also related, an article about one of Cloudflare's founders who was afflicted with a neurodegenerative disease that largely destroyed his personality. It went unnoticed for so long because his actions were taken at face value - he was just tired and disengaged from daily life - instead of as originating from a disease of the brain.
My most charitable guess at what is going on is severe mental illness.
Threatening people if they don’t take a job with you is in the most literal way a challenge to your autonomy as a human being.
Anyways, if you thought there was any freedom or purity to the tech job market, bad news for you.
Ahh, "everyone else does it" - no, have never been threatened that if I refuse a job offer, or otherwise decline, that my current employer will be told all about how disloyal I was to them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g1omxy/matt_for...
It's very possible that he's ill.
> We’re still getting lots of questions about this [checkbox]. What if an agency is part of your affiliate program[…]?
…addressing the WP Engine firm whose users he’s been weirdly bullying with all this?
He attempted to frame his own ambiguously menacing checkbox-cum-loyalty-oath as somehow being of its target’s making? What?
Is that type of… duplicitous? dissociative? schizophrenic?… tactic common these days in twitter kinds of spheres?
Once a dedicated user of WordPress, I never thought I would ever say this, but here it is -- I hope WordPress dies as soon as possible and gets replaced by something else. Well, a better outcome would be Matt goes away, but I don't see that happening.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-...
Effectively, they want to ensure wpengine is not interfacing with wordpress.org through undisclosed ways like shady shell companies. That is the reason for the checkbox.
If you are selling stuff on wpengine or being paid by wpengine for selling stuff on there, you are not an affiliate. you are a seller. if you are selling wpengine subscriptions, you are not an affiliate; just a seller. if you are advertising wpengine services, you are not an affiliate. you are an advertiser.
Why would you recommend that when Matt/WordPress is on record questioning WP Engine's common sense interpretation?
In a Twitter thread linked in TFA WP Engine put forward an interpretation like yours in an attempt to make their customers less nervous and WordPress (probably Matt) replied with a "what if..." casting doubt on that interpretation.
We're talking about a guy who is currently following through on a threat to wage "nuclear war" (his words) and has very clearly shown that he does not care how much collateral damage he causes. It's totally reasonable to take the broadest interpretation of the checkbox possible.
Like under Apache foundation or something
https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/license.t...
Trademark != Copyright
> I have nothing but the out-most respect for what you've built with WordPress. It's an incredible achievement, and you're been justly rewarded for that accomplishment. No need to squeeze the lemon that hard. It's undermining open source as a whole. [1]
A lot of folks had compared it to DHH/Basecamp because of the voluntary severance. But for the most part, those issues did not spill into Rails like this. I think if anyone can talk Matt down from the ledge, it would be another "Benevolent Dictator".
That said, I think DHH misses something: lots of people built Wordpress, not just Matt. And we are slowly seeing the most engaged people, some who do it for the love of Wordpress instead of the money, either back away or get forced out. THAT is what will kill the ecosystem that has been built. Any harm that WP Engine may have been doing cannot compare with the harm that's happening right now from their own spiteful actions.
...Matt doesn't come across well in it. Lots of refusing to state what he thinks the checkbox that he added means.
Main Points of Contention Trademark and Branding Issues Mullenweg accuses WP Engine of misusing the WordPress trademark and causing confusion among users1. WP Engine has since changed some of its plan names to address these concerns1. Open Source Contributions Mullenweg criticizes WP Engine for not contributing enough to the WordPress open-source project relative to their profits5 . Core Feature Modifications WP Engine is accused of altering core WordPress features, particularly disabling post revisions by default2. Mullenweg argues this compromises the integrity of WordPress and its promise to users2.