
Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s Double Standard For WordPress Plugin Developers - foppr
http://tomuse.com/matt-mullenweg-automattic-wordpress-themes-plugins-developer/
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ryanwaggoner
Duh. Of course Automattic has designed their platform so that it benefits
them, and of course the rules they set developers don't apply to them. _It's
their platform and ecosystem._ If you think they're being unfair, go play
somewhere else. I honestly don't understand rants like this. It's like people
think that they're entitled to something just because they want it. If you
can't make money on Wordpress because of Matt's restrictive stance on paid
plugins and themes, then you can't make money doing that. Go do something
else!

Life isn't fair, and business sure as hell isn't. Business is about tilting
the odds in your favor, not making sure everybody is one big happy family.

~~~
Harkins
I think he's grumpy because Wordpress's actions (and lack of actions) means
the healthy marketplace for themes and plugins that could exist doesn't.

A lot of plugins and themes have been abandoned by their creators because
they're walking away from unprofitable time sinks exactly as you suggest. The
blogger is trying to point out Automattic is doing its users a disservice by
keeping this environment.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I don't think he's approaching this from a user-centric perspective, but more
from the perspective of how it's not "fair" to developers and designers. To
wit:

 _Theme and plugin developers have helped make WordPress the champion blogging
platform that it is today without receiving a single dime of the $29.5 million
in funding that Automattic raised last year. Both Matt Mullenweg and his
company Automattic benefit financially from the hard work of plugin developers
and theme designers. Yet it’s somehow justified in Matt’s mind that it’s not
okay for plugin developers and theme designers to directly receive financial
compensation for their contributions to WordPress._

To me, that reads as "We've worked hard on Wordpress and we _deserve_ to share
in its success." The crazy thing is that a) as far as I can tell, not much has
changed in terms of the rules, so if this wasn't a problem before, why is it a
problem now? And, b) no one is saying that developers and designers can't
offer premium themes and plugins for pay, just that Wordpress won't host those
assets for them. How it that unreasonable? Again, this goes back to this guy
thinking that he _deserves_ to be able to charge for stuff that Wordpress is
hosting for him, for free. Give me a break.

~~~
Harkins
Yeah, good point.

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lionhearted
Can't comment on the article, since I don't know that much about the Wordpress
scene. But man, the author is a whiny critic type. Here's just a few from his
last 10 articles:

"Twitter Peaks To Media Overkill, Is Real Time Search Dead", "Comment Systems
Comparison Update: Disgusted With Disqus", "Swoopo May Be Most Profitable,
Ingenius Online Business. But Is It Legal?", "eBay’s Problem: Biting The Hand
That Feeds It"

Yeah. This guys appears to be a loser who creates nothing of value, and points
out holes in other people's creations. One of the hardest things about trying
to do something of value is learning to mostly dismiss people like him. It's
still a challenge - no ones like to be criticized. But wow, it's easy to talk
a lot of trash when you're not doing anything. One of my favorite quotes -

Teddy Roosevelt:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again
and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who
knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a
worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high
achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while
daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

~~~
Confusion
_This guys appears to be a loser who creates nothing of value, and points out
holes in other people's creations. One of the hardest things about trying to
do something of value is learning to mostly dismiss people like him._

I think anyone should welcome as many critics as possible. Critics point out
blind spots and prevent accidental mistakes. I believe the 'strong man' is
usually found to have a 'strong second' that is the strong man's critic on
every turn.

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tptacek
_Please tell me I’m wrong about your understanding of the GPL and your
intentions. It’s probably no mistake that Matt doesn’t want to acknowledge
such issues. For it he did, he would have to acknowledge the fact that
Automattic, a commercial entity that owns WordPress, exploits the GPL to
promote it’s distribution, uses plugin and theme developers work to build upon
WordPress, and then uses the GPL as a barrier to prevent anyone except
Automattic from benefiting financially from the work._

How is this any different from what Sleepycat and MySQL do? I thought this was
the playbook for open source business models.

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mgrouchy
Okay, I think this post is ridiculous for many reasons. The major reason being
the author just doesn't understand the point.

When he talks about 200 themes were removed back in 2007 from the wordpress
theme directory, most of the themes that were removed were sponsored(or
spammy) themes. wordpress.org is is the website for the opensourced GPL'd
project wordpress, there is no reason for them to host themes that run in
contrary to that philosophy. The idea is to create trust in the hosted
wordpress themes and plugins, for people who care they know if they go to
wordpress.org, everything they download is GPL'd they are free to use, free to
modify and free to redistribute.

I don't see that the onus is on Automattic to support any other agenda but
their own, they are a business and the ultimate goal is to make money(for
themselves).

That being said, the idea of a wordpress theme/plugin marketplace is a fine
one, but as many people have already said in this thread it would be easy
enough idea for automattic to take as their own. I would find it hard to
believe the guys at automattic are stupid so if it doesn't exist already,
there is probably a reason(ie/ profit margins are too low to spend the time
developing the service, not enough demand, etc.)

~~~
sho
_"hard to believe the guys at automattic are stupid so if it doesn't exist
already, there is probably a reason"_

Well, exactly. They have had the idea before, as mentioned in the post, but
didn't act on it. They probably did a simple cost/benefit analysis and decided
it would be more trouble than it's worth.

Once you start taking money and acting like a shop, everything changes. It's
not just the implementation, although that would be significant. But suddenly
it's your problem if X breaks on IE8 or Y doesn't work with a new version and
the developer is on holiday or Z said it would do this but doesn't and the
customer demands a refund, etc etc etc. "But I bought it from you!" comes the
flood of email. So you'd probably need support staff too.

Well, all of this might be worthwhile if it's a big, rich market. But I doubt
it is. How many people actually buy premade WP themes? I would have thought
the number is miniscule. Same with plugins. I didn't even realise you _could_
buy WP plugins, actually, until I read that. The idea sounds like a joke.
You'd have to be nuts to try and build a business on that.

Anyway I'm sure Automattic thought about it for a while, then realised what a
distracting, unremunerative hassle it would be and rightfully canned the idea.

~~~
whereareyou
There is a market for premium WP themes and plugins. And, now that people are
using WP as a CMS more and more and not just blog software it will grow even
faster. Take a look at themeforest.net or go to elance.com and see how many
people are hiring plugin developers.

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zach
Few things embitter people more than being this close to money they can't
have.

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GHFigs
Amazing. The author complains of not having a business model, spends most of
the post describing the one he would like to be given by someone else, and yet
never makes the connection between the two.

~~~
Harkins
If you're thinking he could create a premium marketplace that works as a
Wordpress plugin, it's a terrible idea. He'd be proving the model for
Wordpress, as soon as he started getting traction they could introduce their
own official premium marketplace installed by default in all new versions of
Wordpress... and don't forget to upgrade for this month's important security
fix.

I'm not a fan of the post's tone, but he's right that Wordpress needs to do
it. Nobody else wants to try because they'd either fail or have it taken away
from them.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_Nobody else wants to try because they'd either fail or have it taken away
from them._

That's the bitch of relying on someone else's platform for your business
model.

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callmeed
I'm glad this post was written and I hope more light gets shed on this.

I've seen many people who are naive about GPL and how it relates to themes and
plugins.

