It's very funny that Matt's original complaint was that WPEngine didn't contribute enough, and he has now banned them from contributing and stolen what they had previously provided
Do you think they were all of the sudden going to dramatically start contributing? I see this more as symbolically shutting them out. Nothing in this ongoing situation is about more than optics now
I sympathized with Wordpress a lot in the initial drama, but this is going downhill fast.
Blocking somebody's access to the plugin repository, not accepting their patches, and then 'releasing' your own 'secure' version is just abuse, period.
Yeah. I'm a long-time WP site developer. I actually really like Gutenberg (which a lot of critics seem to be suggesting is the first thing that should go in a fork). I'm broadly supportive of e.g. bringing WP-GraphQL and its developer in-house, of adding ACF-type functionality to the core, and even of working to persuade WP Engine to be slightly better citizens.
But I can't shake the feeling that to a lot of people this latest thing is going to look like something of a kidnapping. It's not right.
You say this like there's not much difference between the two, but there's a world of difference.
One is someone yanking a repo and breaking millions of builds across the world and the maintainers of npm stepping in to fix things (in a move that is still controversial, mind you).
The other is the maintainers of the WordPress plugin repository starting a self-described "nuclear war" with the plugin maintainers, banning them from the repo, publicly disclosing a security vulnerability in the plugin, then hijacking it to save the day.
One is a potentially misguided step to solve a real problem. What Matt is doing here is just cosplaying Syndrome from The Incredibles.
I Left wp development when gutenberg came out, it was clear that things would have turned for the worse.
Since then basically no new features only new bugs on an editor the majority didn't want and still doesn't.
Now this. It feels good to be right and see things turned even worse than expected but what a waste.
Wp could have improved so much and done so much more for entrepreneurs and startups.
Instead they are stuck in 2018
Does anyone want to play armchair internet psychologist with me to speculate as to Matt's thinking here?
My guess is that he was focused on these facts:
1) I own Wordpress
2) WPEngine is profiting from Wordpress and I'm not benefiting
3) This is unfair
And it was stuck in his mind like a thorn, irritating him whenever the thought arose, and never went away. Commercializing open source is hard for myriad reasons, but wordpress.com is actually rather profitable, and yet it still bothered him that he wasn't getting a cut.
Eventually, after many grumpy ruminations on it, the answer was obvious: "I deserve a cut of WPEngine's income, since they're using my software." No, this isn't how the license works, and there's no legal basis for it, but it felt right and fair.
This thought, irrational and deluded as it was, wedged in his psyche and fed into his deep loathing for WPEngine. All the subsequent actions follow from it, from the initial ultimatum to the various actions he's taking to fight his enemy.
This is an intensely personal and emotional fight for him, and everyone that disagrees is an enemy too. He's just asking for what's fair, and yet all these ignorant commenters on the internet can't see it.
Why on earth is Matt’s nosebleed on this? Making fun of peoples medical issues is tasteless, and makes me wonder about the motivation behind the rest of the page.
Agreed. For context, Matt posted the following on the original video:
> Around 20 minutes in, my nose started bleeding, which sometimes happens when I travel too much. Prior to this interview, I was on 30+ hour flights returning from Durban, where I was on safari, to Houston. I'm sorry for not noticing it happening; it's very embarrassing.
The inclusion of the nosebleed is not to make fun of Matt, it is to highlight something relevant to the medical issues that people have speculated about. The motivation is to bring to light Matt's wide-ranging exploits in one place, given it is abnormal for someone involved in high-profile litigation to spend their time arguing on Hacker News, Reddit, Twitter and live streams.
People are signaling to you that this particular thing crosses a line. You'd do well to heed that and take that part out. Speculating on his health / insinuating things undermines the points you're trying to make.
They are making a not-subtle insinuation that he’s engaging in stimulant drug abuse.
How that relates to an executive engaged in sudden extremely aggressive and over the top and highly personal scorched earth attack campaign over what appear to be fairly routine open source community squabbles is left as an exercise for the reader.
He's never really been a good person or savvy in general and IMO people put him on pedestal before recently. This is the guy who bought tumblr and hasn't done anything of merit with it after all.
>LIVE/APPLICATION/Under Examination. The trademark application has been accepted by the Office (has met the minimum filing requirements) and that this application has been assigned to an examiner.
Good catch. Looks like it was filed just under a year ago, and hasn't been finalized yet. If it is approved, I think the original filing date is considered the registration date, so Matt's usage would (at that point) qualify as infringement. However, I am NAL.
I’m not AL either, but I’ve been close to a couple of trademark applications and even a court case - so that’s why I was curious. Looking through some of the attached PDF, I wonder if it was, or will be denied unless amended, because the words are just too common and/or the scope for the trademark is being cast too wide? The examiner apparently sent a notice to the applicant earlier this year, and there seems to be some sort of extension to the application in play. This may suggest, that unless amended, the current application won’t be granted?
How can someone like Jeffrey Zeldman believe in the work they're doing when the company acts like this? I understand there are bills to pay and the job market is terrible. Do what you need to do to survive.
If WP Engine is reading, fork WordPress now. Call it FreshPress. Put $25M into it, team up with other hosts, abandon the editor everyone hates, and relicense it to GPLv3 so Matt can’t have any of it. (Note that WordPress’s license specifically says GPLv2 or later.) Maybe support Composer like sane modern PHP projects. Maybe put the most important plugins like Woo into core and make it an all-in-one Squarespace competitor.
Once it’s ahead, legal, and Matt can’t borrow; then he’ll realize his bluff has been called. Make WordPress the new B2.
Perhaps; but WP Engine can argue from necessity following Matt’s actions, as well as just saying: After what Matt has done, who gives a darn what he thinks?
GPLv3 code can’t go into a GPLv2 project - but “GPLv2 or later” licensed code can go into a GPLv3 project.
The main reason is that Matt wouldn’t be able to freeload without relicensing WordPress - which would be a massive headache for him and his partners to go through; and the reason would be patently and embarrassingly obvious.
The goal I described earlier is not to make a WordPress clone that just happens to be free of Matt. There’s plenty of low hanging, long ignored gripes and opportunities for improvement. Offer a better, Matt-free product, and you’ll win.
Lol, surely they will deliver - nah, they will fork core, mirror plugins and themes repos and do absolutely minuscule minimal effort to keep it secure / bacport some changes from main WP line to keep it compatible with most of the plugins and that's all.
This is all good, but I think packaging Woo into core is not a good idea. WordPress is so large; I don't know how the plugin community will react to a fork. It is going to cause a lot of problems.
A lot of the comments seem to call out Matt (right or wrong). But that’s the easy thing to do.
No one dares address the systemic issue of for profit corporations exploitatively (ab)using open source software.
There is a social contract that people should contribute back, and while it’s largely unenforceable, as it should be, when it’s happening on a systemic level something has to be done. And we are all complicit if we don’t at least say that much and spare some good will towards the guy actively in that fight at least superficially
> No one dares address the systemic issue of for profit corporations exploitatively (ab)using open source software.
Calling out Matt and Automattic for their abusive behavior is addressing the systemic issue of for-profit corporations exploitatively abusing open source software.
We're talking about a company that released GPL software, waited a decade for another company to build their entire business around said GPL software, and then came at them with threats of going to "nuclear war" (their words) with them if they didn't agree to extremely exploitative terms on top of the GPL licensing under which the software was released.
That is the affront to Free Software that's happening here. WP Engine may or may not be a good company, but it is Matt who has given up on freedom. If you lure people in with a promise of Free Software and then hold a gun to their head when they take you up on it, you are the bad guy.
Matt being a poor steward of gpl is by definition not a systemic issue … unless ur claim is that many people in positions like him do what he does which is in turn caused by invariant factors?
The systemic issue is companies the world over not giving their fair share back in terms of contributing to foss.
I might agree with most of your points, I’m just trying to get people to realize there’s the local issue of Matt/wp and then there’s this global issue of companies building businesses off foss and not giving back.
> unless ur claim is that many people in positions like him do what he does which is in turn caused by invariant factors?
I don't know about invariants, but there is absolutely a trend of for-profit companies setting up a business around open source and only later trying to close the doors to lock out the competitors that the Free Software system is explicitly designed to encourage.
> this global issue of companies building businesses off foss and not giving back.
I'll never understand this complaint about not giving back. I can understand if they're asking for free support and coercing you into saying yes, but that's rarely the concern, the concern is always "giving back".
If you release it under GPL, then companies are obliged to abide by the GPL and release their modifications, nothing more or less. If you release it under a less restrictive license then they have no obligations at all, and you presumably chose that license specifically because it made the software easier to use in enterprises.
If giving back matters so very much then you're not really interested in Free Software and you should put those requirements in the license. But you don't get to piggyback on the FOSS movement and then complain when people use your software freely to compete with your for profit.
As for the trend of the bait and switch. That’s a fair point. But u can always fork and move on. And even then would you say that’s more of an issue or occurs more frequently then corps not contributing back at all?
Like when you factor in all the negative externalities what is worse?
As for the license, yea I mean that’s kind of the direction I want people to talk about.
We have foss absolutists, but there’s these emerging systemic issues now for a few decades and I think that the literalism surrounding the foss principles needs to address it more fundamentally then saying go non free.
The dichotomy is not effective anymore when there is so much bad faith.
When a user uses some open source software, there is no negative happening. They are not accumulating some debt that should be repaid by "contributing back." If they make a million dollars on it, that makes no difference to the project. Agreeing to a license and then following that license is not "bad faith."
The only damage being done when someone makes money using open source software, is to the ambitions and ego of a developer who imagined that "open source" meant "give me your contributions so I can build an empire." Fortunately, open source is for the benefit of all of us. Nobody owes them fiefs.
This is the part that I disagree with—to the extent there's bad faith, the bad faith is on the part of the for profits that pull the bait and switch, not the users.
Making your dev-focused project FOSS gives you enormous tailwinds that you can ride to dramatically increase your chance of success. That's the draw for these VC-funded FOSS projects. But those tailwinds come with expectations that you'll respect the license and not throw a tantrum when people actually take you at your word.
If you want to be the sole vendor for your project then you should make that clear from the beginning in the license, but people don't do that because then the tailwinds go away.
The key point is that there's no moral issue here (at least not on the users). You offered free stuff and people took you up on it. When you gave out the free stuff you got a lot of free publicity with that free stuff. You made a trade-off, and it's bad faith to try to convince your fans that the people on the other end of that deal are doing something wrong.
> There is a social contract that people should contribute back
No there isn't. The author gets to decide the contract, not you or anyone else.
I am the one who decides how to license my software. If I don't want to require my users to contribute, I don't have to. If I wanted to include such an obligation, I would have.
You don't get to hold users of my projects to unwritten, made-up obligations. You don't get to bully people online who aren't following your imaginary rules. My users and I have a contract. We both agreed to it. You don't get to step in between us and alter the agreement we made. How dare you.
The assertion that users must contribute to open source projects despite the license, is an attack on users, developers, and a just and free society. Developers must be able to license their software how they see fit. You want to take that freedom away from me, in the pursuit of hurting people you don't like.
I’m with DHH. The license is the license. The moment there’s unwritten obligations, the movement will implode - simply because unwritten obligations are always up to interpretation. Don’t like the status quo? Use a different license. This is especially true of WordPress, considering it’s an unlicensed fork of an earlier project itself.
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