by frereubu on 12/20/24, 11:41 AM
I run a WordPress agency and I'm absolutely horrified by all of this. It's not cutting through to our clients yet, but building on WordPress suddenly feels incredibly risky when one person can throw their toys out of the pram - the pineapple checkbox is just fucking ridiculous - and derail an entire ecosystem. I really wish there was some kind of mechanism to cut Matt entirely out of WordPress because he deserves to be completely ostracised.
by pluc on 12/20/24, 11:06 AM
This is just a play to pretend that WordPress.org is run by volunteers when in truth it's entirely run by Automattic. If it was actually ran by volunteers, he couldn't make any of it stop... because people volunteer their time without being told what to do.
I can't wait for him to lose millions of dollars for a hissy fit. It's going to be delicious.
by varun_chopra on 12/20/24, 10:46 AM
Damn, reading all this makes me feel terrible. I wonder what goes on in somebody’s mind to make them self-sabotage their lives like Matt has over the past couple of weeks.
by Brian_K_White on 12/20/24, 10:39 AM
"I’m legally compelled to provide free labor and services"
Can a court sue a person for lying/libel about the court itself?
Now I'm imagining like how doctors and psychiatrists need to go to other doctors and psychiatrists for themselves.
Normally if you lie about me we both go to a court, but if you lie about the court, where does the court go?
by Zealotux on 12/20/24, 10:40 AM
I wish for his sake he had a good friend to take that shovel away from his hands and take him on a long, contemplative, peaceful hike.
Money truly can't buy everything.
by xnx on 12/20/24, 12:03 PM
Through all of this, has there been discussion about how WordPress is "freeloading" off of PHP, MySQL, etc.?
by notfooled on 12/20/24, 10:43 AM
Does he really believe he can convince people that the Matt Mullenweg who owns wordpress.com is a different Matt Mullenweg from the Matt Mullenweg who owns wordpress.org?
They even look the same.
by daenney on 12/20/24, 10:23 AM
There’s one useful paragraph of information in there, and the rest is Matt whining about the consequences of his own actions.
by tanepiper on 12/20/24, 10:44 AM
Why has no one intervened on what is clearly a mental breakdown of one man?
by exsomet on 12/20/24, 4:25 PM
> As you may have heard, I’m legally compelled to provide free labor and services to WP Engine thanks to the success of their expensive lawyers
Didn’t the court order have a whole section about WP Engine covering the cost of providing the required services?
by Gud on 12/20/24, 3:09 PM
I’m so happy this drama came now and not later.
I was in the process of setting up a simple Wordpress site for my wife’s business, to replace the Adobe portfolio she is currently using… so thanks, I guess?
by eonmist on 12/21/24, 2:21 PM
Why is it a conflict at all? Does modifying the software go against the license? They don't have to follow Matt's philosophy. If Matt want to control the use he should have encoded it in the license. Isn't this a classical case of wrongly chosen license and assuming others
agree with you on unstated things.
by CMThF on 12/20/24, 11:06 AM
Oh no! Anyways...
by rsynnott on 12/20/24, 11:31 AM
I mean, if anything this sort of thing surely has to be pushing people towards WPEngine, rather than the service run by the guy who is visibly losing it?
by ochronus on 12/20/24, 11:08 AM
Jesus, what an absolute sh..show :/ it's really a pity.
by phoe-krk on 12/20/24, 10:26 AM
> As you may have heard, I’m legally compelled to provide free labor and services to WP Engine thanks to the success of their expensive lawyers, so in order to avoid bothering the court I will say that none of the above applies to WP Engine, so if they need to bypass any of the above please just have your high-priced attorneys talk to my high-priced attorneys and we’ll arrange access, or just reach out directly to me on Slack and I’ll fix things for you.> I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year. Right now much of the time I would spend making WordPress better is being taken up defending against WP Engine’s legal attacks. Their attacks are against Automattic, but also me individually as the owner of WordPress.org, which means if they win I can be personally liable for millions of dollars of damages.
> If you would like to fund legal attacks against me, I would encourage you to sign up for WP Engine services, they have great plans and pricing starting at $50/mo and scaling all the way up to $2,000/mo. If not, you can use literally any other web host in the world that isn’t suing me and is offering promotions and discounts for switching away from WP Engine.
This post should be named "Holiday Breakdown" rather than "Holiday Break". In particular, one thing stood out to me:
> I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year.
He can't prevent WP Engine from getting access to Automattic services, so he acts out his revenge on the rest of the world instead?
by hulitu on 12/20/24, 1:46 PM
> Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions
If sanctions work so well for other countries, why wouldn't they for WP Engine ? /s
by gustavorg on 12/20/24, 11:27 AM
After reading all these comments, I started to worry and even panic because it seemed to me that I was on the wrong side. HN, which side are we on?