FWIW Jeffrey Zeldman is a living legend. He was one of the first print designers to transition to the web, did it well, and wrote about it constantly. He designed the “Batman Forever” website in 1995; it was visited by something like one-third of all Internet users.
He created the Web Standards Project, hugely influential in getting browser manufacturers to support standards rather than pee in the pool. And if you think cross-browser support today is rough, at the time you could reliably crash production browsers with valid CSS.
Never mind A List Apart, one of the best early mailing lists on the web, a kind of transitionary form between Usenet and forums/Discord. And A Book Apart, which published lots of high-quality stuff.
If you develop for the web today, every time a browser behaves as the spec describes, thank Jeffrey Zeldman.
Zeldman, Bowman, Molly, ppk are the ones I remember reading and learning from back in the IE6, pre-firefox days.
Legends indeed.
RIP Molly.
> I also know that the Maker-Taker problem is an issue in open source, just as I know that a friend you buy lunch for every day, and who earns as much money as you do, is supposed to return the favor now and then
Informal agreements like this work between people who know each other, not for agreements between strangers. The terms in an open source license are intended to be universally applicable, to make the obligations clear for anyone who reads them. This includes total strangers and companies that didn’t exist when you published the code.
Those strangers shouldn’t be expected to abide by anything not explicitly written down in the license. If the license doesn’t document the obligations you expect of anyone, you used the wrong license.
We should be suspicious of people who try to claim that there are additional unwritten obligations for reusing source code. Open source licenses have very generous terms, maybe too generous. They allow takers. That’s how it works, you can take it.
Nah. Or at least, not entirely. (I'm not really writing about Automattic here).
Contracts -- and law in general -- describe in detail what kinds of actions will allow another to bring legal force into play against you or vice-versa.
But there's all kinds of actions that I can legally take that don't conform to norms that will invite condemnation and reprisal through means other than the legal sphere.
Not every obligation should be given legal force; not every action that's strictly legal will turn out to be socially okay or consequence free.
It's I think sort of clear from everything that Automattic's leadership doesn't seem to understand that running a business means you're running a business. You're not making a side project, working on a hobby or running a non-profit. You're running a for-profit business which means others will treat you as such and you can't make excuses for it.
Obviously I agree that current licenses do permit this. However: What are the long-term implications if everyone behaves this way?
They are that less open source software will be created and made available to everyone with permissive licensing. More software will be produced either commercially, or with more restrictive licensing. Less software will be produced overall, because of the overhead costs of enforcing these restrictions. The culture will shift from a norm of "Here, use this thing I made if you want!" towards "You'd better not be using this thing I made without paying me."
This formalisation of norms into explicit contracts backed by legal enforcement would not necessarily be a bad thing overall, and it may be a necessary thing in a "society" where there are too many people for everyone to know everyone else personally and establish trust that way. But it will be different. There will be winners and losers.
I have a tough time relating to "[believing] in the work we do" at a for-profit company, especially one that just makes blogs. I work at a somewhat similar commercial open source company, I really enjoy my job, and I adore my direct collegues, but I've thought a lot over the past few years that if in a similar position I would almost definitely take the offer.
A job you like where ~10% of your colleges leave is a job I would probably enjoy a whole lot less.
Thats an interesting sentiment to me. I dont have much trouble believing in the work, even in for-profit companies. For me, it is about the end product, and if it makes the world a better place or not. If it is net positive, than the work (as a whole), is meaningful. Everything beyond that is just degrees of efficiency.
I conceptually like non-profits, but that seems tangential. Why would I discount my work due to comparison with a hypothetical alternative that is more efficient at doing good.
>especially one that just makes blogs
What's wrong with blogs? I like blogs.
Nothing wrong with blogs, but I think it’s useful just to be real what it is we’re doing. I don’t think there’s a moral obligation or a unique social benefit to creating WordPress.
You can enjoy your job, and I do too, but I don’t claim to be doing anything extraordinary.
Oh, I agree. I just don't think believing in the work requires it to be extraordinary or ground breaking. For example, you can believe that growing potatoes is beneficial work.
Of course, as stated, "believe in the work" is an imprecise sentiment. Believe what exactly? They probably don't believe it is bad tho, haha
>I dont have much trouble believing in the work, even in for-profit companies.
One of the things I liked about selling software is the knowledge that customers do value your software. If they didn't then they wouldn't put their hand in their pocket.
I feel the same way about drug making. Customers might wish new drugs were cheaper, but they are free to with cheaper options or generics. Meanwhile, today's blockbuster will be tomorrow's generic, and progressively more lives are saved.
That may be true when we’re talking about investing in new drugs, but a whole lot of the pharmaceutical industry engages in rent-seeking behavior, and people are often not deep thinkers so their natural inclination is to just throw the baby out with the bath water.
The rent seeking is pretty negligible when you zoom out in time. It is extremely hard to find a specific medication that is still on patent 20 years after approval.
I think people are generally confused by things like insulin, where there are newer and better versions coming out continually, despite it being invented in the 1920s.
So how does a diabetic get one of the older, worse insulins that they can afford? Certainly that's preferable to the better insulin that they can't afford.
> if it makes the world a better place or not.
This seems like a pretty big "if". Arguably, Automattic is better than most for-profit companies since they develop a FOSS product, and I think you can make an argument that any sort of FOSS makes the world better.
OTOH, it's not clear to me that making it easier and cheaper to blog or host websites makes the world better. I'm sure there's lots of people using WordPress and similar products for horrible things, like tobacco companies, arms manufacturers, animal ag companies, etc. And that's not to mention the no doubt plenty of personal users who are blogging about conspiracy theories, white supremacy, or Hindu nationalism.
I think the best case for most software is that it's net _neutral_. I work at a database company. Our products are used by many, many different companies, non-profits, and governments. I think some of our customers are horrible, some are great, and most are neither. But that would be the case for me at nearly every software company I might work at.
I don't think the plan that software is not neutral is any more supportive than it is good or bad. If anything, neutrality seems extremely unlikely because if you were to total all of the impacts, it seems exceedingly unlikely that they would perfectly sum up to zero.
That said, you are right in that these judgments certainly depends on your mental model of the world. Ex. Are blogs and websites good or bad. A proponent of radical back to the trees movement would probably disagree. I tend to think logs are a good thing for the world
There’s a lot of anti-capitalist brainwashing these days that exists to make you just feel guilty about the social/environmental effects of everything that isn’t free.
Being relatively far-left, much of the tech industry is indoctrinated into it.
It seems to them like a not-unintelligent, non-controversial, or even obvious viewpoint because they’ve been swimming in that water their whole lives. It’s a first principle to them and they don’t even know it.
100% agreed - given that they published this under their own name though, I wonder how much of that was just echoing the corporate mission statement of Automattic for the sake of any colleagues who happen to stumble across the blog.
> I wonder how much of that was just echoing the corporate mission statement of Automattic for the sake of any colleagues who happen to stumble across the blog.
It's fairly obvious that's what it is.
Or they are being forced to post "I stayed", as nearly everyone that I've come across that works there is posting it. To the point where it doesn't even feel organic.
For anyone else that wants the latest drama: Matt seems to be weaponizing Automattic and CVE's against WP Engine now.
Post deleted. What did it say?
The Tweets original content was[0]:
> Automattic's security team has responsibly disclosed a vulnerability in @wp_acf to @wpengine. As is standard, they have 30 days to issue a fix before public disclosure. We have reserved this CVE for the issue: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-9529
Basically announcing to the world that there is a CVE in a very widely used ("2MM+ sites") WP plugin, that also can't be patched as they banned the developers accounts from updating said plugin[1].
Perhaps Automattic's goal is to force WPEngine to host their plugin(s) elsewhere? And also force WPEngine to have their own plugin cache or plugin market? Or at least no longer rely on WordPress.org's plugin repo directly.
The tweet has been deleted, but this other submission was in reply to it:
I was a bit dubious about this point of view before reading the full post, but wow, the last couple paragraphs lay it on thick. Suing someone for using your open source product in their own product takes "courage"? Comparing the work of developing Wordpress to Rodney King? I want to give the author the benefit of the doubt, and maybe I'm too cynical, but this sounds even more corporate-y than a lot of stuff I've read on company-hosted blogs.
I don't think there was a comparison between WordPress and Rodney King. If so, what is the comparison being claimed. Is WordPress the cops? The one saying can't we get along?
The way I read it at least, it was a simple reference and sentiment, not a comparison.
Fair enough. It still feels shoehorned in to me though, almost like an essay in school students are told to include a quote in their conclusion (something that happened in my English class at least once from what I can remember), which just adds to the vibe of this being "homework" to support their employer rather than coming across as authentic.
> especially one that just makes blogs
Uhm, that's pretty reductive. Perhaps that's the difference?
His evocation of the assault on Rodney King and the L.A. Riots is perplexing.
For those of us of a certain age, the phrase "can't we all just get along" connects quite naturally to Rodney King. So if you heard it, or for some other reason wanted to use it in a written piece ...
I don't know what you're trying to imply. Rodney King was beaten and shocked by four police officers, 63 people died and approximately $1 billion of damages resulted from the Riots. Zeldman's grief is understandable to the extent that one can emphasize with the internal conflict of choosing to remain employed by a company that is under scrutiny by people in your professional/personal community and ran by a man who is proving to be rather unpredictable.
There's likely more to Zeldman's personal struggles with respect to his health and other financial concerns than what he discloses (rightfully so). But at the same time, evoking the rhetoric of King during the Riots is indeed perplexing when measured against what Zeldman does speak about more openly: his commitment to the open web in light of the aforementioned drama. In this regard, as the kids say, "It's not that deep".
Edit: +++ "in light of the aforementioned drama"
I think it's to say that, in the face of his beating and the aftermath, King said, "can't we all just get along?" instead of calling for the heads of the cops, the mayor, or whoever else he might have considered blameworthy.
I was going to say this too. I’m guessing PR didn’t get to vet this post.
It's a nice sentiment, but are you helping people by granting the wishes of an unshackled combative owner? Could you take the money and help people more by working for a company with more careful leadership? Wordpress isn't the only CMS out there...
Is it really that easy to just leave and find a company/work you vibe with? It seems just as hard as trying to find a quality partner
Come on, pretty much all work is hurting the world now by furthering unsustainable capitalism. I have yet to find a job that truly helps people in the tech line of work.
I hope the decision works out for him. Six months salary is really only a big bag of cash if 1) you have a decent salary, and 2) you can be confident of landing a job of equal or better salary within the six-month window. Otherwise you're just going to burn through it. Given the way hiring has been in the tech world of late, it's easy to imagine it taking six months or more to get a decent job -- you can easily spend several months interviewing to have a role disappear.
FWIW I'd have to be pretty pissed and/or have no confidence in the direction of the company & its leadership and/or have another job/work lined up already to jump ship on a few days' notice like that.
Zeldman would have zero trouble getting hired anywhere tomorrow if he indicated that he was available.
This isn't the case for most people, but he is anything but most people.
I'm guessing one other reason he's staying is that he's probably still on Automattic's advisory board [1], and has significantly more influence on the company's direction than most other people who have taken the offer.
The "We're hiring" link shows the first position offered is a "Happiness Engineer", https://i.imgur.com/zSVeuYq.png.
> Our software and services aim to provide a seamless experience, but when things don’t go as planned, our customers rely on us for help. Happiness Engineers are the frontline heroes ensuring we deliver the best experience for our users. Their role is crucial because they interact with our customers the most and make the biggest impression in their time of need.
They are definitely not the first place I've heard that term. I know System76 has been using it as a title for some time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoL4gqjaWnY
I doubt it originated there, either.
As if the title of engineer couldn't get any more diluted. Reminds me of how everyone now is a "specialist".
Call Flow Optimization Specialist - Works at the front desk answering the telephone
Yeah, it's a cutesy title for customer support because you can't take yourself too seriously in jobs like this. Put very simply, people are fucking ass holes (and yes - you have to acknowledge this to excel at being a "Happiness Engineer" - it's not cynical to recognize that people have angry outbursts, because you have to know how to calm them down; pretending that people aren't mean is a one-way ticket to burnout). Even "nice" people can be ass holes; humans are complex and represent a whole spectrum of emotions [0]. Sometimes they don't know they're doing it, sometimes they do. There are social differences (what someone on the West Coast thinks is rude is not the same as what someone on the East Coast thinks is rude, and there are even difference between "microcultures" on the rules of social engagement; these rules might be intersubjective, but differ) that have to be negotiated often in one-time ephemeral interactions. Negativity is contagious and I cringe at the times that I unnecessarily injected negativity into an interaction where the other person/people didn't do anything to deserve it.
I think there is maybe one other "weird" job title in that list, but otherwise they're all pretty normal, so this is probably one of the last things I'd criticize Automattic for. The fact that they describe customer support as "Happiness Engineering" suggests the nature of the title - we have to be a little goofy to help people.
As a final note, for anyone thinking "I work in customer support and I don't like this yada yada", it's just not for you, and that's OK. No need to think up a huge rebuttal, it's just a different philosophy for those of us who like to help people and have a little bit of fun at the same time.
I don't work at Automattic, but I like WordPress and don't really care too much about this drama.
George Orwell is kicking himself for not thinking up that name first.
Someone should rewrite "1984" as it would work with todays technologies..
It is, in fact, being written. It’s called the modern West.
We’re more Brave New World than 1984.
Believing in the work the author was/is doing is one thing, but I can't help but wonder if/how they still believe in their boss.
I am just reading about this whole Automattic vs WP Engine fight today, and I'm a little surprised that most people seem to think Automattic is the unambiguous bad guy. Automattic has still given away a huge amount of open-source software away over the years. WP Engine seems like it is entirely a mercenary operation. (Which there's nothing wrong with, per se. But it doesn't exactly warm the cockles of my heart.)
And paying people to leave if they don't agree with what the company is doing seems like a win-win.
> Automattic is the unambiguous bad guy.
I wouldn't say that's what people are saying. I've been a vocal critic of Matt's actions in these threads, and my perspective is basically this:
WP Engine may be exactly as bad as Matt says it is. They may be contributing too little and taking too much. I've seen enough of corporations to believe that that can happen.
None of that matters any more after Matt's actions in September. WP Engine has put forward convincing evidence that Matt attempted to extort them into paying tens of millions per year to Matt's for profit under threat of launching a smear campaign. Matt then demonstrated that the boundaries between Automattic (the for profit) and the open source project don't exist by locking millions of WordPress users out of the plugin ecosystem over this dispute with the for profit.
That plugin ecosystem is the WordPress project. By messing about with that ecosystem Matt showed that he is both able and willing to singlehandedly screw over anyone who uses WordPress because he has a dispute with their hosting provider.
That's the issue now. I don't see WP Engine as white knights fighting a villain, but Matt turned what could have been a united effort to improve the WordPress ecosystem into a battle between greedy corporations and it's Matt who showed that he doesn't care who gets caught in the crossfire. The issue isn't that Automattic is the unambiguous bad guy in this suit, it's that Matt has demonstrated he has more power than he can be trusted with.
Did WPEngine maintain their own cache to less the load on WordPress.org's plugin repo? If not then that could be a significant cost, which a large hosting provider should do to minimize their upstream footprint and improve the UX of their own customers.
That said, it seems a modest trademark dispute has gotten way out of hand.
> WP Engine seems like it is entirely a mercenary operation.
WP Engine also acquired and maintains Advanced Custom Fields [1] and Local [2] from their subsidiary Flywheel [3].
[1] https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-engine-acquisition/
[2] https://wpengine.com/blog/better-together-wp-engine-and-flyw...
[3] https://wpengine.com/blog/wp-engine-to-acquire-flywheel/
Automattic previously prevented 1.5 million sites from receiving security updates.
Their latest move (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41751776) is announcing a security hole in ACF, a WP Engine plugin, and preventing them from deploying a fix for it.
Good guys wouldn't do either of these things. The sooner Matt is replaced or Automattic goes under the better.
It will be hard to do that work from within an embattled organization that's only in that situation because of the CEO's behavior. Things don't get better from here. Any good-faith assumptions people made before are just gone. Every action has new layers of scrutiny, every move becomes suspect.
What's the background on doing a soft layoff (or w/e) and hiring at the same time? Many of us have seen one of these close-up, just wondering what the case is here.
It’s an alignment layoff “I’m an asshole and if you aren't on board GTFO”. It’s right out of Musk’s playbook. Although I think Musk does it better.
Musk is an ideological asshole, this is Matt recognizing further growth probably requires pushing WP Engine out of their market. If you disagree with him on this, you probably disagree where Automattic as a whole is going.
Why does someone who works at Automattic have meaningful medical debt? That's awful. I would expect Automattic to have both good insurance and sufficient pay such that no employee suffers from medical debt.
My insight into corporate legal disputes is as meaningful as my opinion on Quantum Mechanics.
What an immensely cowardly statement. Zeldman is not some naive worker elf and pretending to be such as an excuse to avoid saying anything is contemptible. If you don't want people to know what you think, just say that, or say nothing. Pretending you don't have an opinion because you don't understand is just...ick.
Why? This is someone else’s fight. Do you have a high amount of equity in Automattic?
You have to look out for number one.
"It's not the rats who first abandon a sinking ship. It's the crew members who know how to swim." - Antonio Garcia Martinez, Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
> I already miss them, and most only quit yesterday. I feel their departure as a personal loss, and my grief is real. The sadness is like a cold fog on a dark, wet night.
I can't understand this. I do not view my coworkers as part of my personal life, so while I enjoy working with some, I wouldn't say I'm sad if they leave. This sounds unhealthy
I worked at Automattic and the connections you could develop with your coworkers were fantastic. Almost everyone was kind, helpful, and encouraging, and I did my best to bring a positive attitude every day. Nearly everything being written communication makes that easier! (Eg you won’t seem standoffish one day if external circumstances have you in a poor mood.)
While you aren’t seeing people every day (the company is distributed), the relatively frequent meetups in cool places are a massive highlight, and just make your relationships that much stronger.
There are a lot of folks who have been around for ages — even if you aren’t working with someone directly anymore, you’ll frequently see a familiar face (and helping hand!) on the other side of the company.
So the grief of leaving these relationships is acute, especially if you’ve been around for a while. Processing that grief is healthy — and I might suggest that not having any kind of relationship with your coworkers is unhealthy. Or at least speaks to a cold culture somewhere.
LOL
When you spend 8 hours a day around folks and become friends with them, it's natural to miss them when they leave. It's OK if you don't have any meaningful relationships with your co-workers, but, to me, that sounds unhealthy.
Why are you spending your finite life working with people who you wouldn't fight for?
This might not be a "them" problem.
I'm not advocating that your coworkers have to be at the same rung as your family or [in-group X] but it's weird/sad to many reading this that you're okay not caring about the people you spend your days working towards a common goal with.
Is it possible for you to understand why others might feel this way about their colleagues and work?
