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
This is definitely going a bit too crazy.
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.
It's not inherently abusive, consider NPM resurrecting an earlier version of leftpad against author's wish.
Who should provide security updates to an open source package when author no longer has access to the repository - voluntarily or otherwise?
> updates to an open source package when author no longer has access to the repository
Give them the access. It's not like they forgot the password or are AWOL.
Matt has been busy being a tool https://bullenweg.com/
I feel for everyone that uses Wordpress.
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.
Matt gave his reply on the nosebleed 6 hours ago.
It was first brought up in r/Wordpress 17 hours ago.
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.
Mind you I have no idea what’s going on at all. Just answering your question.
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.
This is the press release explaining the move - https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/secure-custom-fields/
Trust is lost forever.
These are good times for Wordpress alternatives to shine.
If you are a Ruby or Rails dev, I built https://sitepress.cc/ to run stand-alone, embedded in Rails, or as a static site compiler.
It’s MIT licensed so anybody can use it, including people affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.
I migrated our company site from Wordpress to PayloadCMS and the difference is night and day. Payload is sooo good.
Ghost.org seems pretty cool.
Ghost (and similar companies) probably can't believe their luck with this Wordpress debacle.
I was expecting a commercial license, but it is MIT licensed, which holds promise.
Drupal?
Additional discussion is happening on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821336
This one has a much clearer title, though.
But that one has matt replying to all comments.
I didn't want to editorialise the title when I submitted, but yes, the tweet does make for a better title.
Wordpress is immolating itself a lot these days, what gives? Is investor money running out?
Is there any legal operation possible?
WPEngine is already suing Matt, so this will get added to that pile, it seems like.
Fun fact. The new plugin uses "ACF" throughout the code, throughout the plugin reviews, and the url slug is literally "advanced-custom-fields".
Guess who owns the trademark for both those things? WPEngine, that's who.
This guy is so bad at this that it's not even funny anymore.
Much better title, thanks
Calling it right now:
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.
> Put $25M into it...then he’ll realize his bluff has been called
I don't think Matt will be too displeased with WPEngine investing $25 million into a fork. He may even feel vindicated.
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?
What is the significance of going from GPL v2 to v3 here?
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.
I agree. This is the best move right now. WordPress needed modernization anyway
What's B2?
B2/Cafelog is the software that WordPress started as a fork of.
WordPress is a fork that basically killed the original project. No reason that history can’t repeat itself.
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.
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.
Pathetic. I guess this is a GPL violation? I mean, taking over a code in a directory with million of customers isn't “forking it”, right?
No, it's not.
Matt is causing damage to the OSS ecosystem far beyond WordPress.
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.
[delayed]
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.