Wordpress Drama

[Suzanne O]

He sounds like he is a vexatious litigant

Clarification for litigants who have been declared “vexatious”

According to the Alberta Rules of Court, a person who has been declared a “vexatious litigant” requires permission to appeal.

www.nortonrosefulbright.com

 

[Arantor]

And Matt seems fine with dragging this drama out for years if he has to via the courts.

He once spent $100k on a domain after having beef with the other person who wanted it, so this is entirely true to form.

 

[Forsaken]

If AspirePress is running mirrors of w.org and people are using those mirrors, that’s less load on w.org, and therefore it would cost less to run.

Matt making money off of Wordpress recommended hosts is what is not confirmed, not anything about AspirePress.

Who knows what was in the agreement he signed with them for their investment? It’s not unheard of for such investment agreements to come with clauses allowing some eviction (or penalties) if targets aren’t met. And it sounds like those targets aren’t being met.

That could be, but it would have been a stupid thing for him to sign, especially given how much of an egomaniac he is.

That in itself is a red flag, because that would imply the WP trademarks have value, and there isn’t anything in the filings of the 503c to indicate they hold such assets.

I’m just waiting for someone to throw the tactical nuke into the mix to petition for cancellation of the trademarks because once granted you actually have to defend them, and Automattic does not have a good history of that.

He has already implied that WP trademark has value, and that is one of the points in the WPEngine lawsuit, that they have purposely underreported assets on filings to the IRS. The fact that prior to the WPEngine lawsuit they were already internally discussing ways to weaponize the trademark shows that they know it has value, and that they can use it to get contributions.

Ah so this is why Matt has beef with Silver Lake owned WPEngine, Matt was kicked out of WPEngine investment by Silver Lake

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And Matt seems fine with dragging this drama out for years if he has to via the courts.

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Was he actually kicked out? I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that he has worded it that way specifically. I do not know if this more details are coming forward, or if Matt is revising things to fit his narrative. He has definitely had personal beef with one specific person who is part of Silver Lake, so it could very well be true.

He has more to lose in a long lawsuit than WPEngine; WPEngine is owned by Silver Lake, while he has investors who are probably not happy with his results. He has already lost employees, supporters and contributors and if this were to continue on for years due to him being petty it would not end well for him.

He once spent $100k on a domain after having beef with the other person who wanted it, so this is entirely true to form.

But but but he totally had other reasons for buying it!... He just hasn't used it for any reason other than being a petty child yet.

 

[RobinHood]

Matt making money off of Wordpress recommended hosts is what is not confirmed,

I mean, it does clearly state they get a cut from affiliate referrals on the recommended host page

If you do decide to go with one of the hosts below and click through from this page, some will donate a portion of your fee back—so you can have a great host and support WordPress.org at the same time.

They're notes at the bottom are pretty funny

Host Feedback​

We’re committed to helping create a wholesome and hassle-free WordPress hosting environment. If you feel there are issues with one of the hosts listed here, please send a note to hosting dash feedback at this domain. If the situation warrants we’ll work with you and your host on a solution.

Note before contacting us: Please don’t send us legal takedown orders or threats, we don’t actually host every WordPress blog in the world. If you don’t understand that, you probably shouldn’t be sending legal notices anyway.

Be Listed on This Page​

We’ll be looking at this list several times a year, so keep an eye out for us re-opening the survey for hosts to submit themselves for inclusion. Listing is completely arbitrary, but includes criteria like: contributions to WordPress.org, size of customer base, ease of WP auto-install and auto-upgrades, avoiding GPL violations, design, tone, historical perception, using the correct logo, capitalizing WordPress correctly, not blaming us if you have a security issue, and up-to-date system software.

 

[eva2000]

Was he actually kicked out? I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that he has worded it that way specifically. I do not know if this more details are coming forward, or if Matt is revising things to fit his narrative. He has definitely had personal beef with one specific person who is part of Silver Lake, so it could very well be true.

Yeah makes more sense now.

Matt trying to lure away WPEngine customers https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/s/8trcu74IUh

 

[Forsaken]

I mean, it does clearly state they get a cut from affiliate referrals on the recommended host page



They're notes at the bottom are pretty funny

I'd have to find it, but all those hosts are owned or partnered with Automattic currently I believe.

Yeah makes more sense now.

Matt trying to lure away WPEngine customers https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/s/8trcu74IUh

This has been going on for a few weeks now, but contacting clients out of nowhere like that is shady.

 

[Arantor]

Also I was reminded by another thread, Gravatar is a service also provided by our good friend Matt Mullenweg at Automattic. I wonder if this becomes a paid-for service, and/or if this otherwise needs monetisation since I’m fairly sure part of the problem at the heart of this is Matt needs money…

 

[Forsaken]

Also I was reminded by another thread, Gravatar is a service also provided by our good friend Matt Mullenweg at Automattic. I wonder if this becomes a paid-for service, and/or if this otherwise needs monetisation since I’m fairly sure part of the problem at the heart of this is Matt needs money…

Would be difficult to monetize as there are competing services that are better now; Gravatar is just widely adopted because it was one of the earliest.

 

[Arantor]

You’re not suggesting that facts and rational thought will enter this particular story, are you?

 

[RobinHood]

Also I was reminded by another thread, Gravatar is a service also provided by our good friend Matt Mullenweg at Automattic. I wonder if this becomes a paid-for service, and/or if this otherwise needs monetisation since I’m fairly sure part of the problem at the heart of this is Matt needs money…

I was reminded about this service last week when setting up a blog article for someone on Wordpress.

You can't even upload a basic photo as an avatar for the author meta box on Wordpress, it's such garbage. I don't want to have to register with a 3rd party service or download a plugin just to upload a damn profile photo in 2024

It's a blogging platform and you can't even upload a photo of the blog author out of the box?!

 

[Mr Lucky]

It's a blogging platform and you can't even upload a photo of the blog author out of the box?!

OTOH it’s free, so you can always get back what you paid for it

 

[Arantor]

I don't want to have to register with a 3rd party service

They will tell you it's not exactly a 3rd party service, given that it is owned and run by the same company that gave you the software download.

 

[RobinHood]

They will tell you it's not exactly a 3rd party service, given that it is owned and run by the same company that gave you the software download.

You have to register an account on another website just to use the built in avatar feature, it’s bonkers

 

[Arantor]

Yes, but it's a global avatar - a whole bunch of other services use the same thing, including this very forum software.

 

[RobinHood]

Doesn't matter if it's an intergalactic avatar, you should be able to upload your own image, just like this very forum software.

Wordpress has an entire media gallery for uploading and managing media for crying out loud. After seeing all the recent drama play out though I can kind of see why it's like this. If Gravatar is also one of Matt's pet projects there's no incentive to give users basic avatar upload functionality , the likes of which has been standard for well over a decade in other software, because it will only draw traffic away from one of his other services.

Matt clearly doesn't give a **** about the end users, as demonstrated by the damage he's caused this last month. So nerfing the avatar feature for the benefit of Gravatar and not improving basic user experience is not surprising any more.

 

[Forsaken]

Doesn't matter if it's an intergalactic avatar, you should be able to upload your own image, just like this very forum software.

Wordpress has an entire media gallery for uploading and managing media for crying out loud. After seeing all the recent drama play out though I can kind of see why it's like this. If Gravatar is also one of Matt's pet projects there's no incentive to give users basic avatar upload functionality , the likes of which has been standard for well over a decade in other software because it will only draw traffic away from one of his other services.

Matt clearly doesn't give a **** about the end users, as demonstrated by the damage he's caused this last month. So nerfing the avatar feature for the benefit of Gravatar and not basic user experience is not surprising any more.

The media gallery is terrible, and people have been requesting something better for years... The official response has been said to try a plugin.

But they were able to focus on that cluster**** Gutenberg, because Matt wanted it to compete with Wix and similar competitors.

 

[RobinHood]

I agree it's very flawed, and under specked for managing and organising the amount of media that many wordpress sites need these days. The point is it's still there though, and Wordpress does handle processing images perfectly well, so there's no excuse to not allow uploading images for user profiles.

 

[Arantor]

Doesn't matter if it's an intergalactic avatar, you should be able to upload your own image, just like this very forum software.

Wordpress has an entire media gallery for uploading and managing media for crying out loud. After seeing all the recent drama play out though I can kind of see why it's like this. If Gravatar is also one of Matt's pet projects there's no incentive to give users basic avatar upload functionality , the likes of which has been standard for well over a decade in other software, because it will only draw traffic away from one of his other services.

Matt clearly doesn't give a **** about the end users, as demonstrated by the damage he's caused this last month. So nerfing the avatar feature for the benefit of Gravatar and not improving basic user experience is not surprising any more.

The whole point is explicitly not to do that, actually. The theory is based on the notion that people recognise avatars before usernames, and having the Gravatar be automatically based off email means wherever you go, there it is. A consistent presence everywhere.

You see, this is because WordPress still thinks of itself as a blog. Comments are enabled by default in every new install (and while you can nerf them, you can’t fully disable the whole thing without an addon) where this philosophy makes more sense. Assuming people actually use the comments functionality, that is… and since folks replying to posts don’t have anywhere to upload to (often they won’t even have an account), no need to give them management features.

 

[RobinHood]

A consistent presence everywhere.

Which makes no sense if you want avatars for the blog authors, not commenters, which is what I'm talking about.

A blog author is site staff, they generally don't have a presense everywhere as a commenter may.

I do get what your saying, and a see the benefit in having the option of a service like gravatar. But It's ridiculously petty and user hostile to literally prohibit a user from uploading an avatar.

 

[Arantor]

It’s a feature they don’t have to build for what amounts to a special case in their mind.