Wordpress Drama

[Forsaken]

Well, if they don't have to, then the automattic doesn't owe them anything either.

There's some ****ery with how things are setup with Wordpress that may likely be forced to be changed (at least I hope).

Wordpress Foundation is the non-profit, and Automattic is a for-profit business that has an excusive license (from Wordpress) to the Wordpress trademark. Wordpress.org has a sub-license, but is solely owned by Matt Mullenweg, but is used for theme/plugin repository as well as updates for Wordpress itself.

While Matt and Automattic do not owe WP Engine anything, there is an expectation to not be able to arbitrarily remove access to critical infrastructure. This is also to a competitor of Wordpress.com, after Matt has tried to extort money from them.

So far 159 people left Automattic - 8.4% of the company walked.

That is 159 people who can afford to leave. The job market for PHP developers isn't exactly booming (it's still mostly React/Angular/Next/Vue etc that is in demand for web stuff right now).

If you're ever in a position as an executive or manager where you have to give the people the choice to leave or to adhere to your actions/ideology then... You've probably failed, and your company will usually be on the decline.

After watching some of the videos with him, I get an uneasy vibe from him.

He's got this public softer than soft, heidy ho neighbour Flanders like vibe, who doesn't curse, yet his actions speak ruthless cut throat CEO who is all about the money and is willing to hold grudges for years and go 'scorched earth'.

Can't quite figure him out.

He reminds me of a bipolar ex and how she would be when she was having a manic episode after not being on medication. Not saying he's bipolar, but the energy he has when he's mid-argument in some of the clips/videos recently is very similar and could just be him being highly emotive.

 

[CedricV]

That is 159 people who can afford to leave. The job market for PHP developers isn't exactly booming (it's still mostly React/Angular/Next/Vue etc that is in demand for web stuff right now).

If you're ever in a position as an executive or manager where you have to give the people the choice to leave or to adhere to your actions/ideology then... You've probably failed, and your company will usually be on the decline.

That's certainly a good point. Many aren't afford to leave and forced to stay under a toxic environment. It really is bad leadership from Matt's side. And true colors will always shine sometime.

 

[eva2000]

Matt Mullenweg: ‘WordPress.org just belongs to me’

WordPress’s WP Engine battle is dividing the community.

www.theverge.com

 

[Forsaken]

Matt Mullenweg: ‘WordPress.org just belongs to me’

WordPress’s WP Engine battle is dividing the community.

www.theverge.com

He says this, but it's listed as a project under the Wordpress Foundation: https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/

It just adds more complexity and confusion to the Wordpress Foundation and Wordpress trademark, and makes it easier for arguments to be made that his actions have been self-serving, rather than in the actual interest of Wordpress itself.

 

[@abdur7man@]

used once & never will use this ** again! better learn some coding instead of reading all this WP **. the same with Drupal.
open source are old, I still surprised, why people are still using them, it's not 2004 year now.
by looking at wp codenames changes, he defenitely suffers with ultimate unknown illness that human never faced yet.

the hardest seo is a porn websites, need ages to make success on this niche, so all those top websites are not using WP.
while WP loads 1 page in 2 seconds, another engine loads upto 76 pages in the same 2 seconds, but never mind!

WordPress, although it is a slow and bad program, is still the most used program in the world. If you gathered the users of forum programs, you would not reach half of the users of WordPress.

 

[eva2000]

Made my first attempt at full sync mirroring of all WordPress plugin zip files, checksum files and JSON metadata https://github.com/centminmod/wordpress-plugin-mirror-poc Still needs work but it's a start

Starting operating costs = US5.35/month which increases as new plugins are released and cached/stored.

 

[TLDR]

It is hilarious how there are at least 2 lawsuits going on (I lost track of the exact count).

And apparently one company listens to their lawyer and says nothing on random interviews or blogs. And what they say looks a lot like it was blessed by (presumably) said lawyer.

While the other is present like everywhere and rambling and ranting about all this, and you can already see how it is not necessarily to the own company's advantage.

I feel like we're going to have some fun with this for quite some time coming...

 

[eva2000]

Matt is stepping up the pettiness weaponizing wordpress.org security CVE system now

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He knows full well he has blocked WPEngine from updating their plugins on wordpress.org.

 

[TLDR]

Sounds like another great point in the complaint from WP Engine.

Something along the lines, "Matt banned our WPorg accounts and is now weaponizing the CVE system, knowing that we can't even upload a fixed version for everyone to update. And that is despite ACF is not even involved in all that (except we happen to own it)".

I mean yes they can, to their own servers, and they offered a guide on how to do it, but this is manual labor where the millions of installed versions can't be auto-updated because the devs can't upload an update.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Sounds like another great point in the complaint from WP Engine.

Something along the lines, "Matt banned our WPorg accounts and is now weaponizing the CVE system, knowing that we can't even upload a fixed version for everyone to update. And that is despite ACF is not even involved in all that (except we happen to own it)".

I mean yes they can, to their own servers, and they offered a guide on how to do it, but this is manual labor where the millions of installed versions can't be auto-updated because the devs can't upload an update.

So loads of customers who have nothing to do with any of this spat are likely to suffer.

 

[TLDR]

So loads of customers who have nothing to do with any of this spat are likely to suffer.

Essentially yes. Unless they happen to have stumbled upon this post:

ACF | Installing and Upgrading to the Latest Version of ACF

Recent events do not impact customers of ACF PRO. All updates of ACF PRO will continue to be served from advancedcustomfields.com and no action is

www.advancedcustomfields.com

It was posted here earlier

But yes if you "just use" Wordpress and plugins and trust auto update system to keep your stuff up to date and safe, you are fooked. Because ACF has no possibility of emailing you about this.

What a mess. And a duck move.

 

[Forsaken]

If you look through the lawsuit WP Engine

Matt is stepping up the pettiness weaponizing wordpress.org security CVE system now

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He knows full well he has blocked WPEngine from updating their plugins on wordpress.org.

This is going to backfire on him, in a very big way.

Weaponizing CVE never ends well for companies or projects, because the people who report do not take well to it. Wordpress is also notorious for being extremely slow to fix exploits, and even more so for Automattic with their WooCommerce products. There are currently several CVE that have been reported but have not been publicly disclosed yet to give time to fix the issues before it goes public, but that could change immediately if Matt wants to continue this behavior.

You don't know petty until you meet a bored security expert who stopped caring about being nice, and just wants to see the world burn.

 

[Forsaken]

Matt is stepping up the pettiness weaponizing wordpress.org security CVE system now

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He knows full well he has blocked WPEngine from updating their plugins on wordpress.org.

They've deleted the tweet now, but it was a tweet that should have never been made by Automattic and will likely just add further weight to the complaints against Matt and Automattic by WP Engine.

Here are backup image:

And here's Matt being a smarmy self-righteous ****:

To put this in perspective, 30 days is generally the minimum time alloted to fix CVE, but it is done as a courtesy rather as any strict rule. Large companies or projects often get longer (60, 90, 120 or rarely 180 days) because the fallout of critical exploits can be detrimental to end users. Wordpress (and WooCommerce) often get longer lead times on CVE, because they've often been slow with fixing issues.

More importantly, Advanced Custom Fields cannot be updated, as Wordpress.org banned their access in doing so, so this is literally just a PR move on their part, to make the company look bad or incompetent.

This is also not something that should have been done on the Automattic Twitter, but through Wordpress Foundation, or Wordpress.org as they are all separate entities, even though they are all controlled by Matt.

The post should have never been made, should never have been through Automattic (who is already being sued for multiple things this will be used as evidence for), and the fact that it has now been deleted is going to look worse on them.

this is more entertaining than any movie released in years.

 

[MySiteGuy]

That is 159 people who can afford to leave. The job market for PHP developers isn't exactly booming (it's still mostly React/Angular/Next/Vue etc that is in demand for web stuff right now).

But at this point, it's unknown how many of those 159 are PHP developers.

 

[Forsaken]

But at this point, it's unknown how many of those 159 are PHP developers.

True, but most tech adjacent jobs are still fairly unstable as far as hiring goes (with the exception of AI probably).

They did lose several key figures who were spearheading initiatives within the company for things such as AI, and one of their main team leads.

 

[Forsaken]

https://freedium.cfd/https://medium...d-threatens-me-with-legal-action-f116ac57d862 (Remove the freedium link if you want to deal with Medium's half page paywall).

Kellie Peterson was one of the people to first break the news about people being paid to leave Automattic, and has some of the conversation she had with Matt soon after her initial Tweet.

 

[eva2000]

If true that Matt makes >$700 million/yr from wordpress.com https://medium.com/@shreyzone/wordpress-open-source-under-a-veiled-threat-dfa814cefc7e, then he really isn't bothered if regular WordPress users are impacted by this drama or if folks decide to fork WordPress. It does not change his financial position. And with 43% of the web using WordPress, loosing a couple percentage won't impact him at all - like the Automattic employee's who left over his actions, he would probably be fine with those free WordPress users leaving too.

 

[Mr Lucky]

If true that Matt makes >$700 million/yr from wordpress.com https://medium.com/@shreyzone/wordpress-open-source-under-a-veiled-threat-dfa814cefc7e, then he really isn't bothered if regular WordPress users are impacted by this drama or if folks decide to fork WordPress. It does not change his financial position. And with 43% of the web using WordPress, loosing a couple percentage won't impact him at all - like the Automattic employee's who left over his actions, he would probably be fine with those free WordPress users leaving too.

So basically he could screw almost half the internet on a whim

 

[Forsaken]

If true that Matt makes >$700 million/yr from wordpress.com https://medium.com/@shreyzone/wordpress-open-source-under-a-veiled-threat-dfa814cefc7e, then he really isn't bothered if regular WordPress users are impacted by this drama or if folks decide to fork WordPress. It does not change his financial position. And with 43% of the web using WordPress, loosing a couple percentage won't impact him at all - like the Automattic employee's who left over his actions, he would probably be fine with those free WordPress users leaving too.

Almost a third of that goes immediately to payroll (and that's with conservative estimates based on 1700 employees), and doesn't account for taxes or all the business expenses related to software development and hosting.

I've seen a lot of reports that Matt himself is worth around $400m, but that is mostly based off of Automattic's value as well.

So basically he could screw almost half the internet on a whim

That is why forking exists . The biggest reason that Wordpress is successful is that it is the most widely recognized platform and has a huge community of third-party resource providers and service providers. There already exist several projects based off of Wordpress (such as ClassicPress), and if Matt does seriously destroy the Wordpress community as it is, they could easily just shift to a fork and abandon Wordpress entirely. It would be difficult, and it is unlikely but there are quite a number of large agencies already looking at alternatives because of Matt's behavior.

 

[RobinHood]

More importantly, Advanced Custom Fields cannot be updated,

It’s pretty shameful that a content management system ecosystem as big as Wordpress is still so reliant on 3rd party plugins for actual content management.

Matt should have invested some of the ungodly amount of dev hours that have gone into Gutenberg into making Wordpress a better CMS and made a native version of ACF.