[HN Gopher] Matt Mullenweg: WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' an...
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Matt Mullenweg: WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges
community to switch
Author : joshbetz
Score : 20 points
Date : 2024-09-22 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| muchospandas wrote:
| I had a different experience from what Matt is talking about -
| people being confused when I told them "just use WordPress" and
| instead of going to wordpress.org they went to wordpress.com, not
| to WP Engine. I don't think Matt is being completely sincere here
| and just wants to bash the WordPress-as-a-service competition
| here.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Other discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628
| danpalmer wrote:
| As much as he may be right, this attack is in very poor taste
| coming from the CEO of the main competitor. By all means provide
| a feature comparison table and let customers make their minds up,
| but calling your competitor a "cancer" based on them not doing
| much open source work, or based on the company that owns them,
| that's a moral judgement that competitors shouldn't be making
| about each other in public.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I wonder if this sort of thing is ultimately going to shrink the
| market share of Wordpress.
|
| Drupal has a similar setup where the founder of the open source
| project also founded a company (Acquia) and took many $millions
| of investment. It created a lot of confusion in the market about
| what would be the terms of competition... how benevolent the open
| source "overlord" would remain.
|
| As Acquia grew its footprint, I knew quite a few companies who
| diverted investment from Drupal into other CMS ecosystems.
| Ironically Wordpress was the beneficiary of a lot of that. Within
| a couple years every "Drupal agency" I was aware of was doing
| Wordpress too. And every "Drupal host" had expanded into
| Wordpress or general hosting. Look around... Drupal ain't dead
| but it's not spreading anymore either. I know there were other
| factors, but I also know Acquia was a factor, at least
| commercially.
|
| Investors and entrepreneurs need a clear runway in front of them
| to feel comfortable making large investments. Matt seems to be
| planting himself in the Wordpress runway, at minimum as a
| gatekeeper and possibly as a straight-up obstacle. He's trying to
| wear the open source hat as he does this, but everyone can see
| the Automattic hat too. Even if he is doing this with the best of
| intentions, I think it will not have a positive effect overall.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| I had been a customer - for a decade or more - of a company that
| WP Engine acquired. A couple of years after the acquisition I
| began to get persistent - VERY persistent - calls and emails from
| their 'product specialists' who were determined to get me a
| "better deal".
|
| It turns out that their idea of a better deal was to move me onto
| a more expensive plan with lower limits than the plan I'd been on
| for 10+ years. They kept trying. I kept saying "I'm not
| interested". But I got tired out of their constant spamming. So I
| left.
|
| Over my time with them I'd spent somewhere in the region of $40k
| I think. I referred a fair few people to them as well. Not a huge
| amount in the grand scheme of things I realise, but you'd think
| it would count for something. Apparently not.
|
| I'm no longer a customer of WP Engine. I could have stayed
| another ten years. I'm taking my next $40k and spending it
| elsewhere.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628
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(page generated 2024-09-22 23:02 UTC)