[HN Gopher] The ACF plugin on the WordPress directory has been t...
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The ACF plugin on the WordPress directory has been taken over by
WordPress.org
Author : endtwist
Score : 240 points
Date : 2024-10-12 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| Additional discussion is happening on
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821336
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This one has a much clearer title, though.
| ValentineC wrote:
| I didn't want to editorialise the title when I submitted, but
| yes, the tweet does make for a better title.
| wongogue wrote:
| But that one has matt replying to all comments.
| xenago wrote:
| Much better title, thanks
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Matt has been busy being a tool https://bullenweg.com/
|
| I feel for everyone that uses Wordpress.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| 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.
| varun_chopra wrote:
| 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.
| ValentineC wrote:
| Matt gave his reply on the nosebleed 6 hours ago.
|
| It was first brought up in r/Wordpress 17 hours ago.
| bullenweg wrote:
| 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.
| jzb wrote:
| People are signaling to you that this particular thing
| crosses a line. You'd do well to heed that and take that
| part out. Speculating on his health / insinuating things
| undermines the points you're trying to make.
| bullenweg wrote:
| Matt doesn't appear to have a problem with the website
| ("It actually is an excellent website"[1]). Please create
| a Pull Request with any changes you think necessary.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821837
| CPLX wrote:
| 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.
| Shekelphile wrote:
| He's never really been a good person or savvy in general and
| IMO people put him on pedestal before recently. This is the guy
| who bought tumblr and hasn't done anything of merit with it
| after all.
| creshal wrote:
| Wordpress is immolating itself a lot these days, what gives? Is
| investor money running out?
| coolgoose wrote:
| 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.
| sangnoir wrote:
| 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?
| wongogue wrote:
| > 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.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| That would be more compelling if the only change was the
| security patch itself. Maybe a link to the "only supported"
| fork.
| lolinder wrote:
| > voluntarily or otherwise?
|
| You say this like there's not much difference between the
| two, but there's a world of difference.
|
| One is someone yanking a repo and breaking millions of builds
| across the world and the maintainers of npm stepping in to
| fix things (in a move that is still controversial, mind you).
|
| The other is the maintainers of the WordPress plugin
| repository starting a self-described "nuclear war" with the
| plugin maintainers, banning them from the repo, publicly
| disclosing a security vulnerability in the plugin, then
| hijacking it to save the day.
|
| One is a potentially misguided step to solve a real problem.
| What Matt is doing here is just cosplaying Syndrome from _The
| Incredibles_.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| "voluntary or otherwise" is doing a _ton_ of lifting there.
| Why does the original author no longer have access to the
| repository?
| sgdfhijfgsdfgds wrote:
| Yeah. I'm a long-time WP site developer. I actually really like
| Gutenberg (which a lot of critics seem to be suggesting is the
| first thing that should go in a fork). I'm broadly supportive
| of e.g. bringing WP-GraphQL and its developer in-house, of
| adding ACF-type functionality to the core, and even of working
| to persuade WP Engine to be slightly better citizens.
|
| But I can't shake the feeling that to a lot of observers, this
| latest thing is going to look rather like a kidnapping. It's
| not right.
| sccxy wrote:
| Trust is lost forever.
|
| These are good times for Wordpress alternatives to shine.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Drupal?
| bradgessler wrote:
| 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.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Ghost.org seems pretty cool.
| mpol wrote:
| I was expecting a commercial license, but it is MIT licensed,
| which holds promise.
| kolanos wrote:
| Ghost (and similar companies) probably can't believe their
| luck with this Wordpress debacle.
| addedlovely wrote:
| Would like to use it, but doesn't seem to have any custom
| field support which is very limiting.
| mgrandl wrote:
| I migrated our company site from Wordpress to PayloadCMS and
| the difference is night and day. Payload is sooo good.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to
| ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things
| differently." - Warren Buffett
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| 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.
| normie3000 wrote:
| What's B2?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| 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.
| mirzap wrote:
| I agree. This is the best move right now. WordPress needed
| modernization anyway
| partiallypro wrote:
| 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.
| gloflo wrote:
| What is the significance of going from GPL v2 to v3 here?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| 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; and the
| reason would be patently and embarrassingly obvious.
|
| The goal I described earlier is not to make a WordPress clone
| that just happens to be free of Matt. There's plenty of low
| hanging, long ignored gripes and opportunities for
| improvement. Offer a better, Matt-free product, and you'll
| win.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > 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.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| 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?
| pxtail wrote:
| Lol, surely they will deliver - nah, they will fork core,
| mirror plugins and themes repos and do absolutely minuscule
| minimal effort to keep it secure / bacport some changes from
| main WP line to keep it compatible with most of the plugins and
| that's all.
| lrae wrote:
| Agree, except for ditching Gutenberg, unless they replace it
| with something better, like... no idea, Lexical based?
|
| But I'm sure they're already debating internally how feasible a
| fork is and if it makes sense for their business.
| henning wrote:
| 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.
| lexicality wrote:
| 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
| andrew_lettuce wrote:
| Do you think they were all of the sudden going to dramatically
| start contributing? I see this more as symbolically shutting
| them out. Nothing in this ongoing situation is about more than
| optics now
| luuurker wrote:
| > [...] and stolen [...]
|
| I'm not happy with the mess and Matt's behaviour, but you can't
| steal free code.
| xuki wrote:
| This is not about the code. WP is free to fork it with a new
| name. This is replacing the old plugin with all its reviews,
| download count.
| lolinder wrote:
| He's stolen the ACF permalink, reviews, download count,
| active installations (including the ability to push auto
| updates), etc.
|
| Sure, the code is free, but that's still a lot of theft.
|
| https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/
| esskay wrote:
| To add to that he is now violating their trademark by still
| using their name, branding and logo, all of which are
| registered trademarks. The copy you download still has all
| of these in.
|
| Way to speed run wiping out trust in your product.
|
| Any Wordpress plugin developer who relies on it for their
| livelihood should be EXTREMELY worried.
| blueaquilae wrote:
| Is there any legal operation possible?
| Sebguer wrote:
| WPEngine is already suing Matt, so this will get added to that
| pile, it seems like.
| petee wrote:
| This is the press release explaining the move -
| https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/secure-custom-fields/
| rpgbr wrote:
| 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?
| mirzap wrote:
| No, it's not.
|
| Matt is causing damage to the OSS ecosystem far beyond
| WordPress.
| mthoms wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/D7YHn4e
|
| This guy is _so bad at this_ that it 's not even funny anymore.
| noizejoy wrote:
| "Under Examination"?
|
| https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=98321164&caseSearchType=U...
| mthoms wrote:
| >LIVE/APPLICATION/Under Examination. The trademark
| application has been accepted by the Office (has met the
| minimum filing requirements) and that this application has
| been assigned to an examiner.
|
| Good catch. Looks like it was filed just under a year ago,
| and hasn't been finalized yet. If it is approved, I think the
| original filing date is considered the registration date, so
| Matt's usage would (at that point) qualify as infringement.
| However, I am NAL.
| noizejoy wrote:
| I'm not AL either, but I've been close to a couple of
| trademark applications and even a court case - so that's
| why I was curious. Looking through some of the attached
| PDF, I wonder if it was, or will be denied unless amended,
| because the words are just too common and/or the scope for
| the trademark is being cast too wide? The examiner
| apparently sent a notice to the applicant earlier this
| year, and there seems to be some sort of extension to the
| application in play. This may suggest, that unless amended,
| the current application won't be granted?
| getcrunk wrote:
| 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
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| > 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_.
| getcrunk wrote:
| Matt being a poor steward of gpl is by definition not a
| systemic issue ... unless ur claim is that many people in
| positions like him do what he does which is in turn caused by
| invariant factors?
|
| The systemic issue is companies the world over not giving
| their fair share back in terms of contributing to foss.
|
| I might agree with most of your points, I'm just trying to
| get people to realize there's the local issue of Matt/wp and
| then there's this global issue of companies building
| businesses off foss and not giving back.
| lolinder wrote:
| > unless ur claim is that many people in positions like him
| do what he does which is in turn caused by invariant
| factors?
|
| I don't know about invariants, but there is absolutely a
| trend of for-profit companies setting up a business around
| open source and only later trying to close the doors to
| lock out the competitors that the Free Software system is
| _explicitly_ designed to encourage.
|
| > this global issue of companies building businesses off
| foss and not giving back.
|
| I'll never understand this complaint about not giving back.
| I can understand if they're asking for free support and
| coercing you into saying yes, but that's rarely the
| concern, the concern is always "giving back".
|
| If you release it under GPL, then companies are obliged to
| abide by the GPL and release their modifications, nothing
| more or less. If you release it under a less restrictive
| license then they have no obligations at all, and you
| presumably chose that license specifically because it made
| the software easier to use in enterprises.
|
| If giving back matters so very much then you're not really
| interested in Free Software and you should put those
| requirements in the license. But you don't get to piggyback
| on the FOSS movement and then complain when people use your
| software freely to compete with your for profit.
| getcrunk wrote:
| As for the trend of the bait and switch. That's a fair
| point. But u can always fork and move on. And even then
| would you say that's more of an issue or occurs more
| frequently then corps not contributing back at all?
|
| Like when you factor in all the negative externalities
| what is worse?
|
| As for the license, yea I mean that's kind of the
| direction I want people to talk about.
|
| We have foss absolutists, but there's these emerging
| systemic issues now for a few decades and I think that
| the literalism surrounding the foss principles needs to
| address it more fundamentally then saying go non free.
|
| The dichotomy is not effective anymore when there is so
| much bad faith.
| lolinder wrote:
| > so much bad faith
|
| This is the part that I disagree with--to the extent
| there's bad faith, the bad faith is on the part of the
| for profits that pull the bait and switch, not the users.
|
| Making your dev-focused project FOSS gives you enormous
| tailwinds that you can ride to dramatically increase your
| chance of success. That's the draw for these VC-funded
| FOSS projects. But those tailwinds come with expectations
| that you'll respect the license and not throw a tantrum
| when people actually take you at your word.
|
| If you want to be the sole vendor for your project then
| you should make that clear from the beginning in the
| license, but people don't do that because then the
| tailwinds go away.
|
| The key point is that there's no moral issue here (at
| least not on the users). You offered free stuff and
| people took you up on it. When you gave out the free
| stuff you got a lot of free publicity with that free
| stuff. You made a trade-off, and it's bad faith to try to
| convince your fans that the people on the other end of
| that deal are doing something wrong.
| usea wrote:
| When a user uses some open source software, there is no
| negative happening. They are not accumulating some debt
| that should be repaid by "contributing back." If they
| make a million dollars on it, that makes no difference to
| the project. Agreeing to a license and then following
| that license is not "bad faith."
|
| The only damage being done when someone makes money using
| open source software, is to the ambitions and ego of a
| developer who imagined that "open source" meant "give me
| your contributions so I can build an empire."
| Fortunately, open source is for the benefit of all of us.
| Nobody owes them fiefs.
| usea wrote:
| > There is a social contract that people should contribute back
|
| No there isn't. The author gets to decide the contract, not you
| or anyone else.
|
| I am the one who decides how to license my software. If I don't
| want to require my users to contribute, I don't have to. If I
| wanted to include such an obligation, I would have.
|
| You don't get to hold users of my projects to unwritten, made-
| up obligations. You don't get to bully people online who aren't
| following your imaginary rules. My users and I have a contract.
| We both agreed to it. You don't get to step in between us and
| alter the agreement we made. How dare you.
|
| The assertion that users must contribute to open source
| projects despite the license, is an attack on users,
| developers, and a just and free society. Developers must be
| able to license their software how they see fit. You want to
| take that freedom away from me, in the pursuit of hurting
| people you don't like.
| toldyouso2022 wrote:
| I Left wp development when gutenberg came out, it was clear that
| things would have turned for the worse. Since then basically no
| new features only new bugs on an editor the majority didn't want
| and still doesn't. Now this. It feels good to be right and see
| things turned even worse than expected but what a waste. Wp could
| have improved so much and done so much more for entrepreneurs and
| startups. Instead they are stuck in 2018
| justin66 wrote:
| Imagine being an Automattic employee who turned down the
| severance offer, realizing only now that you're on the train to
| crazytown.
| maxk42 wrote:
| Abandon WordPress now. Fork it or switch technologies.
| Scaevolus wrote:
| Does anyone want to play armchair internet psychologist with me
| to speculate as to Matt's thinking here?
|
| My guess is that he was focused on these facts:
|
| 1) I own Wordpress
|
| 2) WPEngine is profiting from Wordpress and I'm not benefiting
|
| 3) This is unfair
|
| And it was stuck in his mind like a thorn, irritating him
| whenever the thought arose, and never went away. Commercializing
| open source is hard for myriad reasons, but wordpress.com is
| actually rather profitable, and yet it still bothered him that he
| wasn't getting a cut.
|
| Eventually, after many grumpy ruminations on it, the answer was
| obvious: "I deserve a cut of WPEngine's income, since they're
| using my software." No, this isn't how the license works, and
| there's no legal basis for it, but it felt _right_ and _fair_.
|
| This thought, irrational and deluded as it was, wedged in his
| psyche and fed into his deep loathing for WPEngine. All the
| subsequent actions follow from it, from the initial ultimatum to
| the various actions he's taking to fight his enemy.
|
| This is an intensely personal and emotional fight for him, and
| everyone that disagrees is an enemy too. He's just asking for
| what's fair, and yet all these ignorant commenters on the
| internet can't see it.
| addedlovely wrote:
| Matt you've lost the plot, time to step down or put independent
| governance in-place.
|
| How can you expect any developer to devote time to writing a
| plugin if the dictatorship of Matt can rug pull it at any time.
| noizejoy wrote:
| I don't have the right background/expertise to dig deeper into a
| different way of looking at this, but am still hoping that some
| writer will analyze this as a kind of asymmetrical warfare.
|
| Because looking at it that way, might open different analysis
| than most of what I've seen so far.
| davidandgoliath wrote:
| Disheartening actions by a petulant child.
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