[HN Gopher] WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court inju...
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WordPress CEO quits community Slack after court injunction
Author : davidcollantes
Score : 98 points
Date : 2024-12-11 18:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.404media.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.404media.co)
| petemir wrote:
| Quite a jump from the original title: "WordPress CEO Rage Quits
| Community Slack After Court Injunction"
|
| @dang could it be fixed?
| dang wrote:
| Yes, I've reverted it now (debaited from "rage quits", per
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
|
| (Submitted title was "Matt Mullenweg keeps digging his own
| grave". It's possible that the article originally had that as
| its headline, but if not, then it was editorialized, which is
| against the rules - " _Please use the original title, unless it
| is misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
| mordymoop wrote:
| I found it frustrating that the article highlights Mullenweg's
| actions while failing to even briefly describe what WP Engine is,
| and what actions they took. The story felt very incomplete,
| perhaps intended for someone who is already familiar with all the
| details. I have copied below excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on
| WP Engine because I found it clarifying.
|
| > WP Engine's main function is allowing businesses and
| organizations to build, host, and manage websites powered by
| WordPress.
|
| > During the week preceding September 22, 2024, Matt Mullenweg--
| founder of WordPress.com--began speaking negatively about rival
| WP Engine. Mullenweg gave a speech at WordCamp US 2024 that
| argued that WP Engine had made meager contributions to WordPress
| compared to Automattic, criticized WP Engine's significant ties
| to private equity, and called for a boycott, sparking internet
| controversy.[30] In response, WP Engine issued a cease and desist
| against what it characterized as defamation and extortion,
| attributing his attacks to WP Engine's refusal to pay Automattic
| "a significant percentage of its gross revenues - tens of
| millions of dollars in fact - on an ongoing basis" for what it
| claimed were necessary trademark licensing fees (later clarified
| as 8% of all revenue, payable in gross or in salaries for its own
| employees working under WordPress.org's direction, combined with
| a clause that would've prohibited forking[31]) for the
| "WordPress" name.[32] Automattic responded by sending its own
| cease and desist the next day, citing the trademark issue.[33] On
| October 2, 2024, WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg for
| extortion and abuse of power, which the defendants denied.[31] As
| a result of the dispute, WordPress.org blocked WP Engine and
| affiliates from accessing its servers--which include security
| updates, the plugin and theme repository, and more--on September
| 25, 2024, a day after its trademark policy was updated[34] to ask
| against usage of WP "in a way that confuses people", listing WP
| Engine as an example.[35] Following backlash, access to
| WordPress.org was temporarily restored until October 1 to allow
| WP Engine to build its own mirror sites two days later,[36][37]
| which the company did.[35] On the 12th, WordPress.org replaced
| the listing of WP Engine's Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin on
| the WordPress.org plugin directory with a fork called "Secure
| Custom Fields" citing a guideline that empowers the foundation to
| "make changes to a plugin, without developer consent, in the
| interest of public safety".[38] On October 7, 2024, to align the
| company's stance, Mullenweg announced that 159 employees--8.4% of
| Automattic--had quit in exchange for a severance package of
| $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher, with the
| condition that the resigned would not be able to return.[39] The
| next week concluded another offer of nine months' salary to
| attempt to placate those who could not quit for financial
| reasons,[40] though with only four hours to respond and the added
| term of being excluded from the WordPress.org community.[35]
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| WP Engine is definitely using the open source to make money,
| and is a big competitor to wordpress, but Matt is going
| scorched earth in a way that seems both embarrassing and
| ineffective.
|
| It would be better if WP Engine contributed more to the open
| source project that they make so much money from, but it's not
| illegal or immoral. Maybe Amoral at worse?
| bdcravens wrote:
| If profiting off of open source without contributing back
| substantially is amoral, there's such a long list of
| companies (to say nothing of developers with upper middle-
| class incomes) who are similarly guilty.
| buttercraft wrote:
| It's really weird for matt to say they don't contribute while
| simultaneously taking over one of the most popular plug-ins
| that _they contributed_.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| My understanding is that they bought ACF in 2022 - this
| article from 2021 doesn't mention them at all.
| https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/10-years-of-
| acf-a-...
|
| Your overall point is still valid though - they were for
| example sponsors of the very conference where mm first went
| berserk.
| buttercraft wrote:
| I don't think it really matters whether they paid for it
| with with cash or labor.
| mplewis wrote:
| MM was ok with WPE using "WP" for years until he decided he
| needed a little more money from them. Extortion to the rescue!
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| MM was an WPE investor. He sold his stake in WPE a few years
| back, but I wonder if there was some bad blood in the board
| room that is the root cause of this public battle.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The tl;dr of the dispute is that, a few months ago, Matt
| Mullenweg decided to start ratfucking WPEngine, to which they
| responded by suing to get them to stop ratfucking, and the
| court yesterday ordered Matt to stop ratfucking, to which he
| has apparently responded he doesn't want anything to do
| WordPress if he can't ratfuck WPEngine.
|
| The reason _why_ Matt started ratfucking is somewhat unclear.
| In the most charitable interpretation, he was unhappy with how
| little WPEngine was contributing to WordPress, and intended to
| create a pressure campaign to get them to do more, which
| backfired considerably. In a less charitable interpretation,
| this was merely an extortion campaign which turned out to be
| unsuccessful.
|
| Matt claims that this is all in defense of open source, but I'm
| disinclined to believe him when the legal filings in his
| defense essentially amount to WordPress (whether the .com, the
| .org, the Foundation, the trademarks, the code itself, etc.) is
| entirely _his_ personal property for him to do whatever the
| hell he wants with and we 're all blubbering idiots for
| thinking that any action he'd ever taken (like setting up a
| foundation expressly to keep it from being one person's
| personal property) could ever change that.
| whalesalad wrote:
| [flagged]
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > second, the entirety of WP was produced from "free labor" by
| people all over the world. matt is just the beneficiary. grow
| up dude. it is about time for an Ayahuasca retreat or two to
| beat down some of that monumental ego.
|
| Open Source does not mean free labour. WordPress has been built
| by people employed by Matt either via Automattic or via his
| other entities. WordPress would not exist as it is without
| Matt. To the point, if Matt didn't like you, you would find it
| hard to contribute.
|
| He may be a dickhead and in the wrong. But acting like he's
| benefiting from other people's free labour just shows you've
| never paid attention to the development of WordPress.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Dude I have been using WP since the fork from B2 decades ago.
| Insane to suggest that free labor isn't why it's where it is
| today.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Sure... That's why nearly all the top contributors through
| out time have been paid to full-time work on WordPress by
| an entity related to Matt... Because free labour...
|
| Using WordPress and paying attention to Trac are two
| different things.
| whalesalad wrote:
| There was a time where wordpress.com did not exist, you
| are glossing over that.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| But that time is long gone and WordPress being what is it
| today fundamentally depends on paid labour and not free
| labour. It would have withered to the side like other
| CMSes that depended on free labour. Nearly every top
| contributor that we can see in the WordPress commit
| history was paid.
| whalesalad wrote:
| You're mistaken friend. Just because that time is "long
| gone" doesn't mean it wasn't paramount to the success of
| this platform. A disproportionate amount of work towards
| the WP ecosystem has been unpaid.
| lsaferite wrote:
| > But acting like he's benefiting from other people's free
| labour just shows you've never paid attention to the
| development of WordPress.
|
| Is Matt responsible, financially, for a large portion of WP
| development? Yes. Is he benefitting from free labor from OS
| contributors? Yes. Is the WP ecosystem enriched as a whole by
| commercial and OS contributors? Yes.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There is this whole issue - which plays into the dispute in
| multiple ways - that treats Matt, Automattic, WordPress,
| wordpress.org, wordpress.com, WordPress Foundation, as
| essentially interchangeable and synonymous. That's part of
| the problem.
|
| This lawsuit is between two for-profit companies,
| Automattic and WPE. Automattic has investors and revenue
| streams. As does WPE. This isn't "Matt is financially
| responsible for WP development".
| mplewis wrote:
| He owns the trademark and the two websites named WordPress.
| How is he not benefiting from the free labor?
| graeme wrote:
| It turns out that Matt _personally_ owns Wordpress.org. I
| think that would surprise many people who contributed to
| Wordpress. It certainly surprised me. And likewise the
| Wordpress foundation has only three board members and only
| Matt is active.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And one of the others is one of those "parasites" as Matt
| describes them, the General Partner of a PE firm.
| mingus88 wrote:
| A massive reason WP became the de facto web CMS was the
| community, including volunteers supporting plugins they wrote
| and published for free.
|
| For example, in the early 2010s I manned a help booth at
| wordcamp. I frequented the forums and gave folk advice on
| issues they had with free plugins.
|
| This is entirely distinct from Wordpress core and I would say
| that the ecosystem of plugins was the driving force behind
| WP's rise to dominance. I neither wanted or needed Matt
| Mulenwegs blessing to participate, but he seems to have
| forgotten that lately.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| > It is about time for an Ayahuasca retreat or two to beat down
| some of that monumental ego.
|
| I mean, one of all of my ex's attempts to get people's
| validation was doing Ayahuasca (by drinking Yage). It did
| nothing for her huge ego - not even throwing up like crazy did
| anything for her.
|
| It's not the first time Mullenweg shows his megalomaniac side
| and attempt to manipulate the community for his own benefit. I
| still recall pretty clearly all the Gutenberg drama. Some
| people will never change.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Sample size of 1. Don't discount the benefits of
| psychedelics. You must be willing to open yourself up to
| change and it's not an overnight thing. Takes time, many
| doses, many experiences, lots of introspection and meditation
| to wake up.
| dang wrote:
| That crosses unduly into personal attack, even by the
| monumentally low standard of this topic. Please don't break
| HN's guidelines like this. You may not owe CEO egos better, but
| you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| everfrustrated wrote:
| >it is about time for an Ayahuasca retreat
|
| There's a non-zero chance he might have got one-shotted by
| Ayahuasca setting all this off.
|
| https://x.com/danielmerja/status/1845904144663503098
| perihelions wrote:
| Additional comments:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42382829 ( _" WPEngine, Inc.
| vs. Automattic- Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction
| (courtlistener.com)"_, 19 hours ago, 107 comments)
| curiousgal wrote:
| I mean, judging by his laughably pathetic attempt at extortion, I
| am not surprised that he didn't see this coming.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Given the legal thrashing that was just doled out, primarily
| from quoting the man's public statements, why is he still
| saying anything on the topic?
| spacecadet wrote:
| Drunk on power
| mistercheph wrote:
| This situation is tragic, wish Matt was handling this better, and
| WPEngine is a parasite.
| threatofrain wrote:
| WPEngine is no more a parasite than just about every business
| using Linux or Chrome without offering material support.
| Parasites _drain_ their host but does WPEngine hurt or drain
| Wordpress? In fact, doesn 't WPEngine just make WordPress more
| popular as a business solution?
| drannex wrote:
| None of this is surprising - anyone who was on tumblr and saw the
| absolute meltdown he had (Automattic now owns Tumblr, for those
| who lost track), and his continuous weird scorch-earth attacks on
| the queer community where he kept making up lies and
| justifications for decisions that made little sense, would have
| known he was in the early stages of a seemingly complete mental
| breakdown.
|
| He personally digitally stalked and targeted online users,
| followed them from site to site, publishing and using user
| details that weren't public, and personally started attacking and
| practically doxxing those that couldn't take or understand his
| weird (unintelligible) stances. He would even argue with random
| users by PM'ing directly.
|
| Which gets even stranger that he doesn't know to stay quiet,
| considering Automattic had to pay out to the New York City
| Commission on Human Rights, for constructing teams and moderation
| policies that unfairly targetted LGBTQ+ individuals^2. They kept
| the policies after acquisition, made them worse, and ended up
| paying out for it - just for them to end up going back to what
| they were doing.
|
| ---
|
| To 404Media: There is an _incredible_ article waiting to be
| written that has your name all over it. It was a huuuge thing
| that Automattic tried to cover up and keep from breaking
| containment. Just start with "the car full of hammers" comment
| that led to the blow-up (after a lot of targeted build-up).
|
| He self-destructed and went absolutely mental, it was weird and
| strange. This was last year.
|
| Edit: knowyourmeme^2 has a little bit of history, but it goes
| _much_ deeper. It 's a great story that Vice would have covered
| in extremely poignant details years ago, ready for the taking.
|
| ^1: https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/25/22949293/tumblr-nycchr-
| se...
|
| ^2: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/tumblr-ceo-
| transphobic...
| Kina wrote:
| The most worrying thing is that Mullenweg just seems unwell and
| has created his own reality distortion field where he can no
| longer see the absurdness and damaging nature of his actions. His
| behavior reminds me of a cult leader or a celebrity where they
| surround themselves with only people who do their bidding and
| gradually slip into this state.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I agree, this seems like it's veering from "angry rich person
| wants thing" into "petulant child throws a fit when they don't
| get thing."
|
| At least Wordpress is open source - if it disappears, something
| can take its place.
| JuanSucks wrote:
| "In October, Mullenweg announced that he'd given Automattic
| employees a buyout package, and 159 employees, or roughly 8.4
| percent of staff, took the offer. "I feel much lighter," he
| wrote. But shortly after, he reportedly complained that the
| company was now "very short staffed.""
|
| The jokes write themselves.
| nchmy wrote:
| He then offered _another_ buyout package with even more
| generous terms, with like a 4 hour period to accept it. People
| did, and then he said "yeah, um, we're gonna ask you to say on
| indefinitely because we're really short staffed"
| stevebmark wrote:
| Very happy to see the punishment start against Matt, and I
| sincerely hope it continues and escalates. Not wishing for the
| end of WordPress, but Matt clearly needed to go a long time ago,
| and repercussions for his constant terrible actions will
| hopefully force him out.
| thih9 wrote:
| Curiously, in an old tweet Matt praises the openness of the
| web[1]. I guess this is in response to the bans elsewhere
| (twitter?); but still, Wordpress was positioned as an open
| alternative.
|
| At the moment I feel uncertain about Wordpress and its status.
| Are there any plans to bring more stability here?
|
| Of all the tech CEOs to get humbled in 2024, why did it have to
| be one from an open source project?
|
| [1]: https://x.com/photomatt/status/1644390660781244417
| bravetraveler wrote:
| > Of all the tech CEOs to get humbled in 2024, why did it have
| to be one from an open source project?
|
| He, by his own account, went 'scorched earth'/overreached as a
| result of his ignorance _(either realized or purely
| demonstrated)_ with licensing.
| kayson wrote:
| What's the legal basis for granting the injuction? Also what's WP
| Engine's legal basis for their counter suit? Isn't it
| Automattic's business? Can't they refuse to do business with
| someone if they want?
| tommica wrote:
| Well put... It feels weird
| buttercraft wrote:
| It's described in the preliminary injunction linked in the
| article. I can't seem to copy-paste, but it's multipart test
| including whether the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the
| merits, and also public interest. It's under the heading "legal
| standard." Every part of the test went in WP Engine's favor.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Refusing to do business with someone is one thing. Using your
| power over a competitor to shove them out of the marketplace
| and, in effect, giving them reverse special treatment in order
| to punish them and only them, that's not the same.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42382829 links the
| paperwork including a PDF discussing that
| ivraatiems wrote:
| For those who might be wondering what comes next - IANAL, but,
| this is what seems to usually happen:
|
| Automattic has 72 hours to comply with the order. They probably
| will, plus or minus Matt being a whiny child about it. They have
| competent attorneys who are surely telling them to do so. They
| can also appeal the order, and they could even ask for the appeal
| to be granted on an emergency basis, but there's no promise
| that'd work, and usually it doesn't. The whole point of
| injunctions is that they stop things from changing until they're
| overturned by appeal or trial.
|
| If they do comply, the status quo resumes until this goes to
| trial. There's no guarantee that WP Engine prevails at trial, but
| the fact that the injunction was granted means it's pretty likely
| they will, unless facts or law materially changes in the
| meantime. The statement Automattic released suggests to me that
| this is the path they'll take.
|
| If they do not comply, things become... interesting. Of course,
| the case still eventually goes to trial. In the meantime, though,
| WP Engine can ask the court to force Automattic to comply. That
| probably looks like a motion to show cause why they have _not_
| complied, followed by further orders to comply and possible
| contempt findings. Contempt findings often come with monetary
| fines that escalate (e. g. $1,000 per day the first week, $2,000
| per day the next, and so on). It can also come with jail time,
| though I am not sure how that works in cases where the entity
| being sued is a company.
|
| It probably won't get to that, though. Refusing to comply with a
| preliminary injunction is an extremely bad idea, which is why
| almost nobody does it. Even states and government actors with
| strong political desires for things and a lot of power nearly
| always comply. While Matt Mullenweg is clearly not a rational
| actor, and clearly is willing to do extremely dumb things despite
| the advice of council, the other people who work for Automattic
| (and certainly its investors) are unlikely to be so willing to
| ignore the order of a federal court. If they do, their lives are
| going to get worse, not better, and possibly rapidly.
|
| As of this writing, the Automattic WP Engine tracker site is
| still up.
|
| (Hopefully some actual attorneys who read HN can correct anything
| I got wrong. I just haven't seen anyone write this out yet.)
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