[HN Gopher] Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of con...
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Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors
planning a fork
Author : impish9208
Score : 151 points
Date : 2025-01-11 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I haven't followed this whole controversy closely but I don't see
| a problem with this personally. It's aggressive but this person
| spent most of their life building Wordpress to what it is, giving
| it dedicated focus for a couple decades. Why should WPEngine or
| others get to suck up the money from that?
| stonogo wrote:
| I didn't know someone who worked on a piece software for a long
| time was entitled to every dollar everywhere associated with
| it! I'll have to send some emails; I think I've got some money
| inbound.
|
| It's ironic he's so terrified of someone forking Wordpress,
| since Wordpress itself is a fork.
| mixdup wrote:
| >I didn't know someone who worked on a piece software for a
| long time was entitled to every dollar everywhere associated
| with it!
|
| Parent comment OP must work for developer relations at Apple
| slyall wrote:
| Suck up money from an open source project? Others making money
| from an open source project is kinda the point of open source.
| Also the people whose accounts are being deactivated have by
| definition contributed to the project in the past. It's not
| just one guy who created it all.
|
| This is a wordpress fork that will cost people to run and
| assuming WPEngine is supporting it it'll cost them money to
| support.
| echoangle wrote:
| > Others making money from an open source project is kinda
| the point of open source.
|
| It's always interesting when people become personally
| offended when someone dares to make money off of the project
| they personally open sourced before. Why would you license
| your stuff with a license that explicitly allows that if
| you're salty about the consequences later?
|
| Maybe chose a license you actually stand behind and can live
| with.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| But how else will you be able to use other people's
| contributions for free and market yourself as open source
| otherwise??
|
| That's really the crux of this OSS pushback, people want
| all the benefits of being open source, like free labor and
| marketing, without wanting the ostensible cons.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Why should WPEngine or others get to suck up the money from
| that?
|
| Because that person chose a license that allows that for a
| start?
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Wordpress itself is a fork.
| boredtofears wrote:
| I didn't know that. What did it fork from?
| amiga386 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress#History
|
| > b2/cafelog, more commonly known as b2 or catalog, was
| the precursor to WordPress
| threatofrain wrote:
| There's a good argument to be made that entities like WPE
| actually make WP more popular and viable as a solution. WPE is
| no more "sucking" things up than any other business which
| relies on open source software.
|
| Open source software is about a specific kind of spirit, a way
| of relating to the community, and if you don't have that spirit
| then you shouldn't get the corresponding benefits of viral
| spread, contributions, increased credibility, or community
| goodwill.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Mullenweg is a cuckoo. He did not create Wordpress and yet has
| managed to closely associate the product with his own persona
| and ever since has spent most of his life wringing money out of
| Wordpress.
|
| He is now annoyed that someone else has been better at
| extracting profit from something that - going by what he says -
| he sees as his personal fiefdom.
|
| I really dislike WP Engine because they ruined Flywheel, one of
| the best companies I've ever dealt with (and to which I paid
| tens of thousands of dollars over my lifetime as a customer of
| Flywheel).
|
| But Mullenweg is coming off as completely unhinged.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Mullenweg is a cuckoo. He did not create Wordpress and yet
| has managed to closely associate the product with his own
| persona and ever since has spent most of his life wringing
| money out of Wordpress.
|
| The dude literally one of the top-ever contributors to
| WordPress. He's number 6 on the GitHub contributor graph with
| over 1000 commits. Him and Mark Little started WordPress.
| He's also the person who has funded most of the development
| either via his own private company or via Automattic.
|
| > He is now annoyed that someone else has been better at
| extracting profit from something that - going by what he says
| - he sees as his personal fiefdom.
|
| Another falsehood. Automattic makes more money than WP
| Engine. He's basically trying to force them to either
| contribute to WordPress to to pay Automattic. This latest
| move seems like a move to force WP Engine to fund a fork or
| help fund development of WordPress.
| throw646577 wrote:
| Whatever the latest move is, it's clearly a dick move. He
| is in a bad place, if he wins anything it is going to be a
| pyrrhic victory, and he needs to stop.
|
| If he really does still have Neal Katyal working on
| whatever the merits of his actual case are, I am gobsmacked
| that he is being allowed to behave this way. Katyal is not
| an idiot or a troll, and this picture does not make sense
| to me.
|
| Some of his bullshit has already been smacked down by the
| court: I don't get why he is still doing this.
|
| Matt: stop.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| I don't trust his commits, given how he's acted recently.
|
| He's funded the development _via his own private company
| which profits from wordpress_ - and Automattic (also funded
| by profits from Wordpress - plus VC and private equity
| money derived from his relationship with Wordpress), which
| honestly seems to be a fairly autocratic vanity fiefdom
| primarily concerned with promoting Mullenweg's interests.
|
| So yeah, he's got lots of GitHub commits, but given his
| recent dealing with staff, I would not really be surprised
| if those were just proxy commits with the code written by
| others but cuckoo'd by him. That's just speculation - but
| given how nosebleed-crazy he seems to be, I'd not be _at
| all_ surprised.
|
| To clarify: I didn't say WP Engine was making _more_ money,
| just that they were _better_ at extracting profit.
|
| "Better" in this context (from the Mullenweg view) likely
| means "a threat to Mullenweg's vanity empire because they
| might pull customers to their business at the expense of
| his".
|
| > He's basically trying to force them to either contribute
| to Wordpress to to pay Automattic
|
| Even though (a) they don't have to and (b) "contribution"
| can mean many things including driving awareness and
| adoption or "marketing contribution" or providing a visible
| and simple entry point that sustains usage and development
| or "ecosystem viability"contribution if you will.
|
| Mullenweg is pissed because they threatened his fiefdom.
| Plain and simple.
|
| His nonsense regarding the trademarks says it all.
|
| Edit: I say this as someone who has used Wordpress for two
| decades, and spent a significant amount of money on
| products and services related to Wordpress. I moved my
| Wordpress-based business off Wordpress a couple of years
| ago (because it was too messy), and I've never been so glad
| as I was when this nonsense started.
| throw646577 wrote:
| ???
|
| This is a fair bit of silliness now I'm afraid. Like him
| or loathe him (and he's making it so very easy to do the
| latter), Mullenweg was one of the only developers of WP
| for years back when it was starting. He wrote it part
| time, he actually quit his job to work on it full time,
| and he was still a teenager. His energies are why it
| exists.
|
| Has it all gone horribly wrong in the last couple of
| years? Yes. Has the money situation complicated things?
| Yes. But we can state these things without constructing
| an alternate, incorrect timeline.
|
| He's surely acting like this in part because he does so
| closely identify with something he risked his livelihood
| to build as a pretty prolific young developer.
|
| There are plenty of things he's done recently that are
| ridiculous and bogus enough that they can be criticised
| without imagining stuff.
|
| Focus on the actual issues.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Ok Matt x
|
| But to respond to your specific point: I don't trust his
| commits. That's my opinion based on the completely insane
| egomaniacal behaviour he's displayed recently. I wouldn't
| be surprised by anything, and it's really not something
| that requires a huge leap of imagination to say 'from an
| early stage this guy was driven by ego, named his company
| Automattic, and engaged in poor and deceptive dealings
| around the trademark for Wordpress - so why is it so
| unlikely that he could have potentially hired people to
| write code that he claimed under his moniker?'
|
| Given his dealings with some staff - or potential hires -
| in recent times, it really wouldn't surprise me at all.
|
| I'm not saying he has done this - I'm saying that I,
| personally, do not trust those commits given his recent
| behaviour.
| throw646577 wrote:
| (There is some intriguing but immature downvoting going on
| here, isn't there?
|
| To whoever: I know downvoting-for-disagreement is the HN
| way, but it is IMO cowardly. Reply with a critique if your
| lawyers will let you)
| saaaaaam wrote:
| From the guidelines:
|
| > _Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information,
| but please don 't create accounts routinely. HN is a
| community--users should have an identity that others can
| relate to._
|
| > _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading._
| throw646577 wrote:
| > Mullenweg is a cuckoo. He did not create Wordpress and yet
| has managed to closely associate the product with his own
| persona and ever since has spent most of his life wringing
| money out of Wordpress.
|
| This is quite inaccurate. Sure, WP started as a fork of b2,
| but it's not true to say Mullenweg is _a_ cuckoo. WordPress
| is something he personally did extensive development work on
| to evolve it to where it is today, and he hired many of the
| people who did most of the rest of it as it became
| commercially viable. Even early on it was a quite different
| product to b2, which was at best fledgling, and it is fully
| fair to say that he is one of its creators. He wrote loads of
| it at the beginning; it 's his thing as much as it is any
| other developer's, if not more. We should not diminish that
| achievement by pretending he is just leeching off something
| that in fact he substantially built.
|
| Now, whether he _is cuckoo_ is another matter; as you say, he
| appears unhinged. Something has happened to him such that the
| more self-absorbed tendencies that used to work quite well in
| a BFDL context have gone very wrong. He always used to be
| able to come across as _the guy who could help sell this so
| it will all work for everyone in the ecosystem commercially_
| , and could be likeable and encouraging as a community
| figure, but something has broken.
|
| I am sad for him because this kind of loss of control is
| ultimately humiliating him. It's time to take off all (or all
| but one) of the hats, and find something else in life.
|
| You are right about WP Engine: I am no fan having had
| considerably less than optimal customer service experiences
| with them.
|
| But this is fucked up.
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| If you haven't read the details, you should probably educate
| yourself before making a statement like this.
|
| Matt's behavior has been borderline sociopathic, and it's
| actively harming people, to say nothing of the Wordpress brand
| itself.
|
| Mullenweg needs to step away from WP and spend a few months in
| therapy.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Because of the GNU Public License he slapped on there. Matt was
| free to change the licensing model at any time in Wordpress's
| history, so it's really quite befuddling when people like these
| contributors encounter a bait and switch, that apparently
| forking a GPL'd project is against some terms of service.
|
| EDIT: was Wordpress GPL'd all along because it's a fork of
| b2/cafelog?
| throw646577 wrote:
| IIRC yes.
| jrhey wrote:
| This just in, the creator of UNIX wants to deactivate your
| MacBook. Just yours. Sorry, hope you understand.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The original actions may have been motivated by a sincere
| desire to get a freeloading entity to contribute more to the
| project (although later events make me doubt that sincerity).
| But that is the cost of open source: all open source licenses
| let freeloaders use your products without contributing back; if
| you don't like that, you should have written your own license
| instead.
|
| What Matt has done, though, is far worse. In his legal filings,
| he has effectively asserted sole proprietorship of the entire
| WordPress ecosystem, access to which is gated solely on his
| whim. Furthermore, he has also argued that previous steps to
| create a non-profit foundation that is independent of any
| dictatorial powers were void from the start, and that anyone
| who thought such actions genuine are laughable idiots. His
| actions are anathema for an open source project, and even for a
| corporate product, quite life-threatening.
| croemer wrote:
| techcrunch.com seems down across the board right now? [20:27 UTC]
| robocat wrote:
| Here's the archive link to read the article:
| https://archive.is/1YKki
| croemer wrote:
| Which I created to read the article in the end :)
| croemer wrote:
| https://archive.is/1YKki
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Aligning Automattic 's Sponsored Contributions to WordPress_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138
|
| _WordPress: Joost /Karim Fork_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42662801
| itronitron wrote:
| and also:
|
| Forking is Beautiful - WordPress News >>
| https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/
| sneak wrote:
| People who don't support forking don't actually support the
| concept of open source/free software.
|
| Forking is essential.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| No one should care if matt is unpleasant when they can just
| fork and be done with him.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| That disregards the value and recognition of the Wordpress
| brand beyond people who understand the concept of forking.
|
| The problem is that the tens of thousands of small businesses
| who placed their trust in Wordpress will be damaged by this.
| I know - anecdotally - that many of those people like
| Wordpress "because it is free" (like both beer and speech)
| and because they know - even fuzzily - that because of that
| there's lots of cool useful stuff that is available.
|
| Now, sure, a lot of that cool useful stuff will still work
| with a fork. But it splits the message and gradually - not
| overnight - people developing that cool and useful stuff may
| lose faith and do something else.
|
| What Millenweg is doing hits at the very heart of what open
| source means - and what community means - and is, as far as I
| can see, an absolutely cynical move made in the pursuit of
| profit and vanity.
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| I agree with you.
|
| I run a business that is invested in the WordPress
| ecosystem.
|
| It's going to be a non-trivial endeavor to get a fork
| seriously running and reliably delivered.
|
| In the meantime the community has to suffer this clown's
| further antics.
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| What the fork is he thinking?
|
| (Sorry I'll see myself out)
| gpm wrote:
| Huh, the injunction against "blocking, disabling, or interfering
| with WPEngine's and/or its employees', users', customers', or
| partners' (hereinafter "WPEngine and Related Entities") access to
| wordpress.org;" [0] is still in effect right? There's nothing on
| the docket saying otherwise...
|
| These contributors are "partners" under the common meaning of the
| word right? After all the tweet [1] that Matt links to from his
| own blog post [2] says
|
| > We are committed to working with Joost, Karim, and other
| respected voices in the community to ensure WordPress's future is
| stronger than ever.
|
| That sounds like a partnership to me.
|
| [0]
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...
|
| [1] https://x.com/wpengine/status/1870242287218790849
|
| [2] https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| That does not sound like a partnership at all. It sounds like
| an intent to work with the community.
| gpm wrote:
| Is "committed to working with" not a subset of the class of
| "partners" in your vernacular? What do you think is required
| to be "partners"?
|
| And it names the specific members of the community, Joost,
| Karim, who subsequently had their accounts deactivated, not
| just the community at large.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > What do you think is required to be "partners"?
|
| We're not working on vernacular definition here, we're
| working on legal definition. And while I'm not sure of the
| particular definition that's going to be in play, I
| strongly suspect that the actual definition is going to
| require some sort of "meeting of the minds" and (not
| necessarily written) partnership agreement to qualify as a
| "partner" for the purpose of the injunction.
|
| "We are committed to working with [...] We stand ready"
| isn't strong enough to actually constitute a partnership,
| I'm pretty sure--it is at best an expression of intent to
| make one.
| gpm wrote:
| > We're not working on vernacular definition here, we're
| working on legal definition
|
| Indeed we are not, but absent various exceptions the
| legal definition of a term _is_ its ordinary meaning.
|
| I don't know if there's a history here of courts
| interpreting (or legislatures defining, or so on)
| "partner" in a particular technical way that would cause
| a deviation from that default, I'm certainly not going to
| try and prove that negative, but as a starting point for
| an informal discussion on the internet it's a reasonable
| guess that there is not.
| andypants wrote:
| > with WPEngine's
|
| "WPEngine's" being key here. Some of the banned people are
| _wordpress_ contributors, unrelated to WPE. The other banned
| people are not contributors at all and seemingly the only
| reason they were banned is that matt is angry at their tweets.
| gpm wrote:
| You can't cut "WPEngine's" off from the disjunctive that
| follows.
|
| > and/or its employees', users', customers', or partners'
|
| That clause is why I discussed the evidence that the people
| banned seem to me to fall under the meaning of the word
| partners.
| ValentineC wrote:
| The TechCrunch headline is not accurate. As far as I understand,
| none of the people whose WordPress accounts were deactivated were
| planning a fork.
|
| The current top comment and discussion on this Reddit thread
| provide good context:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hylx50/matt_tro...
| maxk42 wrote:
| He's now actively hostile to the principles of open source.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Now?! The dude hijacked a plugin.
| endofreach wrote:
| Which was actually not at all hostile, but explicitly part of
| the license... which... well, i better not get into this. I
| don't even care.
| itronitron wrote:
| _" Collectively, de Valk and Marucchi contribute around 10 hours
| per week to various aspects of the WordPress open source
| project."_
|
| Is that all it takes these days?
| iambateman wrote:
| This is - without question - the best thing that could happen for
| their fork. It's generating 100x the amount of attention they
| would've gotten otherwise.
|
| I've known about Joost for many years and have a ton of respect
| for his work. Best of luck making this happen!
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| If they weren't planning a fork like one of the other comments
| suggests they totally should now because the have the media
| initiative, people will be looking for it. Strike while the
| iron is hot basically.
| legitster wrote:
| Oh man. This isn't just "some contributors". Joost is basically
| one of the founding fathers of the Wordpress ecosystem. Him
| getting deactivated is like Stalin assassinating Trotsky.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > _This post was updated to clarify that de Valk and Marucchi
| haven't specifically said they have planned a fork,_ and that
| they were hoping to create mirrors for the plugins and themes
| repositories, while also offering to lead on the next release of
| WordPress.
|
| The plan was to scrape the site and set up an alternative, not to
| fork Wordpress. The headline was deliberately written to deceive.
|
| -----
|
| edit: that being said, a distributed model would be best for all
| situations like this. I still can't get over the fact that Rust
| has a _github_ dependency. And I 'm sure they're not the only
| one.
|
| https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/326
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Messy Wordpress drama is messy Wordpress drama though, and
| that's the problem, whatever the truth of one or another story.
|
| Have I unflinchingly recommends Wordpress to dozens of people
| over the years? Yes.
|
| Have they gone ahead and used it? Yes.
|
| Have I helped them get set up? Yes.
|
| Was it worth staking a little bit of my reputation on Wordpress
| saying "this will just work, and when it doesn't there are
| loads of people who can help"? Yes.
|
| Will I continue to do that when there is this insane level of
| Mullenweg-induced teenage-boy-angst highschool drama
| surrounding Wordpress? Hell no.
|
| And that's the problem. This nonsense kills the community
| goodwill around the software. And that's really really sad, and
| all of Mullenweg's making because his ego has run away with
| itself.
|
| It must be really tough being a "software celebrity" for your
| entire adult life. But it seems like his psyche has got stuck
| when he got "famous".
|
| You see this with kids in bands who get too rich, too famous,
| too fast - and the fallout is similar: destroy everything in a
| bonfire of vanity.
| curiousgal wrote:
| SDE Matt strikes again! This guy is outright pathetic.
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