Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress contributor accounts over alleged fork plans | TechCrunch
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Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress community members, including two with plans to fork WordPress.
  • irotsoma@lemmy.worldEnglish
    291·
    3 months ago

    I don’t get the logic of cutting off contributions of any kind unless they were actively sabotaging the projector something. Seems like that just makes the fork basically a guarantee. And in open source, a fork that discourages community is always going to be at a disadvantage.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    974·
    3 months ago

    remember when matt publically attacked a trans woman on twitter because she called him out about his transphobia

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      131·
      3 months ago

      Please don’t, this is the best entertainment I’ve had in months!

    • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
      40·
      3 months ago

      It’s more likely that a fork becomes dominant, making him irrelevant. That’s almost the same thing.

  • dfi@lemmy.nzEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    So does anyone know if the fork has been implemented or not?

  • YurkshireLad@lemmy.caEnglish
    36·
    3 months ago

    I think he misunderstands the label/title “benevolent dictator for life” that can get assigned to people on some really popular open source projects.

      • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
        107·
        3 months ago

        Humans can’t do then benevolent part for very long.

        You can fake it for a bit, but by and large we’re just absolutely shit at not being assholes to each other once you get outside of your family tribe or maybe your local neighbors.

        (Also having a complete mental breakdown doesn’t help, and boy howdy.)

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      351·
      3 months ago

      The original creator of Wordpress and the owner of a Wordpress hosting site. He’s been having a meltdown for months because Wordpress is being used by WP Engine, a for-profit competitor hosting company, in compliance with the license. Since then, he has:

      • Changed the trademark license and retroactively sued WP Engine,
      • Disparaged WP Engine every time he had the chance,
      • Added a potentially legally binding checkbox to wordpress.com where the user must declare their disassociation with WP Engine (which also locked out actual employees),
      • Forcibly taken control of several community-made plugins,
      • Acted like an absolute fucking buffoon the innocent little lamb who’s been set upon by the wolves.
      • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        The sad thing is that at the beginning he had a little tiny bit of justification for not liking what WP Engine was doing.

        What WP Engine was doing was completely legal. They were completely following the requirements of the WordPress license. But, it was true that they could have done more to benefit the WordPress community. Instead, they were building a huge, quarter-billion dollar business based on WordPress without either helping pay for its development or contributing meaningful code themselves.

        A competent project leader could have used the goodwill they’d amassed over decades to mount a subtle pressure campaign to get WP Engine to do more. But, instead, his approach has somehow made a private equity backed for-profit company to almost appear to be the “good guy” in this fight.

  • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1611·
    3 months ago

    Man, this meltdown just keeps fucking going, doesn’t it. Every time I think Mullenweg has finally settled down, he does something else incredibly dumb.

    Sad part is that he’s likely to get away with this pne since it’s not effecting a company with enough money to make it a legal battle.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      37·
      3 months ago

      This will not kill Wordpress outright but it might very well significantly factor into the decision of every future person deciding if they should write a plugin to support Wordpress or some alternative CMS or if they should host a Wordpress instance or something else, especially companies offering commercial hosting.

      It might even lead to a project or two that will eventually replace Wordpress in its dominant position.

      • kingthrillgore@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        I feel like a lot of people using WordPress solely for blogging can transfer to Jekyll or Hugo, and lose nothing. There’s a setup process involved, but you can’t get hacked with static pages.

        For the rest there’s always the far more top-heavy Drupal.

        • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
          11·
          3 months ago

          It’s not the same but laravel is a neat dev platform as well. Lots of community made libraries and relatively drama free.

          • limer@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            41·
            3 months ago

            I program a lot with both wp and laravel over the last years. Not sure what I want to say other than they are cool but different vibes and skills.

            Wp can be used out in the box by almost anyone who is web savvy; laravel is always needing some assembly, at the least, so the entry there is programming or deep pockets to pay that.

            Wp community and sites is probably a thousand times larger than laravel?