[dovin]

I've been trying to wrap my head around why this feels so wrong. If the project had been run like this from the beginning, in an opinionated way that prioritizes what the few creators of the project think are important, then that's one thing. But it seems like Wordpress has generally been the stable, boring, slow-moving project that isn't run like a personal fiefdom, and Mullenweg is trying to force it from the one model to the other. I haven't used Wordpress in years, and this drama makes me never want to use it again.

[bad_user]

Initially, I was taking the side of WP.org and Automattic; however, I changed my mind completely once they took over the “Advanced Custom Fields” plugin, and replaced it with another plugin that broke people's websites. So Matt weaponized the WP package repository, and stole the users of a well-maintained package, making WP site admins work over the weekend to fix the breakage.

This isn't opinionated, this is theft.

If the project had been run like this since the beginning, it wouldn't be where it is today. Automattic is a rich company partially due to the community around WordPress, and the trust that community has had in the governance of the project.

[usaphp]

> replaced it with another plugin that broke people's websites

What makes you think it broke someone’s website? AFAIK they just patched the security issue that wp engine team couldn’t patch because they were locked out from pushing to repo?

[slg]

It reminds me of Reddit cracking down on 3rd party apps or Twitter changing that policy and a whole lot more once Musk took over. The problem isn't necessarily the actions or policies in a vacuum. There are legitimate benefits to these approaches. The problem is it feels like these communities were built up around certain practices and there was no reason to expect those practices to change. So when there is a big change that only happens after a platform has already reached near monopoly status, it feels like a bait and switch to users because many people would have never signed up for a platform with those policies in the first place.

[Sharlin]

I guess the moral of the story is that everything must be assumed to be bait-and-switch in the presence of capital interests.

[wrs]

Wordpress has always been a personal fiefdom.

This is quite reminiscent of the Great GPL Themes Kerfuffle of 2009 [0], actually. Stakes are a lot higher now, of course.

[0] https://thenextweb.com/news/wordpress-and-thesis-go-to-battl...

[bilekas]

> Mullenweg is trying to force it from the one model to the other

There are proper ways to do that, changing the license in a next version for example is how I think it should have been done in the first place. I've said it before here but this has all the markings of being extremely petty and Mullenweg not happy with their own licensing model.

[bad_user]

> There are proper ways to do that, changing the license in a next version

All the projects doing that will soon discover that they were popular mostly because of the Open-Source licensing. Once that changes, the popularity, and goodwill go down, for the simple reason that trust gets breached and forks happen. Open-Source is essentially about the freedom to fork, and that's precisely what happens when governance fails.

Some of them will backtrack on that decision, but it will be too late; like ElasticSearch recently changing again to AGPL, except now the question is why would people choose it over the more trustworthy, open and secure OpenSearch.

There's nothing wrong with building proprietary software, but there is something wrong with pulling a bait-and-switch, betraying your community that invested in your product because of its Open-Source nature.

Matt surely knows that, and also, changing the license of WordPress is probably not possible due to them not having the full copyright. WordPress is not really theirs, despite all their contributions. Which is why this will not end well for Automattic.

[ValentineC]

> There are proper ways to do that, changing the license in a next version for example is how I think it should have been done in the first place.

WordPress is GPL because it is a fork of b2/cafelog:

https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/the-blogging-software-dil...

[bigiain]

> changing the license in a next version

Can Matt do that though? I don't _think_ WordPress has a copyright assignment agreement for contributors? So neither Matt nor Automattic nor wordpress.org nor The WordPress Foundation can choose to re-license future versions of the GPL2 or newer codebase without agreement from _all_ the contributors who retain the copyright in their part of the code.

[immibis]

That would be illegal, since Matt doesn't own the full copyright to WordPress, since it's a fork of another project.

[slimsag]

In 2021 Automattic, the company that effectively owns Wordpress, has a valuation of $7.5 billion in 2021, and revenue of $750M in 2024. It's big money.

[aldanor]

What's the net though?

[CodeWriter23]

> Wordpress has generally been the stable, boring, slow-moving project

80% annual codebase churn (according to Theo) says otherwise

[stefanfisk]

Since they started their crazy Gutenberg project things have certainly not been slow moving and stable…

[fbnlsr]

I'm probably wrong here, but my tinfoil hat take is that Matt has seen how well Taylor Otwell is doing with Laravel and he wants a piece of that cake. Granted they're doing pretty good with wordpress.com hosting, but they'd have so much more money if they licenced plugins and features the way Laravel does.

[FireBeyond]

That might be part of it, though I think the more pressing boat anchor around Automattic's neck is the money pit that Tumblr is, for what seems like very little return.