Avatar

Orygin

Orygin@sh.itjust.works
Joined
1 posts • 41 comments
Direct message

From what I gathered, it is absolutely a question of licensing.
Wordpress is gpl so anybody can host it and provide hosting for others. WPEngine does make money like that and that seemed to rub matt the wrong way.
So he requested more involvement from wpe, claiming they do none (factually false). Then they started trying to extort wpe using trademark as an excuse (even changing the trademark page to reflect their new stance), while also smearing them on the official channels of the project. I’m also skipping the childish behavior of blocking anybody that could be related to wpe from interacting on the official wp.org site, then using this self inflicted wound to say one of WPE plugin is insecure (because they couldn’t publish the update) and doing an hostile takeover of it.

WPE is totally within their rights to use the wp software without giving a cent back to Matt. If WP wanted payment for the infrastructure they provide on the .org site, they can change the rules to require commercial entities to pay for it (which they totally could do, but that would hurt the other players in the ecosystem). If they had a (real) trademark issue it would have been resolved under closed doors by lawyers.

there’s an expectation of contributing back or, at the very least, not exploiting the resources of a non-profit.

No, there are no expectations of contributing. It would be worded in the license otherwise (the only expectation of giving back in the gpl is that you publish the changes you did to your users). And WordPress.org is not the non profit but is run by the for-profit company that Matt is the CEO of.

So let’s focus on the actual problem: a large company exploiting a shared ecosystem to run a commercial service.

Like automatic is doing with wordpress? Don’t they profit from other devs/companies publishing plugins for them to use on their platform? (Actually not opposed to that, that’s the game of open source, but it’s a bit hypocritical to only cry when it doesn’t serve them).

Edit: From your original comment:

They could have easily avoided this situation without turning it into a turf war.

Yes, then why did Matt turn this into a turf war? He totally expected the community to take his side and turned it into a shit slinging show for all of us to enjoy.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Wait, someone edited this just to remove some hamster balls ? Weird

permalink
report
parent
reply

Yeah that’s what I was wondering. Not really following us politics apart from the constant bombardment of it on Lemmy, so I’m also curious about what other candidates exist.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Just curious, which third party would you vote for ?

permalink
report
parent
reply

I don’t see anyone trying to take away his achievement. The report and most commenters even recognize his contribution.
Also this goes more deeply than “not liking them”, he has some morally reprehensible views. I admit I haven’t read the whole report, but I have seen some of the things it touches on in the past and it’s pretty damning.

permalink
report
parent
reply

I get what you mean. GitHub and friends have pushed that back to a more centralized approach. However I think that it’s not too bad actually. Most projects tend to be centralized too

permalink
report
parent
reply

I mean, it’s decentralized alright, but it doesn’t mean it’s HA or automatically replicated. You can just use a different origin server and push/pull from it instead.

permalink
report
parent
reply

It’s a game of cat and mouse. I’d be willing if I needed to use win11 myself but for my parents it’s either gonna be Linux or a new computer

permalink
report
parent
reply

Dang, I see this as I’m waiting for my pinetime to arrive. On paper it seemed okay, and the latest versions seem to have improved the battery life. Will see once I receive it

permalink
report
parent
reply

Yeah I work in tech and I’m the only one that cares enough to use Firefox. All my colleagues use chrome or chrome with makeup.
Maybe ad blocking will be what broke the camel’s back, but I doubt more than a few will care enough to switch.

permalink
report
parent
reply