WordPress is the Latest Free Software Project Facing Calls to Expel the Chief
Expulsions like these create more problems than they can ever solve
As someone who knows WordPress very well and was involved in it 20 years ago (I stopped when WordPress was becoming a company, named after Matt, but I'm still very visible in mailing lists' archives and old forums) I want to comment on the latest noise or even "lynch mob". As one of the very first users of WordPress.com I communicated with Matt in person and I consider him to be a polite and rather nice person. He's even nicer than Linus Torvalds (in my experience), but there are similarities I'll discuss a little later. Modesty matters a lot, Theodore Ts'o explained (he insisted Torvalds was humble and didn't claim credit for other people's endeavours).
A lot of the current mess started because of a blog post titled "WP Engine is not WordPress" (to many people, WP and WordPress mean the same, even the official podcast of WordPress is called "WP Briefing" (latest episode mentioned in the sister site)).
The controversial blog post was pinned or penned for the official WordPress(.org) site and the company's site posted something to say: "We’re not talking about changing Tumblr. We’re not turning Tumblr into WordPress." (Nothing controversial about that; they swallowed Microsoft's MSN Spaces and then Tumblr, then consolidated for efficiency and consistency)
automattic.com does not write articles or blog posts very often.
I was rather appalled to see strong reactions to that blog post. At first I could barely believe what I was reading. Kev Quirk, whom I follow over RSS and generally respect, wrote:
Wow, Matt, salty much? This post is terrible and just screams ”I’m jealous of their success! Come use my service instead!”In my experience revisions were nothing but a pain in the arse anyway. I don't blame WP Engine for disabling them.
You should probably take this post down, Matt. It’s fucking awful.
Not really. Opinionated? Maybe.
But wait, some people went even further (than the above).
To be clear, I have my criticisms of WordPress (even if I still manage about 10 WordPress sites) and 2 days ago I explained why Techrights abandoned it (others like kernel hackers do the same). But WordPress is very good for particular types of sites and it's not evil. A lot of the recent controversies seem to boil down to poor communication or miscommunication.
I already experienced some problems of miscommunication with Matt.
Many people won't know (or remember) this, but before Git and when SVN was all the rage Matt and his mate from Cisco (US) locked out Mike Little (WordPress cofounder, a black man from Stockport, which is near Manchester "proper"). I fought this injustice for Mike, who in turn worried it would "muddy the water"; eventually, after some prodding, he regained SVN access. IOW, Mr. Mullenweg does have some "control freak" track record. That was nearly 20 years ago and Matt was still a teen or just about 20, so this was sort of understandable, even excusable.
Should Mr. Mullenweg be kicked out of his own project? Of course not!
This is getting ridiculous. They almost did this to the person who had founded Mastodon. It's like each time they disagree with someone they leap to demands of a sacking/resignation. No mediation or anything?
Rodrigo Ghedin just wrote about "Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and founder and CEO of Automattic", arguing (in the title that "Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP"!
Come on! Seriously???
He updated it with "[a] colaborative Google Doc with lots of reasons that justify asking Matt to step down."
Oh, yes. The cancel mob. We saw this recently with Nix/NixOS. They basically set up a Web site that's a hatchet job, threatening to advertise it in public unless the founder resigned or stepped down. And it worked! Soon afterwards their true motivations became clear, but that's a story for some other time...
Ghedin says that "WP Engine is suing Matt, WordPress, and Automattic, per Matt himself in this Reddit thread. On Saturday (21st), Matt published a more intense and fiery version of his rant against WP Engine on the WordPress.org blog, the FOSS project he leads as WordPress Foundation chairman."
Just because they sue does not mean they have a legitimate case. Anything or anyone can file a lawsuit. One just pays a fee. The courts and the lawyers love it. Free money!
Ghedin says WordPress is a thing "which has a hosting service literally called WordPress.com, distinct from the FOSS project WordPress.org — an intentional yet obvious confusion that everyone who interacts with WordPress struggles to understand and has benefited Automattic immensely since ever."
Maybe they have money problems; they recently got into trouble for selling their data for so-called "hey hi" (AI). Many users of WordPress.com were pissed off and Ryan ("BaronHK") nearly stopped posting due to this.
Just to be clear, "Wordpress" or "WordPress" (the origin of this name used to be documented prominently) was a fork of someone else's work... a Frenchman who had made b2. So it seems wrong for WordPress to do an epoch revision like Linus Torvalds. They didn't start from nothing. And originality myths ought not illuminate double-standards. WordPress stands on the shoulders of giants who stood there before it existed and when Matt was still just a young boy with little coding experience.
"I really like WordPress," Ghedin adds, "as I’ve stated many times, but Matt has become an irresponsible and damaging actor. He urgently needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership, or he risks undermining WordPress’ popularity and driving the community away."
Not really. Stop going as far as this. It's not helping.
My gut feeling is that Mr. Mullenweg must have been provoked to make such an utterly tactless post (with the word "cancer"); he's a nice, calm person, I've known him and his blog for ages (I know him for 20 years already and last sent him E-mail less than a year ago). I still have some connections in this community and in a coffee shop I went with Rianne to (only some weeks ago) I had met in person the other co-founder, Mike Little... I fought for Mr. Little when Matt pushed him out around 2005. And it seemed to have worked. Eventually Matt did the "Right Thing". Mr. Little got some justice. He was back in SVN.
Stop treating Matt like a misguided toddler. He's an adult and there are adult ways to deal with the current situation. █