Thread

Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave

148 points · 194 comments · ilamont

hypfer · 1790451846 · focus · HN ↗
These will be words I will probably have to eat in the future (or when I research that guy's other opinions), but just based on the BS that was thrown at the guy in HN comments, this guy deserves respect for the power move of not giving a shit about these kinds of politics.
Truly an impressive play.
1. lemmetellya · 1790452277 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
2. askonomm · 1790452529 · focus · HN ↗
  HN truly is a wild place in that I don't know other forums where psychopaths are celebrated.
  1. hypfer · 1790452869 · focus · HN ↗
    Have you heard of this thing called 4chan?
    Insanity · 1790453449 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s just a shitshow on purpose though. Not a place with actual discussions.
  2. echelon · 1790452958 · focus · HN ↗
    He's indignant that WP Engine is eating his market share and not giving anything back in terms of OSS contributions.
    It's not at the same scale that AWS and GCP suffocate database vendors, but it rhymes. And it's easy to see why he's mad.
    If a very vocal part of the OSS community wasn't so averse to letting small amounts of monopolization happen, we might see open source products that reach significant commercial scale. Where a single vendor or entity can profit and grow big without irrelevant competitors abusing the license to latch onto the product. An open source monopoly could collect good margin and build ambitiously.
    It's hard to build a defensible open source business without using fair source licenses, having source available enterprise offerings, or even using an open core design that keeps important parts hidden and out of the commons. That's the only way to defend the magic bits and grow big.
    If OSS folks were more tolerant of this, we'd probably see more funding for OSS and extremely viable and defensible open source businesses.
    askonomm · 1790453294 · focus · HN ↗
    I highly doubt that version is true, though he likes to repeat it. If he doesn't like WP Engine eating his market share while giving little back (they did give back, just apparently not enough, whatever that even means in a volunteer ran open source project) then he would've not responded by pulling his own contributions off of WP.org as well, stealing their plugins, banning their developers, and so forth. Like, what even is that? You don't want to play in my sandbox according the rules that I set so I won't play in my own sandbox either? Not to mention that if there's anyone doing monopolization in the WP world, it's Matt himself, by buying up basically every WP company there is.
    His so-called "democratize publishing" persona is just a complete facade.
    FireBeyond · 1790463798 · focus · HN ↗
    Nope. WPE gave hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the Foundation and community. Hell they put $70K to the PDX event where he got on stage and shit talked them, after banning them from attending and sponsoring the event (no refund though). They give to the OSS community in plenty of resources.
    Guess who owns an irrevocable, free, exclusive and universal commercial license for WP? Automattic. They got it the same day the project was gifted to the Foundation. Matt’s claims pushed for WPE to give damages to Automattic, not the community or foundation.
    WP is OSS because it is as built on other projects and had to be.
    Matt is not the victim here.
  3. irregularbowels · 1790455793 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  4. NewJazz · 1790457262 · focus · HN ↗
    Who's a sociopath here? Is there evidence?
    SpicyLemonZest · 1790458887 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes. There's pretty extensive evidence that Mullenweg engaged in an extortion campaign against WP Engine, threatening to use his position at the WordPress Foundation to sabotage their business unless they agreed to pay Automattic a bunch of money.
    Like many sociopaths, he prefers not to draw a clear distinction between actions he's performing for his own benefit and those he's performing on behalf of others, so he often tells a very different story about this. He claims to think, and may actually think, that there's nothing strange or alarming about the open source WordPress project taking sides in a commercial dispute between two vendors.
    Indeed, I suspect if you sat down with him in private he'd explain to you that things like the Wordpress Foundation or fiduciary responsibility to Automattic shareholders are legal fictions. In his reality, he's the WordPress guy, and anything which seems to limit or constrain his control of WordPress is just some nonsense he signed off on to keep the suits happy.
    hypfer · 1790496208 · focus · HN ↗
    Genuine question:
    Would that be wrong? What makes him not "the WordPress guy"?
    Legal stuff aside I mean. Are there other people that put in significant amounts of work that he is not giving credit to/downplaying their contributions or similar?
    SpicyLemonZest · 1790523056 · focus · HN ↗
    He deserves a lot of credit for shepherding WordPress to where it's at. But like most open source projects, WordPress has become so successful in large part because of his formal and informal commitments to the open source community about how it will be managed. Guido van Rossum spent much of his tenure as the Python BDFL as an employee of Google, but it would have been disastrous for Python if he had gotten on stage at PyCon and declared that anyone who cares about Python had better stop using Bing.
    hypfer · 1790539532 · focus · HN ↗
    That doesn't really answer my question.
    Sooo.. no?
    This, genuinely, is incredible to me. Does really no one on this godforsaken platform have a single name they can drop?
    Always this meta diversion.
    If Matt is truly the bad guy here, then the good guys absolutely suck at making a convincing argument. Which would not be impossible, but dumb nonetheless.
    SpicyLemonZest · 1790567451 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not quite sure what you mean. Why would I drop a name? My point doesn't have to do with anyone's name.
    > Are there other people that put in significant amounts of work that he is not giving credit to/downplaying their contributions or similar?
    If you're looking for an answer to this question as stated, then I agree with you the answer is no. It's unrelated to what I'm talking about, which is why I didn't answer it the first time.
    jeltz · 1790461801 · focus · HN ↗
    Plenty of strong indications, including the lawsuits from former staff working for him and his mom.
    NewJazz · 1790469265 · focus · HN ↗
    It is unclear if the staff are working for him and his mom, or if his mom also has a lawsuit.
    soraminazuki · 1790528910 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes
    - <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20241026031947/http://bullenweg.com/#2024-02-22" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20241026031947/http://bullenweg....
    - <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20241026031947/http://bullenweg.com/#2022-06-09" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20241026031947/http://bullenweg....
  5. cindyllm · 1790460233 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  6. Henchman21 · 1790462059 · focus · HN ↗
    This site is rife with psychopaths and sociopaths, neither of whom have any moral compass whatsoever. This is the legacy of Silicon Valley: working so closely with tech the people become machines themselves, incapable of interacting with their fellow humans. When one has the temerity to say this outloud, well, the predictable consequences follow. :)

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