Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said his decision to reduce his team’s weekly hours working on WordPress by 99% , from 4,000 hours to 45 hours, was designed to pressure WP Engine to drop its lawsuit against Mullenweg and Automattic
“They don’t actually make WordPress. They just resell it,” Mullenweg told Computerworld Friday evening. “If what they are reselling is no longer getting all of the free updates, they have less stuff to sell.”
“It doesn’t make sense for Automattic to pay people to work on all of these things,” he said. “We are under attack and we are circling the wagons. Our number one goal is for WP Engine to drop their expensive lawsuits against me and Automattic.”
Seems like he didn’t understand the terms of the license he used. In the short term, this will be a bad thing. In the long term, it’s probably good for society to move away from Wordpress anyway.
I had no idea WordPress did content management. I’ve only ever seen it used as C&C software. Seriously fuck WordPress.
A for-profit CEO controlling the direction of a open-source project is a big fucking problem
I’m willing to bet that 95% of Wordpress users just want a one-click solution to their non-technical needs and don’t give one shit about “innovation”. Otherwise they wouldn’t be using Wordpress.
What “innovation” has wordpress had since the dreadful new theme format?
ActivityPub integration?
It’s a plugin developed by a third party developer they acqui-hired.
I used it back in the day for the awesome comic press application. Was great for my webcomic. But now I hear thats gone. I was thinking of revamping my webcomic anyone know an alternative that I could integrate with my website?
Thought the same. There are surely more modern CMSs out there by now?
Nothing open source and as simple to set up as far as I know. I was very disappointed the last time I was looking for a CMS. Given the explosion of self hosted stuff it feels like CMS are really lagging behind.
Here‘s my quick list:
- Kirby CMS - really good flat file CMS
- Laravel with Filament - really good for more advanced projects
Other people seem to prefer Craft CMS, Ghost or Statamic. There are lots of free or paid alternatives to WordPress that are already better in most regards.
If this is what he says in public, can you imagine what’s going to come out in discovery?
So if there’s a big zero-day WordPress won’t have dev resources to patch it quickly.
This may or may not be the same as it ever was.
“Drop their expensive lawsuit against me…” that tells you all you need to know about his views on things.
‘May or may not’ thanks for the insight.
I feel like they’re feeling the crunch and this is just a sugar coated facade to cover up mass layoffs and financial pressure. Definitely a “look what you made me do!” Energy that gives off “hedging bets” because we’re likely losing vibes.
No doubt about it.
The original drama started off on shakey ground like it was about using the WordPress branding and WPEngine not contributing.
Which, okay I can see his perspective even if I disagree.
But then his not one, but TWO “If you hate my direction, then quit”. Then not one, but TWO “Well we might not return to contribute” threats.
Sounds like his for-profit company is slowly sinking and he’s looking for something to blame that isn’t him.
