Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork | TechCrunch
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Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress community members, including two with plans to fork WordPress.
  • kalleboo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    6 hours ago

    They weren’t even planning to create a fork.

    Basically Matt interpreted their “we’re going to take over work within Wordpress since Matt abandoned it” as “we’re taking over Wordpress from Matt” and is telling them through some tortured rhetoric “you aren’t Wordpress, I’m Wordpress, you go do it in a fork instead”

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    653·
    10 hours ago

    remember when matt publically attacked a trans woman on twitter because she called him out about his transphobia

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1902·
    12 hours ago

    This is what happens when you feel ownership over a community.

    He thinks “I built this community” and to an extent he’s correct, but as with the nature of communities, it doesn’t matter if he helped build it, the community is by definition made up of the people of the community… not just the guy who spearheaded things way back in the day. Especially something like an open source project, if he wanted this level of control he should have kept it closed source.

    If you think you own your community, you’re in for a bad time.

  • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    106·
    12 hours ago

    Man, this meltdown just keeps fucking going, doesn’t it. Every time I think Mullenweg has finally settled down, he does something else incredibly dumb.

    Sad part is that he’s likely to get away with this pne since it’s not effecting a company with enough money to make it a legal battle.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      11·
      8 hours ago

      This will not kill Wordpress outright but it might very well significantly factor into the decision of every future person deciding if they should write a plugin to support Wordpress or some alternative CMS or if they should host a Wordpress instance or something else, especially companies offering commercial hosting.

      It might even lead to a project or two that will eventually replace Wordpress in its dominant position.

        • mesamunefire@piefed.socialEnglish
          5·
          6 hours ago

          It’s not the same but laravel is a neat dev platform as well. Lots of community made libraries and relatively drama free.

          • limer@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            18 minutes ago

            I program a lot with both wp and laravel over the last years. Not sure what I want to say other than they are cool but different vibes and skills.

            Wp can be used out in the box by almost anyone who is web savvy; laravel is always needing some assembly, at the least, so the entry there is programming or deep pockets to pay that.

            Wp community and sites is probably a thousand times larger than laravel?

  • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
    21·
    9 hours ago

    just filing this away…

    … t… u… v… w… x… woops. back up.

    w.

    there we go.

    right before xfree86 in the file of forgotten projects that fucked-up big, and lost.

  • thejml@lemm.eeEnglish
    591·
    12 hours ago

    So, someone else forks it and then the contributors just fork that one. This is dumb gate keeping when there are other gates readily available nearby.

    Pretty sure no one told this guy how FOSS is supposed to work or what licensing even means.

    Best case scenario here he’s basically asking for is that the open source community forks this to a new project, stops contributing at all to the official one and since he’s announced he will literally have one developer work on this (45hrs per week, down from 4000 supposedly), the new fork becomes the defacto standard and his company is left peddling old wares full of bugs and exploits no one wants.

  • YurkshireLad@lemmy.caEnglish
    23·
    12 hours ago

    I think he misunderstands the label/title “benevolent dictator for life” that can get assigned to people on some really popular open source projects.

      • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
        66·
        10 hours ago

        Humans can’t do then benevolent part for very long.

        You can fake it for a bit, but by and large we’re just absolutely shit at not being assholes to each other once you get outside of your family tribe or maybe your local neighbors.

        (Also having a complete mental breakdown doesn’t help, and boy howdy.)

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      201·
      9 hours ago

      The original creator of Wordpress and the owner of a Wordpress hosting site. He’s been having a meltdown for months because Wordpress is being used by WP Engine, a for-profit competitor hosting company, in compliance with the license. Since then, he has:

      • Changed the trademark license and retroactively sued WP Engine,
      • Disparaged WP Engine every time he had the chance,
      • Added a potentially legally binding checkbox to wordpress.com where the user must declare their disassociation with WP Engine (which also locked out actual employees),
      • Forcibly taken control of several community-made plugins,
      • Acted like an absolute fucking buffoon the innocent little lamb who’s been set upon by the wolves.