I think the problem isn't just that WP Engine doesn't contribute. I read that they pledged to, then had an internal policy not to contribute, and fired an employee for telling this to Matt on Twitter.
If that is really the case, WP Engine had to be exceptionally antagonistic against WP dot org for things to end up like this, but most people are treating it as if it is a simple conflict of interest between WP dot com and WP Engine.
>Last week, in a blog post, Mullenweg said WP Engine was contributing 47 hours per week to the “Five for the Future” investment pledge to contribute resources toward the sustained growth of WordPress. Comparatively, he said Automattic was contributing 3,786 hours per week. He acknowledged that while these figures are just a “proxy,” there is a large gap in contribution despite both companies being a similar size and generating around a half billion dollars in revenue.
I really think they could have handled the PR better by providing more information about the decision on the official announcement. "Uses WP but doesn't contribute back" is something that applies to too many. "Built whole business on WP, pledged to contribute, but then didn't" is something that applies to very few.
> I think the problem isn't just that WP Engine doesn't contribute. I read that they pledged to, then had an internal policy not to contribute, and fired an employee for telling this to Matt on Twitter.
Can you share a link? I haven't been able to find that. A prohibition on contributions seems like a bad policy, because at some point WP Engine will want a change in Core and they need the political capital to make that happen.
>It looks like people here are missing the context of the source of the issue between Matt and WP engine. Couple days ago he posted on X that wpengine has similar revenue to automattic, yet doesn’t contribute back to open source as much as they promised to (5 hour per week per employee or something like that). A wpengine employee replied to a post saying that management doesn’t allow them to contribute to Wordpress open source because it doesn’t align with KPI targets. That employee got fired the next day. That’s when Matt’s issue with wpengine escalated.
There is a part Matt talks about protecting employees who speak up about WP Engine. This was also cited in the cease and desist letter by WP Engine.
I don't how much of it is true, but I don't think he would do all of this if there wasn't some truth to it.
>at some point WP Engine will want a change in Core and they need the political capital to make that happen.
Why would they need a change in Core? WP Core is already a very stable piece of software that supports half of the internet. It's extensible enough that you can add all "changes" you want through plugins. In fact that is another issue in all of this. WP engine says they "contribute" by creating plugins, while WP org insists that a contribution needs to be a contribution to WP core.
Matt gave an interview to about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6F0PgMcKWM and although he sounded very unprepared and showed no receipts, none of what he says sounds unreasonable.
A key point on the interview is that Matt has been trying to get WP Engine to contribute for years and they kept delaying on him. People called this "extortion," but in my view it's a way an open source project found to get a corporation that profits from open source to contribute. There is a "world-famous" trademark, and to use it you need to pay or contribute dev hours. He says various hosts had the same deal, and because he never had a problem with any of the other hosts, he ended up being "naive" and let WP Engine delay and delay for years because he didn't think they would just never agree to it. In the screenshots in the cease and desist by WP Engine you can even see messages from Matt including one where it sounds like WP Engine is telling him to set up a meeting next week instead of talking about it in the Q&A, to which he responds (paraphrased) "if you're saying next week you're saying no." Even up to the last minute he still tried to get an agreement, sending a photo of the audience, and got no favorable answer.
Ignoring the trademark violation allegations, and the whole "revisions" thing that some may think sounds ridiculous, there was a part he mentions Woocommerce has a Stripe code that gives part of the revenue to WP org, and WP Engine hacked the code to give the attribution to WP Engine, which means the money that would go to WP org (com?) goes to WP Engine. I think this is technically legal because it's GPL, but it doesn't look good if you're diverting millions of dollars that would go to WP org to yourself.
From what I've seen, it really feels like Matt tried everything he could to get a commercial entity to contribute to an open source project and now he's getting the blame because their customers are getting affected by it. It doesn't help that many who use Wordpress do not understand the separation between Wordpress, the source code (that WP Engine can still use), and the CDN that provides automatic updates (which WP Engine got banned from). The millions of WP Engine users using te CDN were costing WP org money that can now be invested in a different way. I've seen some even say a court could issue an injunction to force WP org to provide the updates for free. The "free ice cream" analogy Matt uses in the interview is really apt here.
If this goes to court I suppose allegations will start getting receipts behind them and we'll have a clearer view of what happened. To me, based on Matt's allegations, WP Engine is not being targeted for being a competitor like some say, but they have been given an exceptionally favorable treatment that was unjust to the other Wordpress hosts who were agreeing to pay for the trademark, and all of this was just WP org making things fair again.
In fact, Matt even says that if they do agree to contribute 8% of their revenue in cash or dev hours, they will get unbanned. I'm not sure if they will capitulate, but just the fact it isn't just "money" but "dev hours is okay" sounds to me that this isn't about money.
While I agree with Matt's thoughts on Wordpress I don't like this sort of public shaming. If you post this kind of thing, it burns bridges that you can't mend later. How can the two organizations reconciliate after this?
Wordpress wants WP Engine to contribute to the source code because it makes money off Wordpress and uses its servers. I think this is very reasonable.
I'm pretty sure WP Engine could patch Wordpress to use its own infrastructure, so this isn't a really as much of a security risk as people claim. Distros have been doing this since forever. This isn't much different from a Youtuber getting banned from Youtube. If you build your entire business upon a single point of failure, this kind of thing can happen.
But I'd rather there was a path forward for them. Right now it's either 1) Matt gets fired as CEO so WP Engine can continue leeching off Wordpress, or 2) WP Engine has to support its own weight fragmenting the Wordpress ecosystem.
Although I use Wordpress I have no idea what people think Wordpress is supposed to be. I love Gutenberg, but everyone hates it, and some hate it because they compare it to site builders instead of WYSIWYG HTML editors. The point is that Wordpress is used by so many websites, both big and small, as a site builder, blogging platform, news platform, and even as a database and shopping platform sometimes, that it's impossible to say how it's supposed to be used.
I think if Wordpress.org makes it clear what are the costs of WP Engine to the project compared to their contributions, it will be easier for people who use Wordpress to understand their side because numbers are neutral.
> I'm pretty sure WP Engine could patch Wordpress to use its own infrastructure, so this isn't a really as much of a security risk as people claim.
Patching core WordPress is straightforward, but there's also tens of the thousands of plugins and themes on WordPress.org. Until WP Engine can create a mirror of the plugin and theme repos, there will be security risks.
The cost of providing free ice-cream to WPengine is $218,685 or 7.9% of wordpress.org total income! ($2,768,057). But if the people eating up all the ice-cream you give them for free take you to court.... then you gotta cut off that ice-cream. WPengine should apologise and starting slinging cash to Automattic.
WordCamp expenditures: $2,159,747 (82.81% of total expenses)
Meetup expenditures: $229,571 (8.80% of total expenses)
Total Meetup.com dues: $224,249
Total Meetup Venue rental & exp: $5,322
Operations: $218,685 (8.39% of total expenses) <------ HOSTING PLUGINS/THEMES ETC
I realized I had become a boomer when I saw people using the term "Youtuber" as a normal job description which, through all my life, I had thought of as a "joke" profession like "Influencer."
Now they're all real, and I'm officially boomed. Youtuber, Influencer, Content Creator, Streamer, even VTuber. I'm sure the world of professional TikTokers is also upon us.
The way I think is this: there are infinite computer tricks you can use to do all sorts of things, but how many malicious people are also good enough with computers to know about them?
For example, if all they know is the app, they may even think you NEED the app to see posts, or that you CAN'T create multiple accounts on the same app because they signed up with their phone number instead of e-mail.
Just like the smallest UI hurdle blocks onboarding users, the smallest UI hurdle also stop malicious behavior.
Not every malicious user is the hacker type. Sometimes it's just someone stalking their ex-partner. The malicious user could be an elder, could be a teenager, they could be from the U.S. but they could also be from Africa.
When you consider non-English speaking countries, expertise drops tremendously because any high level information is kept behind a language barrier.
>What if I could watch a custom edit of Starship Troopers on demand, and this edit surprised me with something new? I don't know exactly how this would look, but maybe it's interesting?
I think this is a temporary problem. In a few years many AI companies will run out of VC money, others will be only after "low-background" content made before AI spam. Maybe one day nature will heal.
It's the same problem with indie game development. Lots of people get into gamedev and when they have a semblance of a game they start to think "how am I going to get players to try it?" Most of the venues for game developers are just full of other game developers.
The biggest problem is when the game leaves the cradle of a gamedev community that is nice to beginners and is thrown into the wilderness of actual gamers that don't know how much effort it takes to make a game and don't really care. They won't mince words.
I suppose it's just a common class of error to not think beforehand what your end game strategy is going to be? Step 1: make thing. Step 2: ?. Step 3: profit.
If that is really the case, WP Engine had to be exceptionally antagonistic against WP dot org for things to end up like this, but most people are treating it as if it is a simple conflict of interest between WP dot com and WP Engine.
>Last week, in a blog post, Mullenweg said WP Engine was contributing 47 hours per week to the “Five for the Future” investment pledge to contribute resources toward the sustained growth of WordPress. Comparatively, he said Automattic was contributing 3,786 hours per week. He acknowledged that while these figures are just a “proxy,” there is a large gap in contribution despite both companies being a similar size and generating around a half billion dollars in revenue.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/23/wp-engine-sends-cease-and-...
I really think they could have handled the PR better by providing more information about the decision on the official announcement. "Uses WP but doesn't contribute back" is something that applies to too many. "Built whole business on WP, pledged to contribute, but then didn't" is something that applies to very few.