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Posted this in the other thread:

A lot of the comments seem to call out Matt (right or wrong). But that’s the easy thing to do.

No one dares address the systemic issue of for profit corporations exploitatively (ab)using open source software.

There is a social contract that people should contribute back, and while it’s largely unenforceable, as it should be, when it’s happening on a systemic level something has to be done. And we are all complicit if we don’t at least say that much and spare some good will towards the guy actively in that fight at least superficially

*Following is a response to some replies on the other thread, that clarifies my points *

Matt being a poor steward of gpl is by definition not a systemic issue … unless ur claim is that many people in positions like him do what he does which is in turn caused by invariant factors?

The systemic issue is companies the world over not giving their fair share back in terms of contributing to foss.

I might agree with most of your points, I’m just trying to get people to realize there’s the local issue of Matt/wp and then there’s this global issue of companies building businesses off foss and not giving back.

I don't know how much goodwill we owe somebody currently being sued for extortion and who lied to a community about ownership of a trademark for over a decade in an attempt to take a whole community hostage when he feels like it's time to cash in. The writing was on the wall when he sold user intellectual property from WordPress.com and Tumblr to OpenAi. Was that fighting for open source?

A number of people have dealt with the maker/taker issue, for example Dries, the founder and BDFL of the Drupal project: https://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker-problem

I think we're pretty far removed from the original issue of WP Engine and WordPress and people are just trying to deal with the fallout from Matt's nuke-the-entire-ecosystem approach he's elected to take.

> A lot of the comments seem to call out Matt (right or wrong). But that’s the easy thing to do.

It's also productive. If there's enough of an uproar, then the board will remove him. They're pretty much the only people who can stop him.

> There is a social contract that people should contribute back, and while it’s largely unenforceable, as it should be, when it’s happening on a systemic level something has to be done. And we are all complicit if we don’t at least say that much and spare some good will towards the guy actively in that fight at least superficially

You don't speak for me. Contributions to my OSS projects are appreciated, but all I ask is that users comply with the license terms.

If you feel that contributions are an unwritten obligation, he's made them much harder to ask for. Everyone else who asks for them in the future will be tarred with the same brush.

Matt is burning down the WordPress ecosystem because his shakedown attempt failed. He's prevented at least 2.5 million users from receiving security updates. He's earned my contempt, not my goodwill.

> I might agree with most of your points, I’m just trying to get people to realize there’s the local issue of Matt/wp and then there’s this global issue of companies building businesses off foss and not giving back.

Drew said it best. (https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your...) If you want to require contributions, pick an appropriate license.

Hey Jeff! :)))))

That was a great article from drupal. It’s a great idea and really goes along way to help, but we still need more.

This only addresses foss projects that are hosted as an offering. It wouldn’t address how for example the pgp guy basically went broke or just the general amount of pressure maintainers of “critical” foss packages are under and are spread so thin, that it’s always a triage fire and there’s never any room to “level up” with rewrites or full code base audits. And a lot of it comes at a huge personal cost but it just so happens the people often times in those shoes end up being super noble.

Maybe this is a cynical take but year after year it really does seem the software we rely on for modern life is just a house of cards where most cards are solo devs or a handful each doing the task of atlas cus the worlds corporations just don’t give back!

My words will ring true in 10-20 years when most of these people kick the bucket or retire and all we have left will be google’s next android| fuchsia and windows server.