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Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

(torment-nexus.mathewingram.com)
154 points davidandgoliath | 4 comments | 17 Oct 24 18:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.634s | source
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codegeek ◴[17 Oct 24 20:55 UTC] No.41873704[source]▶
Mullenweg just keeps digging. He is the only person I have ever seen interacting in such a petty manner that he made a company backed by Private Equity look like a victim. If Trademark was the issue, why did it take him over a decade ? Why is he not going after all the other gazillion WP providers that use similar phrase on their website ? We all know the answer. The only company (WP Engine) that beat his for profit company (wordpress.com). He is just salty.
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1. pessimizer ◴[17 Oct 24 22:06 UTC] No.41874296[source]▶
What you've said is completely true, but I still can't detect any bad behavior here. He stopped supporting a company that was threatening (not unfairly) his company with his software. Why would he be obligated to justify that?

If you built your business next to mine, and I shared e.g. my water infrastructure with you for free or for a nominal fee, then one day your business got large enough to threaten my business, am I obligated to let you keep using my water, or should you have figured something else out long ago?

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2. CBarkleyU ◴[17 Oct 24 22:43 UTC] No.41874561[source]▶
That analogy doesn't fit. What actually happened is that someone shared with you how they do mining contingent on the fact that if you use that knowledge or add to it, that you have to share it as well (WordPress was a fork off of b2/cafelog)

You did so, but turns out that other people are way better at utilizing that knowledge than you are. You throw a hissy fit on the internet. Everybody turns against you, even people who think that in essence you're right.

3. bigiain ◴[18 Oct 24 00:41 UTC] No.41875304[source]▶
I'd love to see the receipts where Automattic is paying 8% of their revenue to Rasmus Lerdorf or a company he's in control of?

Seems totally fair, right? WordPress is 100% reliant on PHP and getting updates, new features, and security fixes for free, none of which the PHP project is obligated to provide?

Surely Automattic, a company valued at over 7 billion with annual revenues of over 700mil is happily paying Rasmus 50 odd million a year?

No? Why not? Are the rules different for WPEngine and Silver Lake compared to Automattic and Blackrock/Alta Park?

And, you know what? You can't run Wordpress without Linux, Windows, macOS, and maybe a few *BSD operating systems to run it on. I guess Matt's owes Linus and Bill and Tim, and a bunch of BSD project leads another $50mil.

4. gitaarik ◴[18 Oct 24 03:42 UTC] No.41876155[source]▶
Well isn't that the deal when you're building a company around an open-source project? It's a bit childish to go after people that are better at making money of your open-source project. Maybe you should then just not go into open source, if you cannot handle these kinds of situations.