“Please don’t make me cheer for a private-equity operator like Silver Lake, Matt,” is how Ruby on Rails author David Heinemeier Hansson ended his urgent appeal to Matt Mullenweg – and thus to a good portion of the WordPress community. Heart of the matter.
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It is currently divided: On one side is Matt Mullenweg, co-founder and chief developer of the broader web publishing system WordPress, who is currently fighting against WordPress hoster WP Engine, demanding millions and public pressure to Using all methods until closure. Uses the server. On the other side is WP Engine, which was taken over by US technology investor Silver Lake in 2018, as well as parts of the WordPress community – who want Mullenweg to finally end the drama.
The main bone of contention here is the trademark rights of the “WordPress” brand. These are at Mullenweg’s company Automattic, which also owns Tumblr, for example. Mullenweg also accuses commercial provider WP Engine of undermining open-source WordPress because the company hardly contributes anything to WordPress development. One might think that something like this could be explained, after all, WP Engine has been part of the WordPress ecosystem for over a decade, and the hoster has also been using the brand and its associations for a long time. But in this case, things are different: Matt Mullenweg is fighting.
FOSS-Compliant: Publicly
In recent weeks, Mullenweg has backed demands that WP Engine pay eight percent of its monthly revenue for trademark rights, among other high-profile measures. In communications with WP Engine, he threatened to deliver an accusatory keynote at the largest annual WordPress community event – and he also wore itAfter WP Engine doesn’t give up.
Later he had limited resourcesWhat the company was able to obtain from the WordPress.org site also included updates to the ACF plug-in developed by WP Engine, which was used to ensure the security of hosted sites. The subsequent security concerns were so great that the plugin had to be hosted on its own site for some time. The ACF plugin is now redirecting to a fork of SCF, which is not linked to WP Engine but is essentially the same, and which Mullenweg’s company maintains automatically.
Furthermore, the new plugin was forced to be installed on all sites using ACF, affecting millions of users. Mullenweg justified the fork by saying that WP Engine can no longer maintain ACF plug-ins – how could it? Developers of other plug-ins like Gravity PDF and Display Post came to the conclusion that they should no longer use WordPress.org for updates to their plug-ins, but instead host it on their own sites like ACF.
recently restrictions An “official body” will also allow participation in the WP Engine community event WordCamp Sydney – no employees will be allowed to act as organizers or speakers, sponsorship is no longer allowed. WP Engine had previously responded to Mullenweg’s accusation of not supporting WordPress enough by pointing to numerous sponsorship deals related to such community events.
In a now-deleted tweet, WordCamp Sydney agreed with the fired host: “They (WP Engine) have given so much to support the Australian WP community over the last 10 years. It’s just a matter of time to contribute to the growth at the core.” It’s not about.” Mullenweg recently offered employees at his company, Automattic, the opportunity to resign in exchange for a generous compensation payment if they had concerns about continuing to work for him due to the current situation. Currently 159 employees of the company, which has approximately 1,200 employees, have accepted the offer.
FOSS Responsibility: Loss of Stability
However, Matt Mullenweg intends to set an example from WP Engine. Commercial reusability of GPL-licensed software is currently not without controversy. That’s why David Heinemeier Hansson, author of the Ruby on Rails framework, who is also a big name in the open source world along with Mullenweg, spoke out. in one blog entry However, on October 13, he received not words of consolation, but words of warning to the FOSS protector.
Although he admits at the outset that “benevolent dictator for life” can often be the catalyst for some of the most important open source developments of the past – and Mullenweg certainly deserved this crown – this role is no guarantee of infallibility. . Specifically, they found turning off updates for relevant security plug-ins and then redirecting them to a fork of their own company “unhinging.” Here Mullenweg’s exaggeration collides with what free code and free software actually mean.
Hanson justified his contribution to the debate with his concern for the open source ecosystem as a whole: “Using an open source project like WordPress, and weaponizing its plugin registry, as leverage in this contract dispute, Open The source is a threat to the peace that has reigned for decades (…)”. He sees a turning point here that hasn’t happened since the SCO against Linux around 2003 — and notices an explosive increase in uncertainty and anxiety in the OS world.
Elsewhere, the uncertainty Hansen is feeling is pretty clear: things are boiling in the WordPress community. So he made himself heard in the dedicated subreddit r/WordPress, while global IT reporting brought more and more interested people to the platform. News of the closure of ACF Update comes after initial reports of how the dispute was having a real impact on the customer base spend money And the moderators – one of them personally appointed by Mullenweg – were, to say the least, your hands are full,
The subreddit, which has more than 200,000 members, now has a single moderator. In own words: “Honestly, I didn’t want to be in this position. And honestly, I’m tired of it and I really don’t want this job.” On a smaller scale, this irony points to the end that can await even ambitious OS projects – the last one turns off the light, but hopefully it’s on as long as users still need the light. Will remain there.
(KKI)
