WordPress CEO Regrets 'Belongs to Me' Comment Amid Ongoing WP Engine Legal Battle (theverge.com) 5
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said he regrets telling the media that "WordPress.org just belongs to me personally" during a new interview about his company's legal dispute with hosting provider WP Engine. The comment has been "taken out of context so many times" and represents "the worst thing ever," Mullenweg said in a new podcast interview with The Verge.
The dispute began when Mullenweg accused WP Engine of "free-riding" on WordPress's open-source ecosystem without contributing adequate resources back to the project. Mullenweg filed a lawsuit against WP Engine while cutting off the company's access to core WordPress technologies. WP Engine countersued, and Automattic was forced to reverse some retaliatory measures.
The controversy triggered significant internal upheaval at Automattic. The company offered "alignment" buyouts to employees who disagreed with the direction, reducing headcount from a peak of 2,100 to approximately 1,500 people. Mullenweg said this was "probably the fourth big time" WordPress has faced such community controversy, though the first in the current media landscape. WordPress powers 43% of websites globally. Mullenweg said he wants to return to "the most collaborative version of WordPress possible" but noted the legal proceedings continue with both sides spending "millions of dollars a month on lawyers."
The dispute began when Mullenweg accused WP Engine of "free-riding" on WordPress's open-source ecosystem without contributing adequate resources back to the project. Mullenweg filed a lawsuit against WP Engine while cutting off the company's access to core WordPress technologies. WP Engine countersued, and Automattic was forced to reverse some retaliatory measures.
The controversy triggered significant internal upheaval at Automattic. The company offered "alignment" buyouts to employees who disagreed with the direction, reducing headcount from a peak of 2,100 to approximately 1,500 people. Mullenweg said this was "probably the fourth big time" WordPress has faced such community controversy, though the first in the current media landscape. WordPress powers 43% of websites globally. Mullenweg said he wants to return to "the most collaborative version of WordPress possible" but noted the legal proceedings continue with both sides spending "millions of dollars a month on lawyers."
Love the attitude, Matt (Score:1)
Turns out, the open-source AntennaPod (available in F-Droid and Play store) is refreshingly better in some ways.
Fuck this asshat (Score:5, Interesting)
All your base (Score:3)
"All your bad press... (Score:2)
Better Headline: (Score:3)
"Matt Mullenweg regrets an accidental moment of honesty that revealed that the entire WordPress 'community' is a sham."
This asshole wants all the benefits of foss and all the benefits of proprietary systems. He lied for years, telling the public that WordPress was controlled by a community-led foundation. He did that because it attracted developers and users (a shitload of them). All the while those developers and users weren't buying into a community-led project, they were helping Automattic create a crippleware platform.
That he accuses other companies of "free-riding" for taking advantage of a supposedly open platform just shows how clueless he is. He's a spoiled brat who thinks he's entitled to be a billionaire. The guy didn't even make WordPress, he just latched on to the guy who forked it from some other project and then took over as some perverse wannabe cross between Jobs and Torvalds (clearly a failure because unlike Jobs, he has no idea what an elegant product looks like, and unlike Torvalds, he has no idea what elegant code looks like). The only reason it worked is because of the big lie he accidentally spilled the beans on: the open source community propped him up because they took him at his word when he said it was a community-led project.