this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork (techcrunch.com)
submitted 3 days ago by chobeat@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 34 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

The original creator of Wordpress and the owner of a Wordpress hosting site. He's been having a meltdown for months because Wordpress is being used by WP Engine, a for-profit competitor hosting company, in compliance with the license. Since then, he has:

  • Changed the trademark license and retroactively sued WP Engine,
  • Disparaged WP Engine every time he had the chance,
  • Added a potentially legally binding checkbox to wordpress.com where the user must declare their disassociation with WP Engine (which also locked out actual employees),
  • Forcibly taken control of several community-made plugins,
  • Acted like ~~an absolute fucking buffoon~~ the innocent little lamb who's been set upon by the wolves.
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

The sad thing is that at the beginning he had a little tiny bit of justification for not liking what WP Engine was doing.

What WP Engine was doing was completely legal. They were completely following the requirements of the WordPress license. But, it was true that they could have done more to benefit the WordPress community. Instead, they were building a huge, quarter-billion dollar business based on WordPress without either helping pay for its development or contributing meaningful code themselves.

A competent project leader could have used the goodwill they'd amassed over decades to mount a subtle pressure campaign to get WP Engine to do more. But, instead, his approach has somehow made a private equity backed for-profit company to almost appear to be the "good guy" in this fight.

[–] tux0r@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago

Technically, WordPress started as a fork.