<story><title>If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed</title><url>https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pilgrim0</author><text>According to his recent interview on Primeagen, he argues that WPEngine operations incur high costs to his company, due to the millions of installations consuming resources from Wordpress.org. And despite being a very large player, they contribute nothing back to the ecosystem. He argues that they even illegally modified code attributions (stripe plugin) which diverts millions from Automattic. The fact that it took, apparently, so long for him to take some action can be interpreted in his favor, because he tolerated a lot along the years. Add the fact that they had somewhat good relations before WPEngine being taken over by private equity. So this is not about trademark, trademark is the best weapon he has to fight back against a very bad neighbor. And being the sole trademark holder, Automattic can enforce it arbitrarily, as it sees fit. Taking side with WPEngine I think is not only rationally baseless, but also immoral, since they put nothing and only take, which is in the very opposite of what Matt represents, whether or not you like Wordpress.</text></item><item><author>mvkel</author><text>Given the age and ubiquity of Wordpress, I am shocked at the relative immaturity of Matt&amp;#x27;s communication skills.&lt;p&gt;He thinks the world has all the historical understanding and nuance of the situation. Why would they?&lt;p&gt;This looks like a world record speedrun attempt (any%) at destroying a legacy.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s worth noting that WPEngine looked like this all the way back in 2011: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20110112043959&amp;#x2F;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wpengine.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20110112043959&amp;#x2F;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wpengine.c...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;They have never pretended to be anything else.&lt;p&gt;Why now, Matt?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>caseysoftware</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;He argues that they even illegally modified code attributions (stripe plugin) which diverts millions from Automattic.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;From reviewing the code, this is not &amp;quot;attribution&amp;quot; in the sense of &amp;quot;here&amp;#x27;s who wrote this code&amp;quot; but specifically and literally an partner code.. aka an affiliate code or what we&amp;#x27;d normally call &amp;quot;a setting&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;As GPL&amp;#x27;d software, they &lt;i&gt;cannot&lt;/i&gt; prevent people from modifying this code and - if they do - Automattic&amp;#x27;s  only counter is to complain about it.&lt;p&gt;Further, since it&amp;#x27;s a revenue-generating code, it should be disclosed in the README, etc of the plugin and changeable via the Admin. It doesn&amp;#x27;t appear either is true.&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;woocommerce&amp;#x2F;woocommerce-gateway-stripe&amp;#x2F;pull&amp;#x2F;1554&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;woocommerce&amp;#x2F;woocommerce-gateway-stripe&amp;#x2F;pu...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed</title><url>https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pilgrim0</author><text>According to his recent interview on Primeagen, he argues that WPEngine operations incur high costs to his company, due to the millions of installations consuming resources from Wordpress.org. And despite being a very large player, they contribute nothing back to the ecosystem. He argues that they even illegally modified code attributions (stripe plugin) which diverts millions from Automattic. The fact that it took, apparently, so long for him to take some action can be interpreted in his favor, because he tolerated a lot along the years. Add the fact that they had somewhat good relations before WPEngine being taken over by private equity. So this is not about trademark, trademark is the best weapon he has to fight back against a very bad neighbor. And being the sole trademark holder, Automattic can enforce it arbitrarily, as it sees fit. Taking side with WPEngine I think is not only rationally baseless, but also immoral, since they put nothing and only take, which is in the very opposite of what Matt represents, whether or not you like Wordpress.</text></item><item><author>mvkel</author><text>Given the age and ubiquity of Wordpress, I am shocked at the relative immaturity of Matt&amp;#x27;s communication skills.&lt;p&gt;He thinks the world has all the historical understanding and nuance of the situation. Why would they?&lt;p&gt;This looks like a world record speedrun attempt (any%) at destroying a legacy.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s worth noting that WPEngine looked like this all the way back in 2011: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20110112043959&amp;#x2F;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wpengine.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20110112043959&amp;#x2F;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wpengine.c...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;They have never pretended to be anything else.&lt;p&gt;Why now, Matt?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Atotalnoob</author><text>Actually no, trademark is a “use it or lose it” state, waiting so long will not be in their favor</text></comment>