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WordPress.org calling out WP Engine
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"...the content is sacred..."
"...It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content..."
"They are strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem..."
"...they are a cancer to WordPress..."
Good grief. WP-Engine turned off revision history. They're not selling fenty-prepped child slaves.
What a silly tantrum.
That's dumb. WP Engine's major selling point is that they can make your WordPress site run faster if you're just an average person running a site on shared hosting that isn't performing well no matter where you take it. Often these WordPress sites have inflated databases by shitty plugins or poorly thought out use cases. To take what runs slow somewhere else and make it run faster without sacrificing the customer's use case or production data, you have to make sacrifices. You can't just keep throwing caching layers on top, and you can't tell people "your site just sucks, do better" when you're banking on the fact that this customer would rather pay someone any amount of money than start over (plus they're stupid, they won't believe you anyway, they'll just say "WP Engine is another slow web host" because, again, they're dumb).
The post seems kinda petty to me. If WP devs want it to run better for everyone then they'll start enforcing standards for plugins and themes, and require approval to install them. But they won't do that because they know we'll just fork WP and start a new unregulated ecosystem and cut them out.
I also thought it was funny when I clicked on the author's name, after he was bragging about time spent contributing code, and saw:
"Matt Mullenweg contributes 2 hours per week to the Core team."
Which is fine, just thought it was funny.
Im waiting for Clang and GCC to call out entire world on not contributing enough to their code and making changes to compiler flags as changing one available variable seemingly destroys opensource and makes you a cancer.
Looks like he got some heat for what he said about private equity too: https://ma.tt/2024/09/are-investors-bad/
We all step in it from time to time.
Oh this gets better: https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Cease-and-Desist-Letter-to-Automattic-and-Request-to-Preserve-Documents-Sent.pdf
This just got REALLY good. Popcorn, NOW.
I could get behind some of the ideas in the OP, i.e. disabling revisions but that C&D just puts these posts into a whole new light.
New drama just dropped bois.
This is going to be a lovely shitshow
matt is really doing the same. never4get https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6511
Seems to me both sets of investors are getting impatient. WordPress feels like a stale platform. This is a standard staged tactic to force negotiations when there's not a big enough pot at the end of the rainbow for two winners (or maybe even one). I predict they "merge" and consolidate operations in the next 15 months. The only question is which one will actually be the acquirer of the other.
Speaking of barebones Gutenberg, I can't say I'm a big fan. I'm sort of forced to use it at my workplace since we don't use pagebuilders. Instead we use some custom coded bootstrap-like code (Accordion, Notice, CTA, Alerts..) blocks via a plugin developed by IT department, which we can embed via some short codes. Mind you, I at least created some templates of these short codes in Gutenberg as "custom blocks/block templates" as to not having to look them up in the documentary every time and copy them over. Needlessly the workflow is rather tedious this way. Even more so since WYSIWYG doesn't really work that way either. So it's saving edits, then "show in new tab" to see if the code blocks worked and how they'll look like.
I may or may not work for a higher education institution that is ranked quite high globally (for one reason or another).
Yeah I was kind of thinking they're burning cash and looking for a way out. To risk it all like this, surely it's from desperation. I'm talking out of my ass though not like l know anything.
I mean, two things can be true at the same time.
WP Engine might not contribute shit compared to WordPress.com
All while WordPress.com might be mad that WP Engine is outgrowing them
Lol, so basically WP Engine was blackmailed to pay milions, its not about revisions nor contributions - these were excuses all along.
xD
Of course it was about power and money and not opensource efforts. Gimme money, cause it looks bad for investors that we have the same revenue, so at least I can show them thst youre my slave that pays me how much I want.
Not sure if similar or not,but this situation makes me think of piwik/matomo...
🔥🔥🔥
Yeah, kept an eye on it - added some new stuff I've noticed to that thread.
TL/DR
Smells badly from both "sides."
Neither would be my first choice nor recommendation for "WP hosting."
Bit of background for those that aren't aware:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/cease_desist_letter_from_wp_engine_was_made_public/
https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Cease-and-Desist-Letter-to-Automattic-and-Request-to-Preserve-Documents-Sent.pdf
This is hilarious. I actually toyed with the idea of going to Wordcamp because it was here in Portland. However, every review I read said it was basically a drinking event for dreary WP devs and boring presentations. Since it was my dime I passed.
Now here's something fun...Mullenweg read his memo to a jazz accompaniment during his keynote. You can't make this stuff up.
Not sure if it's mentioned already WordPress wants to trademark the words "Managed WordPress" https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fol35p/wordpress_foundation_filed_in_july_to_trademark/
Thanks.
So they’re both equally greedy
I think WordPress.com is a little bit more than Greedy.
Things are getting more interesting:
https://automattic.com/2024/09/25/open-source-trademarks-wp-engine/
It's all quite shady to me.
First of all Matt (Automattic) keeps insisting on the fact that WPEngine didn't contribute enough to the community neither that they donated to WordPress foundation and here comes my question:
Is it mandatory or stated somewhere that this needs to be done? I don't think so.
This whole point makes no sense.
Also I just noticed that Matt applied some changes to the WordPress trademark page:
https://www.diffchecker.com/tJ29tGIn/
In particular:
**If you would like to use the WordPress trademark commercially, please contact Automattic, they have the exclusive license. **
Basically this would mean that from now onwards any hosting company sponsoring or advertising WP services with its logo or name (managed, hosting or whatever) need to pay a commercial license to keep it, whose cost is unknown, so it's gonna affect 99% of the companies out there.
This is getting crazy and will generate a lot of noise and trouble, wrong move for Matt.
This is also bad for WordPress in general.
Mullenweg is unhinged.
I think he's dead wrong about trademarks here.
And what an ungrateful loser. He wrote some software and has a $500m company.
Talk about escalating the issue - WordPress are now blocking Admin Panel updates now for WP Engine customers:
https://wpenginestatus.com/incidents/640187
He's about to have his accounts emptied like a bad divorce for intentionally interrupting their business like this. As vocal as he is being, if he had a valid defense he would have spoken it by now.
This is a shit move tbh.
https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/
Matt banned WP Engine from connecting to Wordpress.org servers
xDD
I thought blameshifting couldnt go even further, but he doesnt care.
Above situation and his attemps to trademark "WP" (yea, even putting WP in name of your plugin like BackupWP will be forbidden) destroy reputation of both Wordpress and WooCommerce.
Squarespace, Shopufy and Wix are sooo happy now