3mo ago

‘The Community Is In Chaos:’ WordPress.org Now Requires You Denounce Affiliation With WP Engine To Log In

www.404media.co ‘The Community Is In Chaos:’ WordPress.org Now Requires You Denounce Affiliation With WP Engine To Log In

WordPress.org users are forced to confirm they are not "affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise" before registering a new account or logging in.

The board needs to oust the CEO.

76 comments

“Matt’s war against WP Engine has been polarizing and upsetting for everyone in WordPress, but most of the WP community has been relatively insulated from any real effects. Putting a loyalty test in the form of a checkmark on the WordPress.org login page has brought the conflict directly to every community member and contributor. Matt is not just forcing everyone to take sides, he is actively telling people to consult attorneys to determine whether or not they should check the box,” the anonymous contributor I spoke to told me. “It is also more than just whether or not you agree to a legally dubious statement to log in. A growing number of active, dedicated community members, many who have no connection with WP Engine, have had their WordPress.org accounts completely disabled with no notice or explanation as to why. No one knows who will be banned next or for what... Whatever Matt’s end goal is, his ‘tactics,’ especially this legally and ethically ambiguous checkbox, are causing a lot of confusion and mental anguish to people around the world.”
This is the sort of behavior that causes irreparable damage to a brand. Psycho.
- What a weird thing to do! They can sue each other until the cows come home for all I care but dragging the community into it like this comes off as petty imo. Musky even.

Based on entries to his personal blog and social media posts, Mullenweg has been on safari in Africa this week. Mullenweg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cherry on top, lmao. Of course he's off doing rich white CEO things.
- Homeboy going to shoot a Giraffe for the trophy room.

This whole thing just makes me want to steer clear of wordpress entirely.
- I'm not sure what in the history of WordPress would have encouraged anyone to do otherwise.
  
  The efficient and clean code? /s

I’ve been using WP for personal projects for something like 15 years.
Nothing I’ve ever created has been that big, but I generally liked the tools nonetheless.
But now I think I’m out. I try to adhere to a rule where I don’t support rich weirdos as much as possible, and as such that’s why I use Lemmy to begin with. And don’t buy from Amazon. And don’t use Twitter any more. Etc.
So my next project now will totally be on new software. And hey, maybe I won’t have to use PHP ever again so this could be a win.
- Don't judge PHP by what you saw in WordPress. Modern PHP is amazing, WordPress had horrible code when it started and they definitely didn't fix things afterwards. It's a horrible slow mess of a code. Look at some modern PHP (for example this api of mine ) to compare.
  
  Thanks for sharing a modern php codebase. It makes me confident that giving it up and switching to Python was the right choice.
  
  Nice code, good job!
- Have you tried Ghost?
  
  Have you tried static site generators like Hugo?

I'm out of the loop, what is WP Engine and why is the rich weirdo in control of WordPress being so weird about it?
- WordPress is open source, there's a foundation and stuff. The Matt Mullenweg, the guy that started the software and CEO of Automatic (which is the main company) is super upset that WP Engine (another company) is using the software without contributing much to the foundation.
  I mean it's a valid gripe, but there's not much anyone can do about it. But Matt Mullenweg is, like you say, being super weird about it.

Luckily I moved to Hugo static site generator 3 years ago.. peweff.. I love PHP, but boy Wordpress was going down hill back then. And still is to this day. Introducing "features" nobody asked for. And at the same time makes your site slow.
- As someone that made enough money to make a freelance career from moving people off of awful WordPress sites, WP's reputation has been in the toilet for a decade, easily. The CMS market has been strong for a long time, and there are countless better options out there.
  With the push towards API backends and static sites, WP should have died years ago. I still cannot believe it's so popular.
  
  Which other options would you recommend?
  
  WP is so bad that I got hired to help a client set up their site. They had a GoDaddy prebuilt site and wanted to migrate to a GoDaddy WooCommerce page so they could add a loyalty program.
  WooCommerce is awful. It was making its own product variants, assigned changes that no one asked for to users that were asleep during the time, and took days for her to load 400 products in their database with the import feature.
  It was like it was intentionally bad to push people who don’t know any better into buying an $80 plugin.

“I’m not affiliated with WP Engine” is this nerd generation’s “I’m 18 or older, let me in.”
- https://youtu.be/bPUNsdwViE8&t=104
- I was thinking more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Privacy_Act

I run a WordPress site but I'm not a developer.
It seems like automatticuses the community for free development and profits from it. They in turn develop and support it, heck they created it.
However, with foss its free for WP engine to use and they dont like it. So they are throwing a hissy fit and making out its about the community and giving back. BS.
I assume it will fork.
- I assume people will actually leave to other platforms, maybe Ghost, maybe Hugo or Jekyll.
- I think not even Automattic so much as Matt is the one mad about WP Engine. Maybe a few others there more closely involved with the code. Almost a decade ago I tried out for a support role there. Most people seemed pretty chill but he struck me as a bit odd (not that I interacted with him but I was present for a few company All Hands).

Fork or CEO getting booted out in 3... 2... 1...
- Personally I'd love to see the CEO thrown out. Maybe then Tumblr will benefit as well.
  
  And PocketCasts. Of all the things in this whole mess that surprised me what what Automaticc owned. I had no idea they owned some of my favorite things.

I remember when I thought Matt's awfulness was only going to affect Tumblr, how naive of me

I'd just like to point out that WordPress is GPL, so anyone could do whatever they want with the code, including Auttomatic. If people using the software in a way that, although uncool, is totally something they agreed to, the best bet would be to leave WordPress as-is and spin continued development into a new product with a new license. Would people like it? No. Do people like this, though? Hell no.
- The GPL is not a "whatever" license.
  
  No, but it’s basically a “I can use it to build my billion-dollar business and keep the profits if I want” license. The only real catch is that if I decide to modify the code and distribute it, I’m required by the license to share those changes with whoever gets the modified version. There’s nothing in the GPL that stops me from being a downstream freeloader, and I can stay on whatever version I like—no one’s forcing me to update to newer ones with terms I don’t agree with. Forking and modifying for my own needs is totally fine, as long as I slap the same GPL on the changes if I hand them out.

I'm gonna start checking out Ghost, at this point. This is ridiculous.
And if Ghost doesn't work, then ClassicPress it is.

Welp I'm done, just started talking to my clients about moving to SquareSpace.
- Imagine thinking moving from a FOSS self-hosted software to proprietary SaaS shit is an upgrade lmao

Haven’t used anything related to Wordpress in 15 years. Seems I’ll make that a permanent decision now.

I lived through the time when every other website was a malware farm because of that POS platform.
I don't think there is a single other piece of software that inspire me so much hate as wordpress so I'm really rooting for a complete implosion of anything WP related and that Mullenweg end up forced to sell his body for food in Pattaya.

Do you condemn WordpressEngine?!
- ** Church organ music intensifies...
  undefined
  
  "I do renounce him."
  Priest: and all his works?
  undefined
  
  "I do renounce them."
- Condemn, renounce AND denounce !
  They make bank off open source, undermine the business model of the company that does most of the development while only giving back minor contributions back.

You have to check the box to log in if you want to delete your account
- It reminds me of that Futurama episode where they go to a XXX chatroom and all the kids "confirming" their age

So much for the goodwill of fediverse integration.

Are you now, or have you ever been... a WP Engine customer?
- Nope. I have used WordPress on a blog or two, but I didn't know what WP Engine was until a couple of weeks ago.
  
  Sorry if you took that as a literal accusation, it was meant to be some light-hearted McCarthyism satire cast upon this whole sad state of affairs.

100% of wordpress™ users in recent poll agree that...

Where’s Snoop when you need her?

Wp engine can go fuck itself
- Agreed, but so can Matt Mullenweg and Automattic

76 comments