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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

I've been a long Wordpress user and proponent for a long time. Until a week ago I had never heard the name Mullenweg.

Regardless of who's in the right or wrong here (I have my opinions), my perception of Wordpress flipped a switch overnight. It went from this quiet, reliable, refreshingly boring open source platform to yet another cult of personality tech fiefdom.

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Likewise. I used it for my personal website before I learned how to use nginx. I guided my wife through the process of moving her personal site from Wix to WP and it's been a massive improvement. I really had no idea all this insanity was going down.

Above a certain size all communities sooner or later turn into cults, most of the time around one or a few persons. The ones that you don't perceive as such you just haven't looked into close enough. I wish it were different but so far I have yet to find a community that doesn't fit that description. Not just open source, not just software, any community.

Next up: Substack?

Rhetoric question: how many Substackers use Notion to organize their writings?

Seems a bit self-contradicting.

If it actually was a cult of personality tech fiefdom, and you are a long-time Wordpress user, presumably you would've heard of Mullenweg before this?

The fact that you hadn't indicates that it's not.

I'm in basically the same boat, but aside from a bit of eye rolling I think I've convinced myself I can just ignore this and safely continue to download wordpress.org/latest.zip when I need it and hack it into whatever shape is convenient - which is what I've always liked doing with it anyway.

I've barely used WordPress and am far from its proponent, but have heard of Matt Mullenweg many times.

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