Matt Mullenweg cries foul and threatens me with legal action | Hacker News Reader

Matt Mullenweg cries foul and threatens me with legal action

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103 pointsgreyface-42 comments

I won't be utilizing wordpress moving forward, not even for fun or suggesting it for clients or friends and looking in to other self hosted simpler solutions for them (preferably nodejs based). After seeing the interviews and then the comments he made on HN (un: photomatt), I'm worried for this guy.

My heart goes out to the millions of organizations that abruptly got cut off when having nothing to do with any of this.

He’s really working hard on torching his reputation. The whole WPEngine debacle just makes him look petty and mean.

I'm not sure if petty and mean are the correct words. He seems more like somebody who has been in a bubble of yes-people for so long that he has become untethered from reality. He views the world as black and white, with him on the side of good, which gives him not just the justification, but the moral imperative to do whatever is necessary to fix things he perceives as wrong, regardless of the consequences.

To me, he doesn't seem petty or mean, he seems unhinged.

A comment I saw regarding Matt was "it's like someone made Elon Musk in PHP".

I think this is the kind interpretation; he doesn’t seem to have anyone around him who he trusts to tell him he’s incredibly off base. He’s in an accidental echo chamber.

The theme here with “leave if you disagree”, though with decent terms, correlates.

> He’s in an accidental echo chamber.

Given what the author in TFA says, I'm not sure "accidental" is the right word:

> He has demonstrated time and again that when he does not get his way or has no leg to stand on he will default to subterfuge to achieve his goals.

Being surrounded by "yes men" is the inevitable consequence of that kind of behavior. He may not have thought, "You know what I need, I need to be surrounded by people who will never tell me I'm wrong"; but if he isn't doing the hard work of choosing to listen people who do tell him he's wrong, he is implicitly choosing to surround himself by yes-men.

It reminds me of the "every idea I'm having right now is a great idea" kind of thinking I've observed from folks publicly having a manic episode. Most people would have second guessed themselves by now.

He has maintained iron clad control over Automattic, WordPress, and WordPress.org. How? By insisting on securing the proxy votes from investors. Investors — what on earth were you thinking?

There is something to say about corporate governance. When a CEO can actively harm the company without risking being fired, the role of the board has failed.

This will help the case of VCs to get board seats.

The board represents the share holders and if the shareholders support Matt, good for them.

According to the company “5% of our company time to WordPress core”, in a for profit company where none of the investors have any vision, you get a WP Engine scenario where (according to Matt) they contribute about 40 hours per week, or about 0.1% of the company time to Wordpress (they have 1000 employees)

That's just the reality of creating open source software.

Anyone (including companies) using it are free to do whatever they want with it (including reselling) and they aren't obligated to contribute in any way.

While this is a particularly dumb case, it's not the first time we've had this situation. Usually the company just relicensed the software going forward, forcing users to either start paying or forking/switching products.

Matt is coming across as suffering from his self-perception and a feeling of "moral credit".

i.e. some mixture of "I am always the good guy" and "I am entitled to this because I am usually the good guy".

"I am the good guy because I am rich and successful"

I mean, what percentage of the web is built on WordPress? It's something massive, isn't it? On the whole, so far, he certainly has made the world a better place; and what's more he managed to do it profitably with GPL'ed software, which is no mean feat. I think that's certainly something to be proud of. And I can certainly see the frustration with a situation where private capital comes in and makes a company just as big as yours without giving anything back.

But that's what you signed up for when you made your project GPL. Open source is built on trust, and I can't begin to describe how destructive this kind of behavior is.

I never questioned either his success, which appears substantial, or his wealth, which is allegedly a reasonable $400 mil. I questioned if those metrics give one a moral or intellectual high ground on their own. Smart people can be wrong, stupid people can be right.

"Past performance is no guarantee of future results"

> I can certainly see the frustration with a situation where private capital comes in and makes a company just as big as yours without giving anything back.

That sounds a lot like envy to me. Many (most I dare say) of the people whos work the success of WordPress is built on do not have "CEO & Angel Investor" on their profile and certainly dont have a net worth in the 100's of millions.

My point was, it's not, "I'm the good guy because I'm rich", but it's "I'm the good guy because I have done a lot of good in the world". I think it's undeniable that he has done a massive amount of good in the world; but that doesn't mean you can't sometimes be the bad guy at the same time.

I read through the whole post but did not see any threats of legal action by Mullenweg.

Are there none and the title is false, or did I miss them?

I think it was in reference to the "possible tortious interference with Automatticc's contracts" and "We have screenshots and archives of all these tweets including when they were posted" messages in one of the screenshots.

You don't mention "contracts" or that you're putting things "on the record" on a whim.

True.

That's a pretty mild "threat" though.

I would say reminding someone that they might be involved in committing a breach of contract and what the indications of the breach are is reasonable.

Otherwise, nobody could remind anybody to stick to a contract without being accused of threatening behavior.

In this context I would disagree... the "act" in question has allegedly already occurred, as such there is no way for the recipient of a "reminder" to make any changes to avoid a breach.

So if someone punched you, there is no ethical way to tell them that it is not ok and that you have the ability to counter?

... when did ethics come into this?

"I'm warning you"

"Hey! Back off!"

My disagreement in the previous comment had nothing to do with the alleged "threat" or the ethics of... it was the idea that it was simply a "reminder".

nothing mild about it

Actually it reads like someone with a tiktok level of legal knowledge trying to substatitate an empty and shallow threat - on a whim.

A proper (legal) threat takes the form of a piece of paper with a letterhead of some person who gets paid $5,000 an hour to make people question their life choices and shit their pants for a living.

Does Automattic have any PR people or legal currently functioning?

I guess Matt himself

Seems Matt === PR

Yes, but unfortunately they are all Matt

Nope... just Chatt Testaweg

I understood that reference, nice.

Why is this flagged?

I suspect it is against the site rules to commentate on an in progress mental breakdown.

Mental health challenges can minifest rapidly and differently for different people, those that are struggling should seek help and support where necessary.

I think it's way too presumptive to say that Matt Mullenweg is having a mental breakdown. I want to wait for someone with more legal experience on this site to comment on the strength of WPE's lawsuit before buying into the idea that Matt is wholly irrational and ignoring advice of wiser legal counsel.

According to Matt his comments are being cleared by his lawyers.

> According to Matt his comments are being cleared by his lawyers.

If that is true - which it almost certainly isn't - his lawyers are laying the grounds for an appeal due to 'incompetent' representation. Which would be rejected on the grounds that it was so obviously their intention that it constitutes competent representation.

The lawsuit is irrelevant; the behaviour is the issue.

The lawsuit is a measurement on his behavior, one with teeth to it.

DM-ing randomly seems all so natural to him. What a creep.

One party keeps things in private, the other makes a circus and airs dirty laundry.

Funny, when someone was falsifying documents about me and forging my signature, attempts to raise awareness to my issue were also downplayed as "airing dirty laundry". Is it a new buzzword or something to help large businesses punch downward?

I’ve noticed that it’s the people who are constantly soiling themselves that are most offended by having dirty laundry aired.

If you go around shitting in other peoples beds often enough then eventually someone is going to hold up the sheet and say "hey look at what they did".

Want to shit the bed and get away with it? Do it in the privacy of your own home and involve as few other people as possible.

Keeping things private is often good manners.

Sometimes good manners are not the only principle at stake.

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