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Comment by mike_d | Hacker News Reader

> Sure, but to do that they'd need to know they are about to be cut off, something which they were given zero warning about

According to Automattic they had been in discussions for 20 months. Your anger should be with WPEngine for taking your money while knowing full well their service depended on servers ran by a company they were on (best case) shaky terms with.

Up until about 8 months ago, Bluehost (another big paid hoster of WordPress sites) ran its own plugin mirror with no issues: https://github.com/bluehost/pluginmirror

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Did Automattic tell WPEngine that they'd cut off plug-in updates 20 motnhs ago?

Or is the 20 months thing just completely irrelevant to the point that Automattic should've given a heads up before cutting off plug-in updates

> According to Automattic they had been in discussions for 20 months.

They could have give a warning 20 months ago that this may happen and then this would not be a thing.

Yea, WPE should have done that.

Matt's behavior is inexcusable and shows that WordPress needs a complete restructuring without him. Too many sites rely on WordPress to endanger them because of one man's temper tantrum. I don't understand how you can defend this reckless behavior by him. Who cares what WPE could have should have done. He needs to step down immediately.

"WPEngine should have foreseen something that has never happened in the 20 years of the software's history".

I mean yeah, companies should have contingency plans for things that are extraordinarily rare but let's be reasonable about it. No one, including you, saw this coming.

I challenge you to find a single blog post, tweet or HN/Reddit comment that suggests Matt could one day shut off wp.org access to a single company running 1.5 million sites without any notice to that company, or the community members who will be affected. It's unconscionable. Or at least it was.

Be reasonable.

Leftpad happened.

Newfold Digital, which owns Bluehost, is the only entity with a commercial trademark sub-license agreement from Automattic per the recently updated WordPress Foundation Trademark Policy:

https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/#:~:text=If....

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