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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

Calling it right now:

If WP Engine is reading, fork WordPress now. Call it FreshPress. Put $25M into it, team up with other hosts, abandon the editor everyone hates, and relicense it to GPLv3 so Matt can’t have any of it. (Note that WordPress’s license specifically says GPLv2 or later.) Maybe support Composer like sane modern PHP projects. Maybe put the most important plugins like Woo into core and make it an all-in-one Squarespace competitor.

Once it’s ahead, legal, and Matt can’t borrow; then he’ll realize his bluff has been called. Make WordPress the new B2.

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The whole thing started because WP Engine does not want to put resources into WordPress development. It's not some sort of disagreement about design or development, it's about the work itself.

If WP Engine has to create a fork and dump millions, they would basically lose. As they have built a business model around not contributing even to the already well developed WordPress codebase. So I can't imagine how going beyond that and forking the entire thing would work, unless they just mirror upstream.

I don't think Matt would mind if WP Engine did just that because he's arguing that they are using WordPress without giving back anything in return, so if they just did their thing outside of WordPress that would be exactly what he wants.

No. Matt want 8% revenue directly straight into Automattic's account.

That became a thing because he felt like they didn't contribute to WordPress. Like, that's the entire reason behind that (very weird imo) request for a royalty.

I'm not sure if it's true, but there were talks about WPEngine devs basically not being allocated any dev time on WordPress anymore (whereas Automattic devs spend tens of hours a week on the actual OSS project). That was one of the catalyst behind the whole drama where Matt called them out basically on stage during a conference talk. Which was just before (or at the same time) as he started talking about the royalty.

Now, again Matt's behavior has been super weird since he basically failed at articulating his position well, and his PR has been catastrophic.

But the fact is WPEngine still does not contribue to WordPress. That is their right, but everything matt has been doing is also "legal" and within his (and his company's) rights.

> That became a thing because he felt like they didn't contribute to WordPress. Like, that's the entire reason behind that (very weird imo) request for a royalty.

I think it's the other way around: the (false) claims about WPEngine not contributing became a thing because they refused his demands to direct 8% of their revenue into matt's private-equity-backed pockets.

It would make no sense otherwise: "you aren't contributing to the community, so contribute to my for-profit corporation instead"? If matt really cared about the community*, wouldn't the appropriate demand be for WPEngine to contribute 8% to the community, instead of to matt?

*: yes, I recognize that, in reality, matt's repeated actions harming the community in service of himself have made clear that he cares more about himself than the community.

Hmmm, so is WPengine actually contributing to WordPress? Everything I've seen seem to indicate very little development work. But maybe I'm misinformed.

Also, the community (in terms of development) is basically automattic and... that's it. That's the whole problem! But again, I completely agree that the royalty request was extremely weird especially considering the supposed separation between WordPress.org & Automattic

> Hmmm, so is WPengine actually contributing

Yes, WPEngine is contributing to the wordpress community, but that's beside the point, since WPEngine's contributions to the community only came up when WPEngine refused matt's shakedown demand to transfer money into matt's pockets. Weirder still, matt banned WPEngine from contributing to the community on wordpressdotorg, then took some of WPEngine's community contributions and claimed them as their own.

> Also, the community (in terms of development) is basically automattic and... that's it.

It's interesting that you felt the need to qualify "community", limiting it to "in terms of development". The community is the sum total of all users of, and contributors to, the wordpress ecosystem. Matt has harmed millions of community members with his actions, and the community is telling him to knock it off, for the good of the community.

No, I think it's much more interesting that you keep focusing on the community part, as if paying some token amounts for marketing stuff (sponsoring conferences, events) is similar to pouring tons of engineering work into the product. It almost sounds like "paying in exposure".

I'd hardly consider ACF to be described as such, but: "paying some token that amounts for marketing stuff" according to whose descriptions of their community contributions?

Agree, except for ditching Gutenberg, unless they replace it with something better, like... no idea, Lexical based?

But I'm sure they're already debating internally how feasible a fork is and if it makes sense for their business.

I agree. This is the best move right now. WordPress needed modernization anyway

> Put $25M into it...then he’ll realize his bluff has been called

I don't think Matt will be too displeased with WPEngine investing $25 million into a fork. He may even feel vindicated.

Perhaps; but WP Engine can argue from necessity following Matt’s actions, as well as just saying: After what Matt has done, who gives a darn what he thinks?

Ha or we may find all this has actually nothing to do with any values

There's another thing WPEngine would do with that decision though, and that's ruin Matt/Automattic/wordpress.org in the court case (look at who WPE retained as councel, this is not going to be a quick/cheap litigation), and then crush them in the WP hosting market (which arguably they're already doing, which is why Matt's losing his mind).

Matt's extortion attempt is because WPEngine is generating a lot of revenue and is valuable enough for PE to notice. He figured he had a decent chance of blackmailing them out of 8% of their revenue to the tune of around 10mil a year. Matt's a deluded and entitled tech nerd cosplaying a mafia mobster. And WPEngine did not blink.

What is the significance of going from GPL v2 to v3 here?

GPLv3 code can’t go into a GPLv2 project - but “GPLv2 or later” licensed code can go into a GPLv3 project.

The main reason is that Matt wouldn’t be able to freeload without relicensing WordPress - which would be a massive headache for him and his partners to go through; and the reason would be patently and embarrassingly obvious.

The goal I described earlier is not to make a WordPress clone that just happens to be free of Matt. There’s plenty of low hanging, long ignored gripes and opportunities for improvement. Offer a better, Matt-free product, and you’ll win.

> GPLv3 code can’t go into a GPLv2 project - but “GPLv2 or later” licensed code can go into a GPLv3 project.

Has this been proven in court, not implying the legality would be respected in this case though.

Yes, the GPL in general has been upheld in court. The gist is that the GPL is the only thing giving anyone any right at all to distribute code licensed under it. If you don’t follow its terms, you no longer have that permission.

The question isn’t whether the GPL can restrict you from doing something. It’s just that in the absence of the GPL, you fall back to the default legal rights where you’re not allowed to make copies of that code.

A exception will be need for GPL licensed plugins/themes (and their forks).

What's B2?

B2/Cafelog is the software that WordPress started as a fork of.

WordPress is a fork that basically killed the original project. No reason that history can’t repeat itself.

This is all good, but I think packaging Woo into core is not a good idea. WordPress is so large; I don't know how the plugin community will react to a fork. It is going to cause a lot of problems.

Lol, surely they will deliver - nah, they will fork core, mirror plugins and themes repos and do absolutely minuscule minimal effort to keep it secure / bacport some changes from main WP line to keep it compatible with most of the plugins and that's all.

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