Hacker News Reader

Comment by kemayo | Hacker News Reader

Tl;dr Wordpress.com has a sketchily-authorized copy of the Wordpress.org plugin directory that’s used as a funnel into signing up for a Wordpress.com hosting account. This was causing the author problems because it has better google rankings than the .org, and they were getting support requests from people who thought buying a plan on Wordpress.com meant they got the premium version of their plugin. So they C&D’d Automattic to remove them from the copied directory.

This is only related to the recent WP Engine drama insofar as the author says it made them lose trust in Matt.

View on HN

> This is only related to the recent WP Engine drama insofar as the author says it made them lose trust in Matt.

I think that's understating the situation a bit, because the WP Engine drama was the provocation for the current action. Very Good Plugins learned of the WP Fusion copy in September 2023 but did nothing about it until October 2024.

"I didn’t want to start a legal dispute with Automattic and possibly damage our reputation. And, generally, I trusted Matt. I assumed he had a competent legal team that had already reviewed the legality of copying our plugins, and that he was acting in the best interest of the community."

I’m amazed that Matt got away with claiming the Wordpress.org/.com duality for so long. Recent events have revealed that the dividing line between the two is virtually non-existent and Mullenweg used whichever organization was most convenient for pushing his agenda at the moment. M

Mullenweg’s recent attempt to dunk on DHH for not capturing enough value from the Rails community is the most succinct mask-off moment of the recent events, in my opinion. He thought he was making a great point by criticizing DHH for not being extractive enough from the rails community. Instead, he only revealed his true thought process about how being at the center of an open source community should be a license to extract from said community. Really puts recent events into perspective.

>Mullenweg’s recent attempt to dunk on DHH for not capturing enough value from the Rails community is the most succinct mask-off moment of the recent events, in my opinion. He thought he was making a great point by criticizing DHH for not being extractive enough from the rails community.

Is it possible to do a short version or medium version summary of that, and/or a link where I can find out more?

HN discussion can be found at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41839864 and contains archived versions of the post that has now been replaced.

https://archive.ph/4yLNR

The very short summary is Matt basically told DHH he sucked for not making billions off Rails and patronizingly suggested he get a business coach.

DHH replied that made him happy / proud, giving a gift like that to the world.

At least for me, the ".com .org duality" looked OK, because the existence of The WordPress Foundation as a non profit which owned trademarks, and the as it turns out incorrect assumption that they owned and ran the .org platform.

The revelation that Matt considers he personally owns wordpress.org outright and can do whatever he chooses there even if it's diametrically opposed to the Foundations stated goals, dramatically changes the risk evaluation in relying on anything to do with Wordpress.

not that it should matter in "principle", but the stupid thing to me is that he's not some small time developer trying to make ends meet. he's extracted quite a bit from from it... in the hundreds of millions, but it's still not enough.

i could even understand if he suddenly went full value extraction mode. there are ways to do it ruthlessly and coldly, but his actions have this angle of being petty as well.

his blatant disregard for WP users while trying to gaslight them into thinking he's their champion, general "assholery" (for lack of a better word) to those who have been in the ecosystem for a long time who dissent.

i guess the mask is truly off.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com