Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s Double Standard For WordPress Plugin Developers | Hacker News Reader

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s Double Standard For WordPress Plugin Developers

tomuse.com

34 pointsfoppr19 comments

Duh. Of course Automattic has designed their platform so that it benefits them, and of course the rules they set developers don't apply to them. It's their platform and ecosystem. If you think they're being unfair, go play somewhere else. I honestly don't understand rants like this. It's like people think that they're entitled to something just because they want it. If you can't make money on Wordpress because of Matt's restrictive stance on paid plugins and themes, then you can't make money doing that. Go do something else!

Life isn't fair, and business sure as hell isn't. Business is about tilting the odds in your favor, not making sure everybody is one big happy family.

"go play somewhere else."

A better suggestion: if you think your complaints are the same as the rest of the community, fork the project and create a fair and healthy ecosystem for your partners.

Isn't WP GPL'ed?

Automattic isn't unique, we just follow the same Open Source business models everyone else does. We do hosting, and provide extra services.

There are at least 1,000 plugins in the directory that do the same thing. There are plugins for Youtube, Adsense, Lijit, Flickr, Sharethis, Twitter, Paypal, translation systems, backup services, Statcounter, Facebook...

I'm not sure what that has to do with being GPL or not, or who exactly he claims I've mislead.

I think he's grumpy because Wordpress's actions (and lack of actions) means the healthy marketplace for themes and plugins that could exist doesn't.

A lot of plugins and themes have been abandoned by their creators because they're walking away from unprofitable time sinks exactly as you suggest. The blogger is trying to point out Automattic is doing its users a disservice by keeping this environment.

I don't think he's approaching this from a user-centric perspective, but more from the perspective of how it's not "fair" to developers and designers. To wit:

Theme and plugin developers have helped make WordPress the champion blogging platform that it is today without receiving a single dime of the $29.5 million in funding that Automattic raised last year. Both Matt Mullenweg and his company Automattic benefit financially from the hard work of plugin developers and theme designers. Yet it’s somehow justified in Matt’s mind that it’s not okay for plugin developers and theme designers to directly receive financial compensation for their contributions to WordPress.

To me, that reads as "We've worked hard on Wordpress and we deserve to share in its success." The crazy thing is that a) as far as I can tell, not much has changed in terms of the rules, so if this wasn't a problem before, why is it a problem now? And, b) no one is saying that developers and designers can't offer premium themes and plugins for pay, just that Wordpress won't host those assets for them. How it that unreasonable? Again, this goes back to this guy thinking that he deserves to be able to charge for stuff that Wordpress is hosting for him, for free. Give me a break.

Yeah, good point.

Can't comment on the article, since I don't know that much about the Wordpress scene. But man, the author is a whiny critic type. Here's just a few from his last 10 articles:

"Twitter Peaks To Media Overkill, Is Real Time Search Dead", "Comment Systems Comparison Update: Disgusted With Disqus", "Swoopo May Be Most Profitable, Ingenius Online Business. But Is It Legal?", "eBay’s Problem: Biting The Hand That Feeds It"

Yeah. This guys appears to be a loser who creates nothing of value, and points out holes in other people's creations. One of the hardest things about trying to do something of value is learning to mostly dismiss people like him. It's still a challenge - no ones like to be criticized. But wow, it's easy to talk a lot of trash when you're not doing anything. One of my favorite quotes -

Teddy Roosevelt:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

This guys appears to be a loser who creates nothing of value, and points out holes in other people's creations. One of the hardest things about trying to do something of value is learning to mostly dismiss people like him.

I think anyone should welcome as many critics as possible. Critics point out blind spots and prevent accidental mistakes. I believe the 'strong man' is usually found to have a 'strong second' that is the strong man's critic on every turn.

Please tell me I’m wrong about your understanding of the GPL and your intentions. It’s probably no mistake that Matt doesn’t want to acknowledge such issues. For it he did, he would have to acknowledge the fact that Automattic, a commercial entity that owns WordPress, exploits the GPL to promote it’s distribution, uses plugin and theme developers work to build upon WordPress, and then uses the GPL as a barrier to prevent anyone except Automattic from benefiting financially from the work.

How is this any different from what Sleepycat and MySQL do? I thought this was the playbook for open source business models.

Okay, I think this post is ridiculous for many reasons. The major reason being the author just doesn't understand the point.

When he talks about 200 themes were removed back in 2007 from the wordpress theme directory, most of the themes that were removed were sponsored(or spammy) themes. wordpress.org is is the website for the opensourced GPL'd project wordpress, there is no reason for them to host themes that run in contrary to that philosophy. The idea is to create trust in the hosted wordpress themes and plugins, for people who care they know if they go to wordpress.org, everything they download is GPL'd they are free to use, free to modify and free to redistribute.

I don't see that the onus is on Automattic to support any other agenda but their own, they are a business and the ultimate goal is to make money(for themselves).

That being said, the idea of a wordpress theme/plugin marketplace is a fine one, but as many people have already said in this thread it would be easy enough idea for automattic to take as their own. I would find it hard to believe the guys at automattic are stupid so if it doesn't exist already, there is probably a reason(ie/ profit margins are too low to spend the time developing the service, not enough demand, etc.)

"hard to believe the guys at automattic are stupid so if it doesn't exist already, there is probably a reason"

Well, exactly. They have had the idea before, as mentioned in the post, but didn't act on it. They probably did a simple cost/benefit analysis and decided it would be more trouble than it's worth.

Once you start taking money and acting like a shop, everything changes. It's not just the implementation, although that would be significant. But suddenly it's your problem if X breaks on IE8 or Y doesn't work with a new version and the developer is on holiday or Z said it would do this but doesn't and the customer demands a refund, etc etc etc. "But I bought it from you!" comes the flood of email. So you'd probably need support staff too.

Well, all of this might be worthwhile if it's a big, rich market. But I doubt it is. How many people actually buy premade WP themes? I would have thought the number is miniscule. Same with plugins. I didn't even realise you could buy WP plugins, actually, until I read that. The idea sounds like a joke. You'd have to be nuts to try and build a business on that.

Anyway I'm sure Automattic thought about it for a while, then realised what a distracting, unremunerative hassle it would be and rightfully canned the idea.

There is a market for premium WP themes and plugins. And, now that people are using WP as a CMS more and more and not just blog software it will grow even faster. Take a look at themeforest.net or go to elance.com and see how many people are hiring plugin developers.

We considered doing a marketplace on WordPress.COM, not .org, which is a big distinction.

I don't think a market on .org makes much sense, unless you decide to ignore the GPL.

Few things embitter people more than being this close to money they can't have.

Amazing. The author complains of not having a business model, spends most of the post describing the one he would like to be given by someone else, and yet never makes the connection between the two.

If you're thinking he could create a premium marketplace that works as a Wordpress plugin, it's a terrible idea. He'd be proving the model for Wordpress, as soon as he started getting traction they could introduce their own official premium marketplace installed by default in all new versions of Wordpress... and don't forget to upgrade for this month's important security fix.

I'm not a fan of the post's tone, but he's right that Wordpress needs to do it. Nobody else wants to try because they'd either fail or have it taken away from them.

Nobody else wants to try because they'd either fail or have it taken away from them.

That's the bitch of relying on someone else's platform for your business model.

There are dozens of successful businesses selling GPL-complaint themes, sometimes in their own directories. There are hundreds of businesses who get some or all of their distribution through WordPress plugins. There are millions of websites using WP as a tool to publish and make money other ways, like TechCrunch or GigaOM.

I'm glad this post was written and I hope more light gets shed on this.

I've seen many people who are naive about GPL and how it relates to themes and plugins.

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