My blog post is my genuine expression of happiness and joy at the ruling. The legal process is slow, and the court date is not until 2027! Reflecting on the strength of the WordPress community, we recently had a great WordCamp US in Portland a few weeks ago.
The case is still happening. I attended the settlement conference, but their CEO did not. There are still many things that need to be worked out through the legal system, and that will take time, but this was a nice moment.
If you could hypothetically turn back time to prior to what is now called the 'WordPress drama', would you personally choose this same path again, or would you do things differently?
Have you thought about licensing future additions to WordPress under AGPL? I believe it can be done [1]. This will disallow private forks and require companies to publish any changes they make.
It's been almost a year, I'm curious if there's been any serious discussions about settling this case (e.g. a proposal both sides were actually actively considering/negotiating)?
I’d describe my personality as curious, open-minded, and calm under pressure — I like exploring ideas deeply and listening before I speak. But I do get worked up when fighting for open source principles.
Hi, Matt. Why, in late 2025, should I opt to use PHP and WP for a blog or a web site instead of just using Rust and Tokio?
If I use Rust, my web site will be blazingly fast and memory-efficient, with no runtime or garbage collector, and it can power performance-critical services that run on embedded devices and easily integrate with other languages. Rust's rich type system and ownership model will guarantee me memory-safety and thread-safety, which eliminate many classes of bugs at compile-time. And that's on top of how Rust has great documentation, a friendly compiler with useful error messages, and top-notch tooling. I can even use Rust to supercharge my JavaScript, one module at a time.
It depends on your goals, your customer needs. All technology is just a means to an end. Languages and frameworks are easy to switch between once you understand programming fundamentals. We run production Erlang code at Automattic. Use the right tool for the job. Don't start with a language; start with a problem to be solved.
Computer nerds should probably use Rust and Tokio. Then they can spend hundreds of evenings tinkering with their oh-so-superior contraption of a website, muttering how silly everyone else's websites are.
But everyone else who just want to put their small business website up that their marketing assistant can easily edit, will just pay someone on Upwork to pop up a WordPress site for them in a day or so, with everything they need included, so they can spend their time on value-added activities.
Matt is in large part mischaracterizing, although not outright lying about, the court's ruling. If you follow the link he provided to the ruling itself, many of the dismissed claims were dismissed "with leave to amend" (basically WPEngine has to fix their allegations), and one was dismissed for the reason that it should instead be asserted "as an affirmative defense if appropriate later in this litigation." There were some claims dismissed in a way WPEngine can't fix, but not many, and others were upheld.
I have no connection to either side here, nor am I a lawyer, but I do know how to read a legal opinion.
Lawyer here-100% agree. Calling this a win is super super strange. The only claims that were dismissed were long shots anyway and will just be amended except for extortion.
The court didn’t even find that there wasn’t extortion, just that you can’t privately sue over the kind of extortion claimed here. Which means California could actually still sue over it, just not WPEngine.
Amusingly, the court also refused to take judicial notice of several documents Automattic submitted because WPEngine said they were not authentic copies of the documents.
Overall this is emphatically not a win. They knocked out roughly no interesting claims, knocked out zero claims permanently (the one claim that can’t be amended could still be sued over by California, and they actually might because it’s California), and will have just made themselves work arguing the same claims again once amended.
They will still end up in trial in 2027 or 2028.
The only usefulness of this would have been as a delaying tactic but I don’t see how that benefits Automattic given the PR disaster they made of this
Just the claims where dismissal was outright denied are also potentially (up to judge and jury at later stages) enough for some pretty devastating damages... I second that this was a loss for Matt. It wasn't even "a draw" where the plaintiffs have to try again with an amended complaint (not that they will necessarily not bother to amend).
> I have no connection to either side here, nor am I a lawyer, but I do know how to read a legal opinion.
I get that Matt based WordPress on open source software initially, but 99% of the work that became what WordPress (and by extension, WP Engine) is today was done by him and his company.
WP Engine contributes nothing back. They're just leaches on an open source license.
They're doing what AWS and the other hyperscalers have done. Making bank on other people's hard work because "pure" open source allows for third party commercialization without compensation. (Or even giving back, as is with WP Engine's case. IIRC, they're not a top contributor to the open source code.)
Shouldn't we be angry at the appropriators that take everything and give nothing back?
AWS is 99.999% closed source. They're taxing the industry and contributing to increased centralization. Much of what made the early web so exciting has been hoovered up by these open source thieves.
Google for taking WebKit, snatching the web, and then removing Manifest v2 amongst other crimes.
Again - I think the community is attacking the wrong person here. Matt acted immaturely, but he's the one that put in the work. Not WP Engine.
Matt cites three claims that are dismissed (antitrust, monopolization, and extortion), which based on my skim are really two claims. The first, as you say, is dismissed with leave to amend. The second is dismissed without leave to amend. The first is given the opportunity to be amended, but the dismissal demonstrates serious flaws in the legal argument that they will have difficulty recovering from. I think it's fair for him to celebrate this as a win.
I'd add that some of the WPEngine claims which have been dismissed were reaching quite a bit, e.g. that blocking WPEngine's access to wordpress.org constituted "computer hacking" under the CFAA.
From a strategic standpoint, this is exactly what you’d want: the judge cut through the noise, dismissed the flimsiest claims (many with leave to amend), and signaled that only well-substantiated allegations have a path forward. That’s a strong opening for Matt and Automattic.
The effort at https://fair.pm is well underway to cut out Matt and wordpress.org as a single point of failure and control in the community. It's a Linux Foundation project, being run by former WordPress community leaders (people who provided years of volunteer labor that directly benefited Automattic), and there's been interest from several large hosting providers, including some that are even larger than WPE. Matt is likely to find that by the time the trial actually starts, that he's already lost.
Looks interesting, but I don't see any mention of a reputation system - what's their plan for warning people about packages that should not be installed, such as hacked, covert adware/spyware, etc?
Package advisories are seen as a content moderation issue: repositories and clients will be able to subscribe to one or more streams of digitally signed "labels" that can be interpreted by a policy mechanism that can render a verdict anywhere from "show this warning" to "do not install" to "remove immediately". The architecture is based on the system used by BlueSky: https://docs.bsky.app/blog/blueskys-moderation-architecture.
It's also not implemented yet: the initial release of the FAIR package manager is aimed at the package distribution parts, both mirroring the themes/plugins on wordpress.org and using W3C DIDs on BlueSky's PLC server as an indirection in front of raw URLs for hand-curated packages not hosted on .org, such as the FAIR client and server plugins themselves.
My own role in FAIR is a lot simpler, and it's maintaining AspireCloud, the project from AspirePress (now a working group of FAIR) that implements enough of api.wordpress.org to enable a searchable mirror of all its downloadable assets. AC is usable on its own without the FAIR ecosystem, but also makes up a good chunk of it while things are getting bootstrapped. So while I have a pretty good grasp of the planned architecture, I'm still not the best person to give the details. There's a public Slack server on https://chat.fair.pm which is still the best place to go for answers, and discussion boards on Github for less synchronous discussion (though the problem with GH is there's so many repos it's hard to find the right one).
> Since each package has a fully unique ID, services can be "layered on top" to provide additional functionality. A moderation service can block users from installing known-dangerous packages, or highlight recommended packages - or even integrate with commercial services like vulnerability scanners.
Maybe he might be winning in courts, but I will never depend on any WordPress.com service again. Don't play with your users and developers that have supported you for more than a decade this childishly. Your public image will not recover from this.
Don't worry, he's not winning in the courts as much as he seems to be trying to claim (I'm reading the legal doc, not his blog post, but going off of the context of his headline and the comments here).
I wouldn't touch Wordpress.com, ever, although I still use wordpress the software and am happy to see movement in decentralizing the plugin and core repos.
Thanks to Matt's shenanigans I discovered ClassicPress a few months ago https://www.classicpress.net/ - I had such a good experience that I ended up migrating all of my self hosted blogs to it, as a form of insurance against further madness with the WP Foundation. Note that depending on what plugins or themes you are using, ClassicPress might not work as well for you. You can consider setting up a monthly donation to support development.
I run an agency that builds WordPress websites, and have been wondering about what to do about all of this. I'm concerned about the future of wordpress.org and have been looking around at alternatives. This seemed sort-of interesting initially but, without wishing to be uncharitable, this looks like a nostalgia project because the Gutenberg editor, while initially quite tricky to wrangle for developers due to breaking changes, has been a real step forward for content editors. It's mostly stable now, so the decision to remove it from this makes it a non-starter for me.
I wonder sometimes what is going on over there. WordPress had a great community , nice people, seemingly successful open source with a business attached. Maybe it wasn't enough? I know talking to some of the shops that use it that their clients were asking about this turn of events.
If you have an infrastructure, stability is a good selling point.
I recently worked on a few client projects that used WP/Gutternberg.
I was pleasenetly surprised by how good the dev/editing experience has been compared to when I tried using Gutternberg a few years ago, some amazing work has gone into it.
Sadly I still have a lot of uneasiness around what has happened over the past year.
For most greenfield projects we have been using Statamic CMS
For those who still need word press, I recommend checking out the roots.io open source collective, they have done great work bringing modern PHP development practices into WP projects. Bedrock and Sage are a great starting point to any project.
As a wordpress dev, yeah. I've got a small file that's almost entirely devoted to reversing stupid things he unilaterally shoved into core. Off the top of my head, full screen editing by default, the stupid 'howdy' that crops up in several places, and the silent user content edit that he added to translate Wordpress into WordPress in the content of every single wp install (no, really, go try it. And then listen to the guy talk about how user content is sacred, lol.)
And I say this as somebody who thinks that the block editor is... fine. I use it in a hybrid style, using ACF to create blocks that behave and perform natively but don't require directly using all the stupid build tool cruft.
>I've got a small file that's almost entirely devoted to reversing stupid things he unilaterally shoved into core
That's actually very cool. In most runtimes the "core" built-ins and standard libraries are immutable. You'd have to recompile them with your changes to get the same effect. Not so with PHP. A footgun, but in this case a useful one.
Matt’s behavior was atrocious. I’m with WP Engine on this, and I’m appalled that the courts sided with Automattic. I don’t pretend to know the law better than they do, but still.
The court opinion doesn't mean what he is implying, although he isn't outright lying. See my explanation in this top-level comment I just made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228927
Agreed about Matt, completely. It should be remembered that although it's framed as a legal win, it's not THE legal win. I am not a lawyer, but I think the practice is generally to make as many arguments as the law will support up front– but not all of them were ever going to stick. And WP Engine can still remedy any deficiencies in their pleading to try to make them stick (I'll wait for legal minds to finish reading this and explain it to me, though).
> I’m appalled that the courts sided with Automattic
There are 11 claims in WPE's complaint, three were dismissed, and as I understand it, only one of them decisively. Matt wants to spin it as good news, good for him. He's still potentially getting taken to the cleaners if he doesn't settle.
matt relies on the passage of time and the fact that nobody really cares too much about wordpress drama. it's best that people do not forget what type of person he actually is behind the public facade when he inevitably pulls this kind of shit again later.
from literally back in 2011 when someone predicted exactly what would happen and got crucified for it:
you didnt even link to the right version of the DHH post! The original had this gem of a paragraph:
> David, perhaps it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach why you keep having these great ideas but cannot scale them beyond a handful of niche customers. I will give full credit and respect. 37signals inspired tons of what Automattic does! We’re now half a billion in revenue. Why are you still so small?
IIRC: guy made a CMS, built a successful company and organization and trademarks around it, decided last year that another company was using it unfairly, created lots of drama, lost his marbles
He didn't win. He won in the way Apple won over Epic. (Apple lost.) People seem not to understand that in a lawsuit like this the lawyers throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. WPEngine surely didn't expect all of this to fly... but some of it did.
It's not clear to you that trying to use trademark law to prevent a company selling WordPress software from saying they offer WordPress software is "being in the wrong"?
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter who or what it's about. Please take care to observe the guidelines if you want to participate here:
Happy to answer any questions from HN folks, to the extent I can. I love this community and have been here since 2007.
> to the extent I can
Taking legal advice now? Rhetorical question, more a statement: last time you were here, you didn't.
edit: For the uninitiated, page 24 is neat. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...
By the way, you can append `#page=xx` to link to a specific page in a PDF file.
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It's interesting to me that all the screenshots besides the HN one appear to be from mobile devices?
Do you have a response to the top comment (among others) which assert that you are mischaracterizing the ruling? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228927
My blog post is my genuine expression of happiness and joy at the ruling. The legal process is slow, and the court date is not until 2027! Reflecting on the strength of the WordPress community, we recently had a great WordCamp US in Portland a few weeks ago.
The case is still happening. I attended the settlement conference, but their CEO did not. There are still many things that need to be worked out through the legal system, and that will take time, but this was a nice moment.
And wordcamp. I mean, I'm not sure on the content, but there were less people at least.
> we recently had a great WordCamp US in Portland a few weeks ago.
Based on https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/attendees/, https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/attendees/, and https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/attendees/
Looks like 2023 had 1,449 attendees, 2024 had 1,339, and 2025 had 884.
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If you could hypothetically turn back time to prior to what is now called the 'WordPress drama', would you personally choose this same path again, or would you do things differently?
Differently.
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Have you thought about licensing future additions to WordPress under AGPL? I believe it can be done [1]. This will disallow private forks and require companies to publish any changes they make.
[1]: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/12276/how-to-...
I suspect WordPress will be GPL forever; it's a lovely license, and I enjoy publishing work under it.
How would this help? This isn’t at issue.
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It's been almost a year, I'm curious if there's been any serious discussions about settling this case (e.g. a proposal both sides were actually actively considering/negotiating)?
There was an excellent magistrate judge and a settlement proceeding, which I showed up to in good faith, but the other CEO did not.
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Are you considering or have you ever considered moving to or developing some other CMS?
I'm maintaining and developing two other CMS systems, in Tumblr and Day One, and I hope one day there can just be one.
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Matt do you guys still use the office in the US Bank Building in the mission?
We do! Would like to activate it more.
What in your opinion is the nature of your personality?
I’d describe my personality as curious, open-minded, and calm under pressure — I like exploring ideas deeply and listening before I speak. But I do get worked up when fighting for open source principles.
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If I may ask, what's your take on SSGs?
Static site generators? Not sure what you mean. A static site is appropriate in some situations. I love sites that are alive, dynamic, reactive.
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Hi, Matt. Why, in late 2025, should I opt to use PHP and WP for a blog or a web site instead of just using Rust and Tokio?
If I use Rust, my web site will be blazingly fast and memory-efficient, with no runtime or garbage collector, and it can power performance-critical services that run on embedded devices and easily integrate with other languages. Rust's rich type system and ownership model will guarantee me memory-safety and thread-safety, which eliminate many classes of bugs at compile-time. And that's on top of how Rust has great documentation, a friendly compiler with useful error messages, and top-notch tooling. I can even use Rust to supercharge my JavaScript, one module at a time.
It depends on your goals, your customer needs. All technology is just a means to an end. Languages and frameworks are easy to switch between once you understand programming fundamentals. We run production Erlang code at Automattic. Use the right tool for the job. Don't start with a language; start with a problem to be solved.
> Rust's rich type system and ownership model will guarantee me memory-safety and thread-safety, which eliminate many classes of bugs at compile-time.
With PHP, you don't have to worry about compile-time bugs, because there is no compile time.
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Computer nerds should probably use Rust and Tokio. Then they can spend hundreds of evenings tinkering with their oh-so-superior contraption of a website, muttering how silly everyone else's websites are.
But everyone else who just want to put their small business website up that their marketing assistant can easily edit, will just pay someone on Upwork to pop up a WordPress site for them in a day or so, with everything they need included, so they can spend their time on value-added activities.
Matt is in large part mischaracterizing, although not outright lying about, the court's ruling. If you follow the link he provided to the ruling itself, many of the dismissed claims were dismissed "with leave to amend" (basically WPEngine has to fix their allegations), and one was dismissed for the reason that it should instead be asserted "as an affirmative defense if appropriate later in this litigation." There were some claims dismissed in a way WPEngine can't fix, but not many, and others were upheld.
I have no connection to either side here, nor am I a lawyer, but I do know how to read a legal opinion.
In case Matt removes the link to the actual ruling from his post, and also simply for HN readers' convenience, here it is: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/169/wpengine-i...
Lawyer here-100% agree. Calling this a win is super super strange. The only claims that were dismissed were long shots anyway and will just be amended except for extortion.
The court didn’t even find that there wasn’t extortion, just that you can’t privately sue over the kind of extortion claimed here. Which means California could actually still sue over it, just not WPEngine.
Amusingly, the court also refused to take judicial notice of several documents Automattic submitted because WPEngine said they were not authentic copies of the documents.
Overall this is emphatically not a win. They knocked out roughly no interesting claims, knocked out zero claims permanently (the one claim that can’t be amended could still be sued over by California, and they actually might because it’s California), and will have just made themselves work arguing the same claims again once amended.
They will still end up in trial in 2027 or 2028.
The only usefulness of this would have been as a delaying tactic but I don’t see how that benefits Automattic given the PR disaster they made of this
It's only super strange if you have no knowledge of who Matt is. Poor attempts at misdirection is his status quo.
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Thanks for that informative analysis and extra details!
Why do these cases take so long? Is it due to the "American rule", that encourages lawyers slowing everything down to rack up huge billings?
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Just the claims where dismissal was outright denied are also potentially (up to judge and jury at later stages) enough for some pretty devastating damages... I second that this was a loss for Matt. It wasn't even "a draw" where the plaintiffs have to try again with an amended complaint (not that they will necessarily not bother to amend).
> I have no connection to either side here, nor am I a lawyer, but I do know how to read a legal opinion.
Describes me as well.
I really don't get the engineers on HN sometimes.
I get that Matt based WordPress on open source software initially, but 99% of the work that became what WordPress (and by extension, WP Engine) is today was done by him and his company.
WP Engine contributes nothing back. They're just leaches on an open source license.
They're doing what AWS and the other hyperscalers have done. Making bank on other people's hard work because "pure" open source allows for third party commercialization without compensation. (Or even giving back, as is with WP Engine's case. IIRC, they're not a top contributor to the open source code.)
Shouldn't we be angry at the appropriators that take everything and give nothing back?
AWS is 99.999% closed source. They're taxing the industry and contributing to increased centralization. Much of what made the early web so exciting has been hoovered up by these open source thieves.
Google for taking WebKit, snatching the web, and then removing Manifest v2 amongst other crimes.
Again - I think the community is attacking the wrong person here. Matt acted immaturely, but he's the one that put in the work. Not WP Engine.
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Matt cites three claims that are dismissed (antitrust, monopolization, and extortion), which based on my skim are really two claims. The first, as you say, is dismissed with leave to amend. The second is dismissed without leave to amend. The first is given the opportunity to be amended, but the dismissal demonstrates serious flaws in the legal argument that they will have difficulty recovering from. I think it's fair for him to celebrate this as a win.
I'd add that some of the WPEngine claims which have been dismissed were reaching quite a bit, e.g. that blocking WPEngine's access to wordpress.org constituted "computer hacking" under the CFAA.
I agree, but note that the "computer hacking" (1030(a)(5)) CFAA claim survived, outright.
Only the extortion (1030(a)(7)) CFAA claim was dismissed, and it was dismissed with leave to amend.
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This could set a very dangerous precedent if it goes through.
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Considering how obviously in the wrong he is, it might not be too off calling that a win for him.
From a strategic standpoint, this is exactly what you’d want: the judge cut through the noise, dismissed the flimsiest claims (many with leave to amend), and signaled that only well-substantiated allegations have a path forward. That’s a strong opening for Matt and Automattic.
This isn't uncommon in proceedings like this.
>In case Matt removes the link
It is sad how his reputation is.
So basically "please sue him right"?
The effort at https://fair.pm is well underway to cut out Matt and wordpress.org as a single point of failure and control in the community. It's a Linux Foundation project, being run by former WordPress community leaders (people who provided years of volunteer labor that directly benefited Automattic), and there's been interest from several large hosting providers, including some that are even larger than WPE. Matt is likely to find that by the time the trial actually starts, that he's already lost.
Looks interesting, but I don't see any mention of a reputation system - what's their plan for warning people about packages that should not be installed, such as hacked, covert adware/spyware, etc?
Package advisories are seen as a content moderation issue: repositories and clients will be able to subscribe to one or more streams of digitally signed "labels" that can be interpreted by a policy mechanism that can render a verdict anywhere from "show this warning" to "do not install" to "remove immediately". The architecture is based on the system used by BlueSky: https://docs.bsky.app/blog/blueskys-moderation-architecture.
It's also not implemented yet: the initial release of the FAIR package manager is aimed at the package distribution parts, both mirroring the themes/plugins on wordpress.org and using W3C DIDs on BlueSky's PLC server as an indirection in front of raw URLs for hand-curated packages not hosted on .org, such as the FAIR client and server plugins themselves.
My own role in FAIR is a lot simpler, and it's maintaining AspireCloud, the project from AspirePress (now a working group of FAIR) that implements enough of api.wordpress.org to enable a searchable mirror of all its downloadable assets. AC is usable on its own without the FAIR ecosystem, but also makes up a good chunk of it while things are getting bootstrapped. So while I have a pretty good grasp of the planned architecture, I'm still not the best person to give the details. There's a public Slack server on https://chat.fair.pm which is still the best place to go for answers, and discussion boards on Github for less synchronous discussion (though the problem with GH is there's so many repos it's hard to find the right one).
> Since each package has a fully unique ID, services can be "layered on top" to provide additional functionality. A moderation service can block users from installing known-dangerous packages, or highlight recommended packages - or even integrate with commercial services like vulnerability scanners.
[dead]
Maybe he might be winning in courts, but I will never depend on any WordPress.com service again. Don't play with your users and developers that have supported you for more than a decade this childishly. Your public image will not recover from this.
Don't worry, he's not winning in the courts as much as he seems to be trying to claim (I'm reading the legal doc, not his blog post, but going off of the context of his headline and the comments here).
I wouldn't touch Wordpress.com, ever, although I still use wordpress the software and am happy to see movement in decentralizing the plugin and core repos.
100% agree. I don't see how I could forget what happened.
Thanks to Matt's shenanigans I discovered ClassicPress a few months ago https://www.classicpress.net/ - I had such a good experience that I ended up migrating all of my self hosted blogs to it, as a form of insurance against further madness with the WP Foundation. Note that depending on what plugins or themes you are using, ClassicPress might not work as well for you. You can consider setting up a monthly donation to support development.
I run an agency that builds WordPress websites, and have been wondering about what to do about all of this. I'm concerned about the future of wordpress.org and have been looking around at alternatives. This seemed sort-of interesting initially but, without wishing to be uncharitable, this looks like a nostalgia project because the Gutenberg editor, while initially quite tricky to wrangle for developers due to breaking changes, has been a real step forward for content editors. It's mostly stable now, so the decision to remove it from this makes it a non-starter for me.
Oh man, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone lose an internet drama, only to revive it a few months later when everyone had forgotten about it.
If we’re lucky he’s still not paying attention to either expert advice or common sense, and will show up to post in this very thread.
Howdy!
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Matt had a golden goose and he decided it wasn't golden enough.
I removed/converted my last Wordpress site (commercial and otherwise) last month.
I wonder sometimes what is going on over there. WordPress had a great community , nice people, seemingly successful open source with a business attached. Maybe it wasn't enough? I know talking to some of the shops that use it that their clients were asking about this turn of events.
If you have an infrastructure, stability is a good selling point.
Im still using wp org, is that risky. I do like the platform.
Converted to what if you don't mind me asking?
I recently worked on a few client projects that used WP/Gutternberg. I was pleasenetly surprised by how good the dev/editing experience has been compared to when I tried using Gutternberg a few years ago, some amazing work has gone into it. Sadly I still have a lot of uneasiness around what has happened over the past year. For most greenfield projects we have been using Statamic CMS
For those who still need word press, I recommend checking out the roots.io open source collective, they have done great work bringing modern PHP development practices into WP projects. Bedrock and Sage are a great starting point to any project.
Just ditched my last WordPress installation in July. Good for you Matt.
Perhaps it’s a legal win but the PR disaster remains.
As our company thinks about a new website vendor, WordPress is off the table because of the nonsense.
I can't imagine the professional reputational damage I'd incur if I were to recommended wordpress, or worse, wordpress.com after all of this.
Genuinely, why? What kind of visions of reputational damage does having your marketing website on wordpress.com conjure up to you?
How would anyone even know where it’s hosted?
I get the guy pissed off some php devs but I’m sure as hell not hosting that shit myself, marketing team content can be their problem.
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This guy is unbearable.
As a wordpress dev, yeah. I've got a small file that's almost entirely devoted to reversing stupid things he unilaterally shoved into core. Off the top of my head, full screen editing by default, the stupid 'howdy' that crops up in several places, and the silent user content edit that he added to translate Wordpress into WordPress in the content of every single wp install (no, really, go try it. And then listen to the guy talk about how user content is sacred, lol.)
And I say this as somebody who thinks that the block editor is... fine. I use it in a hybrid style, using ACF to create blocks that behave and perform natively but don't require directly using all the stupid build tool cruft.
>I've got a small file that's almost entirely devoted to reversing stupid things he unilaterally shoved into core
That's actually very cool. In most runtimes the "core" built-ins and standard libraries are immutable. You'd have to recompile them with your changes to get the same effect. Not so with PHP. A footgun, but in this case a useful one.
Why not share the diff so anyone can apply it :)
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thats great matt. i still wont ever use wordpress because of your choices
The controversial topics around wordpress are surreal.
Matt’s behavior was atrocious. I’m with WP Engine on this, and I’m appalled that the courts sided with Automattic. I don’t pretend to know the law better than they do, but still.
The court opinion doesn't mean what he is implying, although he isn't outright lying. See my explanation in this top-level comment I just made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228927
Agreed about Matt, completely. It should be remembered that although it's framed as a legal win, it's not THE legal win. I am not a lawyer, but I think the practice is generally to make as many arguments as the law will support up front– but not all of them were ever going to stick. And WP Engine can still remedy any deficiencies in their pleading to try to make them stick (I'll wait for legal minds to finish reading this and explain it to me, though).
> I’m appalled that the courts sided with Automattic
There are 11 claims in WPE's complaint, three were dismissed, and as I understand it, only one of them decisively. Matt wants to spin it as good news, good for him. He's still potentially getting taken to the cleaners if he doesn't settle.
WordPress is dying as ungraciously as free-to-air TV is.
The company, or the software? It's held pretty steady for 4 years, powering some 43% of the web.
https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_ma...
matt relies on the passage of time and the fact that nobody really cares too much about wordpress drama. it's best that people do not forget what type of person he actually is behind the public facade when he inevitably pulls this kind of shit again later.
from literally back in 2011 when someone predicted exactly what would happen and got crucified for it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110117190122/http://wpblogger....
https://web.archive.org/web/20110117192124/http://wpblogger....
one of his responses to DHH when the WPE thing went down:
https://archive.md/UZZit
you didnt even link to the right version of the DHH post! The original had this gem of a paragraph:
> David, perhaps it would be good to explore with a therapist or coach why you keep having these great ideas but cannot scale them beyond a handful of niche customers. I will give full credit and respect. 37signals inspired tons of what Automattic does! We’re now half a billion in revenue. Why are you still so small?
https://archive.md/4yLNR
I wrote to DHH at the time hoping the Hey World part could be open sourced or ONCE as a blogging platform. But he wasn't interested in the idea.
The guy already created immense value by his open source work. It's fine for him not to open source everything.
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Can someone provide some context for those of us who are utterly out of the loop?
IIRC: guy made a CMS, built a successful company and organization and trademarks around it, decided last year that another company was using it unfairly, created lots of drama, lost his marbles
One of his first posts on the topic: https://ma.tt/2024/09/wordpress-engine/
A collection of crazy quotes and events, biased towards the other perspective: https://mullenweg.wtf/
Edit: and HN commentary: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
I remember this to be a pretty good recap of the whole fiasco:
https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...
http://archive.today/wfrKj
Not for a paywall, of course: personal blog he hosts. Due to editing in the past.
"Win" or, said another way, "The bullshit I started is seeing an end". Whatever works for you, buddy.
It ain't working for him, but it's all he's got.
It ain't much and it's neither honest or work!
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As someone who is not very familiar with this whole saga, it sounds like both sides lost their marbles? Which is the lesser of two evils?
i dont recommend WPE to anyone, but they have done nothing wrong.
If you care, you could learn plenty here https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...
you could just read the legal document, as others in this thread have, rather than rely on an "unreliable narrator"...
Surely no sane person is on WPE's side. They're just vehemently against Matt, who has proven to be a complete psychopath
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The mad lad won his case, but lost his reputation.
He didn't win. He won in the way Apple won over Epic. (Apple lost.) People seem not to understand that in a lawsuit like this the lawyers throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. WPEngine surely didn't expect all of this to fly... but some of it did.
he hasnt come even slightly close to winning his case
It's not clear to me that he's in the wrong.
https://ma.tt/2024/09/wordpress-engine/
It's not clear to you that trying to use trademark law to prevent a company selling WordPress software from saying they offer WordPress software is "being in the wrong"?
isn't that what trademark law is for?
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Outside of cryptocurrency yeah