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Comment by photomatt

17 hours ago

Happy to answer any questions from HN folks, to the extent I can. I love this community and have been here since 2007.

27 comments

photomatt

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bravetraveler  16 hours ago

> 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...

minimaxir  17 hours ago

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

  • photomatt  16 hours ago

    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.

rustc  14 hours ago

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-...

  • photomatt  13 hours ago

    I suspect WordPress will be GPL forever; it's a lovely license, and I enjoy publishing work under it.

  • misnome  14 hours ago

    How would this help? This isn’t at issue.

    • rustc  10 hours ago

      It would disallow private forks of WordPress (require them to share the modifications) but I don't know whether WPEngine and other hosts have any private modifications or they all use stock WordPress.

      1 reply →

gpm  16 hours ago

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)?

  • photomatt  15 hours ago

    There was an excellent magistrate judge and a settlement proceeding, which I showed up to in good faith, but the other CEO did not.

Johnny2727  16 hours ago

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.

  • photomatt  13 hours ago

    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.

  • pjaoko  13 hours ago

    > 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.