Comment by gkoberger
17 hours ago
"Unfortunately", because Matt did a lot of good for the internet over the past two decades. WordCamp is (or was) really amazing, the community he built is really great, the Automattic Lounge was cool, he's donated millions of dollars to good causes, and WordPress powers a large portion of the Internet.
Automattic also bought Tumblr and Pocket Casts, publishing the code of the latter. I used to have a subscription just to support them.
Wow I had no idea Pocket Casts was open source now. I still have a subscription because it's a perfect app I use every day.
The purchase of Tumblr was basically Elon purchasing Twitter without the political gain. I'm amazed the purchase decision was ever made, and more amazed that it still exists after the hit to the user base.
And unlike the Twitter acquisition, Tumblr users basically universally hate its new owner. Twitter has plenty of Elon boosters, but I've never seen someone on Tumblr actually _like_ photomatt.
And Simplenote.
Which is no longer in active development
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195093
2 replies →
Huh. I still remember back in the Gutenberg launch era and all the drama around it (2018) the internet saying he was the devil for profiting from WP.
> WordPress powers a large portion of the Internet.
Unfortunately.