Can Matt Mullenweg save the internet?

https://www.protocol.com/matt-mullenweg

by decrypt • 5 years ago

67 55 5 years ago

protocol.com

yepthatsreality5• 5 years ago

Since WordPress is open-source software, no company technically owns it

Uh what? This seems like a gross misunderstanding of FOSS licensing.

pmlnr• 5 years ago

GPL3

yepthatsreality5• 5 years ago

How does GPL3 answer under which organization that Wordpress lives and in which it is maintained?

Edit: the Wordpress GitHub also states GPL2

rmccue5• 5 years ago

This is effectively true; as noted in my other comments, WordPress doesn’t have a CLA, so contributors retain rights to their contributions. The trademark, domains, and some other legal parts are owned by the WordPress Foundation.

For example, the team working on the React-based rich editor (Gutenberg) wanted to relicense it under dual MPL and GPL in order to encourage adoption within mobile apps (it supports React Native). To do so, they had to get agreement from over 700 contributors to relicense it: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/09/21/proposal-dual-lic...

coldtea8• 5 years ago

It's still entirely true, in the sense that any release that came out with a FOSS license will perpetually be free to use, extend, do whatever under that license.

jkhdigital• 5 years ago

This might be the tl;dr quote:

And then he offered the closest thing you’ll find to a Unified Theory of Matt Mullenweg. “As more and more of our lives start to be run and dictated by the technology we use, it's a human right to be able to see how that technology works and modify it. It’s as key to freedom as freedom of speech or freedom of religion. So that is what I plan to spend the rest of my life fighting for.”

Contrast with this link also (currently) on the HN front page: https://gavinhoward.com/2021/12/is-it-even-worth-working-on-...

tyingq3• 5 years ago

That does seem laudable, but Automattic isn't open sourcing all the things they are buying either.

ssl2322• 5 years ago

I'd rather say the tl;dr quote is:

He plans to spend the rest of his career building the web’s one true platform, the open system the internet deserves.

and his Camus quote later on:

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

ssl2322• 5 years ago

“I would be very, very interested in Mozilla,” Mullenweg said.

Nice. I hope if Mozilla is ever in jeopardy of losing its independence, Mullenweg can scrap together whatever it will cost to buy and fix them. Seems like the right person to look after them.

woodruffw• 5 years ago

Perhaps it's overly paranoid of me, but I'm not sure that Mozilla being purchased by a firm with significant VC investment is a good thing for its independence.

kingcharles• 5 years ago

I wish he would fix Tumblr first. They just permabanned my gf's account for no reason at all. Another victim of AI-banning.

isehfb6372• 5 years ago

The marketing machine around Matt, WP.com, and OSS is just incredible. Automattic has taken nearly a BILLION dollars in VC money (including 300m most recently from Salesforce) to essentially execute a hostile takeover of open of source WordPress. Automattic forced their rewrite of WordPress (a Squarespace clone written in React) on the community and it has been a disaster, leading to many resignations of long-time contributors and their replacement with paid Automattic employees: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/

Automattic/WordPress is like any other VC-backed venture looking for their exit, except this one is doing off the back of a once-vibrant OSS community. The open source connection is a fairy tale (and apparently powerful marketing tool). They will not save the Internet.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/automattic

ffwd• 5 years ago

The way I read it was that Matt saw that WP needed to evolve to compete with everything else that exists, and that the volunteer release lead model that they used before could never lead to anything like Gutenberg in such a short time.

All Matt has done and said makes me believe he loves OSS, freedom of the user and democratization of publishing. Why would he ruin his own creation by looking for an exit when WP is already hugely popular and more importantly why abandon what seems to be his principles around freedom/OS. I will eat my words in 5-10 years if it isn't true but I think everyone will see he will focus just as much on wp.org and freedom as he does Automattic (ie keeping as much as possible open, free alternatives (like jetpack), etc)

ALso Gutenberg is not nearly as bad as those reviews say. It is much better even only in the last few months, though a lot of UX development is needed it is a powerful editor.

nyanpasu64• 5 years ago

I actually tried Gutenberg a few months back. It was nearly unusable as a document editor. Typing, undo, cursor movement, and moving between blocks was a glitchy mess, and so was importing pages from the classic editor (though that's a difficult problem). I reported several issues, and a few actually got fixed after weeks. Though I haven't tested again since I decommissioned my WordPress Pi image.

stareblinkstare• 5 years ago

Who do you think writes these pieces then? What's in it for them?

bentlegen• 5 years ago

PR firms employed by corporations (e.g. Automattic) shop story ideas to media publications, including access to the subject (e.g. Matt). It is possible, but unlikely, that Protocol just randomly decided to write this piece.

What’s in it for them? Well, people do genuinely want to read these stories. It’s “win-win” for the writer (makes their job easier/they get access), the publication (eyeballs), and the corporation (positive story reaches the public).

Source: in my role at my company, I am occasionally asked to collaborate with hired PR firms to promote similar efforts.

homarp• 5 years ago

isn't that the story/dna of wordpress to evolve https://www.wpexplorer.com/history-wordpress/

mattzito4• 5 years ago

In fairness to Matt and Automattic, Wordpress pre-Gutenberg was basically unusable by non-technical users. I’ve seen research that the successful completion rate for regular users with Wordpress on a bunch of core UX elements is close to zero.

It’s fine if Automattic wants to say that Wordpress is just for web developers and HN readers, but I think they really want to build the website platform for everyone, and that’s not happening with Wordpress without things like a real page builder.

(Full disclosure, I used to work at Squarespace and will freely say that the squarespace page builder at the time I was there was not great, but it was usable by regular people)

dazc2• 5 years ago

For a CMS that was 'unusable by non-technical users' the adoption rate was mighty impressive?

'Catering for everyone' is an ego-trip that's resulted in page bloat for everyone whether they wanted it or not.

coldtea8• 5 years ago

In fairness to Matt and Automattic, Wordpress pre-Gutenberg was basically unusable by non-technical users.

While I'm pro-Gutenberg (see my answer above), the WP editor pre-Gutenberg was absolutely fine for "non-technical users" too. It's adoption, for regular users like plain blog authors and journalists and so on, had already been massive (in the "tens or even hundreds of millions userbase" level massive...

hammyhavoc3• 5 years ago

Unusable by non-technical users? Lol. Then explain how everybody from kids to grandmas started blogs and ecommerce sites built on top of WordPress pre-Gutenberg.

regularjack• 5 years ago

and their replacement with paid Automattic employees

Automattic sponsors about 100 people to work on the WordPress open source project, and that's somehow a bad thing? Also, this isn't an Automattic exclusive thing, many other companies do the same: https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/pledges/?order=con...

(I'm an Automattic employee, but I don't work directly on the WordPress project)

greggh2• 5 years ago

Gutenberg, and the Full Site Editing features that are built in now, are unbelievably bad. With great examples of page editors like Elementor, Beaver, Divi and others, I just don't understand how something as badly engineered as Gutenberg came to be. There is literally nothing intuitive about Gutenberg, not one thing.

coldtea8• 5 years ago

Gutenberg, and the Full Site Editing features that are built in now, are unbelievably bad.

Not in my experience. I prefer them to the messy and hacky third party alternatives..

There is literally nothing intuitive about Gutenberg, not one thing.

As a user, I had absolutely no problem with Gutenberg regarding intuitiveness...

karmakaze3• 5 years ago

Didn't know about that, but was a little surprised by:

In every way that matters, Automattic is a reflection of Mullenweg (you could say he puts the “Matt” in Automattic). He started building web software because he wanted a place to store and share his photos; he’s a blogger to the core, and loves anything that aids in the free expression of ideas on the internet. He loves jazz, which is why WordPress releases are named for jazz musicians.

Sure name your company whatever you like, but why should releases of an opensource project be named based on one person's taste in music?

coldtea8• 5 years ago

but why should releases of an opensource project be named based on one person's taste in music?

Why not? As good as any other inspiration (like the naming themes admins use for hostnames in their LANs), and one man deciding helps stop the bikeshedding.

coldtea8• 5 years ago

to essentially execute a hostile takeover of open of source WordPress

The software he himself first created? Could have gone to worse hands. Not to mention it's still 100% FOSS and has been going from strength to strength.

a5aAqU• 5 years ago

Start by denouncing AMP.[1] WordPress has been a major supporter.

[1] https://wptavern.com/amp-has-irreparably-damaged-publishers-...

hammyhavoc3• 5 years ago

If it involves blockchains, the answer is that he is dooming it.

Can Matt Mullenweg save the internet?

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