FreeWP Is Here to Shake Up the WordPress Ecosystem

by rpgbr • 2 years ago

65 44 2 years ago

They should make a reality tv show about the OSS community would have been less predictable than "Days of our lifes" and would have even more staying power.

pluc2• 2 years ago

god this is cringe over cringe

dochne• 2 years ago

It must be horrible working for Automattic at the moment having to deal with this seemingly never ending farce.

amyjess• 2 years ago

On a more serious note, given that a triple-digit number of employees have taken buyouts over Matt's behavior, it must really suck to be one of the employees who now has to do other people's jobs in addition to their own.

If I worked for Automattic, I'd take a buyout even if I didn't object to Matt's behavior, just because I know how much it always sucks to be one of the employees stuck at a company after a walkout or a layoff.

pfych• 2 years ago

I feel like ClassicPress[^1] is a bit of a better approach to the whole "I just want basic Wordpress that works" - It seems like it's pretty stable and already has a community behind it.

[^1]: https://www.classicpress.net/

lrae2• 2 years ago

The thing is, the current version of Gutenberg is not a bad editor for writers and editors and absolutely the way WordPress needs to go to stay relevant. If Matt did one thing right in the last couple of years, it was realizing that. The way he went about it, seems to have been not always the greatest, but it's an absolute must.

And ClassicPress is the fork of Gutenberg deniers who think a, now, below-average WYSIWYG editor is the way... or...

all the alternative "Page Builders", which are in itself a multi million dollar business, and are horrible usability & code-wise. The two newer big ones, Brick and Breakdance seem fine, but are much more complete website builders than editors. And also something that you don't want end-users to touch.

Don't see that fork being the future.

rpgbr• 2 years ago

Gutenberg is atrociously bad for blogging types — and there are a lot of blogs out there. I agree that WP needed an official page builder, but it doesn’t belong in the core; it should be a plugin.

Btw, Gutenberg is a plugin and its rating in directory (2/5) is telling[1]. Meanwhile, Classic Editor[2], a plugin that disables most of Gutenberg, is used in +10 million websites and a 5/5 plugin.

[1] https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/ [2] https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/

GavinAnderegg3• 2 years ago

This is so bizarre. I saw this first on the Automattic blog: https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/

It’s curious why Matt Mullenweg would be hyping this up when it contains “WP” in the name, like WP Engine. “FreeWP” sounds just as much like something that would cause brand confusion.

Also, the FreeWP announcement post seems like a manifesto to remove Matt from stewardship of WordPress and to start some sort of class action lawsuit. With bits like:

  “On the legal front, I’ve secured a suite of domains for WP Class Action. This independent initiative aims to address the issues plaguing our community head-on.”

and

  “Change isn’t just coming — it’s here. Consider this your wake-up call to those who’ve held the reins for too long. FreeWP stands ready to ensures WordPress remains free, open, and genuinely community-centric.”

Is Matt just really trying to promote forking of software? Is he hoping people point and laugh at FreeWP? Does he want the project to get off the ground so he can go after them with trademark claims? It doesn’t make sense to me.

lolinder5• 2 years ago

This isn't even a fork—looking at the text on this site, I think it's just this guy Vinny deliberately trolling Matt by registering a bunch of WP domains and flaunting them. If so, he succeeded at the goal of provoking an asinine response from WordPress.org (aka Matt).

From the author [0]:

I love how I never said I was going to fork the project and only wanted to support those who did. Matt is incredible at only hearing the things he wants to hear.

See the FAQ for more evidence that this is mostly just Vinny trolling so far [1]:

Well, what does ‘wp’ mean?
We found some notes referencing “word processing” and “web publishing,” and there’s even a mention of Wendell Pierce, who played Detective William ‘Bunk’ Moreland in the popular HBO series The Wire. It seems to be related to one of those topics.
It’s also rumored the singsongy vibes really sealed the deal.

[0] https://x.com/vinnysgreen/status/1844488053060141233

[1] https://freewp.com/faq/

lrae2• 2 years ago

I am not sure who is trolling who here. Maybe they both are trying to troll each other, but both don't really look great.

FreeWP seems like a completely meritless attempt at a fork / initiative. Potentially even just an attempt by "Vinny" to move himself into the spotlight. And the WordPress community, for a big part, looks still very novice and in-experienced and a decent junk of community members might fall for this and put at least some (and more than they should) eggs into that basket.

Matt just seems to troll and knows that "FreeWP" is no competition at all. And continues on his path of eccentric and very weird behavior.

nickff2• 2 years ago

Wordpress has consistently said that “WP” is fair game, but that leaning on “Wordpress” is not.

lolinder5• 2 years ago

They said that consistently right up until they changed the trademark policy to call out WP Engine by name:

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

"Consistently" is not an adverb I would associate with Automattic/WordPress.org/WordPress Foundation/Matt's behavior in recent months.

GavinAnderegg3• 2 years ago

They used to, until the WP Engine fight began. The trademark policy was updated a few days after Matt started publicly beefing with them. There’s now the following on the trademark policy page: https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

  The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

that_guy_iain• 2 years ago

The issue with WP Engine isn't the WP in the name. That's fine and part of how WordPress wants it. The issue is they use the word WordPress to define the services they provide. Which is why it's completely bonkers that there is a trademark dispute since they provide managed Wordpress hosting so using WordPress to describe providing WordPress hosting is normal and expected.

lolinder5• 2 years ago

No, they updated the trademark policy to call out WP Engine specifically with a petulant mini-rant:

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

aimazon• 2 years ago

Matt posted about FreeWP on WordPress.org labelling it a fork: https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/

Yet, per the author, it is not a fork: https://x.com/vinnysgreen/status/1844488053060141233

“I love how I never said I was going to fork the project and only wanted to support those who did. Matt is incredible at only hearing the things he wants to hear.”

Matt is… trolling? by labelling FreeWP a fork.

vinnysgreen3• 2 years ago

He must really want people to think I am forking the project. Is he trying to cause confusion? He hates that, so it must be something else.

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

Is there a good TL; DR for what's going on with Matt, Silver Lake, WordPress and this?

pluc2• 2 years ago

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/05/wordpress-ceo-matt-mullenweg...

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/10/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-dra...

mardifoufs• 2 years ago

I mean, isn't the entire problem related to the fact that most of WordPress core development is still getting funded by Automattic? That's why a fork doesn't really matter, the resources to build WordPress seem to mostly come from one source. Even players with a lot more resources like WP Engine didn't or couldn't work a lot on WordPress so I'd be surprised if a random fork would matter.

tzs• 2 years ago

What exactly are "WP2" and "WP Class Action"?

chiefalchemist5• 2 years ago

I presume WP2 is a play on Automattic's P2 theme, now also available on WP.com

https://wordpress.com/p2/

vinnysgreen3• 2 years ago

Just some domains the community can have. They seem to be so important to all this.

After all, isn't domains/trademarks/IP the reason why Matt feels he can lord over the .org as if it doesn't belong to the community and should be controlled by a robust foundation?

scrapcode• 2 years ago

Since we're here - what are people using these days to prop a quick web property up for a friend, for example, that's not such a PITA?

I recently told a friend I'd throw up a site for him for his dog grooming business, and naturally went to WP. I figured I'd just a simple free theme that was close and modify it to my liking if possible and it was anything but trivial. Free basic themes take a lot of digging to find, they're built on two(?) Wordpress theme-builders, or maybe some other proprietary theme, often include other weird addons, etc... I don't remember it being so convoluted- but I guess I am getting old in this space.

nikcub2• 2 years ago

I send friends + family to Squarespace for simple websites, or Shopify for e-commerce. Works well!.

Squarespace has design templates, a gallery of blocks, domains (what's a DNS?), news section, email marketing, signup forms etc. all built-in making it easy and one-stop

Shopify is Shopify and doesn't need much of an introduction.

Spivak2• 2 years ago

Squarespace is comically overpriced for a simple site. I don't understand why people recommend it so soften for "non-technical family member needs an essentially static site."

The https://neocities.org/supporter tier gets you a custom domain for $5/mo and is as usable as MySpace. https://zume.net/ gets you WordPress for $5/mo which makes for a quick migration.

GavinAnderegg3• 2 years ago

If you’re looking for something low effort but nice looking, Squarespace does a nice job. It can be frustrating if you’re trying to do something really custom — though you can likely make it happen if you’re stubborn enough.

If you’re looking for something you can really build from the ground up easily with, then my go-to is Craft CMS. You need to do things by hand, but it’s easy to build out data models, and the system is sane and easy to predict.

lolinder5• 2 years ago

I'll add to the chorus in favor of Squarespace.

A few years back I helped my 70-year-old father-in-law (who's not remotely technical) get set up with a Squarespace site for a project of his and after initial configuration he was able to run it himself for years. At the time the big reason why I picked it over WordPress was that I knew that I'd be on the hook for maintaining a WordPress site. He just needed something he could post on occasionally and mostly forget about, and Squarespace worked great for that.

lxe• 2 years ago

Ask one of the ai tools like stackblitz or v0 or cursor or replit or ... and deploy to whatever the default thing it for them.

chiefalchemist5• 2 years ago

I'd look at Squarespace first, and then Webflow.

colechristensen• 2 years ago

I already didn’t like Wordpress and would recommend against it just because of maintenance issues but this drama is a whole new layer of something else.

mrinfinitiesx• 2 years ago

This is all really cringe to see. The fact that 50% of websites run this is something else.

znpy• 2 years ago

I would have called it OpenPress, but that's just me :)

bubblesnort• 2 years ago

LibrePress

FreeWP Is Here to Shake Up the WordPress Ecosystem

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