Matt Mullenweg Asks What Drama to Create in 2025, Community Reacts

https://wptavern.com/matt-mullenweg-asks-what-drama-to-create-in-2025-community-reacts

by bookofjoe • 2 years ago

58 42 2 years ago

frereubu• 2 years ago

“We’ll look back on the WPE drama next year as something that seemed like a big deal at the time but isn’t that notable in the grand arc of history” said Ozymandias.

pessimizer• 2 years ago

"...Then, why dont we have all of these entities take action against one of our competitors and their entire customer base, refusing to do business with any customers until they stop working with our competitor. Why don’t we ban ALL of those people from our services, and try to compel them to use our service instead?"

Mullenweg might be nuts, but most of his critics are even crazier. WPE isn't a competitor, it's a parasite. Wordpress doesn't owe anybody anything, it already gave everybody something.

If WPE wants to be a competitor, it should fork and do so. Please do it, I hate plenty of things about Wordpress, and the schema is horrific. But if the alternative is Drupal, Wordpress all day.

SahAssar• 2 years ago

Do you not understand the difference between Wordpress.org and Wordpress.com/automattic?

ceejayoz• 2 years ago

To be fair, that line is intentionally blurred.

3eb7988a16632• 2 years ago

I do not understand this parasite language. It is open source software.

My employer indirectly profits from me using Python resources (eg python.org and PyPI). Yet, Guido is not coming out and saying I am a parasite leeching off of the system. Pony up 8% of company revenue or else.

threatofrain• 2 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if WP is actually more popular as a result of WPE's participation. We all use open source software in commercial ways all the time. The potential of virality is why many people are drawn to open source.

profstasiak• 2 years ago

is anyone working on wp killer?

Open source easy to manage software that can have you blogging in minutes?

gjsman-10004• 2 years ago

The blogging engine is easy. The collection of third party themes and plugins is the hard part; and nobody wants to do that.

The code quality for many of those themes and plugins is also what a FAANG engineer would describe as “abysmal,” an “affront to the industry,” a “I can’t believe people use this,” a “this should be illegal,” whatever epithet you want. Huge surprise, no backwards compatibility coming to anywhere else, anytime soon.

90% of computer code in this world is crap. Crap that seniors would berate or fire people for. We don’t all live in the FAANG bubble; WordPress sadly is the biggest sign of that. The world runs on crap code built on crap architectures, outside of a few niche companies in a few niche geographies who congregate on a few niche forums (like this one). If you’re in one of them, count your blessings. If you’re not, don’t despair, you’ll be a senior-equivalent on a global level in no time.

elcritch• 2 years ago

At the same time many people’s livelihood can be made with a WP instance and some plugins for subscriptions or similar. Similarly much of the world’s engineering is also done by poor farmers. Part of me relishes it.

3eb7988a16632• 2 years ago

I am curious why you think FAANG code is necessarily better than the rest of the world. There are egregious affronts everywhere.

lowercased• 2 years ago

There are already dozens of blogging applications out there to have you blogging in minutes. Wordpress is so far beyond 'blogging' that there will never be a 'wp killer'.

It's used for ecommerce, employee management systems, LMS/education platforms, membership/login sites (affinity groups, etc).

Whether it should be used for those use cases - building on top of something that wasn't really designed to be explicitly supportive of any of those use cases - that's another question.

There will be - and are - dozens of 'wp killers' - ecommerce systems, blogging platforms, etc - that will cover specific use cases. But there won't likely be anything generic/flexible enough like wordpress any time soon. And that's probably an overall good thing, but that's also a different argument to make.

add-sub-mul-div3• 2 years ago

I would imagine there are many superior products but it's the inertia of Wordpress that can't be defeated. Same with Reddit, etc. When network effects reach their highest level they really work against us.

gjsman-10004• 2 years ago

Superior products; that cost more money or require a programmer.

WordPress is $5 in a VPS, click a theme, add a few plugins, it’s an insecure mess but it was cheap. Need a designer? A few thousand bucks is cheaper than a programmer.

It’s not the network effects. It’s about doing things cheap and fast, for which WordPress has no parallel.

And no, this is not a problem with capitalism. Every social structure ever devised has done this. Even if you’re McDonalds and you want new marketing pages in 2 weeks for a 1 week campaign, WordPress is fine. What else are you going to do? Build a CI/CD pipeline for a 1 week website?

foundart• 2 years ago

I am not that familiar with them, and they may not allow blogging in minutes, but I believe systems like Drupal, TYPO3, and Joomla are in the ballpark of providing platforms as flexible as Wordpress.

I'd be very happy to hear from folks more familiar with these tools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TYPO3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joomla

throw_m239339• 2 years ago

The reason WP was so successful isn't because it's the best CMS, or even the one with the easiest API to learn for non programmers.

The reason WP was so successful is that, for a significant amount of time. it had VERY BASIC php requirements to run, but first and foremost, its API was very STABLE, allowing the creation of a gigantic plugin ecosystem that were still compatible after a decade, when JOOMLA, Drupal and co kept breaking API all the time, or decided to bump their minimum requirements way too often.

so there can't really be a wordpress killer, if you have specific need, use a more specialized CMS.

API stability is one of the most under-rated feature when it comes to open source projects.

lylejantzi3rd• 2 years ago

There was a whole rash of them a few years back. I'm not sure if any of them took off or what.

https://ghost.org/

https://strapi.io/

https://getgrav.org/

https://craftcms.com/

julianeon• 2 years ago

The WP killer is really a WP Extensions and WP Easy Setup killer. You must make something as good as those to defeat it. That makes the scale of the job more clear.

Uehreka• 2 years ago

Responding to calls for taking a break, Matt quoted Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Life’s but a walking shadow, A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

This is a ridiculous way to address the community. There are at least five better Shakespeare quotes he could’ve gone with. From Hamlet alone:

- Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t.

- I perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on

- I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is / southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

- Doubt thou the stars are fire; / Doubt that the sun doth move; / Doubt truth to be a liar; / But never doubt I love.

- Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go

pavlov• 2 years ago

WP Engine is both Mullenweg’s uncle and stepfather? It’s all starting to make sense.

slowmovintarget• 2 years ago

I choose to interpret that as Matt calling himself and idiot and saying we won't hear from him anymore because he's done strutting and fretting.

But it's probably wishful thinking, I know.

voidfunc• 2 years ago

Dude has lost his marbles

dogsgobork• 2 years ago

You almost have to admire his dedication to just posting through his problems.

badlibrarian• 2 years ago

"There's no such thing as bad publicity."

"Hold my beer."

degrees57• 2 years ago

Okay, that actually made me laugh. Thanks.

graemep2• 2 years ago

Is that actually him posting on Reddit?

It reads like a satirical take on his behaviour.

recursivecaveat• 2 years ago

It's the same account behind an old verified AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jg781/i_am_matt_mull... so it's his account definitely.

graemep2• 2 years ago

Thanks. I find it astonishing.

Its similar to (not quite covered by?) Poe's law. It honestly read to be like a parody of Matt.

daft_pink• 2 years ago

It should say Wordpress co-founder and professional troll…. LOL

portaouflop• 2 years ago

Would anyone start and build their business on Wordpress in 2025?

I would be surprised, it seems like such a dumpster fire to get into and who knows what insanity Matt will be up to next week

mattcantstop• 2 years ago

Millions of people would. Because the vast majority of people have no idea about the drama and don't care about it. They are just trying to solve a business problem, and their friend says "use Wordpress" or the consultancy they are using tells them to use Wordpress.

People are hacker news are not a representation of society at large.

renewiltord• 2 years ago

The same group of people who were confident Reddit was doomed after removing third party apps and Twitter was doomed after layoffs is now confident that Automattic is going to pay $5.6 b in Sherman Act penalties? I'm sure he's quaking in his boots.

He's a loose cannon for sure, but I'd still bet on him rather than the rabble that will explain why a Real Business would never do what he's doing and then, in their next comment, complain on /r/antiwork about why they can't find a job.

louwrentius• 2 years ago

Imagine having to work for money at Automatic, trying to find the motivation to get through the day while your CEO behaves like this.

Whatever you find inside yourself to motivate yourself to do the current task at hand, please teach me how to reach it. I admire you.

yoz• 2 years ago

Note the included screenshot, in which Matt answers the question, "In 5 years from now, what do you hope WordPress.org looks like?" with

    I think we've basically eliminated plugin security vulnerabilities with Al agents scanning and updating plugins.

I don't know whether he's describing the situation right now or in five years' time, but either way, that's some... remarkably untethered optimism.

mthoms• 2 years ago

"if you don't want your work sold don't put it under an open source license!"

— Actual comment by Matt Mullenweg in a Reddit thread about how terrible WPEngine is for profiting off of WordPress.

The scary thing is... I'm genuinely convinced he doesn't see any of his own hypocricy. Like, at all.

motohagiography• 2 years ago

The whole thing always seemed superfluous. I never understood what I could get from a Wordpress install that I couldn't just get from a remote shell on the machine anyway.

maximilianburke• 2 years ago

Why was this flagged?

kaycey2022• 2 years ago

This is just straight up demonic possession. I hope he gets better.

Matt Mullenweg Asks What Drama to Create in 2025, Community Reacts

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