Matt Mullenweg Asks What Drama to Create in 2025, Community Reacts(wptavern.com)
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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
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"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.
— 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.
This is just straight up demonic possession. I hope he gets better.
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.
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.
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.
Why was this flagged?
“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.
> "...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
is anyone working on wp killer?
Open source easy to manage software that can have you blogging in minutes?
Open source easy to manage software that can have you blogging in minutes?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I am curious why you think FAANG code is necessarily better than the rest of the world. There are egregious affronts everywhere.
Oh, I agree - Just ask Apple’s little known IT department - IS&T.
The Apple engineers even here on HN who work at Apple, and criticize the mistakes of junior devs or other senior devs, have no clue about the trash that exists in the less important parts of the organization. For many of them, just doing some research on how even Apple accepts atrocities would be quite humbling.
The Apple engineers even here on HN who work at Apple, and criticize the mistakes of junior devs or other senior devs, have no clue about the trash that exists in the less important parts of the organization. For many of them, just doing some research on how even Apple accepts atrocities would be quite humbling.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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?
Right, there's an ecosystem of tooling around Wordpress because of its long standing inertia, if a superior product was able to compete and grow it could produce the same or better level of tooling.
I wish, but this is an unsubstantiated claim.
WordPress is for people who don’t work at FAANG. If this is the best they can do so far, there is no reason to believe they’ll do better next time. And that’s okay - we can’t all be FAANG. FAANG standards would be considered delusional compared to most code out there.
Remember that WordPress is the way it is, and it still has a multi-billion dollar company behind it. This is the best a normal, non-FAANG, billionaire organization could do. Which shows, in my opinion, how much of a bubble the code quality purists actually live in.
WordPress is for people who don’t work at FAANG. If this is the best they can do so far, there is no reason to believe they’ll do better next time. And that’s okay - we can’t all be FAANG. FAANG standards would be considered delusional compared to most code out there.
Remember that WordPress is the way it is, and it still has a multi-billion dollar company behind it. This is the best a normal, non-FAANG, billionaire organization could do. Which shows, in my opinion, how much of a bubble the code quality purists actually live in.
I don't think the bar is as high as you're saying. It's a hacked together PHP product with 20 years of cruft after that. It was simply the first to become successful. Anything built today would evolve to meet the same demand of ease of use by non technical people, if the momentum of Wordpress wasn't there preventing competition.
Not even a $5 VPS - my first WP site was shared hosting. Less relevant these days, but as barriers to entry go, wordpress was only one step higher than notepad.
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/
https://ghost.org/
https://strapi.io/
https://getgrav.org/
https://craftcms.com/
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.
> 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
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
WP Engine is both Mullenweg’s uncle and stepfather? It’s all starting to make sense.
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.
But it's probably wishful thinking, I know.
Dude has lost his marbles
You almost have to admire his dedication to just posting through his problems.
"There's no such thing as bad publicity."
"Hold my beer."
"Hold my beer."
Okay, that actually made me laugh. Thanks.
Is that actually him posting on Reddit?
It reads like a satirical take on his behaviour.
It reads like a satirical take on his behaviour.
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.
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.
Its similar to (not quite covered by?) Poe's law. It honestly read to be like a parody of Matt.
It should say Wordpress co-founder and professional troll…. LOL
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
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
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.
People are hacker news are not a representation of society at large.
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.
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.
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.