I’d like to preface this with the fact that I do donate time, money, and on occasion PRs to open source projects.
But frankly, I don’t believe anyone has any obligation to donate to an open source project.
I also don’t think anyone has any obligation to give 8% of their revenue to a project that’s completely under the control of a man that ALSO runs a commercial entity extracting money from the same project.
And I REALLY don’t think you have any obligation to give a guy worth $400 million one damn cent for using his GPL-ed software.
It’s not like he’s going to take the money and give it to the people in the community developing it, it’s going to go into his business - and thus right into his pockets.
This is just CEO corpo greed, and frankly, screw Matt. He has enough, and if his business is falling over because he got greedy and got into bed with VC and bought a failed social media network, well, that’s his problem and not everyone who uses Wordpress’.
I completely agree that individuals have no responsibility to contribute, and thank you for your own contributions. But I completely disagree that a company like WP Engine should get a free pass. I see this as a paradox of tolerance and someone is willing to lose face and money over it. He didn’t get to $400m by hording, he got there by creating and sharing WordPress and promoting a community that is supposed to lift us all up
I’m not saying they shouldn’t contribute; I’m saying there’s no universe in where you should be forced to give 8% (or any amount of) of your revenue to another business as a tithe to be allowed to use GPL software.
It’s the method of extraction I’m disagreeing with here, not that they shouldn’t contribute to what their business runs on.
And yes, technically it’s the Trademark we’re discussing rather than the software, but, ultimately, not being able to use the name of the thing is the same impact from a business perspective. Especially because Matt made sure that only Matt has a license to use the name and Matt is the only one who can decide if Matt should allow someone else to use it, also.
It’d be like Linus saying that Canonical can’t use the Linux trademark, and then going on an unhinged rant in public about how it’s theft that they’re using his trademark.
community that is supposed to lift us all up
Sadly, Matt is busy lighting that community on fire because he thinks he’s owed something for a business (which he also used to own a major portion of, for the extra lols) using GPLed software, which is also something I, in general, disagree with: the whole point of free software is that it’s free. If you want to get rich, make some proprietary software that everyone must use.
creating and sharing WordPress
The hilarious thing here is that WordPress is, itself, a fork of GPLed software. Not saying he didn’t spend an enormous amount of time and resources on improving it, but B2 is the reason it’s under GPL (since Matt would probably have picked a different license, if he could have.)
Bunch of great points, thanks. Funny you mention Linus, I’m pretty sure he’s done that a bunch. First thing that comes to mind is the “f*** you Nvidia” on stage 😂 in the grand scheme of things I just hope this blows over quickly, takes power away from all the ceos and companies involved. I don’t see anyone benefitting from this in the short or long term, especially the users.
I really don’t want WordPress to suffer, I feel like it’s one of the last pillars standing against a bland sea of identical social media profiles. Given enough time, completely unchecked, I see WP Engine moving heavily towards enshitification like that, and I think Matt wants to avoid that too? 🙏
Haven’t dived too deep in this case. But aren’t WP engine leeching the open source project without barely contributing back to the OSS project?
I’d like to preface this with the fact that I do donate time, money, and on occasion PRs to open source projects.
But frankly, I don’t believe anyone has any obligation to donate to an open source project.
I also don’t think anyone has any obligation to give 8% of their revenue to a project that’s completely under the control of a man that ALSO runs a commercial entity extracting money from the same project.
And I REALLY don’t think you have any obligation to give a guy worth $400 million one damn cent for using his GPL-ed software.
It’s not like he’s going to take the money and give it to the people in the community developing it, it’s going to go into his business - and thus right into his pockets.
This is just CEO corpo greed, and frankly, screw Matt. He has enough, and if his business is falling over because he got greedy and got into bed with VC and bought a failed social media network, well, that’s his problem and not everyone who uses Wordpress’.
I completely agree that individuals have no responsibility to contribute, and thank you for your own contributions. But I completely disagree that a company like WP Engine should get a free pass. I see this as a paradox of tolerance and someone is willing to lose face and money over it. He didn’t get to $400m by hording, he got there by creating and sharing WordPress and promoting a community that is supposed to lift us all up
I’m not saying they shouldn’t contribute; I’m saying there’s no universe in where you should be forced to give 8% (or any amount of) of your revenue to another business as a tithe to be allowed to use GPL software.
It’s the method of extraction I’m disagreeing with here, not that they shouldn’t contribute to what their business runs on.
And yes, technically it’s the Trademark we’re discussing rather than the software, but, ultimately, not being able to use the name of the thing is the same impact from a business perspective. Especially because Matt made sure that only Matt has a license to use the name and Matt is the only one who can decide if Matt should allow someone else to use it, also.
It’d be like Linus saying that Canonical can’t use the Linux trademark, and then going on an unhinged rant in public about how it’s theft that they’re using his trademark.
Sadly, Matt is busy lighting that community on fire because he thinks he’s owed something for a business (which he also used to own a major portion of, for the extra lols) using GPLed software, which is also something I, in general, disagree with: the whole point of free software is that it’s free. If you want to get rich, make some proprietary software that everyone must use.
The hilarious thing here is that WordPress is, itself, a fork of GPLed software. Not saying he didn’t spend an enormous amount of time and resources on improving it, but B2 is the reason it’s under GPL (since Matt would probably have picked a different license, if he could have.)
Bunch of great points, thanks. Funny you mention Linus, I’m pretty sure he’s done that a bunch. First thing that comes to mind is the “f*** you Nvidia” on stage 😂 in the grand scheme of things I just hope this blows over quickly, takes power away from all the ceos and companies involved. I don’t see anyone benefitting from this in the short or long term, especially the users.
I really don’t want WordPress to suffer, I feel like it’s one of the last pillars standing against a bland sea of identical social media profiles. Given enough time, completely unchecked, I see WP Engine moving heavily towards enshitification like that, and I think Matt wants to avoid that too? 🙏
Then the mistake was made many years ago by releasing the code under GPLv2, with no obligation to contribute back.
But doesn’t that definition apply to the vast majority of people/companies that use WordPress?