Perfect way to kill the project [LWN.net]

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 17:32 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18)
In reply to: Perfect way to kill the project by Sesse
Parent article: Automattic reduces WordPress contributions

> Like, what? “Community” in scare quotes, weasel words, it all sounds like they're bitter at something someone said about something WP Engine did at some point. They really don't come across well.

Yeah. I feel like the basic position is pretty sympathetic: "Hey, this is open source, but it costs a lot to run these important supporting services. We need other companies who are benefiting from them commercially to kick in and help!" ... but the communications and actions make it pretty hard to _stay_ sympathetic.

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Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 18:52 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

The thing is that contributions to wordpress.org shared infrastructure from all the vendors in the WordPress ecosystem would be a lot more likely if wordpress.org/WordPress Foundation were an actual independent entity and all the vendors were peers rather than the personal plaything of MM. The inability to let go of control (and stunning emotional immaturity, will to dominate) has created all this unnecessary drama. I guess I expect that given the obvious technical risks involved for all the vendors/users in the WordPress ecosystem that it will be effectively forked into Autommatic and everyone-else variants. I see a lot of parallels with Canonical proposing infrastructure components that don't become canonical, because of the licensing and inability to act as a peer among vendors.