@@Kane0123 he just realised he done get some one stinking rich, and now he wants some of that good good cold hard cash. Very understandable. Damn php really can buy a lambo!
I was surprised he appeared so quickly on these youtube channels, probably before he had time to discuss the matter with lawyers and media experts. He should know that everything he says in the public now can be used against him.
I kept citing old law tv shows from the 80's and 90's, they ALWAYS tell you to be quiet and let the lawyers speak...why would this super rich, smart guy feel differently?
You are wrong. It is not in fact true that anything he says can be used against him. EVERYTHING HE SAYS ABSOLUTELY WILL BE USED AGAINST HIM. And he deserves it.
I mean, I saw this coming a MILE off. He literally gave WP Engine all the evidence they needed from the interviews. It's absolutely wild he thought going to streamers was going to improve his argument someone randomly owes him 8% revenue, arbitrarily set by himself, and not legally. He decided to update his legal terms in a rush to argue his point. Instead of seeking proper legal guidance, he went against himself. Stupid fight to pick when you go out of your way to harm customers over settling it in a courtroom (where it belongs.) The blackmailing of Heather is completely criminal. Sick. He's absolutely unhinged.
I thought this after watching the interview live, I never used WP and never planned to use it. However I'm now actively discouraging people from using it. Don't care if Matt is the kindest soul in the world (he isn't), they didn't care about fucking over thousands of small companies and business owners because of all this issue
The way I see it OS is great engine for innovation but it needs to be protected from the predatory VCs, I find the Unreal Licence kid of interesting it's all free 100%, unless you start making serious money, then you give them a cut. Meaning you can play as you want edit a game and get payed, but should you blossom into a giant you pay you due, I think it's fair. The wordpress situation has been unfair, devs working hard for others to live on yacht, you can intuitively see something had to give.
unless an open source alternative comes out i highly doubt it, like half the internet is built on wordpress at this point. i’ve seen a ton of online stores with frontends built in wordpress
@@spaceghostmiid lol wordpress is free and open source. just not the wordpress trademark. so you basically just have to fork it and rename it to OpenPress or sth, then you're good. only thing is that the whole community would have to move to the fork, and that's pretty unlikely.
@@spaceghostmiidThe open source alternative could be a fork of WordPress. It's happened to other open source projects like open office. Sometimes the majority of the community of users and developers around an open source project jumps ship together to a fork with a new leadership structure and a new name but a copy of the existing code.
@@spaceghostmiid there are plenty alternatives Joomla, Ghost (the ones I used), but I think WP iterated faster on updates and was simpler to handle. Especialy majority of hosting services was based on PHP same language WP is written and even included one click to start WP site. It would take few minutes to by hosting on server and run WP site. Also large plugins library.
@@yojou3695 He did not, he was playing the victim card and doing exactly what a manipulator does, both in his actions and body language. Exerting pressure on WPE with the extreme amount of power he has for his position and playing the "I'm so good" card, the "are you thirsty? lets get you some water, I'm so servicial" card. Fuck him.
Definitely comes across like a guy who slipped someone a roofie then tried to claim they were nice enough to arrange a taxi afterwards and also definitely didn't penetrate them while they were asleep.
While his demeanor doesn't help to be likable, one should judge the facts instead of appearances and preferences. My judgement is: They are all douchebags and are being extra douche because it appears there is A LOT of money in Wordpress.
Yip, that all looks pretty horrible. Let's remember it's private equity on the other side of the coin, though. I'm not a fan of Matt, and he 100% comes across as super toxic, but I'd bet money that the private equity group is no better. I tend to wonder if Matt really was trying to broker a deal for years, got jerked around, and finally snapped. Matt did some pretty messed up stuff, for sure. But I'm not about to believe the private equity group are these poor, innocent victims. They're just far better at mud slinging and hiding their toxicity.
I don't care about Matt, Automattic nor WP Enginge, but this is just sad for the WordPress community and ecosystem as a whole. The consequences will show eventually, and they won't be good.
Your interview was amazing. Why? You let him expose himself. The arrogance and form of narcissistic behaviour makes him feel untouched. He should have NEVER done the interview. I would be pissed if I was part of his legal team.
Matt basically asnwered no questions in his youtube interviews, just attempts to defame, deflect blame, minimize the consequences, or do a reverse uno/what-aboutism. He was so frustrating to listen to. He literally hurt himself several times, like with what counts as a contribution and then refusing to answer Theo's questions about what WPE was doing could be counted as a contribution. Matt - It's not about the contribution! It's the license Theo - but they can pay the 8% with a contribution, and they're technically contributing aren't they? Matt - Look they could pay the 8% however they want and make this all go away Theo - They're betting their whole company on Wordpress services, providing support, hosting, writing their own plugins, they're active in the community, and you said that could count just moments ago when talking about others Matt - Well do a poll then, ask your chat if it's confusing and if the result is over 15%, I win
@@nathanielkswas Then keeps justifying it like “Well, they got Al Capone on tax evasion”, like dude, stop telling everyone that you’re weaponizing this suit for some reason that you can’t touch them legally for. On top of changing the policy in September from “Do whatever you want with the branding” to “Don’t be confusing with the branding”, right as he’s about to base his entire legal argument on them being “confusing”.
Matt seemed like so unprofessional by even doing those interviews and then seemed to portray himself (at least in Primes interview, I think he sharpened up a bit in Theos) as just some guy who was butthurt that someone else was getting major success off wordpress with an attitude of "but I should have some of that money if you're going to be that successful" and that really seems like thats all there is to it
Matt has been unprofessional for at least a few months at this point, he had been personally banning transwomen off of tumblr for bs reasons, even at a time when he was supposed to be taking a work free holiday. The big one where he banned a transwoman for "death threats" - she said, and I quote "I hope photomatt dies forever a painful death involving a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and hammers go flying everywhere", in what world is this a serious threat, it's cartoony, unrealistic and funny. Sure, he might not have liked it, but as someone in a high position, it's better for him to ignore the situation instead of diving into it - just like with this wordpress stuff. When he gets butthurt, he reaches for the ban hammer - not a great trait to have as a CEO.
I kinda wish that would be grounds for losing a Trademark. Something tells me it’s not, but if he is selectively enforcing his trademark to extort people, maybe that means he isn’t protecting his trademark elsewhere?
This is why stuff should be taken to court rather than argued about between armchair lawyers on the internet. The truth will come out. In court, if they lie, they are committing purgery. On the internet you can basically lie as much as you want.
Lol I remember applying to this company forever ago, passing their code interview, and them basically saying I wasn’t qualified after easily passing lol. So excuse me while I grab my popcorn and watch them go down in flames.
@@JavedAlam-ce4mu No it was Automattic lol and just the standard generated email denial template. No one ever gives you any real reason. Even if you pass. Most likely some other dev came in and wanted less money and they wanted to go for a cheaper option. That’s how this typically always goes lol
@@imadetheuniverse4fun oh sir you are absolutely right that I am vindictive. I am the definition of petty. And I will happily watch anyones downfall that I feel like deserves it. But make no mistake about it, I’m nothing like this man. There’s a clear asymmetrical power imbalance between corporations who screw people over and devs working hard to get ahead. So I’m always going to side with devs over corporations ran by assholes. It just so happens that I’m the dev in this situation but I’d feel the same way if anyone else had to go through the bs I did
I can absolutely believe this happened. Honestly shocked so few thought Matt's public appearance was going to give WPE fuel. The man's narcissism is a ticking time bomb for investors.
Matt is such a bully. Anyone can look like a sad puppy for an hour, but the facts are clear, actions speak for themselves! WP is on a path to self-destruction. Change is good, and people and organizations relying on WP will move to a better solution!
I feel like I'm watching Matt implode, in slow motion, for the public to see. The Hacker News thread spun out of control pretty quickly, and he can't seem to stop self-owning. I really think he's a decent guy, but he's on tilt and I honestly hope he can pull back on his public comments for a while. What a mess. EDIT: after the crap he pulled with Heather, I'm actually not sure he's a decent guy. Feels really wrong to me.
Pretty sure it has been a decade or more of implosion. It's been a very long time since I cared about WordPress, but I have vague memories of him being petty and vindictive in multiple instances in the distant past.
He's not a decent guy. We judge others by their actions, and ourselves and people we like by their intentions. Thing is, nobody cares about his intentions. You are your actions to the world. And his actions suck.
Having read all 62 pages it does not make Matt look good at all, especially when you see the screenshots of the private messages. He has been very unprofessional in all this in my opinion and it makes him look like a total scum bag. Be very interesting to see how this plays out if it goes to court.
Example? Or are you just a corporate shill? You'd have to be quite invested to read 62 pages, so please do tell of the things that Matt said that were unprofessional.
@@JavedAlam-ce4mu Did you not watch this video? I'm not going to do your research for you, read the lawsuit and make up your own mind. I'm just a regular WP user and no shill.
I've been making WP sites since 2008. I've been professionally freelancing with WP since 2013. This is the single largest f-up by Matt I've seen to date, and I'm genuinely wondering if there's even going to be a WordPress once the dust settles.
whoa now i'm interested in all this wordpress stuff. my biggest discovery so far is automattic, who owns(?) wordpress, also owns(?) mongoose, which is giving me hell at work
When I saw the Matt interview you did (incl Primes), there was just something about his facial expression that was off.. the other thing was the body language - the interviewee is normally the one skewed to be in a slightly more defensive posture, considering the topic it was just odd to see him with open arms and leaning in, as if he's hyperaware that he should hold this pose to seem trustworthy. What a mess. Good job reporting on this whole thing Theo, massively appreciate your ability to change your mind & respect for having the guts to lay it all out in public.
Body language analysis is rubbish. People don't sit or non-verbally communicate in any standard way. A great example is autistic people... The body language means nothing.
Looks like a serious case of open source regret, he open sourced WP and now is starting to greedily eye the money others are making off of it and feel like he deserves a cut. Comically inept attempt at a hostile corporate takeover may not turn out to be the best way to express that regret however.
I don't know why you'd hate a piece of software because the authors are trash, if the software itself is good that's no reason to hate it. WordPress is good at what it does.
@@theairaccumulator7144 If by that you mean loading up 50% of the Internet with slow mastodontic web sites full of security holes managed by people who have never written a line of code, yeah, it's great at what it does 🤣
@@theairaccumulator7144Code does not exist in a vacuum. It is tied to the people who built it and the little who use it. There is no WordPress without Matt. It is perfectly fine to say you don't want to use WordPress because you don't want to be seen to endorse Matt. After all, that's the argument he was trying to make in his trademark claims - that by using the WordPress trademark to describe WordPress, they were claiming an affiliation.
@t3dotgg Kudos for getting Matt's take on it so fast and continuing to follow the story. Your work on this story is important (even if you wish it weren't at this point...)
Even if Automattic owns the trademark, the fact they didn't defend it until now violates the number 1 rule of American trademark law: protect it or lose it! I don't know the time frame that must lapse for this to happen, but a reasonable person could assume 5 years of silence is enough. Additionally, as was pointed out in the prior video (pre-interview), quickly updating the webpage where it discusses the letters "WP" would also be enough, in my non-lawyerly opinion, to be extremely distrustful of Automattic/Mullenweg and demonstrates bad faith conduct on their part. Had this trademark claim occurred in 2019, this would be a different conversation. In 2024, this sounds like extortion and I hope Mullenweg and his company are forced to pay heavily for this mob-style tactic. (While I don't really use WordPress enough to care about this particular case, I want the precedent set for future attempts by open-source founders to pull this crap for stuff I do use regularly.)
I'm confused by what you said about quickly updating the webpage, I was under the impression that WPEngine were the ones to change their webpage? Also, Matt claimed that he had been trying to negotiate with WPEngine for years, but they were stonewalling him. So he was attempting to protect the trademark. Further, he said that he has protected it against other actors in the past.
@@JavedAlam-ce4mu It doesn't matter if he's tried to negotiate for years if there's nothing to negotiate. It's like you buy a house and later the previous owner calls you out for not even negotiating over paying them rent. What is there to negotiate? It's your house, you already have the right to quiet enjoyment, you don't need to pay the previous owner a grand a month for it. The items in the term sheet were made under false exclusivity. They were offering a grant of and limitation to rights that WPE already had, and offering nothing in return, indeed demanding they be paid for it. It's a sham contract. If this goes to trial, Matt loses hands down. He tried to extort WPE, got called out on it, and then had a tantrum over it.
Matt is a horrible CEO. He's the one who should be replaced. I formally retract what i said about not impacting me much. I've been working with WordPress for ten years, but been doing other things already. Now I'm leaving wp for good.
I think it's very fair to say Matt has not behaved well, here. This is extremely disappointing. But let's not forget that private equity is on the other side of that coin. I am going to need a lot of convincing before I believe the private equity group is clean. Private equity often seems to be good at creating three things: money, human suffering, and a lower quality product than what was offered before they got involved.
In my opinion what happens is that most companies which use wordpress contribute to it by money or by human resources which is not mandatory but as a gesture to build on a business open source. But WP Engine did not do that as it was not some sort of mandatory rule which led to this situation. How does this escalate to is I think it was one of first time something like this happens and WP Engine was first of which did not agree to Matt demand of giving money or human resources to community which made Matt personally mad and he tried his best to blackmail or whatever we see here to make them do what he wanted thinking they will give up.
This filing literally touches on everything that my gut told me about his whole thing. I hope it kicks his ass. He's a petty child. He blocked me on X for tweeting his quotes from your video that he referrred to and asked me if i watched.
Wow. When your CEO can’t convince people to join your company using bribery, threats, and intimidation… it probably is time to take that severance package.
I believe Matt is human. Silver lake is money. Theo should understand that the lawsuit is not to bring two sided argument. Should WP Engine not just settle for years ago, with a commercial license. But at what stage should you need a commercial license or not for Wordpress? Manny companies use it as their CMS. Matt still made blunders. Both with being on a personal agenda against WP engine, and threats. Silver lake is smart company. They will never let some passionate CEO or employee of theirs talk in public. Because all of the spoken word will used against you. Hats off for Matt, showing his open approach. But it does hurt him. Yes, WP engine should have agreed to a commercial license. Just as blue hosting - but I guess there are no formal pricing plans and "a must" for companies. Both Silver lake and Matt is both doing wrong.
1337 nice, esp. the last part with the edit. Wild, I only saw half of the interview/vid and I don't know if it is me falsly remembering it but I think I had a weired vibe from that guy.
If it turnss out Matt owns 50% of Automattic at best then this coul be trouble for him, depending on how much damage is caused by this. Asides, even if he owns +50%, investors like BlackRock could still sue for loss of returns. And, where the claims made in his new document go the SEC might well have pricked up their ears. Matt has a lot of money, but his investors have more and there's a hierarchy to be observed.
Not that I agree with Mullenweg's conduct here but you talking about the topic as though you are 100% sure WPE will win the lawsuit surprises me. You do realize if they lose the lawsuit for Copyright infringement you are next right? Scary times.
Wordpress at this point is an over engineered cms. The Gatsby block page builder is horrendous and so is all the crappy plugin page builders.. Wordpress has tried to be the everything open software which only creates a ton of bloat code and unnecessary features. Any developer could build a cms.. it’s not that difficult.
Wow! You have done a fabulous job with your interview! Much better than Prime in my opinion. And to be fair, watching it did raise some more suspicion about Matt. He has f@*ked up and would not admit it. I would not be surprised if it’s the end of his WP career - it’s either this or irreparable damage to Wordpress.
@@pilapila183 I don’t really get your point. Are you saying that if you compare two interviews with the same person but conducted by two different moderators, that you are not allowed to say that one interview was better than the other because one of the moderators did not prepare as well (for whatever reason)? If so, thank you for your valuable input! 🙏
Big respect for being honest in the video and not defending Matt. I was on his side during the interview, but now I know it was just a mask he was wearing with a creepy smile. I cannot imagine the shit he did/will do behind the scenes.
Oh my god, reading to the lawsuit carefully and understanding the facts more ... makes the situation even more insane. Discussing the replacement of a key employee that people love? And then she lives proving it was obviously not in good terms? What was he thinking? And he thinks that he's the good guy? Jesus, he fucked up massively. Next time somebody should calm his ego, bully, manipulative behavior. And i say every one of these words fully aware what they mean. Ego for making this all about himself. Bully and Manipulative for literally practicing extortion while insulting them. He's not a good influence to have around, lets leave it at that.
Місяць тому+2
I'm still impressed of how massive is WP marketshare of CMS, with a 20 years old stack. How come no other newer CMS have succeeded?
Drupal may not be as big but it's widely used. A big part of WordPress's success is due to its ecosystem, with many small/medium businesses selling services (like SEO or accessibility optimizations) or plugins/themes, and those actors all have an economic incentive to keep WordPress as a main platform on the Internet, by not being too negative about it for instance. They kinda lost me as a dev with their React-based editor, which seemed to be a relatively feature-breaking and dirty hack to keep face in Wix/Squarespace comparisons, as those services were doing better full-page editors.
From a developer standpoint it's awful to work with, too. The problem is (as is often the case) that clients have become used to it. It's the customers keeping it alive, and devs going along with it because they get paid. "WordPress" and "blog" are basically synonymous to people who don't know better, that's how strong the brand is.
I wouldn't expect anything less from a guy who puts his first name in his company name. The only thing that worries me is that this will paint FOSS in negative light.
Bro? Linux? Linus? What nonsense u blabbin? Throughout the entire man-known history scientists and engineers were naming their work after themselves, to leave at least that fraction of the legacy they deserved to leave behind. Don't slander history's best and most useful people on whose shoulders we all stand because of one bad dude here.
For the good or the bad I think Matt is not gonna be coming out as a good individual, but the license is his and the agreement (as far as I could understand) is on his part. Like, if he wants to pull the plug on WPE he can. Will he be considered a jerk for it? Most likely, but that's how it is. On the bright side, Wordpress is hiring (probably)
WPE has a Limerick office, in the same small Irish city where Stripe was developed. Without intending to, there are implicit connections between the engineers. Some of them would know eachother and would share knowledge and expertise. It's not a rumour, just a result of close proximity with a comparativrly small pool of software engineers.
Having worked with WordPress in the past, it should not be considered unless the client specifically requests it. There are more elegant solutions that are much less depressing to work with.
Anyone simply taking this document at face value doesn't know anything about the legal process. WP Engine's lawyers will have intentionally represented facts in a way to spin a particular narrative favorable to their clients. We won't know the whole picture until Automattic's legal team get a chance to respond, and potentially until a significant amount of back and forth in court filings, motions, legal proceedings, etc. The most likely outcome of this is that it will be settled out of court and we will never know the full truth or the legal veracity of the various facts presented.
sure, but we have access to enough data to come to a pretty clear conclusion of what's going on. both sides have made everything public. and lmao you think it will be settled out of court haha
That’s true, but on the other hand it seems like they’ve made some assertions which are pretty devastating on the face of it, and so easy to disprove if false that it hardly seems worth trying. So unless their legal team is totally incompetent it sounds like Matt is in trouble.
Thanks for your contrasting opinions. I don't think this situation is a good thing for either party. I'll revisit this thread in 6 months to a year if we get more legal facts to analyze, and we can evaluate in retrospect if what we saw in this initial filing was actually enough to come to a conclusion. Personally I don't feel any need to confidently speculate either way at this time, regardless of what facts have been presented. I've seen enough "plot twist" filings to still be on the fence.
The amount of negative comments is crazy.. How can everyone be so easily swayed. IMO It's too early to take either side. This here is called propaganda or in more modern terms PR. Fact is that Matt is obviously not cutout to be a leader or frontman for business/law side of things; he's too immature. Everyone can see that and WPE is smart to take advantage of the fact. However that has little to do with the question "who is right". To me it's a red flag how WPE cuts out pieces of DMs; they paint the color that that is favorable to them, then they present SS of the chat part that(alone) confirms what they're saying; i.e. if you're looking at it from the perspective that they previously force upon the reader. Then they go ahead about how Heather says this or that but do not present any evidence. For all we know this Heather did negotiate with Matt about jumping boats in the recent past, but then used the current situation in her advantage to negotiate e.g. double the salary with the WPE. And if they're making that much money (WPE), it would cost them so much less to go through the end with this; buyout people out (e.g. double/triple the salary of Heather), finance PR etc. than pay the 8%. All I'm saying is that it's possible for either side to be at fault here. And people shouldn't be this quick to condemn either side; instead let the things play out first. Also bias is very real. There are people that are dependent on WPE and now they're facing issues without their fault and understandably from their perspective Matt would be the antagonist. PS: Im talking about social justice here. From the legal perspective I think it is hard for Matt's lawyers to build a case in their favor here. Like I said, he is immature and probably easy to manipulate. I bet all the evidence that would prove of him warning them for years and asking for givebacks in sense of developer help etc., happened during unrecorded calls and real world(lunch) meetings; considering he's telling the truth of course.
For those who worked on WP and know, the red flags and dark nuances of Matt behavior started in WP itself with infesting the default distribution with automatic cancer plugins… WPE has a quality products. Everything else is music against him. Him treating someone like that specially a woman is worthy of being exposed because he f*d up
Every few years after forgetting him, Matt M find s creative way to remind us all that he's an idiot. His lawyers must be looking at yachts and planes now bc it's going to cost for them to dig him out of this one.
I didn't know much of either side before all of this, what I feel is a shame is that I think Matt has a really good point about contributing back to open source burried in all of this but he has managed to handle it all in the worst possible way. Also his whole "nice guy" persona just feels fake, i hope it's not but his vindictive actions seem to confirm it.
He doesn't really have a point about contributing back. Not only because it appears that WPE do, in fact, contribute back significantly in both code and community involvement, but also because he's not a starving maintainer whose project is being used by billion-dollar companies for free. He's sufficiently well off that he can afford to drop millions in a year on donations and still live in the Bay Area. He's not Lasse Collin, overworked maintainer with too many little relying on him. He's more like Lars Ulrich, pretending to be the starving artist while his band had become one of the biggest in the world in their genre.
@@himagainstill I don't see Matts personal wealth holding any relevance to how much large companies should contribute. I haven't seen any evidence of significant financial contributions (and no sponsoring a conference is buying marketing not a contribution) or code contributions to wordpress core.
@@isomochyn1 Have you tried paying attention. They were literally sponsors of the conference where he dumped on them, and he even pointed out in that talk that they contribute code back. And yes, his personal wealth matters, because whether or not it is exploitative explicitly depends on the relative position of the parties. In this instance, he's worth about as much as their revenues. Nobody's ripping him off here. He just wants a slice of their revenue for no articulable reason. If he wants 8% of their money, he can buy 8% of the company like anyone else.
@@isomochyn1 His personal wealth is relevant because whether or not the relationship is exploitative explicitly depends on the relative position of the parties. In this case, the party claiming to have been exploited is apparently worth more than the target company's revenue, and has enough of a platform that he can make what are clearly personal blog posts on the main websites of both WordPress and Automattic unimpeded. Seems like he's doing just fine, and he's not suffering any harm from it. Also, I don't think it's fair to characterise WPE as a big company. In the tech space, if your valuation isn't at least $50bn, you're nothing.
This beef was the first time I've ever heard about WP Engine, Automattic, and Matt. I'm not impressed by either. We have another Portuguese 🇵🇹 saying: "A roupa suja não se lava em público"
IIIIIIII toollddd youuuu both: You are repeating both your questions and you didn't got even a clear Answer. Damn there are so many controversal statements. Why can't Matt just say he wants money?
tech media is crazyy im goin back to my terminal
this is the way
My safe place 😌😌
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Can’t believe he did half that stuff.. my dude has lost it.
@@Kane0123 he just realised he done get some one stinking rich, and now he wants some of that good good cold hard cash. Very understandable. Damn php really can buy a lambo!
When you are in the middle of an interview and your lawyer calls, pick up the damn phone!
😂😂
I knew that was wassup!🤣🤣🤣
Wait, this happened? I didnt watch the interview
Matt didnt pick up his phone when his lawyer called him? Thats crazy
@@rawallon there was a call during matt's intervew with prime....it was not answered
I was surprised he appeared so quickly on these youtube channels, probably before he had time to discuss the matter with lawyers and media experts. He should know that everything he says in the public now can be used against him.
I kept citing old law tv shows from the 80's and 90's, they ALWAYS tell you to be quiet and let the lawyers speak...why would this super rich, smart guy feel differently?
@@bob-p7x6j same reason everyone else feels like they're different
@@bob-p7x6j obvious Sun Tzu's law ...
Never interrupt your opponent while he is in the middle of making a mistake.
You are wrong. It is not in fact true that anything he says can be used against him.
EVERYTHING HE SAYS ABSOLUTELY WILL BE USED AGAINST HIM. And he deserves it.
He even outwardly named he had no PR training. And I was like if you’re in a lawsuit maybe just maybe you should not be public about anything.
The big company cited UA-camrs in a lawsuit before GTA 6.
I don't thin this is the first time this has happened.
I don't think this is the last time this will happen.
I do think this wil happen
I do think (sometimes)
I think
I mean, I saw this coming a MILE off. He literally gave WP Engine all the evidence they needed from the interviews. It's absolutely wild he thought going to streamers was going to improve his argument someone randomly owes him 8% revenue, arbitrarily set by himself, and not legally. He decided to update his legal terms in a rush to argue his point. Instead of seeking proper legal guidance, he went against himself. Stupid fight to pick when you go out of your way to harm customers over settling it in a courtroom (where it belongs.) The blackmailing of Heather is completely criminal. Sick. He's absolutely unhinged.
Even talked about WP at work today, and nobody wants to touch it. This is going to cost them bigtime, decades of branding down the drain
I thought this after watching the interview live, I never used WP and never planned to use it. However I'm now actively discouraging people from using it. Don't care if Matt is the kindest soul in the world (he isn't), they didn't care about fucking over thousands of small companies and business owners because of all this issue
The way I see it OS is great engine for innovation but it needs to be protected from the predatory VCs, I find the Unreal Licence kid of interesting it's all free 100%, unless you start making serious money, then you give them a cut.
Meaning you can play as you want edit a game and get payed, but should you blossom into a giant you pay you due, I think it's fair.
The wordpress situation has been unfair, devs working hard for others to live on yacht, you can intuitively see something had to give.
Great! Less PHP on the web :D !
Matt is his own worst enemy. I wouldn't be surprised if in 5-10 years WordPress doesn't exist as it does today.
unless an open source alternative comes out i highly doubt it, like half the internet is built on wordpress at this point. i’ve seen a ton of online stores with frontends built in wordpress
@@spaceghostmiid lol wordpress is free and open source. just not the wordpress trademark. so you basically just have to fork it and rename it to OpenPress or sth, then you're good. only thing is that the whole community would have to move to the fork, and that's pretty unlikely.
Nah
@@spaceghostmiidThe open source alternative could be a fork of WordPress. It's happened to other open source projects like open office. Sometimes the majority of the community of users and developers around an open source project jumps ship together to a fork with a new leadership structure and a new name but a copy of the existing code.
@@spaceghostmiid there are plenty alternatives Joomla, Ghost (the ones I used), but I think WP iterated faster on updates and was simpler to handle. Especialy majority of hosting services was based on PHP same language WP is written and even included one click to start WP site. It would take few minutes to by hosting on server and run WP site. Also large plugins library.
Matt’s demeanor with Theo and Prime was unsettling and felt exactly like a manipulator trying to play the good guy.
Yup
not really, it's clear he was lied to and he is angry now. He looked emotional
@@yojou3695 He did not, he was playing the victim card and doing exactly what a manipulator does, both in his actions and body language. Exerting pressure on WPE with the extreme amount of power he has for his position and playing the "I'm so good" card, the "are you thirsty? lets get you some water, I'm so servicial" card. Fuck him.
Definitely comes across like a guy who slipped someone a roofie then tried to claim they were nice enough to arrange a taxi afterwards and also definitely didn't penetrate them while they were asleep.
While his demeanor doesn't help to be likable, one should judge the facts instead of appearances and preferences. My judgement is: They are all douchebags and are being extra douche because it appears there is A LOT of money in Wordpress.
WordPress becoming evil was not on my 2024 bingo card.
good news, you didn't hit that square because they didn't "become" evil in 2024.
@@danmerillat yeah this isn't the first time he tried this
theyre not though...
Yip, that all looks pretty horrible. Let's remember it's private equity on the other side of the coin, though. I'm not a fan of Matt, and he 100% comes across as super toxic, but I'd bet money that the private equity group is no better. I tend to wonder if Matt really was trying to broker a deal for years, got jerked around, and finally snapped. Matt did some pretty messed up stuff, for sure. But I'm not about to believe the private equity group are these poor, innocent victims. They're just far better at mud slinging and hiding their toxicity.
I haven't trusted Wordpress since they forced through the Gutenberg editor. It was clear they were putting automattic first.
Sounds like Theo and Matt became friends (they are both nerds after all), and Theo is just so disappointed in his new buddy.
I don't care about Matt, Automattic nor WP Enginge, but this is just sad for the WordPress community and ecosystem as a whole. The consequences will show eventually, and they won't be good.
Your interview was amazing. Why? You let him expose himself. The arrogance and form of narcissistic behaviour makes him feel untouched. He should have NEVER done the interview. I would be pissed if I was part of his legal team.
Matt basically asnwered no questions in his youtube interviews, just attempts to defame, deflect blame, minimize the consequences, or do a reverse uno/what-aboutism. He was so frustrating to listen to. He literally hurt himself several times, like with what counts as a contribution and then refusing to answer Theo's questions about what WPE was doing could be counted as a contribution.
Matt - It's not about the contribution! It's the license
Theo - but they can pay the 8% with a contribution, and they're technically contributing aren't they?
Matt - Look they could pay the 8% however they want and make this all go away
Theo - They're betting their whole company on Wordpress services, providing support, hosting, writing their own plugins, they're active in the community, and you said that could count just moments ago when talking about others
Matt - Well do a poll then, ask your chat if it's confusing and if the result is over 15%, I win
"If the result is (a fraction of a fraction of a majority), I win." This dude sounds like he's making bets on the playground. What the fuck.
@@nathanielkswas Then keeps justifying it like “Well, they got Al Capone on tax evasion”, like dude, stop telling everyone that you’re weaponizing this suit for some reason that you can’t touch them legally for. On top of changing the policy in September from “Do whatever you want with the branding” to “Don’t be confusing with the branding”, right as he’s about to base his entire legal argument on them being “confusing”.
15% is the value set by law when talking about trademark confusion... he didn't just make up a number
@@GameOn0827 no one said he did
@@Iscream4j0y Literally the first guy said he did
13:37 min - this video will be l337
Matt seemed like so unprofessional by even doing those interviews and then seemed to portray himself (at least in Primes interview, I think he sharpened up a bit in Theos) as just some guy who was butthurt that someone else was getting major success off wordpress with an attitude of "but I should have some of that money if you're going to be that successful" and that really seems like thats all there is to it
Matt has been unprofessional for at least a few months at this point, he had been personally banning transwomen off of tumblr for bs reasons, even at a time when he was supposed to be taking a work free holiday.
The big one where he banned a transwoman for "death threats" - she said, and I quote "I hope photomatt dies forever a painful death involving a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and hammers go flying everywhere", in what world is this a serious threat, it's cartoony, unrealistic and funny.
Sure, he might not have liked it, but as someone in a high position, it's better for him to ignore the situation instead of diving into it - just like with this wordpress stuff.
When he gets butthurt, he reaches for the ban hammer - not a great trait to have as a CEO.
When the CEO of Automattic says "Thats the law we are using to encourage them to give back" he is essentially admitting to attempted extortion.
I kinda wish that would be grounds for losing a Trademark. Something tells me it’s not, but if he is selectively enforcing his trademark to extort people, maybe that means he isn’t protecting his trademark elsewhere?
@@Drazil100 It can be.
Thanks bro for recording this hot juicy drama instead of going to sleep so that now I can sleep to it in my timezone.
Under the genial smile and cardigan sweater, is a tech mafia boss...
This is why stuff should be taken to court rather than argued about between armchair lawyers on the internet.
The truth will come out. In court, if they lie, they are committing purgery. On the internet you can basically lie as much as you want.
Yeah you don't want to commit purgery for sure.
Lol I remember applying to this company forever ago, passing their code interview, and them basically saying I wasn’t qualified after easily passing lol. So excuse me while I grab my popcorn and watch them go down in flames.
Wordpress or WPEngine? What was their justification for saying you were unqualified?
@@JavedAlam-ce4muthey dont like indian people
@@JavedAlam-ce4mu No it was Automattic lol and just the standard generated email denial template. No one ever gives you any real reason. Even if you pass. Most likely some other dev came in and wanted less money and they wanted to go for a cheaper option. That’s how this typically always goes lol
trust me with the amount of vindictiveness coming off your comment, you would have fit right in with Matt 🤣
@@imadetheuniverse4fun oh sir you are absolutely right that I am vindictive. I am the definition of petty. And I will happily watch anyones downfall that I feel like deserves it. But make no mistake about it, I’m nothing like this man. There’s a clear asymmetrical power imbalance between corporations who screw people over and devs working hard to get ahead. So I’m always going to side with devs over corporations ran by assholes. It just so happens that I’m the dev in this situation but I’d feel the same way if anyone else had to go through the bs I did
I can absolutely believe this happened. Honestly shocked so few thought Matt's public appearance was going to give WPE fuel. The man's narcissism is a ticking time bomb for investors.
Matt is such a bully. Anyone can look like a sad puppy for an hour, but the facts are clear, actions speak for themselves!
WP is on a path to self-destruction. Change is good, and people and organizations relying on WP will move to a better solution!
I feel like I'm watching Matt implode, in slow motion, for the public to see. The Hacker News thread spun out of control pretty quickly, and he can't seem to stop self-owning. I really think he's a decent guy, but he's on tilt and I honestly hope he can pull back on his public comments for a while. What a mess.
EDIT: after the crap he pulled with Heather, I'm actually not sure he's a decent guy. Feels really wrong to me.
Pretty sure it has been a decade or more of implosion. It's been a very long time since I cared about WordPress, but I have vague memories of him being petty and vindictive in multiple instances in the distant past.
He's not a decent guy. We judge others by their actions, and ourselves and people we like by their intentions. Thing is, nobody cares about his intentions. You are your actions to the world. And his actions suck.
hes always been nuts
hes also transphobic soooooo
this is worse than redis situation
Having read all 62 pages it does not make Matt look good at all, especially when you see the screenshots of the private messages. He has been very unprofessional in all this in my opinion and it makes him look like a total scum bag. Be very interesting to see how this plays out if it goes to court.
Example? Or are you just a corporate shill? You'd have to be quite invested to read 62 pages, so please do tell of the things that Matt said that were unprofessional.
@@JavedAlam-ce4mu Did you not watch this video? I'm not going to do your research for you, read the lawsuit and make up your own mind. I'm just a regular WP user and no shill.
When you get past middle school reading 62 pages won’t be so hard
@@viewerguy10 I'm blind.
Screenshots of PMs? This sounds more like Discord server drama than something that could actually go to court lmfaoo. So ridiculous.
I've been making WP sites since 2008. I've been professionally freelancing with WP since 2013. This is the single largest f-up by Matt I've seen to date, and I'm genuinely wondering if there's even going to be a WordPress once the dust settles.
whoa now i'm interested in all this wordpress stuff.
my biggest discovery so far is automattic, who owns(?) wordpress, also owns(?) mongoose, which is giving me hell at work
They also own Tumblr
Theo thanks man, that interview you did was phenomenal how you stood up
When I saw the Matt interview you did (incl Primes), there was just something about his facial expression that was off.. the other thing was the body language - the interviewee is normally the one skewed to be in a slightly more defensive posture, considering the topic it was just odd to see him with open arms and leaning in, as if he's hyperaware that he should hold this pose to seem trustworthy. What a mess. Good job reporting on this whole thing Theo, massively appreciate your ability to change your mind & respect for having the guts to lay it all out in public.
Body language analysis is rubbish. People don't sit or non-verbally communicate in any standard way. A great example is autistic people... The body language means nothing.
Its the eyebrows especially - he's always making a conscious effort to appear to be innocent, harmless, folksy, etc..
@@nchomey Right?? Gives me the creeps for sure as he's clearly not able to mask the smugness
Goodmorning Theo! Or rather Goodnight. You know it is good when a lawsuit is dropped 🍿.
Wow! Thank you for putting this out there! I am so that you are wrapped up in this. I sincerely hope the WordPress community can recover!
Looks like a serious case of open source regret, he open sourced WP and now is starting to greedily eye the money others are making off of it and feel like he deserves a cut. Comically inept attempt at a hostile corporate takeover may not turn out to be the best way to express that regret however.
He did not open sourced WP. WP was fork of b2/cafelog which was GPL licensed.
@@RADOS_A51 brooo no way how come that theo kid didnt mention it
Just when I tought I cannot hate WordPress any more.
I don't know why you'd hate a piece of software because the authors are trash, if the software itself is good that's no reason to hate it. WordPress is good at what it does.
@@theairaccumulator7144 If by that you mean loading up 50% of the Internet with slow mastodontic web sites full of security holes managed by people who have never written a line of code, yeah, it's great at what it does 🤣
@@theairaccumulator7144Code does not exist in a vacuum. It is tied to the people who built it and the little who use it. There is no WordPress without Matt. It is perfectly fine to say you don't want to use WordPress because you don't want to be seen to endorse Matt. After all, that's the argument he was trying to make in his trademark claims - that by using the WordPress trademark to describe WordPress, they were claiming an affiliation.
Yeah, when you need a site that is easy to set up, slow, bloated and ugly, WP is your guy.
@@theairaccumulator7144 A playground for Indian scriptkiddies to practice port scanning and old school injection attacks?
and the drama continues
I'm not watching this video but I'm happy for you (or sorry that happened)
@t3dotgg Kudos for getting Matt's take on it so fast and continuing to follow the story. Your work on this story is important (even if you wish it weren't at this point...)
What a ride, huh. Thanks for the video. Goodnight, man
I think its pretty Elite that you managed to edit this at 2AM and got it down to exactly 13:37.
his K400 keyboard is the biggest pile of shit ever conceived
I hope Heather Brunner (WP Engine CEO) seeks a criminal blackmail prosecution against Matt Mullenweg for his threats here.
Even if Automattic owns the trademark, the fact they didn't defend it until now violates the number 1 rule of American trademark law: protect it or lose it! I don't know the time frame that must lapse for this to happen, but a reasonable person could assume 5 years of silence is enough. Additionally, as was pointed out in the prior video (pre-interview), quickly updating the webpage where it discusses the letters "WP" would also be enough, in my non-lawyerly opinion, to be extremely distrustful of Automattic/Mullenweg and demonstrates bad faith conduct on their part.
Had this trademark claim occurred in 2019, this would be a different conversation. In 2024, this sounds like extortion and I hope Mullenweg and his company are forced to pay heavily for this mob-style tactic. (While I don't really use WordPress enough to care about this particular case, I want the precedent set for future attempts by open-source founders to pull this crap for stuff I do use regularly.)
I'm confused by what you said about quickly updating the webpage, I was under the impression that WPEngine were the ones to change their webpage?
Also, Matt claimed that he had been trying to negotiate with WPEngine for years, but they were stonewalling him. So he was attempting to protect the trademark. Further, he said that he has protected it against other actors in the past.
@@JavedAlam-ce4mu It doesn't matter if he's tried to negotiate for years if there's nothing to negotiate. It's like you buy a house and later the previous owner calls you out for not even negotiating over paying them rent. What is there to negotiate? It's your house, you already have the right to quiet enjoyment, you don't need to pay the previous owner a grand a month for it.
The items in the term sheet were made under false exclusivity. They were offering a grant of and limitation to rights that WPE already had, and offering nothing in return, indeed demanding they be paid for it. It's a sham contract.
If this goes to trial, Matt loses hands down. He tried to extort WPE, got called out on it, and then had a tantrum over it.
Another fantastic piece of coverage on this insane mess thanks for keeping us informed Theo 😊😊😊
13:31 Hire an editor from Australia
Matt is a horrible CEO. He's the one who should be replaced.
I formally retract what i said about not impacting me much. I've been working with WordPress for ten years, but been doing other things already. Now I'm leaving wp for good.
hate the player bro. not the game
What other opensource CMS do you recommend?
@@captnoplan3926 exactly.. none!
@@captnoplan3926 nothing comes close in terms of plugins and network effects and shit
I think it's very fair to say Matt has not behaved well, here. This is extremely disappointing. But let's not forget that private equity is on the other side of that coin. I am going to need a lot of convincing before I believe the private equity group is clean. Private equity often seems to be good at creating three things: money, human suffering, and a lower quality product than what was offered before they got involved.
In my opinion what happens is that most companies which use wordpress contribute to it by money or by human resources which is not mandatory but as a gesture to build on a business open source. But WP Engine did not do that as it was not some sort of mandatory rule which led to this situation. How does this escalate to is I think it was one of first time something like this happens and WP Engine was first of which did not agree to Matt demand of giving money or human resources to community which made Matt personally mad and he tried his best to blackmail or whatever we see here to make them do what he wanted thinking they will give up.
WPEngine wrote the most popular WordPress plugin as well as paying for the conference where Matt said they never pay for anything
This filing literally touches on everything that my gut told me about his whole thing. I hope it kicks his ass. He's a petty child. He blocked me on X for tweeting his quotes from your video that he referrred to and asked me if i watched.
9:30 Jesus, that guy is a sociopath
Wow. When your CEO can’t convince people to join your company using bribery, threats, and intimidation… it probably is time to take that severance package.
Matt was a real idiot for talking to theo and co.
I believe Matt is human. Silver lake is money.
Theo should understand that the lawsuit is not to bring two sided argument.
Should WP Engine not just settle for years ago, with a commercial license.
But at what stage should you need a commercial license or not for Wordpress? Manny companies use it as their CMS.
Matt still made blunders. Both with being on a personal agenda against WP engine, and threats.
Silver lake is smart company. They will never let some passionate CEO or employee of theirs talk in public. Because all of the spoken word will used against you.
Hats off for Matt, showing his open approach. But it does hurt him.
Yes, WP engine should have agreed to a commercial license. Just as blue hosting - but I guess there are no formal pricing plans and "a must" for companies.
Both Silver lake and Matt is both doing wrong.
27 seconds ago is crazy
The concept of time really is
@@oSpam indeed
1337 nice, esp. the last part with the edit. Wild, I only saw half of the interview/vid and I don't know if it is me falsly remembering it but I think I had a weired vibe from that guy.
I really appreciate the update, but I hope you get some sleep after this Theo. I know your plate is super full rn.
If it turnss out Matt owns 50% of Automattic at best then this coul be trouble for him, depending on how much damage is caused by this. Asides, even if he owns +50%, investors like BlackRock could still sue for loss of returns. And, where the claims made in his new document go the SEC might well have pricked up their ears.
Matt has a lot of money, but his investors have more and there's a hierarchy to be observed.
Yeahhhh as soon as I read the extortion text it's GG for Matt Mullenweg lol, that is SO scummy and unethical. Hope he gets his.
This what happens when you become a web developer...
Web development. Not even once.
What a dumb statement. This could happen in any sector. The real issue is one guy has too much control/ownership in multiple assets.
Thanks for the update Theo… this is a mess ……
Not that I agree with Mullenweg's conduct here but you talking about the topic as though you are 100% sure WPE will win the lawsuit surprises me. You do realize if they lose the lawsuit for Copyright infringement you are next right? Scary times.
talk about imploding on itself.
Wordpress at this point is an over engineered cms. The Gatsby block page builder is horrendous and so is all the crappy plugin page builders.. Wordpress has tried to be the everything open software which only creates a ton of bloat code and unnecessary features. Any developer could build a cms.. it’s not that difficult.
Talked like a true retrad. Are you from india ?
Wow! You have done a fabulous job with your interview! Much better than Prime in my opinion. And to be fair, watching it did raise some more suspicion about Matt. He has f@*ked up and would not admit it. I would not be surprised if it’s the end of his WP career - it’s either this or irreparable damage to Wordpress.
wait the guy who had time to prepare for the interview did better than the guy who didn't get any time to prepare. No way
@@pilapila183 I don’t really get your point. Are you saying that if you compare two interviews with the same person but conducted by two different moderators, that you are not allowed to say that one interview was better than the other because one of the moderators did not prepare as well (for whatever reason)?
If so, thank you for your valuable input! 🙏
Doesn't surprise me. I bet your interview will end up in the trademark lawsuit too
“Open source”
Hey, as long as you dont make more money than us ;)
Big respect for being honest in the video and not defending Matt. I was on his side during the interview, but now I know it was just a mask he was wearing with a creepy smile. I cannot imagine the shit he did/will do behind the scenes.
Seems more and more like Matt's actual beef is with Silver Lake and not WPE per se 🤔
"FOSS" vs PE
@@masedinet Yet Automattic has received investments from private equity firms 🤔
Theo the best independent american investigative journalist alive. could be the only one. lol.
I know it was late night, thank you for getting this out so swiftly though.
Oh my god, reading to the lawsuit carefully and understanding the facts more ... makes the situation even more insane. Discussing the replacement of a key employee that people love? And then she lives proving it was obviously not in good terms? What was he thinking? And he thinks that he's the good guy? Jesus, he fucked up massively. Next time somebody should calm his ego, bully, manipulative behavior. And i say every one of these words fully aware what they mean. Ego for making this all about himself. Bully and Manipulative for literally practicing extortion while insulting them. He's not a good influence to have around, lets leave it at that.
I'm still impressed of how massive is WP marketshare of CMS, with a 20 years old stack. How come no other newer CMS have succeeded?
Drupal may not be as big but it's widely used.
A big part of WordPress's success is due to its ecosystem, with many small/medium businesses selling services (like SEO or accessibility optimizations) or plugins/themes, and those actors all have an economic incentive to keep WordPress as a main platform on the Internet, by not being too negative about it for instance.
They kinda lost me as a dev with their React-based editor, which seemed to be a relatively feature-breaking and dirty hack to keep face in Wix/Squarespace comparisons, as those services were doing better full-page editors.
From a developer standpoint it's awful to work with, too. The problem is (as is often the case) that clients have become used to it. It's the customers keeping it alive, and devs going along with it because they get paid. "WordPress" and "blog" are basically synonymous to people who don't know better, that's how strong the brand is.
Oh dear oh dear, what a crazy time to be alive!! 🤣
I wouldn't expect anything less from a guy who puts his first name in his company name.
The only thing that worries me is that this will paint FOSS in negative light.
Bro? Linux? Linus? What nonsense u blabbin? Throughout the entire man-known history scientists and engineers were naming their work after themselves, to leave at least that fraction of the legacy they deserved to leave behind. Don't slander history's best and most useful people on whose shoulders we all stand because of one bad dude here.
at least Linus didn't put his name there himself @@jakubhalik-rr6sv
That closing clip, when you realized you now had to edit the video… perfect closer 🤣 you and the team make great content. Thanks for that.
13:31 - as a Creator I can 100% empathize with this part 🤣
For the good or the bad I think Matt is not gonna be coming out as a good individual, but the license is his and the agreement (as far as I could understand) is on his part. Like, if he wants to pull the plug on WPE he can. Will he be considered a jerk for it? Most likely, but that's how it is. On the bright side, Wordpress is hiring (probably)
No, he can't pull the plug, because that's not how FOSS licensing works. GPL is irrevocable.
😬 “total insane mess” indeed.
WPE has a Limerick office, in the same small Irish city where Stripe was developed. Without intending to, there are implicit connections between the engineers. Some of them would know eachother and would share knowledge and expertise. It's not a rumour, just a result of close proximity with a comparativrly small pool of software engineers.
I'm currently deciding on tech stacks for several projects and Wordpress is off my list.
Having worked with WordPress in the past, it should not be considered unless the client specifically requests it. There are more elegant solutions that are much less depressing to work with.
Theo's testosterone level is all time high in this video 😂😂
Thanks for doing this. On the plus side, you'll also be in the mini series about it. Working title probably "Gutenberg".
hehehe sometimes the ice cream licks back :)
Anyone simply taking this document at face value doesn't know anything about the legal process. WP Engine's lawyers will have intentionally represented facts in a way to spin a particular narrative favorable to their clients. We won't know the whole picture until Automattic's legal team get a chance to respond, and potentially until a significant amount of back and forth in court filings, motions, legal proceedings, etc. The most likely outcome of this is that it will be settled out of court and we will never know the full truth or the legal veracity of the various facts presented.
sure, but we have access to enough data to come to a pretty clear conclusion of what's going on. both sides have made everything public. and lmao you think it will be settled out of court haha
That’s true, but on the other hand it seems like they’ve made some assertions which are pretty devastating on the face of it, and so easy to disprove if false that it hardly seems worth trying. So unless their legal team is totally incompetent it sounds like Matt is in trouble.
Thanks for your contrasting opinions. I don't think this situation is a good thing for either party. I'll revisit this thread in 6 months to a year if we get more legal facts to analyze, and we can evaluate in retrospect if what we saw in this initial filing was actually enough to come to a conclusion. Personally I don't feel any need to confidently speculate either way at this time, regardless of what facts have been presented. I've seen enough "plot twist" filings to still be on the fence.
Matt to attorneys: "Sue me please."
Attorneys: "Happy to oblige."
Matt's gonna win easy peasy
Border line extortion? Nope, full blown extortion. Matt is crazy for doing this.
Text book extortion.
I knew he had a thing for that woman!!🤣🤣🤣 And prime 's interview showed that he was not ready for court🤦
2:49 the best part of your stream was pushing Matt on that lie
The amount of negative comments is crazy.. How can everyone be so easily swayed. IMO It's too early to take either side. This here is called propaganda or in more modern terms PR. Fact is that Matt is obviously not cutout to be a leader or frontman for business/law side of things; he's too immature. Everyone can see that and WPE is smart to take advantage of the fact. However that has little to do with the question "who is right".
To me it's a red flag how WPE cuts out pieces of DMs; they paint the color that that is favorable to them, then they present SS of the chat part that(alone) confirms what they're saying; i.e. if you're looking at it from the perspective that they previously force upon the reader. Then they go ahead about how Heather says this or that but do not present any evidence. For all we know this Heather did negotiate with Matt about jumping boats in the recent past, but then used the current situation in her advantage to negotiate e.g. double the salary with the WPE.
And if they're making that much money (WPE), it would cost them so much less to go through the end with this; buyout people out (e.g. double/triple the salary of Heather), finance PR etc. than pay the 8%.
All I'm saying is that it's possible for either side to be at fault here. And people shouldn't be this quick to condemn either side; instead let the things play out first.
Also bias is very real. There are people that are dependent on WPE and now they're facing issues without their fault and understandably from their perspective Matt would be the antagonist.
PS:
Im talking about social justice here.
From the legal perspective I think it is hard for Matt's lawyers to build a case in their favor here. Like I said, he is immature and probably easy to manipulate. I bet all the evidence that would prove of him warning them for years and asking for givebacks in sense of developer help etc., happened during unrecorded calls and real world(lunch) meetings; considering he's telling the truth of course.
For those who worked on WP and know, the red flags and dark nuances of Matt behavior started in WP itself with infesting the default distribution with automatic cancer plugins… WPE has a quality products. Everything else is music against him. Him treating someone like that specially a woman is worthy of being exposed because he f*d up
Every few years after forgetting him, Matt M find s creative way to remind us all that he's an idiot. His lawyers must be looking at yachts and planes now bc it's going to cost for them to dig him out of this one.
hey theo, delivering fresh news is good for the people, but please don't put that over your own health, you really need some sleep! :)
I didn't know much of either side before all of this, what I feel is a shame is that I think Matt has a really good point about contributing back to open source burried in all of this but he has managed to handle it all in the worst possible way. Also his whole "nice guy" persona just feels fake, i hope it's not but his vindictive actions seem to confirm it.
He doesn't really have a point about contributing back. Not only because it appears that WPE do, in fact, contribute back significantly in both code and community involvement, but also because he's not a starving maintainer whose project is being used by billion-dollar companies for free. He's sufficiently well off that he can afford to drop millions in a year on donations and still live in the Bay Area. He's not Lasse Collin, overworked maintainer with too many little relying on him. He's more like Lars Ulrich, pretending to be the starving artist while his band had become one of the biggest in the world in their genre.
@@himagainstill I don't see Matts personal wealth holding any relevance to how much large companies should contribute. I haven't seen any evidence of significant financial contributions (and no sponsoring a conference is buying marketing not a contribution) or code contributions to wordpress core.
@@isomochyn1 Have you tried paying attention. They were literally sponsors of the conference where he dumped on them, and he even pointed out in that talk that they contribute code back.
And yes, his personal wealth matters, because whether or not it is exploitative explicitly depends on the relative position of the parties. In this instance, he's worth about as much as their revenues. Nobody's ripping him off here. He just wants a slice of their revenue for no articulable reason. If he wants 8% of their money, he can buy 8% of the company like anyone else.
@@isomochyn1 His personal wealth is relevant because whether or not the relationship is exploitative explicitly depends on the relative position of the parties. In this case, the party claiming to have been exploited is apparently worth more than the target company's revenue, and has enough of a platform that he can make what are clearly personal blog posts on the main websites of both WordPress and Automattic unimpeded. Seems like he's doing just fine, and he's not suffering any harm from it.
Also, I don't think it's fair to characterise WPE as a big company. In the tech space, if your valuation isn't at least $50bn, you're nothing.
This beef was the first time I've ever heard about WP Engine, Automattic, and Matt. I'm not impressed by either.
We have another Portuguese 🇵🇹 saying: "A roupa suja não se lava em público"
Theo's 2AM voice is so nice...
I think we let the cat decide
Those messages ... 😬 Yikes.
I am amazed he did those things over texts and video interview to give more evidence
IIIIIIII toollddd youuuu both: You are repeating both your questions and you didn't got even a clear Answer. Damn there are so many controversal statements. Why can't Matt just say he wants money?
Matt should go on an actual sabbatical and let a grownup run Automattic
borderline? That is black and white extortion.
"Everything legal is fiction." ~every attorney.
Great moment for Ghost to grow. I hope it is ready.
Matt is a weasel
oh no, the consequences of my actions