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by mvellandi 625 days ago
All this reminds me of a much more minor spat years ago when Matt got upset Chris Pearson made a configurable premium theme (Thesis) which controversially went against the GPL license. Matt then purchased the domain thesis.com and tried unsuccessfully to revoke Chris’ 3 trademarks related to the name and ‘diy themes’.

In this current case, it looks like Matt is thankfully trying to ensure end customers don’t get unreasonably affected. But nonetheless, it certainly appears WP.org should at least be relationally more of an independent entity with a separate leadership, or at least appear to be so.
2 comments
ncr100 625 days ago
Or ... in 2022 when Mat called GoDaddy "Parasitic" and an "existential threat to [WordPress's] future." And then to argue at GoDaddy employees ... attempting to convince them they're working for a bad organization. All hovering around his presumption about the quantity and quality of GoDaddy's contribution back to WordPress, while GD simultaneously profits by being in the broader marketplace.

* https://wptavern.com/matt-mullenweg-identifies-godaddy-as-a-...

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gamblor956 625 days ago
it looks like Matt is thankfully trying to ensure end customers don’t get unreasonably affected.

No, WordPress' lawyers almost certainly told Matt he was committing tortious interference of contract, and opening up WordPress, Automattic, and himself to tens of millions in damages claims from WP Engine and their affected customers.

Given his behavior in prior such tantrums, it's clear that the decision to be reasonable was not Matt's choice. It was an ultimatum given to him by others.

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FireBeyond 625 days ago
> decision to be reasonable

I'm not sure "We have given you 72 hours (starting on a Friday afternoon) to figure out how to mirror everything you need, and to have completed the mirroring process, and then the block is back. And updates? Sucks to be you." qualifies as "reasonable" in any sense of the word, though.

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gamblor956 625 days ago
The page no longer includes that language. It now simply states "We have lifted the blocks of their servers from accessing ours, until October 1, UTC 00:00. Hopefully this helps them spin up their mirrors of all of WordPress.org’s resources that they were using for free while not paying, and making legal threats against us."

So, the original draft (which you saw/see?) clearly came from Matt; the reasonable version that's now on their website almost certainly came from Legal/the rest of the board.

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mtlynch 625 days ago
>So, the original draft (which you saw/see?) clearly came from Matt; the reasonable version that's now on their website almost certainly came from Legal/the rest of the board.

I believe the person you're responding to was creatively summarizing Matt's sentiment, not providing a direct quote from the post.

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