[skmurphy]

The lawyer they've hired is a very serious guy who is concerned about his long term reputation. It's unlikely he would hostage his fortune to someone who was a "pissed off-preteen." Reasonable people may differ but I don't believe you have correctly assessed the players and the sum of forces at work in this situation.

[mthoms]

I have sites on WPE and I've worked for a major WP plugin developer. I've been in and out of the community since 2010. I know the players pretty well.

Matt has sabotaged any chance of a good result for him and Automattic no matter how good this lawyer is. And even if he wins in court he's already lost in the court of public opinion. Its over.

[skmurphy]

We have been using and building WordPress sites since 2006. I have no experience with WP Engine but I bear them no ill will. I think the "court of public opinion" is very difficult to assess and dominant players can take a very very long time to die.

Matt may need to step down if your assessment is correct but that's distinct from what happens to Word Press as a platform.

My sense is that the Word Press negotiating position is stronger and WP Engine will either have to fork or make a much larger contribution. But I may be wrong. If that does not happen then I believe that the private equity players will do a lot more damage to open source communities because a "harvesting paradigm" will continue.

[mthoms]

I generally agree except for "the court of public opinion" part. It seems abundantly clear to me that Matt has damaged his name beyond repair.

As I see it, the only way for WordPress to survive is if Matt steps down from the board, and the foundation & dot org mess is reorganized in a manner that makes it accountable to the community. Even then, a lot of damage has been done to the reputation of WordPress.

I won't be surprised if we eventually start seeing mainstream reporting on this case from the WSJ and NYT. Luckily, it's an election cycle so that might not happen for a while.

[skmurphy]

Reasonable people may differ. We have very different perspectives on the likely evolution of the current situation. I believe Matt will remain CEO and a year from now, the voluntary departure buyouts from WordPress will be viewed in the same way that 37 Signals weathered the buyout departures of some of their staff. See contemporaneous report at https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/30/basecamp-employees-quit-ce...

Firms that dominate markets enjoy tremendous inertia in customer choice and can take a long time to die--if, in fact, WordPress is dying. The longer-term perspective on what Silver Lake has been doing to profit from open source efforts by Word Press may reach a very different conclusion about Matt's actions than your assessment.

[mthoms]

>Firms that dominate markets enjoy tremendous inertia in customer choice and can take a long time to die

That's a really good point. But I think (& hope) it's a little different in the open source world, because people have stronger moral opinions about where they hang their hat. We'll see.