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by graemep 59 days ago
This is something people seem to miss. His position as CEO of Automattic creates a huge conflict of interest with his position at the non-profit foundation.

This is an example: the foundation's code gives special treatment to an Automattic product.
1 comments
kstrauser 59 days ago
I don't think anyone but Matt is missing the significance of that.
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graemep 59 days ago
People do not know about it. Look at the current top rated comment on this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824925
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kstrauser 59 days ago
I wrote that comment.
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graemep 58 days ago
Oops, sorry, did not notice.

Were you aware of it and its relevance to this decision at the time you wrote the comment? My interpretation of your defence of it as just the CEO making a product decision was that you did not know. If you did know it seems to miss the point which is that he made a decision that was better for his company but worse for Wordpress.

It would be fine if Wordpress was developed by Automattic, but its not.

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kstrauser 58 days ago
I was aware of it, but as an outsider, this actually seemed like a reasonable decision. Wordpress sites that allow external comments need some kind of comment moderation, lest they become instant spam cesspits. The CEO said hey, we're adding this section to feature suggested plugins, and we should add this long-time anti-spam plugin to it. In a vacuum, that looks fine to me. I'd rather see them emphasizing comment moderation than talking up a commercial add-on. Sure, this is a subscription they sell to businesses, so it's not a charitable work. It's one of the more defensible subscriptions I can think of, though.

And I really don't see it as worse for Wordpress. It's the kind of thing I think they should be recommending because it benefits the whole ecosystsem.

To be super clear, I am far, far from a Matt/Automattic (same thing) fanboy. I think this was a good decision in spite of my opinion of him, not because of it.

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graemep 57 days ago
> The CEO said hey, we're adding this section to feature suggested plugins, and we should add this long-time anti-spam plugin to it. In a vacuum

The lead developer of a not for profit project said lets favour the anti-spam plugin that is provided by the company I am CEO of. Is that an entirely impartial decision?

> And I really don't see it as worse for Wordpress. It's the kind of thing I think they should be recommending because it benefits the whole ecosystsem.

All the Wordpress core committers apart from the two that work for Automattic disagree with you as far as I can tell.

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