Executive Director of WordPress.org is simply a job title at Automattic. Josepha found out about the WP Engine ban from wordpress.org in real time along with the rest of the community.
The software running on those servers was built by volunteers, some of which are now scrambling to help their clients who are blocked from using that software.
Yeah, the practical situation there would seem pretty clear. I'm just wondering what theory Mullenweg is trying to express here in support of this action.
Of course the claim of trademark infringement has some plausible iota of basis to it. But I question whether WP Engine is really pursuing legal claims against WordPress.org as Mullenweg says they are, which would be a surprise to me. (Well, except for new claims as a consequence of this action.)
> They had the option to license the WordPress trademark for 8% of their revenue, which could be delivered either as payments, people (Five for the Future .org commitments), or any combination of the above.
So they could have "paid" by just hiring a few WordPress devs to work on it. That is: not necessarily by transferring dollars to Automattic.
IMHO this is an important bit of nuance missing in this thread.
They do the majority of the work, so they get to decide. That's how it works everywhere. If WP Engine wants to decide they should invest the same 4,000 hours/week.
That's the problem though. It's a chicken and egg issue. Those donated hours could be directed towards things that aren't in WPEngines interest. To use an analogy: it's taxation without representation. That seems counter to the open source ethos.
If everything was handled by an independent, transparent and accountable foundation then this would be a different conversation. It isn't. It's handled by a private, for profit, vc-backed company with a leader known for personal vendettas and holding grudges.
I want to be clear: I have no love for WPE and agree they should be doing way more. I'm just pointing out that the current arrangement is not exactly conducive to facilitating that.
> Those donated hours could be directed towards things that aren't in WPEngines interest
I have a hard time seeing how that can happen. WP-Engine still decides what bits of WordPress they work on – it's just a matter of having developers who work on it.
Matt gave away the software he invented and founded a commercial venture to monetize his efforts despite this. Automattic originally registered the trademarks. Years later they donated them to the foundation, to make the marks available for noncommercial use and limited commercial use. In the process Automattic retained the exclusive commercial license to the marks.
Where is the invention? He forked b2/cafelog and continued work on it when the original project faded out. He had no choice but to give it away unless he wanted the only WordPress install in the world. Another fork like b2evolution or any of the billion blogging tools at the time would have taken the spot WordPress did instead.
“it would be nice to have the flexibility of Movable Type, the parsing of Textpattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right?”
Synthesis is a type of invention: https://evanm.website/2016/03/synthesis-over-invention/
>Another fork like b2evolution or any of the billion blogging tools at the time would have—
People love to say things like this about any and all products but there’s this overwhelming counterpoint of what actually happened.
There are things in that WPE C&D that make me question how candid they're being; for instance, the trademark dispute seems an awful lot more complicated than the letters "W" and "P".
Out of five board members, one is Matt, one was the CEO of Automattic before Matt took over the role, and a third was an early investor. The other two are harder to pin down.
I watched the video and it seemed pretty obvious that the old man responded mockingly to the other person accusing him of white power.
I don’t think the driver was actually chanting white power as a claim that white power was his desire.
Now, there’s certainly an argument for not making such a response and to channel anger better and not joke about such things. But I don’t think retweeting that video is a show of support for white power. Poor taste is much more likely.
You can add levels of meta to disarm any analogy and excuse any statement but that's silly. Yelling 'white power' is goatfucking and that guy is a goatfucker.
Yes but you're trying to make the trivial context and intent complicated and it isn't. Ed Norton plays a goatfucker. We are talking about goatfuckery. Dude yelling 'white power' in public? Actual goatfucking. But no, you say, he was commenting on the absurdity of the goatfucker accusation by fucking some goats. This is precisely the sort of thing the Rule of Goats is about.
I don’t think that’s what the rule of goats is about, but I appreciate your continued commenting.
If your interpretation of the rule of goats is right, then it’s not very useful as it turns lots of people into goatfuckers. And when everyone is a goatfucker, fucking goats isn’t that bad any more.
The point of the 'rule' is that some things are so repugnant, there's no doing them 'ironically' or 'as commentary'. Hence the goats. If, when accused of goatfucking, you produce a goat and start fucking it, you are a goatfucker not a wry commentator on the baselessness of the accusation. If someone at a rally accuses you of racism (by, you know, association since you are rallying in support of someone with a long track record of racism) and you start shouting a virulently racist slogan, you're a racist. It's super-duper simple. Your interpretation is that yelling 'white power' is not actually racist because... some weird meta-thing. The entire purpose of the rule is to act as a terminating condition in otherwise unbounded meta-recursion.
Was that not the very point of some people’s frustration? Why does the intentions of the person on the video need justification, rationalization or explanation?
I agree but brought it up as OP stated that POTUS endorses racism and white power through the tweet. I think I may be automatically biased against his tweets. But if a regular person posted that video I wouldn’t consider it endorsement of white power.
Perhaps if there’s more context on the person in the video that would help. It seems like a frustrated response pointing out absurdity. But if the person flies a nazi flag then that would change my mind.
I don't care what the motivations of the person in the video are, they're irrelevant and I'm not interested in trying to unpack them; it was incredibly poor taste for POTUS to retweet it for any reason. That's the point.
My comment wasn’t whether it was poor taste or not.
I think saying the president is clearly supporting white power because he tweeted this video is incorrect. This video does not support white power. I don’t think it’s intent is to further white power. I think representing its purpose as promoting white power is incorrect, or misleading, or confusing, or anything other than accurate and truthful.
But I agree about the poor taste comment. But I think there’s a big distinction between a rude person and a white supremacist.
Someone says “I bet you beat your spouse and children?
It’s such an insane statement I say “Oh yeah, I’m definite a spouse beater. Beating spouses is a great thing. We all should beat our spouses and children!”
I don’t think that’s ironically condoning domestic violence. It’s an as absurdism response. If I was captured on video with such a response and you retweeted it, I don’t think it’s likely that the retweeter was condoning domestic violence.
Your entire post history is just you repeating the same talking points from a clear side of the political spectrum. But it’s not “hate” when it aligns with your beliefs, I suppose?
Disagreement isn’t hate. Is good to disagree and share differing viewpoints. My above statement was that the guy brought up his disgust for Trump when the discussion was entirely unrelated.
