@@JamesWelbes DHH is the guy who created Rudy-on-Rails, a very influential web framework. Theo is a Twitter/TH-cam influencer who used to work at twitch and has a couple of startups
Imaging being a word press customer on _any host_ right now, thinking "wow, I could be a perfect customer and do everything above board, and have my entire company *vanish literally overnight* because of a disagreement between the host and the framework owner" I would be frantically looking for a new platform to use or a way to self host because what business on earth has that kind of risk tolerance.
Hell imagine being a new customer looking to set up a website / web store, and hearing "they did WHAT to HOW MANY customers?" Is there any way you'd still choose word press as your platform?
@@corgano6068 WP was bad 10 years ago, bloated, slow and confusing, it needed more plugins than meat to function properly it is fundamentally a vestige of an ancient past, but it's not a viable platform any more.
@@corgano6068 I happen to be "between CMS's" at this moment, and I was about to bite the bullet and learn WP (never been a fan but there's hardly an alternative anymore) when this happened. Now looking into jamstack solutions, very exciting but quite a step for me.
I’m ready to jump ship. Been developing in WP for the last 10 years, involved in the community, planned a WordCamp, but now I’m just done. Was personally berated by Matt over accessibility of Gutenberg, but I stuck around then… but this is the last straw.
Yeah. It sucks too, with all that time and history. It’s hard to see yourself pouring your heart into something like that anymore knowing how the project is being led. 😓
yeah i am on the same boat ngl I hated how they rushed the blocked editor to production how there is still no proper way to make fse themes etc now on top of these there is this smh IDK man I wont recommend Wordpress unless they correct their path
@@QriousKoder Oh god. Yeah, that new theming system is an absolutely brain-fuck. I started trying to develop a theme for it and noped straight out of there when I saw how every element had to be defined in duplicate HTML comments. Every time I agree to a project based on WordPress I end up regretting it.
My guess is the people who didn’t leave with the rest need the job and thought this would blow over. There is no way anyone but Matt thinks this is a good idea.
Not quite. Not everyone supports freeloaders who profit without giving back to the community. WP Engine went so far as to automatically reverse the WooCommerce Stripe add-on, changing the attribution ID to their own when someone from their network installs it. This allows them to take a share of the sales made through the plugin, while providing zero support to the plugin or the broader ecosystem. The list goes on-they are a cancer to open-source projects. While Matt's handling of this situation might not be perfect, consider putting 20 years of your life into open-source, only to have a greedy corporation exploit every opportunity to profit from your hard work. Then we’ll see how you react.
The funniest part about the 'affiliated with WP Engine' checkbox is that the text is *not localized*. So if English is not your native language you literally don't even know what you're agreeing to.
The even funnier part is, that since 'you are responsible for your account security' there is no policy about someone else logging into your account other than you are responsible for their actions. This alone makes that check box ... an unreliable measure, as say the spouse, friend, child, automated bot, etc... could log in for you and they can answer the check box honestly. (To be clear, even if also stated the account holder as the target them answering it could be as flawed. This is why contract law does not even think of going into someone reporting another's contract/connection status with yet another third party. It's unreliable & a legal mess)
@@DePhoegonIsle tbh that's not exclusive to that checkbox. When you sign up to Disney Plus and, by doing that, agree to never ever sue Disney even if they kill your wife (true story), they can't really prove that it was you who signed up and not your daughter or something using your name. The whole idea that a box being ticked in your account somehow proves that you read an entire ToS document and agreed to it is hard to defend.
Plugin author here. Hard to even explain to a layman how absolutely bonkers it is to use the open-source license of the author against them to just steal their work. How on earth can you complain that people aren't giving enough to open-source then lock developers out of their own software when they do?
Think about it: What if a hosting company systematically changed the attribution ID in your deal with Stripe Connect? No support, no help with tickets, no development-just rerouting your sales to their pockets. How would you feel knowing they’re profiting from your hard work while contributing nothing back? It’s crazy that this is being justified in the name of open-source. They did that with the Woo Stripe add-on. And p.s I am a plugin owner as well so no, not everyone supports this narrative. wpe is a cancer that needs to go away.
I've seen a company that was a big trusted partner in a FOSS community hijack the name and start selling their own fork that was only available as a cloud service to get around the GPL license of the original code base. Giant shitstorm for years. Wordpress burning any trust in them to the ground is insane. I'm just happy I don't have any wordpress sites anymore at work or at home. But ACF Pro was the main good thing about WP.
Forcibly taking ownership of an open source project should just plain be illegal, and I'd be surprised if it didn't break intellectual property rights somehow.
he just PROVED that he doesn't actually believe in the open source principles the way he pretends to all the time. "Nice guy" Matt is a LIAR, a fraud, and a con artist.
@@bentoth4324 I mean, you can certainly complain. But you can’t do anything about it since you literally published a legal document giving them permission to use the code for free.
I just love that you're not one of those usual guys who'll have a guy on for an interview and then afterwards everything they do is 100% amazing. You were willing to call him out to his face, on your mentioned call prior to the checkbox and also in your own content. Bravo, sir. I hope he ends this tirade soon.
100 % agree. I was worried that you where going to be a bit to soft when you where reporting on this going forward after that. But you definitely proved me wrong. Great Video Theo!
I’m just waiting for WP Engine to fork it. They have the capital, they have the developers, and thanks to Matt if you somehow hadn’t heard of WP Engine you have now. I don’t know if WP Engine controlled fork of Wordpress is a good thing, but it’s certainly a better option than Matt the mad king.
@@Drazil100 I wondered back and forth in my head if having multiple, semi-official flavors of Wordpress (much like Linux) would be a good or bad thing. I landed on Good Thing.
@@Drazil100 Imagine the countless hours of research and development, the infrastructure costs, just to stay competitive. They already didn’t want to invest more than 48 hours a week into core development, so imagine the burden of handling bug fixes, updates, and infrastructure-all while others profit from their work without contributing back. The effort it takes to support these plugins, integrate them, and manage the operational overhead is massive, and for what? So freeloaders can take advantage while they foot the bill?
@@Drazil100 Having run Wordpress for work I'd honestly be interested in a fork that promises better security, has some solid backing and stays open source. Even more so if ACF Pro is included right into it. But right now I'm just happy I'm not responsible for any WP sites anymore.
I called WP and its core developers "toxic" many years ago and took flack for that. The entire ecosystem is a disaster. WP is one of the least performing PHP applications on Earth. ISPs hate WP because it sucks system resources like no tomorrow. A single request consumes 64MB RAM...minimum. 64MB! And if you install the most common plugins, it jumps up to 128MB RAM or more per request. That is completely insane. To serve 100 users, you need a minimum of 6.4GB RAM. WP refuses to ship a caching plugin to curb the insanity, but even with caching enabled it's still a horribly unoptimized dumpster fire.
Matt didn't "become" anything, he was always like this and simply kept pushing harder and harder because he didn't get any consequences for his previous public meltdowns
Hero is a bit of a stretch at this point. All of this should have been handled behind closed doors or in court. He literally threw the WP community and greater tech community into this. He has damaged WordPress more in the past 4 weeks that it nullifies a lot of the good WordPress has done.
Many other people have stuck around as very respectable leaders. Look at Linus Torvalds. If Linus would behave like Matt, and he's in a MUCH more advantageous position, the world as we know it wouldn't exist now. Matt seems to just think that this is all about him.
Matt was never a hero and, frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long for people to realize that he's nuts. I've never used WordPress but I am a dedicated tumblr user, watching him liveblog a mental breakdown was definitely all I needed to be convinced he's just a rich, crazy, power-hungry man.
That's 2M active installations now forced to SCF which is not what they signed up for I bet. Theo's sentiments here are probably more mellow than those agencies who have to deal with this shit show. 😬😬😬
He was looking pretty angry during his SKG reaction, but that was more immediate angry reaction to comments (and I don't exactly agree with him but whatever). Now this one feels like long term exasperation, a much more concrete level of pissed off. He is very not pleased at all.
@@StereoBucket There must be years of conversation we are missing, plus the venture capitalists have a way of triggering the human bomb like no others. The mix of ignorance and greed must push you towards the edge and he did what he could given the situation. It's not even that ley locked out people out of the plugins, they showed Venture Caps technical technicalities count as much as legal technicalities. After making half a billion, not giving back anything is morally corrupt, that's why you need to show your teeth's I am with Matt on this one. I know it disrupt the open source world (Which needs an 'Unreal' bannister) but if you break the unspoken rule because there is no bannister, you get the unspeakable done to you, and you fall from the building. Those VCs and their greed is actually the culprit, outside of the open source spirit, Matt is reacting to this legal injustice.
WordPress is done. I am in the process of moving my sites off, and I know of some corporations that are doing the same. Even if Matt reversed course now, he has opened the door that it could happen again at any time. Businesses do not like unstable situations.
Important note: they didn't republish forked version on the same url (/advanced-custom-fields/), they just renamed the plugin - you can see that this "new" plugin inherits all the reviews of ACF, all the support forums and all user base of ACF (2m+ active installations). Meaning that the all the previously installed ACF plugin instances will be updated to SCF "fork" automatically upon updating the plugin.
It is shitty how he is going about it but do you think a simple plugin made in a weekend (using NONE of their own code) should charge $40 a month to customers, making 10s of millions a year and give ZERO back to the community? There are plenty of cases of this in the wordpress ecosystem and I can understand him being pissed off about that.
@@excitedbox5705I think most people understand why he is pissed. WP Engine is a parasite. It is the biggest issue with OS since forever. But the dude is burning down the village to hurt his shitty neighbor and now he is the shittiest neighbor of them all.
To me, this indicates that WordPress as a whole should be considered compromised and insecure. At a certain point, the risk assessment of an open source project depends on trust in the maintainers. If someone with publishing rights demonstrates that they're untrustworthy, the entire project becomes untrustworthy.
But also, don't give equal power to everyone. Because people are dumb and don't have time or interest to understand relevant issues, and it becomes a matter of who markets better rules
Matt cannot apologize now. IMO. He went too far before, there were real extortion, real tortious interference, caused real financial damages to another company and lots of end users. There had been real consequences. For him to apologize now would be terrible for the lawsuits coming his way as a result of his previous actions. He cannot admit to any fault on his part now, I imagine.
Depends on how seriously he is about making right. His lawyer could send a letter to WP Engine tomorrow offering to make an apology, return all previous access, and pay for the loss of revenue incurred by WP Engine, in exchange for immunity from his actions and they might accept it. Lawsuits are expensive if you can get what you want without it. This is pretty much what has happened every time you hear "Settled out of court"
@@Musikur Lawsuits are expensive when the other guy has no money. Matt has money, and he acted with such blatant malice that it turns into a slam dunk. There might be a payday big enough to settle over, but it's not going to be without heavy amount of damages. Matt has so blatantly broken the law in this context that when we're talking about "getting what you want" out of a lawsuit against him, we're not talking about anything less than taking every single penny he has. Because that's how badly he has implicated himself.
@@Musikur Ya.... but he has actively damaged and harmed others in the process. Which means liability. This is also to not mention the galatic sized nuke placed on him and wordpress as a whole reputation. Do you really think anyone would trust him or wordpress again... when the only reason an apology was given is because of a lawsuit that had Merit?
It's a 2 edge sword, If he was legally stuck from having people contributing on what they used to make half a billion and went for closing access. I can only see from here how venture capitalist told him : 'Whaddare you gonna do about it?' and he did that. Have you ever dealt with venture capitalists? You rather immolate yourself that deal with them. There is legal and fair, and this situation was certainly unfair if not illegal, so he went for a kill, I think it's fair, but I am always disagreeing with majorities for some reason. It shows the limitation of open source for the same reasons communism doesn't work.
I am getting strong reminders of when my (former) Boss went off the rails due to a psychotic break due to constant drug use. Not to say that matt's on drugs, But the behaviour rings similar
He's an adult with an opinion, and is willing to stand on business and stick to it. Nothing but respect for him. He's gone on several interviews and was completely calm and collected. I disagree, and honestly think what he is doing is the right thing, even if his methods aren't great.
@@poopman8837 I mean this in the nicest way possible - did you miss when Theo asked him the same question 5 times in a row, and he gave a different non-answer every time? He was also grinning and giggling while being asked serious questions. Especially when the questions lead right into one of his talking points, he seemed a bit too excited about it. I know that can just be nerves, but it still doesn’t strike me as someone collected or appropriately treating this as a pivotal moment of his professional career, or more importantly, of many thousands of other people’s careers.
One thing that helped me understand Matt was this: in order to get inline documentation in WordPress, it didn't take facts, statistics, reasoning, explanations, etc. It took one of his friends telling him, "yeah, you should do that."
7:30 If they have shown they can do this, you can no longer trust a single plugin to not be a virus, what if a rouge staff member swaps the most popular plugin?
Honestly Wordpress has been bottom of the barrel in terms of features for years and years. There's a reason new devs don't want to get into it, it's a talent black hole.
Unfortunately, Webflow, Wix, et. al., are not "alternatives", in that they are not FOSS, and cannot be downloaded and self-hosted. Really, the only true alternative to WP is the same as it has always been: A text editor and {var}. (Where, var, in my case, is Astro and Laravel.) Webflow is evil in their own way, and has made many headlines over how they tax their successful customers with surprise price hikes. Webflow is great, until you hit the proverbial "front page of Reddit", and get their next invoice which breaks your business model.
Webflow, Wix and such websites are very limited on their capabilities and are really inflexible compared to Wordpress. People that were used to working with Wordpress I think won't be happy with changing to Webflow. Things such as 50,000 plugins, custom pages and custom shops, WP flows, custom themes, ACF, forums, membership systems, for-code solutions, self-hosted platform, Open source ... Webflow and Wix are not alternatives to Wordpress, they're barely substitutes.
No idea about his mental health history but automattic also runs tumblr and earlier this year Matt had a similar breakdown over a edgy tumblr post and somehow managed to turn it into a massive site wide controversy. It ended with him having to take a sabbatical from being involved in tumblr. Unfortunately it does not look like a wordpress sabbatical is in the cards :|
Yes. This isn’t the first time, but it is the first time it’s against a company strong and rich enough to fight back, and he cannot handle the backlash.
WP Engine started by systematically and programmatically reverse-engineering the WooCommerce Stripe add-on to change the attribution ID to their own for every website they host-millions of websites. They found every possible way to profit from open source while providing zero support and contributing no more than 48 hours a week back to the community. And of course, they do all this so they can claim a big section on their homepage about how much they 'give back.' It's outrageous when you think about how they've managed to profit without truly supporting the ecosystem.
I've been seeing some of the stuff from the slack on X and it's wild. I appreciate you trying to talk him down, but it's clear he's going off the deep end.
Thanks for covering this Theo, this was what the majority of my weekend has been dealing with. Also, thanks for calling him out on the singling out of community members, notably the Laura tweet was so bad. I asked Matt directly for an explanation multiple times on why he felt that was appropriate, with no luck yet.
Not a lawyer, but it is hilarious that supposedly this started over a trademark violation given that depending on the open source license, I would argue taking over the ACF page and putting your own fork would violate the ACF trademark. Be one thing if they took the ACF link and 404 errored it, but to have it redirect to the fork? Yeah, sure sounds like "impersonating" another group for financial benefit. By the way, would love to see Matt try to sue someone who checked that box in deceit. Not sure the non-profit would gave the legal justification to demand that, even if the fir-profit could. Oh, and pretty sure conflating the non-profit and the for-profit business would be of interest to folks at the IRS!
Since you mention conflating the two, on twitter the official (org) account responded along the lines of 'we'll unblock you/them once you cancel the lawsuit against *[US]* '. Keep in mind that the lawsuits are only against automatic and matt, so the non proffit to tweet that... And also, obviously another case of extorsion/blackmail/interference that can be added to the list
The basically copied the logo too, just changed the A to an S and the shade of blue to another one... There are also lots of reviews that say "advanced custom fields" in the reviews. If they have it trademarked, the page is definitely violating it.
I can understand the stage where he was unhappy about lack of contribution (I don't know how true this is, I didn't check but let's roll with it), and WPengine sounding like it's affiliated in some way, but goddamn this is some major case of every single textbook phrase that could be used to describe spite with self inflicted harm. I'd say he's cutting his nose to spite his face but that one doesn't even scratch the surface of how disastrous this was. Hostile plugin takeover is like a rancid cherry on the rancid cake. Just completes the package.
Forcibly taking ownership of an open source project should just plain be illegal, and I'd be surprised if it didn't break intellectual property rights somehow.
Somehow I wasn't subscribed to you, so I fixed that. This was a fantastic video and cannot thank you enough for your ability to make strong statements about important things
Im sharing this video with my bosses (I work in marketing for a company, I am the only developer and we are on WP Engine). the implications I think are seismic, as you point out it alters the nature of what open source really is, and the future of wordpress itsself. Thank god I know how to build in Drupal!
Matt is going to get utterly destroyed in civil court. Tortious interference in a contract. He won't shut up and has given loads of ammo to opposing counsel. Although it's permissible to fork a GPL repo all you want, the context matters here. If you do it out of malice or spite with the intention of "going nuclear" and burning everything to the ground, you better hope your lawyer is smarter than you are because you're going to get taken to the cleaners. He could even face a class action from the community because he's harmed them now. This will make a great HBS case study for marketing students one day (for what not to do)
An analogy would be to compare this to a property-line dispute with a neighbor. Rather than let the legal system resolve the dispute, Matt has chosen to set his neighbor's house on fire.
I'm interest to see what a judge would do with the theft of the plugin name. That's a big nono in the realm of intellectual property rights. No ToS is going to cover his rump having pulled that one. I'd hope for an immediate injunction, at the least.
Exactly this. Even if we presume that WP Engine has a motivation to get this settled as soon as possible, this isn't going to be true for everyone else. Right about now is the time when lawyers are going to start seeing the future windfall and start calling up everyone caught in the crossfire.
@@neruneri I just saw Theo's last vid on this where he reads a copy of the complaint and it's exactly that: tortious/intentional interference, unfair competition under Cal BPC, slander/libel and EXTORTION 😬. This guy is unhinged, he's trying to blackmail WP Engine's CEO, that actually could even be criminal!! I don't think the fireworks are over yet, but he'll almost certainly be forced to settle out of court for an eye-watering amount... This guy is on a bipolar train of consequences that makes most rock stars look emotionally stable. Very sad 😢!
This just shows how Open source assumes we play "nice" with each other. Such a disengenious takeover of ACF is this easy and there's no recourse, absolutely infuriating.
Having had someone close to me go through a manic episode of BPD, this seems *exactly* like one. Feelings of grandeur, rash actions, not listening to people around them. It's really hard to see. I hope Matt gets the help he needs. If he does apologize for all this and try to right these wrongs, it's on us as a community to accept it and him.
there was a recent interview where matt developed a spontaneous nosebleed partway through and just didn't acknowledge it at all and kept talking, so I'm thinking less bpd manic episode and more coke binge
It's hard to watch people as dumb as Steve at 8:35 who did not immediately see Matt for who he is. It was clear from Matt's first actions with WPEngine that Matt was in the wrong. Thinking Matt's action were ever justified is a big middle finger from Steve to open source culture.
This is a stark warning to anyone intending to do business, being it plugin or theme development or saas, in the wordpress ecosystem. WP has been losing traction in recent years, this will just add up to people jumping ship and looking for alternatives, even ones not open source.
I was a WP developer for a long time, and jumped over to react and next about 2017, and did not look back. I feel sad about what is happening. I thinking of all the developer out there, who dont know what to say to there clients. And all the junior php developers that selected WP for there platform to get a good jobb from, who now dont know what to do. Im so sad about this.
Well done calling this behavior out so publicly; it's insane that it just keeps going. He really seems like he is going to destroy WordPress before admitting he was in the wrong.
I'm a WordCamp speaker, plugin author, WordCamp lead organizer, Meetup organizer and all that stuff that doesn't matter when Matt is making it really hard to want to continue to contribute. I'm not sure if I'm "allowed" to contribute when I also host some sites on WP Engine. We need some clarification.
it's like they don't even exist! I think if this all goes to court it may be revealed that there is a lot of funny business going on around Matt and his organizations
I'm really new to the channel and was not expecting to hear Matt get addressed directly, incredible. You know all this drama will make sense when Matt publishes his new book, "What Not To Do"
At the very least Matt is cooking up some great content. I never found WordPress to be so entertaining until now. Perhaps he's gonna pull a 4D move and eliminate the competition, generate tons of marketing, and cement himself as the WP-Godfather.
The thing is, he's implicated himself so hard legally that this isn't even in the cards anymore. Right about now is the time when opportunistic lawyers are going to start smelling the blood in the water and start calling up everyone he as screwed over so that they can take every last penny he has.
I don't see how that checkbox would do anything to prevent anyone affiliated with WP Engine from logging in like, literally just check the box and press log in
So if whenever I have an open source project I can never change the license on it? I'm wondering how many times it has happened in the history. This mindset from this video also hurts the community.
..wow, wtf didn't even know this was going on. This is beyond crazy. I love WordPress and was just recently thinking about utilizing it headless, but at this point.....iono maybe imma just stick to javascript for the front end and python for the backend. Why the f*wk would you do this? This is why we need open-source to be decentralized.
When the best becomes bad, everything else falls down and deteriorates. While I do believe that WordPress can survive this, the Internet will never be the same after this.
@@warrenarnoldmusic This well-worn and unbelievable nonsense invented by so-called advertising experts for people who cannot think 3 minutes ahead is repeated over and over again. You don't believe me? Can you show me at least one business owner with at least a grain of salt in his head, who will between two similar options choose the controversial and contentious option versus the balanced, proven and sustainable option? That's right, you can't. It seems that you have never heard of the statement in business and in life: A good voice can be heard far away. The bad voice is heard even further.
This is giving me I'm not just mad but also disappointed vibes. Also very sad story because i added WordPress to the list of tech i wanted to learn about but now it's very much gone from that list
Seriously Matt. We all appreciate your work and sacrifice over the years. You’ve built something that is used and loved by millions of people. Please don’t ruin it in the sake of dragging down some hosting company nobody even cares about with you. It is simply not worth it.
What "sacrifice"? God I have when people use this word for successful people who swim in money. His dad was a programmer. He started forking B2 because he loved photos and blogging, he did what he LOVED and turned it into huge profit. He did not sacrifice shit. He did work on this because he liked it. He stopped coding and turned to a guy where his main job is just tell people what to do and hiring people and decide where to spend his money on. Do not call this "sacrifice". Until I see at least 2 wifes leaving him because his fingers bleed from coding and he decides to sacrifice his life so hard for people in WP who beg him to do something that nobody but himself can do (does not exists, is just made up by me) then you can talk about sacrifice.
The only thing he's "sacrificed" is his communities. Automattic has repeatedly harmed the websites under his ownership, he needs to see the pattern and step back.
There’s been more development to this story since this video was published with Matt’s incredibly childish reply to DHH. I really do not foresee him being able to dig out of this mess. It’s done. There’s no coming back.
Matt needs to be fired. End of story. He is out of control and is not the kind of stable CEO we need. Everyone who uses WordPress needs to be reaching out and urging them to boot Matt. Matt does not need to stop, he does not need to change, he simply needs to go. He's demonstrated he is not capable of behaving like an adult. He's done so much damage. Time for it to stop!
Thanks for the clear statement. I also think it's beyond reasoning at this moment and still find it hard to believe the steps taken by WP/Matt have been taken the way that they were 😞
This whole thing ends one of two ways - the big hosting players fork their own version of WordPress and the repository, putting undue pressure on the community to keep their plugins/themes active on multiple repositories; or - Matt gets forced out of WP entirely. Seeing what WP (Matt) has done with ACF today destroys any and all trust I have for the company and product.
You realize 'Option 2' will not happen, and you're missing 3. Mat owns the IP & his 'claims' about the shell company HE OWNS & RUNS AS WELL, & this is ontop of him being on the board of the supposed controllers of who gets to run the IP, is entire ... questionable to how meaningful it is. CHeck theo's video where he ACTUALLY tried to talk him off a fing cliff. Mat literally admits (and omits details about transfership of the IP rights of word press) to being on a board of 3 that has control over the IP. He passively admits he OWNS the company that basically own the IP, only saying he didn't own it when they originally got it. In honestly the shorthand.. He can't be forced out, & given the level of snake oil going on... I ever doubt he'll never own the IP short of it being utterly decimated in whole so no one can.
@@DePhoegonIsle Matt definitely does not own the WordPress IP. Trademarks are not IP. Matt owns that trademark to the WordPress and other related brands. WordPress is under the GPL and code is accepted without copyright assignment.
I woiuldn`t want WP engine taking control of their own version. They are even more malicious. They should have just taken the criticism and ended it there. They aren't acting any better.
Man, this is sad. My first dev job was a small agency and we did a looot of custom Wordpress sites. If this burns to the ground, what’s a comparable alternative?
@@NithinJune There is no evidence, just some garbage attack someone is spreading around maliciously to discredit Matt by claiming he is mentally insane. What is sadder is the people who regurgitate that vomit far and wide because it supports their viewpoint.
As someone who has had a manic episode, I do think there is a chance that it is. I wouldn't say 100% but when someone who was functioning normally starts to do all of these outrageous things, it often is caused by a manic episode.
There's some insane things going on here. Large and fragile egos isn't new, but a move like giving users another software than the one they are asking for seems straight up illegal. Like if I'm ordering a NVIDIA graphics card and get sent some offbrand copy I'd file fraud charges.
This whole thing utterly insane. Referring to the terms of use of your own platform for taking over other people's work is so f*cking insane and (as far as i know) unprecedented in the world of OSS.
@@albertcamus6611 Meant Automattic. It was 2 AM when I wrote that.
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I remember that in 2016 NPM recovered and un-un-published a package called "left-pad" after author's rage-quitting, so the world that was depending on that package doesn't stop. 😬
Undermining open source is right. It is absolutely highlighting the danger of one person projects. Benevolent dictators are widely appreciated but only because they are benevolent.
being called matt and watching videos about wordpress is a very fun game to play in 2024
"matt, btw"
Hey Matt, whatchu doin bro? Don't do absurd things.
Talking straight to my soul and I didn’t even do anything
@@deshpandekaivalya i'm not messing with wordpress and that's for sure
@@mmattbtw I feel like I'm being lectured at
If Theo agrees with DHH then something crazy must have happened
I don't know who Theo or dhh are, what's the history there?
never trust any youtubers.
@@JamesWelbes DHH is the guy who created Rudy-on-Rails, a very influential web framework. Theo is a Twitter/TH-cam influencer who used to work at twitch and has a couple of startups
@@glebtsoy4139 i would trust dhh but never a youtuber especially one with toxic takes
@@JamesWelbes Theo doesn't agree on all takes of DHH. Especially the ones involving TypeScript and client side JavaScript in general.
*Adds unhinged CEO to threat model*
Haha already got that one, my workplace uses 3CX for VoIP 🤣
@@W1ldTangent Or Oracle taking over a company.
lol
There are hinged ones?
@@splitprissm9339I've never heard anything about Pepsi or Cokes ceos, so I think they're probably normal ceos
Imaging being a word press customer on _any host_ right now, thinking "wow, I could be a perfect customer and do everything above board, and have my entire company *vanish literally overnight* because of a disagreement between the host and the framework owner"
I would be frantically looking for a new platform to use or a way to self host because what business on earth has that kind of risk tolerance.
Hell imagine being a new customer looking to set up a website / web store, and hearing "they did WHAT to HOW MANY customers?" Is there any way you'd still choose word press as your platform?
@@corgano6068 (%
@@corgano6068exactly.
@@corgano6068 WP was bad 10 years ago, bloated, slow and confusing, it needed more plugins than meat to function properly it is fundamentally a vestige of an ancient past, but it's not a viable platform any more.
@@corgano6068 I happen to be "between CMS's" at this moment, and I was about to bite the bullet and learn WP (never been a fan but there's hardly an alternative anymore) when this happened. Now looking into jamstack solutions, very exciting but quite a step for me.
I think we are at peak tech, the number of dramas appearing in tech seems to indicate nobody is busy building anymore 😂
wonders in the age of AI
Yup, billionaire bros with their own SNS clutching pearls that they are being censored while censoring critique seems quite peak
People busy building stuff dont have time to burn on drama.
Yes, we don't need paid plugins anymore. Drama is created by devs losing their value.
Fascinating observation! Thanks!
I’m ready to jump ship. Been developing in WP for the last 10 years, involved in the community, planned a WordCamp, but now I’m just done. Was personally berated by Matt over accessibility of Gutenberg, but I stuck around then… but this is the last straw.
Yeah. It sucks too, with all that time and history. It’s hard to see yourself pouring your heart into something like that anymore knowing how the project is being led. 😓
yeah i am on the same boat ngl I hated how they rushed the blocked editor to production how there is still no proper way to make fse themes etc now on top of these there is this smh IDK man I wont recommend Wordpress unless they correct their path
I think WordPress is long overdue being dethroned. It's a massive pile of spaghetti code and technical debt.
@@QriousKoder Oh god. Yeah, that new theming system is an absolutely brain-fuck. I started trying to develop a theme for it and noped straight out of there when I saw how every element had to be defined in duplicate HTML comments. Every time I agree to a project based on WordPress I end up regretting it.
@@andybrice2711 100% this
Maybe the team “on his side” are the 12 people that reacted with 🙌 to the Slack message.
Could be non-devs that don't get what absolute undermining bonkers that was
My guess is the people who didn’t leave with the rest need the job and thought this would blow over. There is no way anyone but Matt thinks this is a good idea.
Not quite. Not everyone supports freeloaders who profit without giving back to the community. WP Engine went so far as to automatically reverse the WooCommerce Stripe add-on, changing the attribution ID to their own when someone from their network installs it. This allows them to take a share of the sales made through the plugin, while providing zero support to the plugin or the broader ecosystem. The list goes on-they are a cancer to open-source projects. While Matt's handling of this situation might not be perfect, consider putting 20 years of your life into open-source, only to have a greedy corporation exploit every opportunity to profit from your hard work. Then we’ll see how you react.
I am confused it is called forking but reviews and installations stayed the same. 🤣😆
they probably need to keep their job somehow and "don´t want to upset the big Boss" :)
The funniest part about the 'affiliated with WP Engine' checkbox is that the text is *not localized*. So if English is not your native language you literally don't even know what you're agreeing to.
The even funnier part is, that since 'you are responsible for your account security' there is no policy about someone else logging into your account other than you are responsible for their actions. This alone makes that check box ... an unreliable measure, as say the spouse, friend, child, automated bot, etc... could log in for you and they can answer the check box honestly. (To be clear, even if also stated the account holder as the target them answering it could be as flawed. This is why contract law does not even think of going into someone reporting another's contract/connection status with yet another third party. It's unreliable & a legal mess)
Matt when you say this: th-cam.com/video/grZg-BEhKMI/w-d-xo.html
@@DePhoegonIsle yeah he either sought no legal council before doing this, or sought it and then ignored it
It doesn't help that the entire WordPress Accessability Team can't log in because they feel they might have had affiliations with WPEngine.
@@DePhoegonIsle tbh that's not exclusive to that checkbox. When you sign up to Disney Plus and, by doing that, agree to never ever sue Disney even if they kill your wife (true story), they can't really prove that it was you who signed up and not your daughter or something using your name.
The whole idea that a box being ticked in your account somehow proves that you read an entire ToS document and agreed to it is hard to defend.
Plugin author here. Hard to even explain to a layman how absolutely bonkers it is to use the open-source license of the author against them to just steal their work.
How on earth can you complain that people aren't giving enough to open-source then lock developers out of their own software when they do?
Think about it: What if a hosting company systematically changed the attribution ID in your deal with Stripe Connect? No support, no help with tickets, no development-just rerouting your sales to their pockets. How would you feel knowing they’re profiting from your hard work while contributing nothing back? It’s crazy that this is being justified in the name of open-source. They did that with the Woo Stripe add-on.
And p.s I am a plugin owner as well so no, not everyone supports this narrative. wpe is a cancer that needs to go away.
I've seen a company that was a big trusted partner in a FOSS community hijack the name and start selling their own fork that was only available as a cloud service to get around the GPL license of the original code base. Giant shitstorm for years. Wordpress burning any trust in them to the ground is insane. I'm just happy I don't have any wordpress sites anymore at work or at home. But ACF Pro was the main good thing about WP.
Forcibly taking ownership of an open source project should just plain be illegal, and I'd be surprised if it didn't break intellectual property rights somehow.
he just PROVED that he doesn't actually believe in the open source principles the way he pretends to all the time. "Nice guy" Matt is a LIAR, a fraud, and a con artist.
@@bentoth4324 I mean, you can certainly complain. But you can’t do anything about it since you literally published a legal document giving them permission to use the code for free.
I just love that you're not one of those usual guys who'll have a guy on for an interview and then afterwards everything they do is 100% amazing. You were willing to call him out to his face, on your mentioned call prior to the checkbox and also in your own content. Bravo, sir. I hope he ends this tirade soon.
100 % agree. I was worried that you where going to be a bit to soft when you where reporting on this going forward after that. But you definitely proved me wrong. Great Video Theo!
I think wordpress can recover pretty quickly, but at this point that recovery will probably be without matt
I’m just waiting for WP Engine to fork it. They have the capital, they have the developers, and thanks to Matt if you somehow hadn’t heard of WP Engine you have now.
I don’t know if WP Engine controlled fork of Wordpress is a good thing, but it’s certainly a better option than Matt the mad king.
@@Drazil100 I wondered back and forth in my head if having multiple, semi-official flavors of Wordpress (much like Linux) would be a good or bad thing.
I landed on Good Thing.
@@Drazil100 Imagine the countless hours of research and development, the infrastructure costs, just to stay competitive. They already didn’t want to invest more than 48 hours a week into core development, so imagine the burden of handling bug fixes, updates, and infrastructure-all while others profit from their work without contributing back. The effort it takes to support these plugins, integrate them, and manage the operational overhead is massive, and for what? So freeloaders can take advantage while they foot the bill?
Yeah wordpress can revover without a dout .. but he can make it worse
@@Drazil100 Having run Wordpress for work I'd honestly be interested in a fork that promises better security, has some solid backing and stays open source. Even more so if ACF Pro is included right into it. But right now I'm just happy I'm not responsible for any WP sites anymore.
I called WP and its core developers "toxic" many years ago and took flack for that. The entire ecosystem is a disaster. WP is one of the least performing PHP applications on Earth. ISPs hate WP because it sucks system resources like no tomorrow. A single request consumes 64MB RAM...minimum. 64MB! And if you install the most common plugins, it jumps up to 128MB RAM or more per request. That is completely insane. To serve 100 users, you need a minimum of 6.4GB RAM. WP refuses to ship a caching plugin to curb the insanity, but even with caching enabled it's still a horribly unoptimized dumpster fire.
"You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" Seems especially accurate here
Matt didn't "become" anything, he was always like this and simply kept pushing harder and harder because he didn't get any consequences for his previous public meltdowns
Hero is a bit of a stretch at this point. All of this should have been handled behind closed doors or in court.
He literally threw the WP community and greater tech community into this.
He has damaged WordPress more in the past 4 weeks that it nullifies a lot of the good WordPress has done.
@@aaronvenomfang Wordpress has been a bloated pos anyway for years already.
Many other people have stuck around as very respectable leaders.
Look at Linus Torvalds. If Linus would behave like Matt, and he's in a MUCH more advantageous position, the world as we know it wouldn't exist now.
Matt seems to just think that this is all about him.
Matt was never a hero and, frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long for people to realize that he's nuts. I've never used WordPress but I am a dedicated tumblr user, watching him liveblog a mental breakdown was definitely all I needed to be convinced he's just a rich, crazy, power-hungry man.
Matt said he would go nuclear… I guess nobody expected it meant going nuclear against himself…
He really is blind to any reasoning at this point
While I agree with Theo's sentiments here, I've never seen him so *pissed off* like this. Holy crap has Matt screwed the pooch here.
yeah this 'ish is WILD 🍿😮
That's 2M active installations now forced to SCF which is not what they signed up for I bet. Theo's sentiments here are probably more mellow than those agencies who have to deal with this shit show. 😬😬😬
He was looking pretty angry during his SKG reaction, but that was more immediate angry reaction to comments (and I don't exactly agree with him but whatever).
Now this one feels like long term exasperation, a much more concrete level of pissed off. He is very not pleased at all.
@@StereoBucket There must be years of conversation we are missing, plus the venture capitalists have a way of triggering the human bomb like no others. The mix of ignorance and greed must push you towards the edge and he did what he could given the situation. It's not even that ley locked out people out of the plugins, they showed Venture Caps technical technicalities count as much as legal technicalities. After making half a billion, not giving back anything is morally corrupt, that's why you need to show your teeth's I am with Matt on this one. I know it disrupt the open source world (Which needs an 'Unreal' bannister) but if you break the unspoken rule because there is no bannister, you get the unspeakable done to you, and you fall from the building. Those VCs and their greed is actually the culprit, outside of the open source spirit, Matt is reacting to this legal injustice.
WordPress is done. I am in the process of moving my sites off, and I know of some corporations that are doing the same. Even if Matt reversed course now, he has opened the door that it could happen again at any time. Businesses do not like unstable situations.
Important note: they didn't republish forked version on the same url (/advanced-custom-fields/), they just renamed the plugin - you can see that this "new" plugin inherits all the reviews of ACF, all the support forums and all user base of ACF (2m+ active installations). Meaning that the all the previously installed ACF plugin instances will be updated to SCF "fork" automatically upon updating the plugin.
Matt needs seven years in Tibet without internet connection.
Hear me out. Matt wants to rid the world of PHP. It has to start with WP. He's secretly the hero we need.
Think about it.
🤣
LMAOOOOOO
"He's the Jonas Salk of Stacks" - Paulie Walnuts
javascript shall rule the world
Think about it. XBox Live, the faulty hardware, windows 8, 13 billion dollars worth of sand. Microsoft is run by ants!
For those that started following this in the last few weeks - this is not new behaviour
Yeah Matt's lost his damn mind. Very sad to watch his mental breakdown
It is shitty how he is going about it but do you think a simple plugin made in a weekend (using NONE of their own code) should charge $40 a month to customers, making 10s of millions a year and give ZERO back to the community? There are plenty of cases of this in the wordpress ecosystem and I can understand him being pissed off about that.
@@excitedbox5705 If it can be 'made in a weekend', make your own free alternative plugin then.
It's not even his first breakdown, but they were focused on Tumblr before
@@excitedbox5705I think most people understand why he is pissed. WP Engine is a parasite. It is the biggest issue with OS since forever. But the dude is burning down the village to hurt his shitty neighbor and now he is the shittiest neighbor of them all.
@@vincentguttmann2231 ah yes, the exploding hammer car incident
To me, this indicates that WordPress as a whole should be considered compromised and insecure. At a certain point, the risk assessment of an open source project depends on trust in the maintainers. If someone with publishing rights demonstrates that they're untrustworthy, the entire project becomes untrustworthy.
Matt is burning his own house down just because his neighbor has a nicer lawn.
I wouldn’t even say “nicer” - wp engine is a fraction of the size of automattic- it’s more like “your neighbor has a yard”
12:43 let it burn. I want a post-Wordpress wold 😈
History always proved this one thing right; never give too much power to a single human being.
But also, don't give equal power to everyone. Because people are dumb and don't have time or interest to understand relevant issues, and it becomes a matter of who markets better rules
Matt cannot apologize now. IMO. He went too far before, there were real extortion, real tortious interference, caused real financial damages to another company and lots of end users. There had been real consequences.
For him to apologize now would be terrible for the lawsuits coming his way as a result of his previous actions. He cannot admit to any fault on his part now, I imagine.
Depends on how seriously he is about making right. His lawyer could send a letter to WP Engine tomorrow offering to make an apology, return all previous access, and pay for the loss of revenue incurred by WP Engine, in exchange for immunity from his actions and they might accept it. Lawsuits are expensive if you can get what you want without it. This is pretty much what has happened every time you hear "Settled out of court"
@@Musikur Lawsuits are expensive when the other guy has no money. Matt has money, and he acted with such blatant malice that it turns into a slam dunk. There might be a payday big enough to settle over, but it's not going to be without heavy amount of damages.
Matt has so blatantly broken the law in this context that when we're talking about "getting what you want" out of a lawsuit against him, we're not talking about anything less than taking every single penny he has. Because that's how badly he has implicated himself.
@@Musikur Ya.... but he has actively damaged and harmed others in the process. Which means liability. This is also to not mention the galatic sized nuke placed on him and wordpress as a whole reputation.
Do you really think anyone would trust him or wordpress again... when the only reason an apology was given is because of a lawsuit that had Merit?
I mean it’s kinda too late. Everyone aside from his yes-men already hate him. No one will trust WP anymore until he leaves.
It's a 2 edge sword, If he was legally stuck from having people contributing on what they used to make half a billion and went for closing access. I can only see from here how venture capitalist told him : 'Whaddare you gonna do about it?' and he did that. Have you ever dealt with venture capitalists? You rather immolate yourself that deal with them. There is legal and fair, and this situation was certainly unfair if not illegal, so he went for a kill, I think it's fair, but I am always disagreeing with majorities for some reason.
It shows the limitation of open source for the same reasons communism doesn't work.
This really does seem like an untreated/unmanaged mental health episode at this point. Seems a lot like the behavior I've seen in people with BPD.
I am getting strong reminders of when my (former) Boss went off the rails due to a psychotic break due to constant drug use. Not to say that matt's on drugs, But the behaviour rings similar
He's an adult with an opinion, and is willing to stand on business and stick to it. Nothing but respect for him. He's gone on several interviews and was completely calm and collected. I disagree, and honestly think what he is doing is the right thing, even if his methods aren't great.
Mid life crisis strikes alot of people
@@poopman8837username checks out
@@poopman8837 I mean this in the nicest way possible - did you miss when Theo asked him the same question 5 times in a row, and he gave a different non-answer every time? He was also grinning and giggling while being asked serious questions. Especially when the questions lead right into one of his talking points, he seemed a bit too excited about it. I know that can just be nerves, but it still doesn’t strike me as someone collected or appropriately treating this as a pivotal moment of his professional career, or more importantly, of many thousands of other people’s careers.
One thing that helped me understand Matt was this: in order to get inline documentation in WordPress, it didn't take facts, statistics, reasoning, explanations, etc. It took one of his friends telling him, "yeah, you should do that."
He should be listening to his friends now more than ever.
@@charliegnu I don't think you understand what I was saying. He does. What does it tell you that he didn't?
All my brain is thinking right now:
Holy crap, Theo, I have mad respect for you.
Thank you for being this way.
👏👏
Same mad respect to him on this hope Matt steps down its really damaging
we're getting into open source illegal activities that we didn't know could exist
The last 60 seconds of this made me look over my shoulder as I thought Theo was going to jump me!
Especially for people named matt
7:30 If they have shown they can do this, you can no longer trust a single plugin to not be a virus, what if a rouge staff member swaps the most popular plugin?
Alternatives like Webflow are so happy right now
Wix too
Honestly Wordpress has been bottom of the barrel in terms of features for years and years. There's a reason new devs don't want to get into it, it's a talent black hole.
Unfortunately, Webflow, Wix, et. al., are not "alternatives", in that they are not FOSS, and cannot be downloaded and self-hosted. Really, the only true alternative to WP is the same as it has always been: A text editor and {var}. (Where, var, in my case, is Astro and Laravel.) Webflow is evil in their own way, and has made many headlines over how they tax their successful customers with surprise price hikes. Webflow is great, until you hit the proverbial "front page of Reddit", and get their next invoice which breaks your business model.
Webflow, Wix and such websites are very limited on their capabilities and are really inflexible compared to Wordpress.
People that were used to working with Wordpress I think won't be happy with changing to Webflow. Things such as 50,000 plugins, custom pages and custom shops, WP flows, custom themes, ACF, forums, membership systems, for-code solutions, self-hosted platform, Open source ...
Webflow and Wix are not alternatives to Wordpress, they're barely substitutes.
Uh... honest question; does he have any history of mental health episodes? This seems like something a doctor should take a look at...
this is very ableist bruv
No idea about his mental health history but automattic also runs tumblr and earlier this year Matt had a similar breakdown over a edgy tumblr post and somehow managed to turn it into a massive site wide controversy.
It ended with him having to take a sabbatical from being involved in tumblr. Unfortunately it does not look like a wordpress sabbatical is in the cards :|
Yes. This isn’t the first time, but it is the first time it’s against a company strong and rich enough to fight back, and he cannot handle the backlash.
This isn't even his first time, he had similar breakdowns when running Tumblr
Many creators have some sort of crazy streak going through them, "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain".
That plugin takeover is craaaaaazy...
yoinked
WP Engine started by systematically and programmatically reverse-engineering the WooCommerce Stripe add-on to change the attribution ID to their own for every website they host-millions of websites. They found every possible way to profit from open source while providing zero support and contributing no more than 48 hours a week back to the community. And of course, they do all this so they can claim a big section on their homepage about how much they 'give back.' It's outrageous when you think about how they've managed to profit without truly supporting the ecosystem.
@@alcymn9:49 sorry npm already did this for that package that got deleted and they had to bring it back because everyones build was failing
Went full disappointed dad mode, and I'm, here for it
I've been seeing some of the stuff from the slack on X and it's wild. I appreciate you trying to talk him down, but it's clear he's going off the deep end.
I have never been a fan of DHH, but DHH calling Matt the "Mad King" is peak zeitgeist perfection! 🤣
Thanks for covering this Theo, this was what the majority of my weekend has been dealing with.
Also, thanks for calling him out on the singling out of community members, notably the Laura tweet was so bad. I asked Matt directly for an explanation multiple times on why he felt that was appropriate, with no luck yet.
Not a lawyer, but it is hilarious that supposedly this started over a trademark violation given that depending on the open source license, I would argue taking over the ACF page and putting your own fork would violate the ACF trademark. Be one thing if they took the ACF link and 404 errored it, but to have it redirect to the fork? Yeah, sure sounds like "impersonating" another group for financial benefit.
By the way, would love to see Matt try to sue someone who checked that box in deceit. Not sure the non-profit would gave the legal justification to demand that, even if the fir-profit could. Oh, and pretty sure conflating the non-profit and the for-profit business would be of interest to folks at the IRS!
It isn’t redirected to the fork, the fork now lives on the ACF page. It is even worse than a redirect.
Their "fork" still has the ACF logo in the top left and "ACF" as the menu label.
Since you mention conflating the two, on twitter the official (org) account responded along the lines of 'we'll unblock you/them once you cancel the lawsuit against *[US]* '. Keep in mind that the lawsuits are only against automatic and matt, so the non proffit to tweet that...
And also, obviously another case of extorsion/blackmail/interference that can be added to the list
The basically copied the logo too, just changed the A to an S and the shade of blue to another one... There are also lots of reviews that say "advanced custom fields" in the reviews. If they have it trademarked, the page is definitely violating it.
I can understand the stage where he was unhappy about lack of contribution (I don't know how true this is, I didn't check but let's roll with it), and WPengine sounding like it's affiliated in some way, but goddamn this is some major case of every single textbook phrase that could be used to describe spite with self inflicted harm. I'd say he's cutting his nose to spite his face but that one doesn't even scratch the surface of how disastrous this was.
Hostile plugin takeover is like a rancid cherry on the rancid cake. Just completes the package.
Just look at the bright side! If wordpress dies the web instantly becomes more secure.
That's just not true. There's nothing inherently insecure about WordPress.
Yes in the same way a computer with a broken network card can't be hacked
Guess he is going founder mode we just don't understand founder mode enough to realise it
Okay WordPress is dead if they dont throw him out.
What amazed me is that the org and the company are both under his control.
1 is a company and the other is supposed to be a community site.
Vulture capital would love that.
@@autohmae People were calling this out years ago but it mostly fell on deaf ears unfortunately.
Forcibly taking ownership of an open source project should just plain be illegal, and I'd be surprised if it didn't break intellectual property rights somehow.
I think Matt's running full speed into a very public anti-trust lawsuit
Somehow I wasn't subscribed to you, so I fixed that. This was a fantastic video and cannot thank you enough for your ability to make strong statements about important things
NGL a Webflow ad would go so hard on this video series rn
WordPress bringing Theo and DHH closer together is not the romantic curveball I expected
12:22 👏 Let him know
Im sharing this video with my bosses (I work in marketing for a company, I am the only developer and we are on WP Engine). the implications I think are seismic, as you point out it alters the nature of what open source really is, and the future of wordpress itsself. Thank god I know how to build in Drupal!
Then it stands to reason that Matt Mullenweg owes Michel Valdrighi (B2/CafeLog) a percentage of Automattic's wealth, say about 8%? Fair is fair.
Oh ya I forgot WordPress is a fork of an earlier project. He's a hippocrit
@@joshallen128 wait, it is?
Matt is going to get utterly destroyed in civil court. Tortious interference in a contract. He won't shut up and has given loads of ammo to opposing counsel.
Although it's permissible to fork a GPL repo all you want, the context matters here. If you do it out of malice or spite with the intention of "going nuclear" and burning everything to the ground, you better hope your lawyer is smarter than you are because you're going to get taken to the cleaners.
He could even face a class action from the community because he's harmed them now.
This will make a great HBS case study for marketing students one day (for what not to do)
An analogy would be to compare this to a property-line dispute with a neighbor. Rather than let the legal system resolve the dispute, Matt has chosen to set his neighbor's house on fire.
I'm interest to see what a judge would do with the theft of the plugin name. That's a big nono in the realm of intellectual property rights. No ToS is going to cover his rump having pulled that one. I'd hope for an immediate injunction, at the least.
Exactly this. Even if we presume that WP Engine has a motivation to get this settled as soon as possible, this isn't going to be true for everyone else. Right about now is the time when lawyers are going to start seeing the future windfall and start calling up everyone caught in the crossfire.
@@neruneri I just saw Theo's last vid on this where he reads a copy of the complaint and it's exactly that: tortious/intentional interference, unfair competition under Cal BPC, slander/libel and EXTORTION 😬. This guy is unhinged, he's trying to blackmail WP
Engine's CEO, that actually could even be criminal!! I don't think the fireworks are over yet, but he'll almost certainly be forced to settle out of court for an eye-watering amount... This guy is on a bipolar train of consequences that makes most rock stars look emotionally stable. Very sad 😢!
Stealing the plug-in page and auto-updating everything to your own fork is 100% no ok
This just shows how Open source assumes we play "nice" with each other. Such a disengenious takeover of ACF is this easy and there's no recourse, absolutely infuriating.
Having had someone close to me go through a manic episode of BPD, this seems *exactly* like one. Feelings of grandeur, rash actions, not listening to people around them. It's really hard to see. I hope Matt gets the help he needs. If he does apologize for all this and try to right these wrongs, it's on us as a community to accept it and him.
I was thinking the same thing
and all this for Wordpress lmao
there was a recent interview where matt developed a spontaneous nosebleed partway through and just didn't acknowledge it at all and kept talking, so I'm thinking less bpd manic episode and more coke binge
That's not at all limited to BPD that can happen with someone with no diagnoses.
@@zoellazayce6796 both parties are making millions off of Wordpress, so it's not just some quarrel
It's hard to watch people as dumb as Steve at 8:35 who did not immediately see Matt for who he is. It was clear from Matt's first actions with WPEngine that Matt was in the wrong. Thinking Matt's action were ever justified is a big middle finger from Steve to open source culture.
This is a stark warning to anyone intending to do business, being it plugin or theme development or saas, in the wordpress ecosystem. WP has been losing traction in recent years, this will just add up to people jumping ship and looking for alternatives, even ones not open source.
I was a WP developer for a long time, and jumped over to react and next about 2017, and did not look back. I feel sad about what is happening. I thinking of all the developer out there, who dont know what to say to there clients. And all the junior php developers that selected WP for there platform to get a good jobb from, who now dont know what to do. Im so sad about this.
The best part of the video is the end, when Theo says: I'm done! A Wordpress commercial appears! lol. 😅
Lol..
..that was a weird commercial
matt woke up one day and chose violence... and a sensible sweater jacket
yeah he's giving Mr. Rodgers but a secret serial killer vibes
Great video btw. Theo, you're doing a great job covering this and trying to reason with mad Matt
Well done calling this behavior out so publicly; it's insane that it just keeps going.
He really seems like he is going to destroy WordPress before admitting he was in the wrong.
I'm a WordCamp speaker, plugin author, WordCamp lead organizer, Meetup organizer and all that stuff that doesn't matter when Matt is making it really hard to want to continue to contribute. I'm not sure if I'm "allowed" to contribute when I also host some sites on WP Engine. We need some clarification.
That nonprofit with two other board members needs those members to agree to put Matt in timeout
it's like they don't even exist! I think if this all goes to court it may be revealed that there is a lot of funny business going on around Matt and his organizations
I'm really new to the channel and was not expecting to hear Matt get addressed directly, incredible.
You know all this drama will make sense when Matt publishes his new book, "What Not To Do"
Or “From Hero to Zero in 30 days”
At the very least Matt is cooking up some great content. I never found WordPress to be so entertaining until now.
Perhaps he's gonna pull a 4D move and eliminate the competition, generate tons of marketing, and cement himself as the WP-Godfather.
I think you're onto something....
The thing is, he's implicated himself so hard legally that this isn't even in the cards anymore. Right about now is the time when opportunistic lawyers are going to start smelling the blood in the water and start calling up everyone he as screwed over so that they can take every last penny he has.
I've got a plugin in review queue right now. Think I'll email them back and tell them not to bother at this point.
The company and the org should NOT be entwined this much !
It should have been separated out long time ago as it's own entity.
I don't see how that checkbox would do anything to prevent anyone affiliated with WP Engine from logging in
like, literally just check the box and press log in
This is like watching the avengers civil war. It has been hilarious
So if whenever I have an open source project I can never change the license on it? I'm wondering how many times it has happened in the history. This mindset from this video also hurts the community.
..wow, wtf didn't even know this was going on. This is beyond crazy. I love WordPress and was just recently thinking about utilizing it headless, but at this point.....iono maybe imma just stick to javascript for the front end and python for the backend. Why the f*wk would you do this? This is why we need open-source to be decentralized.
Joomla has open arms for all WP users.
When the best becomes bad, everything else falls down and deteriorates. While I do believe that WordPress can survive this, the Internet will never be the same after this.
should I be looking for a replacement for WP?
What is even the endgame here. what does he hope to accomplish by burning his community
I don't think he's thinking clearly at this point...
Become famous, in business bad publicity is still publicity
@@warrenarnoldmusic This well-worn and unbelievable nonsense invented by so-called advertising experts for people who cannot think 3 minutes ahead is repeated over and over again. You don't believe me? Can you show me at least one business owner with at least a grain of salt in his head, who will between two similar options choose the controversial and contentious option versus the balanced, proven and sustainable option? That's right, you can't.
It seems that you have never heard of the statement in business and in life: A good voice can be heard far away. The bad voice is heard even further.
it's not his first rodeo, he's done this before. i think he's just gone off the rails
This is giving me I'm not just mad but also disappointed vibes.
Also very sad story because i added WordPress to the list of tech i wanted to learn about but now it's very much gone from that list
The guy needs a PR team, legal team, and patience.
“God, I pray you grant me patience. And do it now!”
- Matt probably
@@WarayVan *right now
And a mental health team.
@@DominickWalenczak first and foremost
Thanks Theo. This is very sad to see.
I left WordPress ecosystem years ago but I’m very sad to see this.
Seriously Matt. We all appreciate your work and sacrifice over the years. You’ve built something that is used and loved by millions of people. Please don’t ruin it in the sake of dragging down some hosting company nobody even cares about with you. It is simply not worth it.
What "sacrifice"? God I have when people use this word for successful people who swim in money. His dad was a programmer. He started forking B2 because he loved photos and blogging, he did what he LOVED and turned it into huge profit. He did not sacrifice shit. He did work on this because he liked it. He stopped coding and turned to a guy where his main job is just tell people what to do and hiring people and decide where to spend his money on. Do not call this "sacrifice". Until I see at least 2 wifes leaving him because his fingers bleed from coding and he decides to sacrifice his life so hard for people in WP who beg him to do something that nobody but himself can do (does not exists, is just made up by me) then you can talk about sacrifice.
The only thing he's "sacrificed" is his communities. Automattic has repeatedly harmed the websites under his ownership, he needs to see the pattern and step back.
The only thing he can do now is step down completely at least for a few years.
The plugin takeover reminds me of NPM package hijacking
There’s been more development to this story since this video was published with Matt’s incredibly childish reply to DHH. I really do not foresee him being able to dig out of this mess. It’s done. There’s no coming back.
Matt needs to be fired. End of story. He is out of control and is not the kind of stable CEO we need. Everyone who uses WordPress needs to be reaching out and urging them to boot Matt. Matt does not need to stop, he does not need to change, he simply needs to go. He's demonstrated he is not capable of behaving like an adult. He's done so much damage. Time for it to stop!
Get em Theo - this was a refreshing amount of authenticity.
goodbye wordpress.... hello astro... 2025 a fork of WP called "NewPress"...
“Web Publisher” would keep the “WP”
@@NateVolkerMatt just had a stroke reading this 🤣
two different things
Thanks for the clear statement. I also think it's beyond reasoning at this moment and still find it hard to believe the steps taken by WP/Matt have been taken the way that they were 😞
This whole thing ends one of two ways - the big hosting players fork their own version of WordPress and the repository, putting undue pressure on the community to keep their plugins/themes active on multiple repositories; or - Matt gets forced out of WP entirely. Seeing what WP (Matt) has done with ACF today destroys any and all trust I have for the company and product.
Why is the WP org under his control ? This needs to be separate, maybe under Linux Foundation or something
You realize 'Option 2' will not happen, and you're missing 3.
Mat owns the IP & his 'claims' about the shell company HE OWNS & RUNS AS WELL, & this is ontop of him being on the board of the supposed controllers of who gets to run the IP, is entire ... questionable to how meaningful it is.
CHeck theo's video where he ACTUALLY tried to talk him off a fing cliff. Mat literally admits (and omits details about transfership of the IP rights of word press) to being on a board of 3 that has control over the IP. He passively admits he OWNS the company that basically own the IP, only saying he didn't own it when they originally got it.
In honestly the shorthand.. He can't be forced out, & given the level of snake oil going on... I ever doubt he'll never own the IP short of it being utterly decimated in whole so no one can.
@@DePhoegonIsle that's why it's time to FORK IT!
@@DePhoegonIsle Matt definitely does not own the WordPress IP. Trademarks are not IP. Matt owns that trademark to the WordPress and other related brands. WordPress is under the GPL and code is accepted without copyright assignment.
I woiuldn`t want WP engine taking control of their own version. They are even more malicious. They should have just taken the criticism and ended it there. They aren't acting any better.
Man, this is sad. My first dev job was a small agency and we did a looot of custom Wordpress sites. If this burns to the ground, what’s a comparable alternative?
Theo this is 100% a manic episode. If you still have his contact, get him to get some mental health support
do you have any evidence for this?
No way to help someone who doesn't want help
@@NithinJune There is no evidence, just some garbage attack someone is spreading around maliciously to discredit Matt by claiming he is mentally insane. What is sadder is the people who regurgitate that vomit far and wide because it supports their viewpoint.
@@MoBeigi yea seems like that. People will use any excuse to display their ableism
As someone who has had a manic episode, I do think there is a chance that it is. I wouldn't say 100% but when someone who was functioning normally starts to do all of these outrageous things, it often is caused by a manic episode.
Strong ending. At this point, a fork would be pointless. Let the ship (community engagement) sink and build a new version based on modern tech.
I do love Theo’s ego trip here of “I can advice and control a titan”. Call me Matt, I can save you
oh good thanks, i’m not the only one seeing this!
There's some insane things going on here. Large and fragile egos isn't new, but a move like giving users another software than the one they are asking for seems straight up illegal. Like if I'm ordering a NVIDIA graphics card and get sent some offbrand copy I'd file fraud charges.
Sadly Matt's actions are overshadowing the fact that he might had been right to ask WP Engine to pay the required fee.
This whole thing utterly insane. Referring to the terms of use of your own platform for taking over other people's work is so f*cking insane and (as far as i know) unprecedented in the world of OSS.
After the plugin stuff, we have to burn WordPress to the ground. We simply cannot let people think BS like that can fly.
why does this wordpress you speak off need to suffer?
it's time to fork it, go around Matt and his messy cult of corporate structures and conflict of interest
Automattic, the company, and Matt. Not WordPress the software.
@@herofoundry Forking WordPress would be a massive undertaking. I don't think it will happen.
@@albertcamus6611 Meant Automattic. It was 2 AM when I wrote that.
I remember that in 2016 NPM recovered and un-un-published a package called "left-pad" after author's rage-quitting, so the world that was depending on that package doesn't stop. 😬
Do we already have a community-based fork of wordpress going?
Letterpress or sth? 😅
There is classicpress that no one cares about.
this sure makes me bite into learning how to create a website on my own all the more
Undermining open source is right. It is absolutely highlighting the danger of one person projects. Benevolent dictators are widely appreciated but only because they are benevolent.