Oddbean new post about login | logout I’m not sure if Nostr is aware of what’s going on in the #WordPress community right now, but it’s headed toward a civil war and has effects that are rippling through the entire open source internet. If someone is capable of developing a decentralized plugin repository built on Nostr, you’d have a million developers turning their heads to look this way. This is a much larger opportunity for nostr to attract talent than any possible exodus from Twitter.
What happened?
Matt Mullenweg, the founder and CEO of WordPress (biz) and director of the .org declared open war on WPEngine, the largest host. Back-and-forth lawsuits, bickering on Twitter, Matt acting like an entitled whiny billionaire, and, most recently, he revoked their access to their largest plugin in the directory, forked it, renamed it, and claimed it as his.
Something similar happened with Owncloud and the result was a fork to Nextcloud that basically killed Owncloud and it’s for profit associated services. Open source does not have patience for dictators.
Yeah, I think people are already looking at or working on ways to fork WordPress. At this point, I suspect the community would flock, but there’s also been a LOT of talk about a decentralized plugin/theme repo.
If not now, it will happen. Like people, information wants to be free.
Not all people want to be free
Sincerely: while you may believe that I’ve seen enough corruption in the world to know how typical humanity reacts. Some always seek to destroy, exploit or make profit from others. If anyone in Open Source isn’t prepared for 1. more scams 2. people monetizing their work 3. Knowledge & data freely given will always be stolen & used for profiteering Example: Years ago “someone” stole pictures of me posted on Facebook ( by friends) & created a fake account. Someone finally told me I shouldn’t be posting pictures of myself online if I took my career seriously. 😳 Checked it out & had to prove to FB I was me. Apparently some catfisher or something. We already see big name accounts here being targeted & many fakes. We aren’t doomed to repeat the mistakes of previous generations but there is a **lot** of work to be done.
Thanks friend. Sincerely: this is a good example of what I meant about the future of open source. It will be hacker versus hacker eventually. Humans & their ego make them do dumb things. Witnessed it repeatedly.
nostr:nprofile1qqsqfa7a5zwqarc3zume6hepk5pjftens0se4hpqgpmr3nhecngqk3spzfmhxw309ucnqt3j9cczuv36xsurvwgpzdmhxw309akx7cmpd35x7um58g6rsd3eqyg8wumn8ghj7vf5xqhxvdm69e5k78xxvwu 🎯🤏
👀
Fuck it, come over to Drupal.
😂
Nooooo for decades noooo
This is a job for nostr:nprofile1qydhwumn8ghj7emvv4shxmmwv96x7u3wv3jhvtmjv4kxz7gqyqrx8x3cdjwpq9ppwc3ve085pyyvfudqcvlz87xk668540m9t78hz2yu954
Been thinking about this today as well. To me this highlights an uncomfortable truth. If you build a decentralized repository, at some point it needs to coalesce into a singular interface. Wordpress plugins are open source, the code is decentralized, yet how could have this been avoided?
I understood Automattic's point in the WPE stuff at first but Matt seems to be going off the deep end. The stuff with ACF yesterday blew my mind.
I'm half convinced that the actions that WordPress have taken are in violation of the GPLv2 which the WordPress source is licensed under.
While it's definitely sleezy to use your control of the underlying repository I don't see how it violates GPL?
The GPL requires the the source be made available. Blocking WPE from accessing the public source could be perceived as violating that portion of the GPL. I'm not a lawyer so I could easily be wrong.
What's the TLDR? I have a few Wordpress sites but haven't been following the developer drama
Matt Mullenweg (founder) got in a fight with WPEngine (huge host and developer) and he’s been acting like an entitled billionaire. He’s made moves which is making the rest of the open-source community VERY nervous when it comes to code repositories.
What should i use to host my mainstream website? I want to get away from wix. the community recommended WP. now i feel lost. please help. I dont want to host it on a start9 server tor page lol
You may want to look into @Npub.pro, GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages
I am still on WP and have been following the WP crisis and so far I could not see anything alarming. Or am I missing something?
I don't know. I am completely uninformed about the situation. Hoping to learn more before I move away from wix 😄
I tried wix and did not like it. I am using WP because I have all the flexibility to customise and host my own data. I love it and would continue to use! 🤞🤞🤞☺️
Stripping the ACF plugin away from its developers, locking them out of the repository, forking it, renaming it, and forcing users to update to your new version seems pretty alarming.
what does ACF plugin do and how does this affect users? genuinely curious, ta! ☺️
It stands for “advanced custom fields”, allowing users to add an huge range of content editing options to Wordpress posts. It is one of the most popular and most downloaded WordPress plugins ever.
thanks this is helpful! ✌️
didn't @jack put out a bounty for a nostr github? i know you mentioned plugins but plugins are just a type of codebase... im one of the sad lonely devs using drupal.
It’s getting really nasty… “We were saddened and appalled by Matt Mullenweg’s actions this morning appropriating the Advanced Custom Fields plugin that our ACF team has been actively developing for the WordPress community since 2011.” https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/acf-plugin-no-longer-available-on-wordpress-org/
Basicly we need to find a way to distribute git objects, as all these Wordpress plugins are git repositories.
Exactly. Someone builds a decentralized nostr repository for code, even if it’s just for WordPress code, and every dev in the world will take notice.
Just don’t market it as bitcoin. Maybe nostr needs a usdt on Lightning ⚡️. It is what it is
in the end this boils down to the issue of naming and trust, isn’t it? who says plugin xyz is the one I want and is not confused with another one that is called xyz? we still did not solve this in a usable and scalable way, did we?
signatures + time chain to the rescue?
I don't think so. I think it's more so about contributions to development versus freeloading off Automattic's work than the TM stuff. I think the TM stuff is just the proxy war.
I was always a big fan of Matt and I've especially followed it in the early days of WP. Automattic was always an inspiration as a company. - but I haven't followed it in the recent years and I don't know the current drama... my comment was more about developing an alternative solution (on Nostr for example). in a decentralized plugin repository naming and trust is the issue, isn't it?
Have not been following this. Our site is built on wordpress *sigh* Never a big fan but was easy to launch quickly. Any others you'd recommend? I know webflow is getting love these days but not easy for a beginner to use.
People should be aware that the WordPress software is free and open source and that will never change, as are the 60k free plugins in the repo, all maintained by the developers who provide them. The drama is between two big companies in the space. That's all. Your website is fine!
Except the trust in the repo was violated when Matt stole a plugin away from its developers. You’re right, though – for the average website owner, this really doesn’t matter.
I left wordpress at precisely the right moment. Or bitcoin opened my eyes at the right moment… if it can be sabotaged it will. If you rely on the workings of others you and your project are at risk… hmm. 🤔
I couldn’t stand Wordpress and all its bloatware. I could never manage to build anything decent on it without paying for third party garbage, might as well have just used Squarespace.
It’s a huge ecosystem. Took me years to learn how to build quality, fast, custom sites instead of using bloated themes and premium garbage plugins.
I think you're blowing things out of proportion. What did you move to?
