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Perspective

Here I’ll offer some brief bits of perspective on matters related to the #wpdrama and road ahead. This might include things that occurred to me while I was reading something else, or just thoughts I’ve had about specific issues. Ideally, a number of those would be articles with more full thoughts put together, but they may not get beyond being a stub on this page.

It’ll probably make sense to add the perspective offered by others, so I’ll try to do that as well. If it’s not sourced, it’s my own thought but may have occurred to others as well.

What can I say?

These are some things I’m thinking about.

I’ve got a lot more to say, and hopefully I can expand the most relevant of these into proper articles. Everything’s moving so fast right now, it’s hard to go in-depth and still publish quickly, so I’ll try to focus on more foundational pieces.

The point will be to relate the larger perspective, or foundational, writings to the current #wpdrama. This pages addresses that more directly.

What’s Here?

    Elephants in the Ecosystem

    “When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.” — Swahili Proverb.

    If you get into bed with an elephant, it doesn’t matter that he means you no harm; if he rolls over in the night, you may not get up in the morning.

    “It’s the Community, Stupid.”

    I saw the Boromir meme somewhere saying “One cannot just fork a community.” I think it was wrong.

    Matt won’t lead the community out of this mess he created, but I expect the community will be found to be more resilient than he thinks.

    I’m a lawyer who flunked out of the computer science program in December of 1994… I realized the coding stuff wasn’t for me but just speaking as a lawyer who has a fairly solid background in open source, my personal opinion at this point is that it’s fork or die.

    Mike Dunford,
    October 24, 2024 (Twitch) at 1:07:45,
    discussing latest Automattic court filing

    Talking Forks: @AspirePressOrg thread on X

    Fork or Fork Not, That is the Question.

    Lots of people talking WordPress fork these days, and that will happen. Before you fork, or before you adopt someone else’s recent fork, give it some sober thought. Don’t make any rash decisions. If you’ve been nursing a pet peeve about WordPress, don’t simply use this as an excuse to fork now. For a fork to be successful, it needs to have good leadership and a solid group of core developers who are able to sustain development over the long haul. I won’t be adopting a fork that lacks either of those requirements. You don’t need to have it all sorted out the gate, but if you’re one dude with a bone to pick, your fork won’t go anywhere. Frustration, anger, and knee-jerk reactions won’t sustain your motivation for the long haul. Turning one of those into bitterness will take you quite far, but it’s a really toxic motivation to try and use for fuel.

    WordPress has Lost its Way

    This isn’t recent, and it started when Matt Mullenweg came up with the Five for the Future campaign that he announced in September 2014. It took a decade, but in September 2024 we saw the disastrous results of this scheme. The problem is twofold. First, it’s completely contrary to the FOSS ethos. Second, the majority of people in the WordPress community learned about open source ideals through WordPress, meaning they’ve largely learned it from Matt Mullenweg. That’s a problem. There aren’t enough people in the community who understand the advent of open source and the beginning of the free software movement. A lot of “senior” developers today aren’t old enough to remember the browser wars, let alone the early days of open source. Coming to it late is an accident of chronology, but it means many people are in the community that either don’t fully understand the ethos, or were never committed to it in the first place, arriving in WordPress only because of its market share. Free software was the original model before it was commercialized, and open source software has a specific social component that cannot be ignored. Five for the Future attempts to put open source back into economic terms.

    Is this the End of [FOSS/Open Source/WordPress]?

    This is alarmist language. “End” would be a strong word for any of these. WordPress as we know it is over, but the software at is core will keep going. In the future, WordPress might refer only to .com, but that’s not the end. The Free & Open Source Software Movement has a long history before WordPress, and nothing Matt Mullenweg does can jeopardize its future. It will take a hit among people who don’t fully understand it or haven’t absorbed its social aspects, but that won’t end open source. Others have questioned its viability, but in every case I’ve seen, the questioning of its future is based in economic assumptions that are largely antithetical to the FOSS ethos. Nobody is opposed to making a living, but there are some approaches that are not at all looked upon favourably.

    Time to Jump Ship?

    Don’t do anything rash. Other people have more at stake here in this WP drama than you do. It’s good to survey the market at any time, switching CMS platforms shouldn’t be a spur-of-the-moment reactionary decision. Watch how the situation evolves, and see what the community does. There may be more than one viable forks of WordPress that provide a sound migration path that doesn’t cut you off from the themes and plugins you’re already using. And whatever you do, don’t jump to a single-source vendor like Wix, Squarespace, and their ilk. It’s somewhat ironic, but the current problems in WordPress are more of a single vendor issue than a failing of open source. In fact, it’s because of open source that options remain. Trust the GPL. Is it time to jump ship? Honestly, it’s too soon to tell. Keep watching, and you’ll find new options becoming available in the coming months.

    I can be pithy.
    Sometimes I can be downright snarky.

    Hot Takes

    • Matt complaining that WP Engine “cherry-picked” the text messages they showed is like defending yourself against a murder charge by pointing out all the bullets you didn’t fire.
    • Matt: Today was my 19th year at @automattic . 🙂
      Me: Congrats, it’s been a good run for 18 years and 48 weeks. (October 25, 2024 on X)