Technology

37849 readers

59 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

130

Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress contributor accounts over alleged fork plans (techcrunch.com)

submitted 6 days ago by alyaza to c/technology

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

archive.is link

In amongst all this, key figures from within the wider WordPress community have stepped forward. Joost de Valk — creator of WordPress-focused SEO tool Yoast (and former marketing and communications’ lead for the WordPress Foundation) — last month published his “vision for a new WordPress era,” where he discussed the potential for “federated and independent repositories.” Karim Marucchi, CEO of enterprise web consulting firm Crowd Favorite, echoed similar thoughts in a separate blog post.

WP Engine, meanwhile, indicated it was on standby to lend a corporate hand.

Earlier this week, Automattic announced it would reduce its contribution to the core WordPress open source project to align with WP Engine’s own contribution, a metric measured in weekly hours. This spurred de Valk to take to X on Friday to indicate that he was willing to lead on the next release of WordPress, with Marucchi adding that his “team stands ready.”

Collectively, de Valk and Marucchi contribute around 10 hours per week to various aspects of the WordPress open source project. However, Mullenweg said that to give their independent effort the “push it needs to get off the ground,” he was deactivating their WordPress.org accounts.

“I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort,” Mullenweg wrote.

At the same time, Mullenweg revealed he was also deactivating the accounts of three other people, with little explanation given: Sé Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen. Reed, it’s worth noting, is president and CEO of a newly incorporated non-profit called the WP Community Collective, which is setting out to serve as a “neutral home for collaboration, contribution, and resources” around WordPress and the broader open source ecosystem.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If WP Engine contributed nothing, then why steal their custom fields plugin?

🤔

[–] Kissaki 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Real issues and contributions aside; creating one plugin is not contributing to Wordpress core/itself. And if they make good money over many years, I would agree that that alone is not a proportional or very significant contribution.

The plugin was evidently significant. But doesn't necessarily indicate overall contributions or proportionality.