WordPress drama

`5:41:49`

It is a good moment to bring up what I think is the, maybe one of the greatest open source projects ever, WordPress. And you spoke up in October 24 about some of the stuff that's been going on with WordPress's founder Matt Mullenweg in a blog post open source royalty and mad kings. It's a really good blog post on sort of just the idea of Benevolent Dictators For Life, this model for open source projects. And then the basic implication was that Matt as the BDFL of WordPress has lost his way a bit with his battle with WP Engine. So I should also say that I really love WordPress. It brings me joy. I think it's a really... it's a beacon of what open source could be. I think it's made the internet better. It allowed a lot of people to create wonderful websites.

`5:42:52`

And I also think, now you might disagree with this, but from everything I've seen, WP Engine just gives me bad vibes. I think they're not the good guy in this. I don't like it. I understand the frustration. I understand all of it, but I don't think that excuses the behavior. There is a bit of, see this kind of counter to a little bit what you said, which is when you have a open source project of that size, there is a bit of a, like when you're the king for a project of a kingdom that large, there's a bit of responsibility. Anyway, could you speak to your, maybe to your empathy of Matt and to your criticism and maybe paint a path of how he and WordPress can be winning again?

`5:43:52`

— First echo what you said about what a wonderful thing it is that WordPress exists. That there are not many projects in the open source world or in the world at large that has had as big of an impact on the internet as WordPress has. He deserves a ton of accolades for that work. So that was my engagement, essentially my premise. Do you know what? I had tremendous respect for what Matt has built with WordPress. What that entire ecosystem has built around itself. It's a true marvel. But there's some principles that are larger than my personal sympathies to the characters involved. I agree. The Silver Lake private equity company that's involved with WP Engine is not my natural ally. I'm not the natural ally of private equity doing some game with VP Engine. That's not my interest in the case. My interest is essentially a set of principles.

`5:44:55`

And the principles are if you release something as open source, people are free to use it as they see fit. And they're free to donate code or resources or money back to the community as they see fit. You may disagree about whether they've done enough, whether they should do more, but you can't show up after you've given the gift of free software to the world and then say, now that you've used that gift, you actually owe me a huge slide of your business because you got too successful using the thing I gave you for free. You don't get to take a gift back. That's why we have open source licenses. They stipulate exactly what the obligations are on both sides of the equation. The uses of open source don't get to demand what the makers of open source do and how they act. And the makers of open source don't get to suddenly show up with a ransom note to the users and say, actually you owe me for all sorts of use.

`5:45:57`

I'm 100% allergic to that kind of interaction. And I think Matt, unfortunately, for whatever reason, got so wrapped up in what he was owed that he failed to realize what he was destroying. WordPress and Automatic already makes a ton of money. This is part of the wonder of WordPress. This is a project that generates hundreds of millions of dollars, and Matt didn't feel like he was getting enough of that. That's not a good argument, bro. You can't just violate the spirit and the letter of these open source licensees and just start showing up with demand letters even to characters that are not particularly sympathetic. This goes to the root of my interpretation of open source in general. The GPL is a particular license that actually demands code from people who use it under certain circumstances.

`5:46:58`

I've never liked the GPL. I don't want your shitty code if you don't wanna give it to me. What am I gonna do with that? Some code dump that youve... I'm not on board with that part of Stallman's vision at all. I love the MIT license. To me that is the perfect license because it is mercifully short. I think it's two paragraphs, three paragraphs. Really short, and it basically says, here's some software. It comes with no warranty. You can't sue me. You can't demand anything, but you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Have a nice life. That's a perfect open source interaction in my opinion. And that license needs to be upheld. These licenses, in general, even the GPL, even if I don't like it, we have to abide by them. Because if we just set aside those licensees, when we in a moment's notice feel like something's slightly unfair, we've lost everything. We've lost the entire framework that allowed open source to prosper and allowed open source

`5:47:58`

to become such an integral part of commerce too. I mean, back when open source was initially finding its feet, it was at war with commercial software. Stallman is at war with commercial software and always has been. Bill Gates was in return at war with open source for the longest time. The open source licensees and the clarity that they provide allowed us to end that war. Today, commercial software and open source software can peacefully coexist. I make commercial software. I sell Basecamp, I sell HEY, and then I also make a bunch of open source software that I give away for free as gifts. That can't happen if we start violating these contracts. No commercial company is gonna go, "Let me base my next project off this piece of open source. If I'm also running the liability that some mad maker is gonna show up seven years in and demand, I give them $50 million." That's not an environment conducive to commerce collaboration or anything else. And it's just basically wrong.

`5:49:00`

I think there's one analysis that's all about kind of the practical outcomes of this, which I think are bad. There's also some an argument that's simply about ethics. This is not right. You can't just show up afterwards and demand something. This is not too dissimilar in my opinion, to the whole Apple thing we talked about earlier. Apple just showing up and feeling like they're entitled to 30% of everyone's business. No, that's not right. That's not fair. So I think Matt unfortunately kind of steered himself blind on the indignity he thought was being perpetrated against him because there was all this money being made by VP Engine making a good product and not giving quite enough back in Matt's opinion, tough cookie. — I think there, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but there might be some personal stuff too, which they weren't only not giving enough, but probably implicitly promising that they will give

`5:50:01`

and then taking advantage of him in that way in his mind, just like interpersonal interaction. And then you get like interpersonally frustrated, that forget like the bigger picture ethics of it. It's like when a guy keeps saying, you know, promising you'll do something. And then you realize you wake up one day like a year or two later. Wait a minute, I was being lied to this whole time and that I don't even know if it's about money. — I'd get mad too. It's totally fine to get mad when people disappoint you. That's not justification for upending decades of open source licensees and the essential de facto case law we've established around it. This is why I chose to even weigh in on this because I like WordPress. I don't use WordPress. I'm not a part of that community. I don't actually have a dog in this fight. I'm biased if anything towards Matt just as a fellow BDFL. I would like to see him do well with this.

`5:51:01`

But I also think there's some principles at stake here that ring much louder. I don't want Rails to suddenly be tainted by the fact that it's open source and whether companies can rely on it and build businesses on it. Because wait, maybe one day I'm gonna turn Matt and I'm gonna turn Matt King and I'm gonna show up with a demand ransom letter. No, screw that. We have way more to protect here. There's way more at stake than your personal beef with someone or your perceived grievance over what you're owed. — What would you recommend? What do you think he should do, can do to walk it back to heal? — Decide, this is the curious thing. He could decide to give this up. That's very, very difficult for driven, ambitious people to do. To accept that they're wrong and to give up and lay down their sword. So I had a hope earlier on in this that that was possible. I haven't seen any evidence that Matt is interested in that and I find that deeply regretful,

`5:52:02`

but that's his prerogative. I continue to speak out when he's violating the spirit and ethics of open source, but I wish he would just accept that this was a really bad idea. He made a bad bet and I thought, I think he thought he'd just get away with it. That they'd just pay up and that he could put pressure. I mean, I know that temptation. When you sit as the head of a very important project, you know that that comes with a great degree of power and you really need a great degree of discipline to reign that in and not exercise that power at every step where you feel aggrieved. I've felt aggrieved a million times over in the 20 plus years of Ruby on Rails. I've really tried very hard not to let those... sometimes petty, sometimes substantial grievances over time seep in to the foundation of the ecosystem and risk ruining everything.