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.