WordPress drama

`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.