Automattic, WP Engine, and 37signals manton.org
@manton I think the situations are similar, except people disagree with how Matt is acting as a business and community leader whereas I think 37 Signals damaged more of their reputation as humans, to be honest.
@manton I opposed the 37Signals decision vehemently at the time, but now I think it was right. Leave political discussions outside of work — to the extent that work and politics can be separated, which often they can't.
And yes Matt has done great work for the community, which is not negated by his current actions. Though those actions seem to be bad, and uncover that Matt seems to be an absolute dictator of WordPress, which is a bad way to structure an open source community.
@manton There is an interesting parallel to Micro.blog (albeit at a much smaller scale) and you? Not that I'd worried about what you may or may not do with Micro.blog - but then I wasn't that worried about Matt either? 😆
@manton Great article! I think #WPEngine is playing a smart public relations war against @photomatt, which will not influence their legal situation, but it can influence potential jurors pre-selection.
Matt will probably be despised whether he wins or loses, but I believe @WordPress & @wordpressdotcom will still be successful down the road.
@manton I'm in the micro-minority that uses neither 37Signals nor WordPress products but after reading up on the various kerfuffles, found myself supporting the firms over the dissenters. Great piece unpacking it all. I think the comparison is right between the two.
@iChris Yeah, I had been thinking about that too. There could be a couple parallels, which one were you thinking? 🙂
@ChrisU Definitely will try to help. Can you email help@micro.blog a copy of the WordPress import file?
@manton I think the problem is more the concentration of power. WordPress is internet infrastructure whereas Basecamp is a product that you buy. It’s not healthy that such important software is subject to the whims of one techbro.
@kjz I’m inclined to agree. The revelation that one guy can cut off your easy access to plugin updates is enough to make any publisher nervous. He might be in the right in the dispute - but the way he’s behaving is punishing uninvolved people,
I guess I am a lone voice here (not @ing anyone since this is just a general comment into the thread) Topic: Wordpress v WP Engine.
I have read stuff elsewhere and based on what I have read - my only reaction to date has been - 'Go Matt'.
What have I missed that has caused people in this thread to take the 'other' side.
TechCrunch - from 5 years ago when Silver Lake ploughed 1/4 Billion into WP Engine ... (my bold)
This makes WP Engine the biggest WordPress host among the 1 million most-trafficked sites on the Internet, and a significant player in its own right, putting to paid (sic) the belief that a company that is built on a platform — in WP Engine’s case, WordPress — it does not own is in a precarious state.
It seems that TechCrunch might have called it wrong.
Happy to adjust my thoughts if someone can share any links that explains why I should switch teams.
@manton Hi again. I know you're busy but wanted to update you. It looks like the posts may have imported (they show up in "Posts") but now I get this: Error: Error building site: "content/2013/11/18/fdr-american-badass.md:12:1": failed to unmarshal YAML: yaml: line 11: did not find expected key
@ChrisU It looks like some of the quoting is interfering with the Hugo front matter when we process the posts. I'm testing this and will follow up in email. Thanks!
@manton I was being mostly silly - but the "it can only be done by Matt!" cries I hear from some Automattic employees makes me worry about the cult of a singular person running anything I even slightly care about. I don't know the answer because community / collab is very difficult.