alt.hn

1/16/2025 at 9:31:53 PM

Mullenweg's Grip on WordPress Challenged in New Court Filing

 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mullenwegs-grip-on-wordpress-challenged-in-new-court-filing/537416/

by rmason

1/16/2025 at 10:01:59 PM

Normally I would say "tough nuggies" in this situation - you can't just sue an organization because they suck.

But in this case:

- Mullenweg violated his own T&Cs.

- Him constantly lying about the nature of the dot org and community structure definitely feels like false promises

- The WP Engine conflict definitely seems like it could escalate into a racketeering case. In which case the entire ecosystem could be thought of as victims.

To actually have WP stripped away from Automattic and handed over to the community would be such an amazing outcome.

by legitster

1/16/2025 at 11:35:32 PM

Is there any precedent to taking someone’s (privately owned) business away? Don’t we have very strong property rights laws?

by atonse

1/17/2025 at 12:25:54 AM

My understanding is that's it's pretty hard to remove a director from a corporation but it's a bit easier to remove someone from a foundation.

by legitster

1/17/2025 at 7:25:37 AM

We had. Then the anthill fell on the side, standard oil got busted with many others, turns out we had not in times of crisis, then we had, than we had a war, beef with communism ,which got unions negotiation powers, so we had not. Than communism failed, history ended and we thought we could keep the masses placated with bread and netflix. Rights are as strong as society was stable. Now we have a dictatorship to protect property rights,which is the equivalent of forbidding physics tought to prevent rain. So now we have and the havenots aint having it.

Ps: Which sort of private property are we talking about? Vital resources to organize societal complexity? Or useless economic blubber? Stability is not a property of a single element of a system but of the whole thing.And it cant be propped up by dams.

by ashoeafoot

1/17/2025 at 2:59:28 PM

I don't fully understand your response, sorry.

Property I'm talking about means your ownership of physical objects, or virtual equivalents (ownership of a legal entity like a private company or your shares in a public company). Any conversation I've ever had about those things with lawyers, usually talking about estate planning etc, has been something along the lines that it has the same protections as physical property that you own.

Nobody can just take it from you (eminent domain being the exception for physical property, but has a high bar).

When Ma Bell was broken up (not sure about Standard Oil), I assure you that the shareholders would've gotten the shares transferred to the new smaller bells.

So what is the precedent for the idea of taking Wordpress away from its legal owner? I'm asking a legal question, not taking sides in this. For the record, Mullenweg seems absolutely unhinged.

But we've seen things like forks happen, but nobody can take Wordpress itself away from Matt against his will. It's not a publicly owned company where we could potentially be fired by the board.

by atonse

1/17/2025 at 12:08:13 AM

Not the business, but the product, it's two different things.

Also since the product is not physical but intellectual, a court can grant rights, exclusive or non exclusive. Especially if there's copyleft involved

by TZubiri

1/17/2025 at 7:08:40 PM

I really want to take a moment to thank everyone who's worked in and around the WordPress community for years to make it work. It helped start my career. Even back then, I remember people warning about getting involved in .org in hushed tones. Now I wonder how much of it stems back to what's coming to light.

Somewhat a propos of nothing, the work people have done on improving Gutenberg over the past couple of years is amazing. I just had an opportunity to sit down and experiment with it for the first time since it came out years ago, and I'm just floored by how much improvement has occurred, both in terms of documentation and the solution itself. After realizing this I was immediately overwhelmed with grief by the idea that someone with an ego like Matt's could ruin or threaten all of this. This really shouldn't be possible.

Before all of this, my exposure to Matt was only through the How I Built This podcast episode he was interviewed. At the time I had moved on from working primarily in the WordPress ecosystem. After listening, I was ultimately grateful that I had because at points in that episode I thought his tone, demeanor, and ego really made him sound like a complete, insufferable jerk.

I have to admit that so much of the news, from solo open source projects to wildly toxic megalomaniacs in charge of companies, in recent years has really led me to question the viability of solo founders in general. Perhaps that's heresy in a place like this but so be it. Obviously there has to be a more pragmatic solution, but this kind of political distraction from work we're all here because we love is very frustrating.

by CSSer

1/17/2025 at 2:13:57 AM

He should be stepping away and handing over the domains to people with that will make an elected council and figure out who will host *.org and host the plugins. He can have wordpress.com but at this point there's too many websites on the internet running wordpress for somebody to be pulling dictator shit like this.

Just my opinion.

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