Aligning Automattic’s Sponsored Contributions to WordPress
automattic.com
Automattic has always been deeply committed to the success of WordPress, dedicating significant resources and talent to its development for almost two decades. However, we’ve observed an imbalance …

Automattic will stop contributing to WordPress after reaching 45 hours a week, “aligning” its contributions to those by WP Engine, and because the lawsuit is taking up their resources.

  • @RegalPotooEnglish
    39•15 days ago

    Maybe I’m out of the loop, but isn’t this the primary corporate entity - the one that owns the trademark, sets the development direction, and ultimately owns the product - essentially announcing that they are abandoning their own product?

    • @[email protected]English
      20•15 days ago

      Essentially, yes: they’re not going to contribute to their primary project because some fee-fees got hurt. It’s not really a suicide note, but they’ve certainly decided they’re not opposed to it.

      • @RegalPotooEnglish
        8•15 days ago

        Yikes. I feel sorry for the 3rd party vendors who are going to be getting awkward questions from their clients about why they think that WordPress is going to be a viable platform in the future

        • @[email protected]English
          6•15 days ago

          $5 says there’s a hard fork led by all the commercial providers and anyone else who has a business that depends on Wordpress, and that it happens fairly soon.

          It’s GPLed, so while you can’t call your fork Wordpress, you can just rename it and carry on with everything as it was, except you’re no longer involved in dealing with crazy.

          I’m not sure the average customer of any of those businesses knows or cares about the name of the software that their site runs, and won’t give a single crap about it not being Wordpress but some other name while otherwise staying exactly the same - or, maybe, without an opinionated obstructionist sitting in front of the code approval path, perhaps even better.

          • @x1gmaOPEnglish
            6•15 days ago

            I’d laugh my ass off if WP Engine would lead a hard fork called WP Core. If any WP Engine folks read this, feel free to use the name, I won’t sue, I promise.

            • @[email protected]English
              7•15 days ago

              That’s a much better name than something I was thinking.

              I just made the assumption they’d do the standard open source thing and call it Libre-something.

              I’d pay actual money to see the meltdown Matt would have if it was forked and called WP Core.

              • @x1gmaOPEnglish
                2•14 days ago

                To be fair, Matt is providing meltdowns regularly and totally free of charge. 😂