I was really pleased to see that - that's the way to introduce premium tiers as your business evolves.
I love Beeper, and have got a couple of colleagues on it. The only feature I'd like - the ability to mute a conversation for a duration rather than forever.
This is an overreaction. It's violence. Trying to justify it by claiming it's part of their culture is not healthy, I think we can have some universal values (don't stab people?) and it is perfectly reasonable to force people to adopt to those values. It's their culture? They can leave the violent parts of culture behind and adopt to the expectations of modern society (not stabbing people).
I'm Turkish. I grew up in Turkey. These things happen, but let's not try to justify them. We should aim to get to a point where people share these "western values" (of not stabbing people).
WordPress.org is not Automattic’s platform (there is a lot of managerial overlap and both are ultimately controlled by the same person).
Our well documented issues with WP Engine does not change the fact Automattic has been one of THE open source companies in tech for the last 2 decades and continues to ship in the open. There is constant push internally to build more in the open.
Bullshit. For all practical purposes, WP.org is Automattic.
> Our well documented issues with WP Engine does not change the fact Automattic has been one of THE open source companies in tech for the last 2 decades
This is debatable but even if I grant this point, I’m saying that the reputation that you’ve built up over the last two decades is completely destroyed, and anyone who actually cares about open source and public stewardship of projects should stay far, far away.
Beeper (Automattic) | Remote | Full-time | Reverse Engineer | $70-$170k and great benefits
Beeper unifies all your chats across networks in one app. We are looking for people to join our incredible team of reverse engineers that build our integrations with chat networks. Like most software at Automattic, all of our bridge work is open source: https://github.com/mautrix (and more of our stack is open source at https://github.com/beeper)
Basically, if you are someone hacks on proprietary software and protocols for fun, we want to hire you. We don't care about your degree or previous work experience. We care about your ability break things to make them work the way you want.
Our bridges are written in Golang, but you don't need to know Golang to apply.
Automattic's products are used by over a billion people each month across WordPress.com, WooCommerce, WordPress VIP, Jetpack, Tumblr, Beeper, Day One, Pocket Casts, and many more. If you love the open web, open source, radical problem ownership, and simple over pure solutions, Automattic is probably the place for you.
The initial release of SCF only applied security fixes, changed the plugin name and removed upsells. I don't think there is any change that might cause the issue you are having.
If you can share the problem you are experiencing on Making WordPress Slack (#secure-custom-fields channel), I'm sure relevant people would love to help out ASAP.
I work at Automattic and I can get you in touch with people from WordPress.org if that's easier. You can email me at batuhan@a8c.com.
If there are any bugs, regressions or any issues with the fork, it's in the interest of everyone to quickly find and resolve them, so I'm sure your help would be appreciated.
So you guys don't get sued any further for essentially hijacking a distribution channel and pushing an unauthorized version?
If I were an employee of A8C I wouldn't be touching this code with a ten foot pole - employees can still be found guilty of criminal wrongdoing even if their employer told them to do something.
It really is strange Automattic's lawyers haven't clamped down on any public comment. Have any of WP Engine's people been as free with commentary as Automattic employees have been?
If I were an employee at a company being sued I wouldn't say anything related to it even without an order from legal because I wouldn't want to have to risk answering for it in the trial. Why dangle yourself out there as a target for the opposition's lawyers?
Lawyers can give advice, but clients make the decisions. One of Automattic's lawyers appeared in an earlier thread and strongly suggested that Matt is ignoring his advice.
I haven't seen any comments from any WP Engine employees. They have an adult CEO, though, so I'm sure she told them not to comment on it.
Matt has actually complained on the official WordPress Twitter account that the WPE CEO hasn't commented on it. It's really bizarre. Honestly, he doesn't sound well. There's no way he can be this reckless and be in his right mind. He's worth a ton of money, so I don't know if anyone can actually get him under control or get him out.
The abbreviation "WP" was initially permitted for use before they retroactively changed it a few days ago.
Saying "We host WordPress" on WPEngine's site constitutes as much trademark violation as a random shoe shop listing Nike shoes in their catalog.
It seems this is more about attempting to undermine a competitor, with trademark issues serving merely as an excuse.
ACF isn’t a premium plugin (linked post only concerns those).
The linked post also might not reflect the current policies. This update was a security update and was done due to the unique circumstances around the original publisher.
The correct information is that your employer created the security problem as part of their shakedown attempt. They then banned the WP Engine developers from Wordpress so that they couldn't update the plugin. Now they've forked the plugin, removed the commercial upgrade, and renamed it.
I'm not sure where values come into it. I'd be ashamed to work there.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair (probably, may be apocryphal)
For sure dude, the guy who came here to defend the values of his own and his megalomaniac employer on a weekend evening is probably much too busy to name one. That tracks.
It still uses trademarks from ACF, those are obviously not "open source", which also has been Matt's & wordpress.org's stance since forever: the _code_ is GPL, but the assets are not.
If you "fork" the assets, you're not covered by GPL.
Obviously it's nonsense to discriminate between the free version of a freemium plugin and a commercial plugin and this is simply a stupid way to lash out.
> a8c is intentionally obfuscating their ownership of wp.org
Automattic (my employer) does not own WordPress.org
There is no obligation on WordPress.org's part to provide free services to WP Engine. WP Engine uses trademarks in misleading ways while WordPress.org has a license from WPF to use the trademark.
So wordpress.org is owned entirely by Matt Mullenweg? The vast majority and default location of the whole plugin and theme distribution infrastructure is owned by one person? Perhaps you could point me to some page on wordpress.org that clarifies the ownership situation.
> Automattic (my employer) does not own WordPress.org
I really think your employer is lying to you about this. The Automattic CEO made an official WordPress.org announcement that the .org was taking action against WP Engine on September 25 in response to legal threats. WP Engine says - and neither Automattic nor WordPress.org have produced evidence to the contrary - that the only legal threat they've made was their public one to Automattic on September 23. This clearly implies to me that Mullenweg is operating WordPress.org as an extension of Automattic and its business interests, regardless of what official ownership records might say.
Just as an FYI: this is a really really bad look from the outside. Your CEO's comments and the new trademark policy sound borderline deranged, and this step of banning them dangerously destabilizes the ecosystem.
WP Engine may be just as bad as you say, but if so they just successfully baited you into making yourselves look like the bad guys.
Yes - I don’t use WP and have no experience with either of those companies but everything I’ve heard about this has been people looking into alternatives because this raises the question of whether it’s motivated by a desire to boost revenue and merely the first step in the process.
OK. But do you really think this public bullying abuse of power from your increasingly unstable-sounding CEO is going to play out well? Good luck I guess.
