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This is the guy who said people who don't like his way of doing business should just fork wordpress
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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Technology
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Deactivating Wordpress contributor accounts does not prevent any forks. I don't get what the benefit is to ban them. Is it just to demonstrate his power?
If WP Engine contributed nothing, then why steal their custom fields plugin?
🤔
Real issues and contributions aside; creating one plugin is not contributing to Wordpress core/itself. And if they make good money over many years, I would agree that that alone is not a proportional or very significant contribution.
The plugin was evidently significant. But doesn't necessarily indicate overall contributions or proportionality.
I know of no faster way to relegate your project to the dustbin of history.
It happened with X. XFree86 was the graphics system you used on Linux. One developer had constant friction with the core XFree86 people, but he was also a guy who kept coming up with good and innovative ideas and making them happen, and had a lot of respect from the wider community, and so for a long time there was this uneasy tension. Finally, things came to a head:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/dispute-divides-key-open-source-group/
I think it took about a week after that before Keith was leading a new core group of developers and sensible people, and everyone was simply totally ignoring XFree86. All the distributions switched to Keith's fork, xorg, which they continued to use for about 15 years, until Wayland came along.
It stands alongside Larry McVoy telling the Linux developers they needed to jump through hoops to use his version control system, because they had no alternative, in the absolute hall of fame of completely unforced own-goals that changed the landscape of software in ways that are still felt today.
Edit: Typo
McVoy first blustered and threatened, but ultimately chose to go home and take his ball with him: he withdrew permission for gratis use by free software projects, and Linux developers will move to other software.
If I remember it right, he did a lot more than that. He tried to say that one particular kernel developer who he viewed as disobedient to him would be punished by no longer being allowed to use the software. When people pointed out that this behavior was insane and would cause significant disruption to the project, he didn't care. Then, they made the absolutely predictable choice to abandon him. Then he took his ball and went home, after everyone had already moved to a nearby park and started a new game without him.
I might be misremembering, but that's how I remember it happening. Instead of using git, we could all be using BitKeeper, and paying McVoy our $5/month or whatever for the privilege, because it was just as much better than everything else as git is now. But he didn't want that, if it involved not having everything exactly the way he wanted it.
This dude is burning down his entire city just to prove some vapid point.
This guy is such a fuck.
What an asshole.