WordPress Situation With DHH Is Crazy  ## Metadata - Author: [[Melkey]] - Full Title: WordPress Situation With DHH Is Crazy - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #WordPress - #OpenSource - #CommunityDrama Author: Merlin Source: YouTube Video Transcript Reference: [WordPress Situation with DHH is Crazy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CUVtCb0mvI) date created: 2024-10-20 22:00 --- # Title: WordPress Controversy: Matt Mullenweg vs WP Engine and DHH ## Table of Contents:  - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### References: - [YouTube Transcript for WordPress Situation with DHH](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CUVtCb0mvI) ## 📝 Summary: This video dives into the recent controversy surrounding WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, WP Engine, and the open-source community, highlighting Mullenweg's actions of blocking WP Engine's access to the WordPress plugin registry. DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson) entered the conversation, expressing concerns about the overreach of WordPress governance and urging Matt not to become a “mad king” of the open-source realm. The situation underscores ongoing debates in open-source ethics, ownership, and community leadership. ## 📖 Main Content: The video covers how Matt Mullenweg’s recent actions, including blocking WP Engine from the plugin registry and taking control of the ACF plugin, have sparked outrage in the WordPress community. The video explains that DHH's blog post, "An Open-Source Royalty and Mad Kings," criticizes Matt's behavior, warning about the dangers of expropriating open-source work. Mullenweg later issued an apology, acknowledging the personal attacks he faced and how this clouded his judgment in the situation. ### 🗒️ Notes: - **Controversy Overview**: WP Engine blocked from plugin registry, leading to open-source community outrage. - **DHH’s Criticism**: DHH warns against turning WordPress into a monarchy, controlled by one individual’s whims. - **ACF Plugin Takeover**: Automattic took control of the ACF plugin, raising concerns about open-source weaponization. - **Matt’s Apology**: Matt Mullenweg issued a retraction, noting that personal attacks influenced his original response. - **Open Source Ethics**: Debate on how much ownership original creators can claim over open-source projects. ## 📖 References: - [WordPress Situation with DHH is Crazy Transcript](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CUVtCb0mvI) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase:  1. DHH's post highlights how Matt Mullenweg, as an open-source leader, has earned his status. However, DHH expresses concern about Matt's recent moves, where Mullenweg appears to be overstepping, controlling WordPress in ways that could harm the open-source community. 2. In his response, Matt Mullenweg acknowledges that the barrage of personal attacks clouded his thinking, leading to an uncharacteristically harsh reaction toward DHH and others. He ultimately withdrew his post and apologized. ## 📰 Newsletter: 🚨 **WordPress Drama: Mullenweg vs WP Engine & DHH!** In this week’s newsletter, we break down the escalating conflict between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, WP Engine, and the broader open-source community. The dispute centers on WP Engine being blocked from the plugin registry and Automattic taking control of the popular ACF plugin. DHH chimed in with a powerful blog post, urging Matt to avoid becoming a "mad king" of open source. Will cooler heads prevail? Get the full scoop and insights on what this means for WordPress governance. 📖 [Read More](#) ## ✅ Action Items: This controversy surrounding WordPress governance underscores your focus as a Developer Advocate on promoting a healthy, inclusive open-source ecosystem. Highlight the importance of community-driven contributions over monopolizing control in WordPress training initiatives. Advocate for transparency, inclusivity, and shared governance in open-source projects, aligning with your aspiration to become an OSPO director. Reflect on how to onboard contributors without reinforcing the power dynamics criticized in this case. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - Open-source communities managed by a single authority are more vulnerable to governance issues. - Disputes over plugin ownership will lead to increased demand for decentralized governance in open-source ecosystems. ### 📊 Methodology: - **Qualitative Analysis**: Conduct interviews with WordPress contributors about their experiences with governance and community leadership. - **Comparative Study**: Compare the WordPress governance model with decentralized open-source communities to identify strengths and weaknesses. ### ❓ Questions: - How can open-source communities like WordPress ensure that no single entity monopolizes the ecosystem? - What safeguards should be in place to protect contributors from having their work expropriated? ### 🔮 Future Research: Investigate how decentralized governance models could be applied to large open-source projects like WordPress, to prevent similar issues in the future. Examine existing governance models in other successful open-source communities for comparison. ### 💡 Implications:  Decentralized governance in open-source projects could prevent controversies like this from undermining the community’s trust. Future research on governance structures might influence how open-source projects scale while remaining fair and transparent. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: 1. **Visual Learners (Spatial)**: - **Present**: The video is purely visual, but lacks supporting diagrams or visual aids. - **Improve**: Incorporate flowcharts explaining the plugin registry conflict or governance issues. 2. **Aural Learners (Auditory-Musical)**: - **Present**: The video format suits auditory learners well. - **Improve**: Add podcast or audio transcript options for better accessibility. 3. **Verbal Learners (Linguistic)**: - **Present**: The conversational style is engaging, though lacking detailed written resources. - **Improve**: Supplement the video with additional blog posts or reading materials. 4. **Physical Learners (Kinesthetic)**: - **Improve**: Suggest interactive sessions, like community discussions or workshops on governance models. 5. **Logical Learners (Mathematical)**: - **Improve**: Include analytical breakdowns of WordPress governance and decision-making frameworks. 6. **Social Learners (Interpersonal)**: - **Improve**: Encourage group discussions around open-source governance. 7. **Solitary Learners (Intrapersonal)**: - **Improve**: Add reflection prompts for contributors on how they feel about open-source ownership issues. 8. **Naturalistic Learners**: - **Improve**: No nature-based analogies or environmental context, consider framing governance as an ecosystem with interdependent parts. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader Compatibility**: Ensure transcripts for videos include alt-text for linked resources. - **Keyboard Navigation**: The site could improve accessibility for users navigating only by keyboard. - **Contrast and Readability**: Maintain high contrast in text overlays on video content. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - **Cultural Relevance**: The controversy is limited to a Western tech perspective. Including more global voices in the conversation would improve inclusivity. - **Inclusive Language**: The content avoids exclusionary terms but could further simplify language for non-native speakers. - **Neurodiversity Support**: Shorten long sections for easier comprehension and provide more structured headers to assist readers with ADHD or similar conditions. ### ✅ Logical Validity: - **Sound Reasoning**: DHH’s blog post offers well-supported criticism, and his suggestions are fair. His argument flows - Summary: In this video, we explore the escalating WordPress situation involving Matt Mullenweg and DHH. Tensions are running high as recent actions by the WordPress founder have sparked outrage across the open source community. From plugin takeovers to open source conflicts, things are getting even worse. How DHH is involved, and what this means for the future of WordPress and its community DHH Blog: https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-a8f79d16 Code: https://github.com/Melkeydev/go-blueprint ### Twitch I stream live on Twitch every weekend Twitch : https://www.twitch.tv/melkey Join the amazing community on Discord Discord: https://discord.gg/melkeydevhouse I post memes and host Twitter Tech Spaces Twitter: https://twitter.com/MelkeyDev SUBSCRIBE OR GET LAID OFF ╔═╦╗╔╦╗╔═╦═╦╦╦╦╗╔═╗ ║╚╣║║║╚╣╚╣╔╣╔╣║╚╣═╣ ╠╗║╚╝║║╠╗║╚╣║║║║║═╣ ╚═╩══╩═╩═╩═╩╝╚╩═╩═╝ #coding #neovim #typescript #programming #vim #softwareengineering #codinglife #webdesign #webdevelopment #webdev #javascript #rustlang #rust #twitch #twitchstreamer #programmerhumor #codinghumor #software #softwareengineer #softwaredeveloper #softwaredevelopment #gymbro #gym #programmerhumor #programming #coding #golang #go #golanguage #php #laravel - URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6CUVtCb0mvI&si=FUeiAVwvVsVtyatc the world of tech moves very fast and the world of drama moves even faster but the world of tech drama moves the fastest now if you don't know what I'm talking about yesterday I released a video called how to destroy a community and your reputation WordPress gone too far where it summarizes the current situation with wordpress.org WP engine and automatic and the CEO of automatic and the original co-author of Wordpress Matt mullenweg the situ ation as sad as it is basically revolves on Matt going on this tyrannical spree where he is blocking everyone who is defending WP engine blocking WP engine from WordPress which includes all the plugins and work that contributors do stealing the work of other contributors and making it owned by wordpress.org as well as just acting in a manner that makes WordPress look terrible and these actions have gone the intention of everybody in the community so much so that even people like dhh have gone up to make a really good blog post here and if you want to read this blog post I will leave it in the description in this video but this basically says an open source royalty and mad Kings now dhh starts off his blog post by saying Matt Mullen wig has earned his crown in the land of Wordpress he created the system and for 20 years has been its prime champion and cheetah lator his achievements are obvious half the damn internet runs on WordPress there's an industry worth billions feeding themed designers plug-in makers hosting companies and Matt's own automatic Enterprise it's a First Rate open-source success story it absolutely is and nobody's arguing it but it even makes this whole situation of what happened that much more heartbreaking so dhh continues to summarize the situation but he talks about the most recent escalation and in my opinion the most unhinged is the expropriation of the AC F plugin automatic first answered wp's lawsuit by blocking Engineers from the ladder from accessing the wordpress.org plug-in registry which is used to distribute updates and security patches it then used the fact that wpe no longer had access to the registry to expropriate the plugin including reviews and download stats the ACF entry now points to automatics own secure custom fields which basically means they took it weaponizing open source code registers is something we simply cannot allow to form precedence they must remain neutral territory like Switzerland in a world of constant commercial skirmishes so he finishes this off by saying so while I always try to keep things from getting personal I'll break practice to make this plea Matt don't turn into a Mad King I hold your work on WordPress and Beyond in the highest esteem and I recognize the temptation of gratitude grievances AR ring from beneficiaries getting more from our work than they return in contributions but that must remain a moral critique not a commercial Crusade you can't just extract by force that which you believe to be owed beyond the license agreement on a whim now I personally thought that was a very good unbiased letter from dhh who in his own right is potentially seen in the news or in the world of controversy but I think that was very base that was a very good take and obviously to I guess no one surprise Matt responded response to dhh now before I click on this I want to state that dhh said maybe I'm supposed to get mad at this but instead I just get sad Mullen wig clearly sees it as a failure to create much more value in the world than what you capture and maybe that's the root of our differences I see that as a proud achievement so when you click on this current link you'll see that responsive dhh I've taken this post down I've been attacked so much the past few days the most vicious personal hateful words poisoned my brain and the original version of this post was mean I'm so sorry I shouldn't let this stuff get to me but it clearly did and I took it out on dhh who while I disagree with him on several points isn't the actual villain in the story it's WP engine and Silver Lake so I think this is already a good post and to talk about Matt about how he already took it down down however I do want to highlight the things that were said in the original post so I think the points here are clearly obvious come from a very toxic place from Matt's perspective I think it makes sense why he took this down and why other people gave this post the reaction it got however a few points I want to go about is the last one here I don't think open source is measured by how many lines you contribute or how many right lines you write nor do I think open source really is about having ownership in something and Mak sure making sure that everybody knows you are the original owner and you have gone the most squeeze out of whatever you created and that squeeze in the context of this post being around money or Revenue I think you can contribute to open source any way you want it doesn't have to be about the line you can create something and once it's out there you basically allow people to come in work on it contribute to it and they have to abide by the license but in terms of rails there's nothing wrong with Shopify seeing the potential and the ability rails gives its engineers and then taking it and building a company around it I don't necessarily think Shopify owes anything to rails unless they break a licensing agreement which I don't think they have so overall I think this is a very Wicked post I think it really shows the downside of Open Source contributing in such a way because there are people who have this mentality who think that even though it's open source that they are the owner and they deserve or are owed the most out of the contribution financially so if you use it and you make $10 you owe some of that to the original author of whatever you forked spun off or whatever it is now I'm not going to get into the situation of Wordpress and WP engine but I did want to summarize this article here between dhh and M Matt Mullen wig thankfully Matt came back cooled off and took it down but as you can see before you make a post like this make sure you're in a cool calm headed state uh cuz it can get dirty but you can see here melon wig has taken down the original post I'm glad to see it it's hard to come off looking sharp when lashing out in anger ask me how I know which DH dhh looks just based in this I mean he looks great in this exchange I'm happy that they've able to uh talk in private uh and I'm happy this is gone but I just want to give you guys an update of the current status of what happened if you saw this FL around let me know what you think in the comment section down below thank you so much for watching I'll see you guys next time peace, WordPress Situation With DHH Is Crazy, Melkey, 01jagyr2js7mhqmzvkp2gcay51.