Tweets From Kevin Geary  ## Metadata - Author: [[@thekevingeary on Twitter]] - Full Title: Tweets From Kevin Geary - Category: #tweets - URL: https://twitter.com/thekevingeary ## Document Notes ## Highlights - Okay, let's talk "open source" and WP, because I'd argue that trademarks are antithetical to the *spirit* of "open-source" relative to WP and that we've all been playing a giant shell game. I say this because WP is a brand of open source marketed as "for everyone," "democratization," "freedom," "we're all in this together," "everyone can contribute," etc. This messaging has led millions to believe that WP is "ours" and that our contributions are valuable to the community and not just one person. And we feel safe believing that no one person can just flip a switch and harm/kill WP. But when a trademark is introduced, the shell game begins! It's a shell game of "hide the market value." The market value is the fuzzy ball and you're trying to follow it from cup to cup. Let's play... Matt says the fuzzy ball is under the code cup. You believe him. And you think that you can just take the code cup wherever you need to take it in the future and do whatever you want with it because "GPL." And the fuzzy ball will always be underneath it, right where you were told it was. Matt sings the praises of this constantly. He encourages you to contribute your heart out and go all-in on WP. He wants your free labor, your time, your attention, and your heart and soul and passion (and for agencies, your millions of clients). The problem is that the code cup has no fuzzy ball under it. There's a bunch of code, but zero market value because the code is not WP and WP is not the code. See, once a project gets so large, a value shift occurs. The market value shifts from the code base to the brand itself. The fuzzy ball has been under the brand cup this entire time and the code cup is completely devoid of any real, practical value. This would be fine if we could drink from the brand cup whenever we want, and use the brand cup to get something in return for all our contributions and all the opportunities in front of us, but we can't. Only Matt can. Why? Because that part of the game is protected by a trademark. That part isn't open source. That part isn't ours. That part belongs to one single person. The practical result is that there are millions of contributors who have poured resources into something that now has no value to them whatsoever, unless Matt says they're allowed to derive value from it. This is why Matt smiles as he says, "Fork it if you don't like me. The code is GPL!" Easy to say when you've known all this time that the code cup has no fuzzy ball under it. The code is useless to me, you, and everyone else and he knows it. It's useless because the market value shifted from the code to the brand long ago and he knows that's the part you can't have. It's a very disingenuous game, because he's clearly used all this picture painting of democratizing publishing to dupe millions of people and thousands of contributors into promoting the brand and contributing to the project. At least Webflow says, "Let's be clear: this shit is ours. You can use it until we say you can't." That's fair. Matt, on the other hand, tells all these tall tales about democratization, freedom, open source, ownership ... effectively saying, "The ball is under the code cup" ... when he knows the code cup has a bunch of spaghetti and no fuzzy ball. He knows that when you contribute to WP, that the added value ultimately goes to him and him alone. He also knows that he's capable of switching off the entire thing. If he wants to burn WP to the ground there's not a single thing you can do about it. So, the protection you're supposedly afforded by the nature of open source software doesn't actually exist. If one fully believed in the spirit of open source, freedom, democratization, etc. they would clearly not exercise a trademark in this fashion. It's hypocritical to the spirit of the project and the messaging that's been used up to this point. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1879979619807379686)) - Had a convo with @markjszymanski and we started kicking around a very compelling question (follow along!)... Does the so-called “layperson who wants to build a website” actually exist in WP dot org? We keep hearing that WordPress, especially Gutenberg, needs to be simplified so ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1946555190737518853)) - @photomatt You hyped Tumblr, too. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1979245907150258480)) - @photomatt AutomaticCSS is called "automatic" because it's the only CSS framework that does a lot of things automatically. Congratulations on owning the domain name for a generic term. Let me know when that fact becomes relevant. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1985052432775500088)) - https://t.co/OCw8GNT910  ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1985047531408007489)) - @richard_tabor Who got talked down to? You mean the person who arrogantly rejects any semblance of standards in our industry? Real leadership is telling the truth and holding people accountable for lowering the collective quality of work when they actively reject standards. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1984408304173662276)) - WP has 600k+ followers and can’t break 50 likes on release posts. Sad. If I had control of their Twitter account for one post I’d get a minimum of 50k likes. One post could reinvigorate the entire ecosystem. It’s just a matter of focusing on what WP users actually want. Nobody https://t.co/edkNw0NR1p ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1988213667410633202)) - Watching the footage of the UPS plane crashing made me immediately think about the security footage of a plane supposedly hitting the Pentagon on 9.11. Those two things are most certainly not the same. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1987620195913834787)) - Pay close attention over the coming weeks to people who claim to support & promote the WordPress block editor. If they ignore, or seem uninterested, in the next two Etch block authoring updates, their credibility should go to zero. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1988608109041082402)) - Fun fact of the day: The WordPress block editor that supposedly powers 43% of the internet, doesn't support absolutely positioned elements with classes because their crack dev team sets everything to position relative with 0,2,0 specificity. 43% of the internet, but everything ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1988953705421434959)) - @mikemcalister @WordPress Translation: "Hey everyone, I'm here to tell you that there's a brand new world with tons of limitations and a completely scattered user experience. If you don't like it, it's because you're clinging to your old super flexible, scalable, maintainable, and long-proven practice of ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1989080691829608821)) - @arniepalmer @mikemcalister @WordPress Who is angry? I'm simply responding to a video where the author claims that he's getting a certain kind of response to his latest thing because the people responding are "outdated" and "out of touch" with "the new world." Surely if you can make a video calling people outdated ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1989090648394203274)) - @mikemcalister @arniepalmer @WordPress It's kinda like WP telling everyone for years, "you don't need responsive controls in the block editor ... [shut up and quit whining about it]." Like ... wut. The whole "it's not us, it's you" vibe from the block editor crowd when the product is so objectively awful, is ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1989111244259737784)) - @mikemcalister @arniepalmer @WordPress Sure, here's a quick breakdown: [0:00] The context of the video is that you're responding to people who messaged you to request expanded functionality in your new tool. And here was the explanation for why you won't add it: [3:34] - "The platform of WordPress is ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1989109895421894695)) - .@mikemcalister is one of the best UI designers in WP. He also makes good products (even if we disagree on philosophy). But personally attacking me and cosplaying as my disappointed father simply because I dared challenge his *constant* dismissiveness of very real issues in https://t.co/5wyRWil1NK  ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1989331759415034304)) - The leader of Automattic (who is currently bullying my company with legal threats) and who is also the leader of WP, promoting what is essentially a baseless gang personal attack thread, is WILD. Not a single thing of substance in that thread. Pure personal attacks. https://t.co/ICO4J8ODdm  ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/thekevingeary/status/1991282119616729538))