#wordpress-tags

[thokanetwork]

Warum WordPress-Tags wichtig sind

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[tinystepsforward]

autocrattic (more matt shenanigans, not tumblr this time)

I am almost definitely not the right person for this writeup, but I'm closer than most people on here, so here goes! This is all open-source tech drama, and I take my time laying out the context, but the short version is: Matt tried to extort another company, who immediately posted receipts, and now he's refusing to log off again. The long version is... long.

If you don't need software context, scroll down/find the "ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening" heading, or just go read the pink sections. Or look at this PDF.

the background

So. Matt's original Good Idea was starting WordPress with fellow developer Mike Little in 2003, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) that was originally just for blogging, but now powers lots of websites that do other things. In particular, Automattic acquired WooCommerce a long time ago, which is free online store software you can run on WordPress.

FOSS is... interesting. It's a world that ultimately is powered by people who believe deeply that information and resources should be free, but often have massive blind spots (for example, Wikipedia's consistently had issues with bias, since no amount of "anyone can edit" will overcome systemic bias in terms of who has time to edit or is not going to be driven away by the existing contributor culture). As with anything else that people spend thousands of hours doing online, there's drama. As with anything else that's technically free but can be monetized, there are:

Heaps of companies and solo developers who profit off WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, and other services;

Conflicts between volunteer contributors and for-profit contributors;

Annoying founders who get way too much credit for everything the project has become.

the WordPress ecosystem

A project as heavily used as WordPress (some double-digit percentage of the Internet uses WP. I refuse to believe it's the 43% that Matt claims it is, but it's a pretty large chunk) can't survive just on the spare hours of volunteers, especially in an increasingly monetised world where its users demand functional software, are less and less tech or FOSS literate, and its contributors have no fucking time to build things for that userbase.

Matt runs Automattic, which is a privately-traded, for-profit company. The free software is run by the WordPress Foundation, which is technically completely separate (wordpress.org). The main products Automattic offers are WordPress-related: WordPress.com, a host which was designed to be beginner-friendly; Jetpack, a suite of plugins which extend WordPress in a whole bunch of ways that may or may not make sense as one big product; WooCommerce, which I've already mentioned. There's also WordPress VIP, which is the fancy bespoke five-digit-plus option for enterprise customers. And there's Tumblr, if Matt ever succeeds in putting it on WordPress. (Every Tumblr or WordPress dev I know thinks that's fucking ridiculous and impossible. Automattic's hiring for it anyway.)

Automattic devotes a chunk of its employees toward developing Core, which is what people in the WordPress space call WordPress.org, the free software. This is part of an initiative called Five for the Future — 5% of your company's profits off WordPress should go back into making the project better. Many other companies don't do this.

There are lots of other companies in the space. GoDaddy, for example, barely gives back in any way (and also sucks). WP Engine is the company this drama is about. They don't really contribute to Core. They offer relatively expensive WordPress hosting, as well as providing a series of other WordPress-related products like LocalWP (local site development software), Advanced Custom Fields (the easiest way to set up advanced taxonomies and other fields when making new types of posts. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it), etc.

Anyway. Lots of strong personalities. Lots of for-profit companies. Lots of them getting invested in, or bought by, private equity firms.

Matt being Matt, tech being tech

As was said repeatedly when Matt was flipping out about Tumblr, all of the stuff happening at Automattic is pretty normal tech company behaviour. Shit gets worse. People get less for their money. WordPress.com used to be a really good place for people starting out with a website who didn't need "real" WordPress — for $48 a year on the Personal plan, you had really limited features (no plugins or other customisable extensions), but you had a simple website with good SEO that was pretty secure, relatively easy to use, and 24-hour access to Happiness Engineers (HEs for short. Bad job title. This was my job) who could walk you through everything no matter how bad at tech you were. Then Personal plan users got moved from chat to emails only. Emails started being responded to by contractors who didn't know as much as HEs did and certainly didn't get paid half as well. Then came AI, and the mandate for HEs to try to upsell everyone things they didn't necessarily need. (This is the point at which I quit.)

But as was said then as well, most tech CEOs don't publicly get into this kind of shitfight with their users. They're horrid tyrants, but they don't do it this publicly.

ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening

WordCamp US, one of the biggest WordPress industry events of the year, is the backdrop for all this. It just finished.

There are.... a lot of posts by Matt across multiple platforms because, as always, he can't log off. But here's the broad strokes.

Sep 17

Matt publishes a wanky blog post about companies that profit off open source without giving back. It targets a specific company, WP Engine.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?

(It's worth noting here that Automattic is funded in part by BlackRock, who Wikipedia calls "the world's largest asset manager".)

Sep 20 (WCUS final day)

WP Engine puts out a blog post detailing their contributions to WordPress.

Matt devotes his keynote/closing speech to slamming WP Engine.

He also implies people inside WP Engine are sending him information.

For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc. I have a bunch of journalists happy to connect you with as well. #wcus — Twitter I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. — Tumblr

Matt also puts out an offer live at WordCamp US:

“If anyone of you gets in trouble for speaking up in favor of WordPress and/or open source, reach out to me. I’ll do my best to help you find a new job.” — source tweet, RTed by Matt

He also puts up a poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed back at WordCamps.

Sep 21

Matt writes a blog post on the WordPress.org blog (the official project blog!): WP Engine is not WordPress.

He opens this blog post by claiming his mom was confused and thought WP Engine was official.

The blog post goes on about how WP Engine disabled post revisions (which is a pretty normal thing to do when you need to free up some resources), therefore being not "real" WordPress. (As I said earlier, WordPress.com disables most features for Personal and Premium plans. Or whatever those plans are called, they've been renamed like 12 times in the last few years. But that's a different complaint.)

Sep 22: More bullshit on Twitter. Matt makes a Reddit post on r/Wordpress about WP Engine that promptly gets deleted. Writeups start to come out:

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg Sparks Backlash

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers

Sep 23 onward

Okay, time zones mean I can't effectively sequence the rest of this.

Matt defends himself on Reddit, casually mentioning that WP Engine is now suing him.

Also here's a decent writeup from someone involved with the community that may be of interest.

WP Engine drops the full PDF of their cease and desist, which includes screenshots of Matt apparently threatening them via text.

Twitter link | Direct PDF link

This PDF includes some truly fucked texts where Matt appears to be trying to get WP Engine to pay him money unless they want him to tell his audience at WCUS that they're evil.

Matt, after saying he's been sued and can't talk about it, hosts a Twitter Space and talks about it for a couple hours.

He also continues to post on Reddit, Twitter, and on the Core contributor Slack.

Here's a comment where he says WP Engine could have avoided this by paying Automattic 8% of their revenue.

Another, 20 hours ago, where he says he's being downvoted by "trolls, probably WPE employees"

At some point, Matt updates the WordPress Foundation trademark policy. I am 90% sure this was him — it's not legalese and makes no fucking sense to single out WP Engine.

Old text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. New text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Sep 25: Automattic puts up their own legal response.

anyway this fucking sucks

This is bigger than anything Matt's done before. I'm so worried about my friends who're still there. The internal ramifications have... been not great so far, including that Matt's naturally being extra gung-ho about "you're either for me or against me and if you're against me then don't bother working your two weeks".

Despite everything, I like WordPress. (If you dig into this, you'll see plenty of people commenting about blocks or Gutenberg or React other things they hate. Unlike many of the old FOSSheads, I actually also think Gutenberg/the block editor was a good idea, even if it was poorly implemented.)

I think that the original mission — to make it so anyone can spin up a website that's easy enough to use and blog with — is a good thing. I think, despite all the ways being part of FOSS communities since my early teens has led to all kinds of racist, homophobic and sexual harm for me and for many other people, that free and open-source software is important.

So many people were already burning out of the project. Matt has been doing this for so long that those with long memories can recite all the ways he's wrecked shit back a decade or more. Most of us are exhausted and need to make money to live. The world is worse than it ever was.

Social media sucks worse and worse, and this was a world in which people missed old webrings, old blogs, RSS readers, the world where you curated your own whimsical, unpaid corner of the Internet. I started actually actively using my own WordPress blog this year, and I've really enjoyed it.

And people don't want to deal with any of this.

The thing is, Matt's right about one thing: capital is ruining free open-source software. What he's wrong about is everything else: the idea that WordPress.com isn't enshittifying (or confusing) at a much higher rate than WP Engine, the idea that WP Engine or Silver Lake are the only big players in the field, the notion that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But he's started a battle where there are no winners but the lawyers who get paid to duke it out, and all the volunteers who've survived this long in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by big money are giving up and leaving.

Anyway if you got this far, consider donating to someone on gazafunds.com. It'll take much less time than reading this did.

[aroworlds]

After six (very slow!) years of writing, Hallo, Aro comprises eighteen short fiction and creative-non-fiction pieces about allosexual aro protagonists--all collected on my website, Patreon or Tumblr.

Stories include:

Unspoken

Leaving

Friendship

Lucky

Attraction

Existence

Neuronormative

Loveless

Monstrous

Pressure, Side One

Pressure, Side Two

Abrasive

Question

Antagonist

Witch

Hunter

Pillar

Tomorrow

Please expect fantasy and fairy tale motifs, trans and multisexual characters, a dash of autism, a great deal of amatonormativity, and a pervasive struggle for recognition by family, society and community.

[uke-zone]

I really hate to post something like this on an account called uke-zone, but there's not much choice. I'm going to be homeless in a month.

For the past 2 years, I’ve been stuck in a toxic job because I took the first one I could get without reliable transport. I’ve been working as a web admin, making $14,400 a year. My rent is $12,360 a year, not including bills. I scraped by, constantly stressed, and exhausted. I lived alone after leaving an abusive family environment, so I just kept going.

Four days ago I was given a termination notice—the day after I refused to violate FCC guidelines. They wanted me to add a static list of customers to an email list, without allowing them to unsubscribe, and I couldn’t let myself be complicit or get hit with a $5,000 fine.

No savings, no support system, and no cushion. I won't survive the next month if I'm evicted. There is just straight up nowhere to go.

If you’re able to help me keep a roof over my head while I continue the job search, please drop a $20 or the most that won't hurt here: paypal.me/Ymukhopadhyay

In Texas, unemployment takes at least 4 weeks, assuming no disputes, and with my employer that's not happening. Rent is due. I’d be eligible for $143 a week, which... isn’t even close to enough to keep a roof over my head or eat. I couldn’t pay one month of rent if I tried. I'm looking down the barrel of being homeless again, and would frankly rather be dead.

If you have any need for a web developer, designer, or multimedia content specialist, I'd appreciate any support there as well, whether through projects or referrals.

I need to survive the next 30 days to not be constantly on the verge of losing everything. Going back to living paycheck-to-paycheck with no security and no safety net isn't an option. I was terrified one mistake or one bad turn could leave me with nothing until it did.

If you can’t offer help, I understand. But if you can, I'm begging in random tags on the Internet because I don’t want to be homeless again.

GoFundMe, if PayPal isn't an option

Thanks for reading this. ❤️

[lilycelebi]

Rotom-Heat!

Haven't drawn/painted anything for quite a while. Have this!

[deletedstimgifs]

So recently, Tumblr broke their ability to follow a reblog chain. This is a problem.

Following a reblog chain now takes you to a popup of that post alone on web, and a permalink view of it alone on mobile.

This is not only a stupid update that nobody asked for, but it also removes a core function necessary for my work here as an archiving blog.

As a blog who collects gifs from deleted blogs, I rely on the ability to go back to people's reblog and then continue to scroll back in time through their blog, where they've likely reblogged more gifs from other deleted blogs! I need this function to do my archiving work, and they've removed it!

And for what? To make things more "intuitive and consistent"?

@staff @changes Please, I am begging you to reverse this update. I can't do my work properly like this. I'm not the only one who's unhappy about this...

[ID a series of screenshots of various Tumblr users commenting asking Staff to fix the reblog chain]

[venomgender]

im the smartest person alive btw. this + adblock + filtering the tubu ad = i will never see a goddamn ad on this site ever again

[stories-of-a-lifetimee]

La Natura

I stand among the royal lands. The court had many discussions, and everything had gone sad. It was all over now, and joy resumed.

I thanked the mountains as I left their heavenly court, the soft snow welcoming me into its grasp. I walk along the paths I paved, feet bare on the white blanket. once in a while, something sharp pierces through, but I'm unfazed. It reminds me of my children. No matter how much someone loves you, they're bound to hurt you sometimes.

I sink my toes in the dirt. I'm checking up on the subjects of my dear mountains, the common land. I feel the life in these trees. The forest is alive and flourishing, and the wind whispers sweet nothings in my ear. As I near the end of the forest, I hear the sweet melody of my children's voices. I smile.

I reach the village filled with joy. My children prepare for their festivals. both skies and their hopes are high. Walking amongst them, I feel I'm home. I breathe in deep. The air clings to the salt of the sea and I feel complete.

They ask me, who are you? To some I'm an old man practicing religion atop the mountains, to some I'm a spirit of the forest, and to some a lost sailor of the sea. but you can call me nature.

read it on wordpress here.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

I have the headcanon that Leslie lived until 11, even if he had not super good scores, because he was a little genius of music.

Not everyone can create a song, not everyone can learn super quickly to play a music. I don't remember which song he wanted to learn before his deparature, but i think that it was a difficult one (we don't see him train a lot in the story too) and he plays it before going to the gate, without any partition to help him and without doing any mistake.

I headcanon that she demons keep all the little genius, even if they not have good scores and are genius in other ways, because they think that it worth to keep them.

A kid has not good scores but it a genius with drawing and creates super beautiful things? It's worth to keep him until the age limit.

Leslie is super good in music, learn quickly song and has not need of a partition when he plays? it's worth to wait until he's 11 (close of 12). It could also be a kid who has a beautiful voice ansd sings super well for exemple.

etc....

Norman was a genius in studies and stuff so they keep him beyond 12 by sending him to lambda but people can be genius in other ways that in studies. A genius can be super good in something but kinda bad in another things.

I feel like this is essentially canon, no?

The only birthdays mentioned in "The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List" are Isabella's twelfth birthday and Ray's sixth birthday, so contrary to what the wiki currently says, it doesn't look like Leslie was shipped out exactly on his twelfth since they don't celebrate or even mention it.

(Leslie's page on the TPN Wiki | TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List” Chapter 1)

They are among the oldest though since Isabella turns twelve within a year of his shipment while not being physically able to jump atop the wall as we see her do in chapter 37/S1 episode 12 yet due to the sprained ankle she sustains over the course of the light novel, in addition to spending weeks to months writing him letters that never received a response and what finalized her decision to make the jump in the first place.

(S1 Episode 12 | TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List” Chapter 8 | Chapter 9)

But it's still soon enough that she discovers the truth of the house during the night of the first snowfall of the year, which could be anywhere from late October 2025 to January 2026 (since the full score trio deduces in chapter 5 that Grace Field is located in [the demon world equivalent of] the northern hemisphere, in addition to "The Guiding Star" short story mentioning them planning on using Polaris to find each other again after they go off to foster homes, winter would be during this time of the year).

I'm inclined to go with January 2026 since we don't see snow on the night of January 15, 2046, and also because I feel there's some poignancy in what would have been Leslie's twelfth birthday month getting to Isabella as the final push to make her seek him out. He surely would have written her in response to the birthday wishes she mailed him. (This is also why I feel his shipment was after September 9, 2025 because him not sending her any birthday well wishes would have tipped her off sooner, too).

(TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List” Chapter 9)

This could be an oddity in the translation, but Isabella also mentions how her her twelfth birthday was close enough that they could mark it on the calendar while the snow was piling up outside. Assuming they put up a new calendar at the start of January, she discovered the truth only in 2026, and then spent over half a year trying to come up with some sort of plan to escape (and isn't there a wealth of potential there, thinking of the adversarial atmosphere between her and Sarah during those few months and how that would be replicated in the next generation between her and Ray, although not 1:1.)

I don't remember which song he wanted to learn before his departure, but i think that it was a difficult one (we don't see him train a lot in the story too) and he plays it before going to the gate, without any partition to help him and without doing any mistake.

He learned to play Nocturne No.2! Though the translator, c72684, wasn't entirely certain what larger body of work it belonged to.

(TPN Light Novel 2: Moms’ Song of Remembrance - “The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List” Chapter 2)

[the-physicality]

https://thehockeynews.com/womens/pwhl/watch-montreals-full-pwhl-free-agent-signing-press-conference

i hope this is as new and wonderful to you as it was to me :)

[wolfsbaneandthistle]

A zoronxie growth chart! Text is in the image ID if tumblr decides to make this blurry for you.

Zoronxie start life as a tadpole in a cleanwater* pool. They shed throughout their life, growing limbs and eventually becoming terrestrial, and even later, bipedal. They also go from hairless babies to having fur back to having their hair fall out when they’re old.

When does a zoronxie start to be aware of themself? Around the 12 week mark, sometime before they leave the water.

When can they start to talk? They start to mimic sounds at a year and a half. Zoronxie commons, a language made up of the surviving native languages, can be learned and spoken at around 3 years. Languages that rely less on mimicry, like Zornxian and galactic standardized, take longer to learn, but can generally be spoken before the 5 year mark. Sign languages made for the zoronxie body plan can also be learned once a child is steady enough on two feet.

When do they become an adult? Areas with Enithian influence have a child looked after by a caretaker until they’re bipedal, after which point they go into an apprenticeship. Areas with a more traditional skew, like the House, tend to let a person fend for themselves once they can steadily walk on their forehooves. Zoronxie growing up off-planet can oftentimes pass as an adult once their horns start growing in.

*clean being clear of the carnivorous microbacteria found in Zornxia’s rivers and oceans, not fresh like freshwater.

[fobnsfwdoodlesbackup]

Heyyy thank you @bshpkntrck for coloring in these commissions!! I love seeing my drawings colored in always!!

[shespillsherself]

I am home yet I don’t feel at home!

-why

[nofurylike]

You use words As if a blade

Reckless slashes Strikes pervade

Heaven forbid You get a taste

Of what "The Razor's Edge" Has laid to waste

[lilycelebi]

Space Lesbians!

Commission for a friend. :)

[leliesblou]

The IEC's live portal for election results 🇿🇦🇿🇦

If you see any fake news being shared online, you can report it at real411