WP Engine Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter To Automattic Over Mullenweg's Comments (techcrunch.com) 33
WordPress hosting service WP Engine on Monday sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic after the latter's CEO Matt Mullenweg called WP Engine a "cancer to WordPress" last week. From a report: The notice asks Automattic and Mullenweg to retract their comments and stop making statements against the company. WP Engine, which (like Automattic itself) commercializes the open-source WordPress project, also accused Mullenweg of threatening WP Engine before the WordCamp summit held last week. "Automattic's CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic -- his for-profit entity -- a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described 'scorched earth nuclear approach' toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond, the letter read. "When his outrageous financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by making repeated false claims disparaging WP Engine to its employees, its customers, and the world," the letter added.
tempest in a teapot (Score:1)
Sucks (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re: Sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
What would you suggest as a preferable alternative? I'm genuinely all ears, since I've had my share of wp security bothers over the years.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Ghost - https://ghost.org/vs/wordpress... [ghost.org]
This is the way
Re: Sucks (Score:5, Informative)
I looked into Ghost a while back. It's very cool but not geared toward individuals. This is from their web site, "Ghost is best suited for people who want to build a business around publishing." Their coding interface is feature rich but not for the faint of heart, again from their web site, "Ghost is focused on professional publishing, and is deeply customisable for professional use by a small team of developers." If this is what you are looking for then Ghost is right up your alley.
Drupal (Score:3)
What would you suggest as a preferable alternative? I'm genuinely all ears, since I've had my share of wp security bothers over the years.
Drupal. No one outgrows it, unlike Wordpress and other CMSs. That's one reason why governments all over the world [drupal.org] use it. Drupal has its own security team [drupal.org] too. For e-commerce Drupal Commerce is competitive [multidots.com] with closed-source Adobe AEM.
Re:Drupal (Score:4, Informative)
Drupal shed its purely PHP origins starting with Drupal 8. Since Drupal 8, Drupal has used the Symfony [symfony.com] framework and is now fully Object Oriented Programming (OOP) with a wealth of APIs for things like Forms, Ajax, .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
= = = =
Here are various APIs documented on Drupal.org, (if you stick with the APIs, you can trust your site to be secure):
Entity API
Allows developers to define, load, save, and manage entities (such as nodes, users, comments, etc.) within Drupal. It is central to the data model in Drupal.
Form API (FAPI)
Provides a structured way to define and manage forms in Drupal. It handles input validation, rendering, and form submissions.
Field API
Enables the addition of custom fields to entities (such as content types, users, or taxonomy terms) and provides mechanisms for handling field data.
Menu API
Used for defining and managing menus and navigation. It allows for the creation of new menu items and altering existing ones.
Render API
Defines how content is rendered on a page, including theming, content preparation, and caching.
Cache API
Provides caching mechanisms for storing and retrieving data to improve performance. It supports multiple backends like memory, database, and files.
User API
Used for managing user accounts, authentication, roles, and permissions.
Database API
A robust API for interacting with the database, allowing for SQL queries, schema manipulation, and database abstraction across multiple database systems.
Plugin API
Provides a framework for creating pluggable, reusable components in a system. Commonly used in blocks, fields, and views.
Theme API
Helps in managing theming layers and templates, allowing developers to control the appearance of content.
Views API
Powers the Views module, enabling complex queries and displays of content through custom filters, sorting, and formatting options.
Entity Query API
Simplifies querying entities based on their properties and fields, without requiring direct SQL queries.
File API
Handles file uploads, downloads, and management within Drupal. It is essential for managing media, documents, and other file types.
REST API
Provides an interface for interacting with Drupal entities and data over HTTP, allowing for the creation of RESTful web services.
Cron API
Used for scheduling and running periodic tasks, such as content indexing, automated backups, and maintenance routines.
Queue API
Manages job queues and allows for background processing of tasks, improving performance for time-consuming tasks.
Each of these APIs serves different aspects of the Drupal ecosystem, providing a flexible and extensible foundation for building complex sites and applications.
Re: (Score:2)
My country (inside EU) is on that list... yes, there might be a few old government websites still running on Drupal, but most old websites were on Joomla! and almost new ones are on WordPress. Source: I work on government, have some 5 websites on my supervision, all of them are WordPress. One of them was moved a couple of years ago from Joomla! to WordPress.
Drupal == WordPress, but annoying. (Score:2)
The big upside of WordPress is that it doesn't force you to pay along with any shoddy inner platform contraption. Yeah, the data model is booked, the code is somewhat of a mess in quite a few places, it uses hardwired URLs, etc. However, Drupals model is even worse in that it forces you into its totally arbitrary and just as amateurish model with no way of escaping. I can program around WordPresses model and quirks in less than 20 minutes, but Drupal shoves it's inner platform down my throat, including its
Re: (Score:2)
I can program around WordPresses model and quirks in less than 20 minutes, but Drupal shoves it's inner platform down my throat, including its bolted on propriety template system and forces me to play along, even if the entire setup makes no sense at all for my needs.
I see where you're coming from and you are correct, Drupal has many APIs and a strict coding structure and way of doing things. IMHO Drupal websites are fairly large budget websites with project managers, daily Agile stand-ups, sprints, etc. Drupal is often an Application. For most publishing requirements and budgets, a Wordpress project is less costly.
For example a classic requirement is to have to change something that's already in the codebase, like a menu for example. To be as clear as I can try to be,
Re: (Score:3)
Sometime around 2012 static sites came into vogue - alternative CMS like the ones suggested in the comments popped up
Spotify took over e-commerce.
Sure, I saw a job interview for Drupal the other day but the preferable alternative?
A static website. Don't host a CMS with a login open to the web.
Re: (Score:3)
Sometime around 2012 static sites came into vogue
They really didn't. CRM systems are still dominant in many smaller content sites. Just because larger e-commerce sites moved on doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Wordpress still runs on some estimates half a billion websites.
Tomorrow's news (Score:2)
WP Engine Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter To KlomDark over posted slashdot comments.
Re: (Score:1)
Go pound sand (Score:3)
Freedom of speech and all that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Generally when you sign termination paperwork for severance, you sign both an NDA and non-disparagement remarks. His remarks are probably in violation of both. Saying negative things about a company has a pretty high bar for truth, so that is also on the table.
Re: (Score:2)
Freedom of speech and all that.
Free speech is freedom from government. It means nothing in a civil context, and even the most free speech loving nations have laws against libel and slander which can land you in hot water.
Re: (Score:2)
Free speech is freedom from government.>
That's the "protections of the 1st Amendment," "Free speech" has been used to refer to a non-governmental level regarding the freedom to express opinions for centuries at least.
america (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
In America "process is the punishment".
They can make that post cost $150K by just tossing around "tortuous interference of contract", even if it's eventually tossed.
Only the superwealthy have free speech in 2024 America.
Streisand effect (Score:4, Interesting)
This seems likely to have the opposite of the expected effect.
WPE is not "profiting" off WordPress (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is strange in a few ways. (Score:3)
First of all, Matts wording isn't what people are used to. Calling WP Engine a "cancer" that could spread seems a little harsh when it comes to wording. Matt is usually extremely chill and quite measured when criticizing other entities profiting off WP. This doesn't fit.
WP Engine is a somewhat shady WordPress freeloader, like many others, but anyone in the WP space who isn't a total dimwitt is aware of this. Automattic and WordPress.com have premium brand value in the WordPress space and it's typically the number one place people are pointed to when they don't want to host WP them selves. The behaviour that WPEngine accuses him personally of seems quite petty. I get he may be pissed that WP Engine doesn't give back as much as he'd like, but I wonder why he bothers making such a fuss. WordPress/Automattic is one of the worlds leading internet companies and brands, right along FB, Google, Amazon, IBM, MS and Oracle. It's the crazy FOSS underdog amoung the top ten, why would he tarnish the brand with such a hissy fight with some lowly also-ran like WP Engine?
The cease and desist from WP Engine is rife with details and they make a bunch of solid points vis-a-vis Matt and make him look like a bit of a douche.
The truth is certainly somewhere in the middle, but if this attempt at extortion really went down as WP Engine lays out, that would be wholefully unprofessional by Matt. This all appears to be quite very strange IMHO. Don't quite know what to make of it. Yet.
Oddly enough (Score:2)
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenwang factually has no penis, or any genitals of any kind.
Wordpress is its own cancer. It's always been a terrible product for idiots to make ugly websites. If I see any indication a website is Wordpress, I won't go to it. All Wordpress pages are garbage. The internet would lose nothing if they, and any archives, were permanently deleted forever.
A developer and WordCamp attendee speaks out (Score:4, Interesting)
Jonathan Jernigan is a WordPress developer, YouTuber, and an all-things WordPress proponent who attended the WordCamp where Matt Mullenweg went off on WPEngine.Here's his Blog post about his experience as an attendee at the Keynote: https://jonathanjernigan.com/y... [jonathanjernigan.com]
Barbra Streisand approves this! (Score:2)
Both kinda suck as hosts (Score:3)