• Optional@lemmy.world
      1·
      9 minutes ago

      There’s a strong current of people who believe the WP fight with WPEngine is bad on this guy’s behalf. He’s megalomaniacal, he’s being a spoiled rich guy, stuff like that.

      Personally I don’t see it, but I may not know enough about it. But I see this as a part of that conversation. Someone’s arguing that fighting with a private corporate business whose model depends on exploiting the software they have no intention of supporting is outrageous and he’s Gone Too Far.

    • Ab_intra@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 hours ago

      Have the same question. It seems to be open source but if they wanted to they could make it closed source for sure…

      • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
        18·
        2 hours ago

        They cannot make WordPress closed source because it’s released under the GPL, which means that any closed implementation cannot use this code.

        With that said, the linked article is about access to wordpress.org, which is different from the source code of the project. I’m not entirely sure what this is about.

        • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 hour ago

          They can, but only if all contributors agree or their work is removed entirely, and only future releases (code released prior to that is still GPL).

      • auroz@lemmy.sdf.org
        13·
        2 hours ago

        I don’t know what the governance setup is like, but in theory the owners of the project can change the license to whatever they like at any time.

        The catch is that this doesn’t affect old versions, which remain available under the old license. So they could make WP closed-source or make the license more restrictive, but WP-engine or any portion of the community could make a fork and maintain the open source version from there. It wouldn’t have the features added by the mainline WP project since the license change (and they’d likely have to change the branding), but that’s about all that would be lost.

        Similar things have happened in the past: see OpenOffice becoming LibreOffice for example.

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
        3·
        2 hours ago

        Nah wordpress would instantly die if it went closed source. So many businesses only function the way they do because wordpress is easily customizable.

        It would just get forked by some big webhosting company.

    • Dot.OPEnglish
      5·
      1 hour ago

      Mainly, .org can block anyone from updating their software(if they are set as the update provider on your Wordpress distribution) and accessing their addons repo( which is very essential to how some websites work)

  • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    1 hour ago

    I currently have WP running on a VPS. It utilizes neither wordpress.org nor wpengine infrastructure. I’m not getting how this means they can do anything about that.

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      1 hour ago

      He can’t. Mullenweg is just having a really bad, prolonged meltdown over a hosting company making (morally questionable, but legally clear) money and threatening to burn it all down.

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
      2·
      1 hour ago

      Where do you get your updates from? Theoretically they could change the license for newer versions or switched to a paid model or any number of things. Your only choice would be a fork or nothing, the latter which would suck if there’s a security hole. As others have mentioned look what happen with OpenOffice

      • Optional@lemmy.world
        1·
        7 minutes ago

        What happened with OpenOffice? iirc Oracle bought them then made it open source and abandoned it, so it became LibreOffice, still free and awesome.

    • FMT99@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 hour ago

      As far as I have been able to tell, it doesn’t. If you have your own infra it doesn’t affect you at all.

      • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
        2·
        1 hour ago

        Even self hosting, thenplug ins directory and updates etc seem to be where they have stopped wp engine access. It is still open for other websites but could be cut off if they chose.

        From what ive read, manual upload of a plugin still works, so its just removing convenience and auto update. I doubt its long before a fork or plug in offers identicsl functionality.

        • taladar@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          22 minutes ago

          This is also about WP Engine access to upload their plugins and support their users on the centralized forums,…

  • lily33@lemm.ee
    1·
    32 minutes ago

    As someone who has no knowledge of the ecosystem: Why would people who self-gost wordpress care about access to wordpress.org? Isn’t the point of self-hostung to use your own infrastructure?