Tag: donald trump

Truth be told, this is the first post that has been published in years. Of all the things to talk about, the controversy between Automatic and WP Engine was the least expected.

Then again, it’s 2024.

How We Got Here

Enter the WordPress community. It started with Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress and Automatic CEO, referring to WP Engine as a “cancer to WordPress.” He took exception to them disabling tracking of revisions of every post to save money.

He also accused Silver Lake, a majority owner of WP Engine, of not contributing enough to the WordPress project and confusing people into believing that it is officially part of WordPress.

Ironically, Automatic was a partial owner until 2018 according to David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and CTO of 37signals. Suffice it to say, Mullenweg did not take too kindly to Hansson’s take on the situation, though he did later edit his post in attempt to tone down the harshness.

Throughout the drama there have been lawsuits filed, and actions taken that have alarmed many.

The Drama

The official page for the Automatic Custom Fields plugin was taken over by Automatic and changed to Secure Custom Fields. WP Engine no longer has access to WordPress.org’s servers, where WordPress plugins are commonly available for installation and updates. Consequently, they have had to create an alternative method to updating the plugins they own.

This isn’t the first public conflict Mullenweg has had with those who used WordPress to make money.

In the end, Mullenweg is attempting to convince WP Engine of paying 8% of its gross revenue to Automatic in order to have a trademark license so they can continue to have WP in their name. Indeed, it did not go over well.

As Steven J Vaughn-Nichols put it,

From where I sit, this is not a battle over open source. It’s a fight between someone worth hundreds of millions and a company worth billions. When you’re trying to figure out what’s going on in any conflict, whether it’s a family fight, a divorce, or a business fight, one of the best rules of thumb is to follow the money. What it’s telling me here is it’s about the cash.

Unfortunately, this battle can potentially affect me and everyone who uses WordPress and WP Express in particular. I didn’t need this. None of us do.

What can we do?

This site uses WordPress and though none of the plugins used are affected as they don’t come from WP Engine, that doesn’t mean they won’t be as some of them come from third parties. Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner has a good answer to that question.

The TL;DR takeaway is don’t panic.

This site has been on hiatus for years as life changes were occurring and different priorities took hold. This type of conflict impacting media creation is nothing new. It’s concerning, but nothing that this site or most content creators have any control over.

The best path forward is to stay the course while looking into alternatives should the need to use a different content management system become necessary.

The good news is that efforts are underway to create another distribution method for WordPress plugins and themes. There is also ClassicPress, a fork of WordPress without the Gutenberg Editor. Alternatives are on the table.

So Don’t Panic

Corporate conflicts with other corporations are nothing new. When Oracle bought out Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice.org was eventually forked into LibreOffice by The Document Foundation. No project truly dies, especially when there are enough willing participants.

Beyond that the best we can hope for is a quick resolution to this conflict, lest Mullenweg digs himself a hole into the realm of major legal hot water.

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

As this is being written, the rain has been pounding the pavement in spurts. One moment, it’s a calm flow of droplets. Then comes the rapid torrent.

This week’s roundup has been like that with its various ups and downs.

Unix

With Canonical’s announcement of switching back to GNOME for Ubuntu’s default desktop, the question of how they would go about it remains. OMG Ubuntu sheds some light on this and even links to a survey asking for input.

Developers are considering some tweaks to ease the transition.

There’s some good news for the GNU GPL for the time being. Though it wasn’t meant to be treated as a contract, the license agreement itself appears to be enforceable as one for the time being.

The case revolved around Hancom and its use of Ghostscript without adhering to the GNU Affero General Public License.

To end this portion of our weekly roundup, here’s an interesting story about immigration policies possibly impacting free and open source software development. On the one hand, recent policies could impact the ability of the U.S. to bring in intelligent individuals who can lead the way in innovation.

On the other hand, the idea of promoting from within has been brought up assuming interest in the field of software development exists.

Time will tell the tale on that one.

Overlooked Pop Culture

There’s a reason many are either captivated and/or aggravated by politics. Though campaigns may portray otherwise, things are rarely black and white. Nothing demonstrates this more than with the firing of James Comey by President Trump.

Though there has been suspicion as to the President’s actual motivations, Trevor Aaronson of The intercept reminds readers that Comey himself did some things during his tenure as the head of the FBI that were questionable at best.

The aggravating portion of the political arena is why people seek an escape, even if it’s a virtual arena. An old escape may have a chance at a revival if Billy Corgan has his way after buying the rights to the National Wrestling Alliance.

He will own the rights to the trademarks as well as the NWA Championship belt.

Though the classic name in professional wrestling has waned over the years, the plan is a long term move, so nothing will change right away. Could this WCW 3.0?

Speaking of retro, 8-big video game music has been making a comeback… on vinyl that is! The LA Times has a fascinating piece on how boutique record labels have been combining the two niches together.

That’s all for this week. See you next time.

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

This article will be brief and to the point. There has been drama surrounding the electoral college, and it is certainly understandable that many are hoping for a rebellion against President-elect Trump. For full disclosure, I did not vote for him.

Before we drone on about the “will of the people,” a timely reminder is in order; we are not a democracy, nor were we meant to be one in these United States.

All one has to do is read Article 4, Section 4 of the US Constitution. It reads:

The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

There are elements of democracy, which does include voting. However, the majority can not run roughshod over the entire country. There’s a reason it’s called Tyranny of the Majority.

Our representative form of government has checks and balances not just in the three branches but all throughout the country. The electoral college was designed to prevent Tyranny of the Majority.

It’s an unfortunate shame that faithless electors are not able to rebel against that of the blind masses should the need arise.

The idea is supposed to be about having checks and balances to prevent anyone from having too much power over others. In other words, the electoral college is not the real problem, though giving electors more autonomy would make things a bit better.

Regardless of what happens, we need to focus on the real problem with the election cycle and that’s the fact that two political parties do not want other party to come to the table or be involved in the process.

We need to change the conversation about the fact that there are only two perceived choices in any given election cycle, and push for more than three.