I’m not sure if Nostr is aware of what’s going on in the #WordPress community right now, but it’s headed toward a civil war and has effects that are rippling through the entire open source internet. If someone is capable of developing a decentralized plugin repository built on Nostr, you’d have a million developers turning their heads to look this way. This is a much larger opportunity for nostr to attract talent than any possible exodus from Twitter.

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Yeah, I think people are already looking at or working on ways to fork WordPress. At this point, I suspect the community would flock, but there’s also been a LOT of talk about a decentralized plugin/theme repo.
Been thinking about this today as well. To me this highlights an uncomfortable truth. If you build a decentralized repository, at some point it needs to coalesce into a singular interface. Wordpress plugins are open source, the code is decentralized, yet how could have this been avoided?
Matt Mullenweg (founder) got in a fight with WPEngine (huge host and developer) and he’s been acting like an entitled billionaire. He’s made moves which is making the rest of the open-source community VERY nervous when it comes to code repositories.
I’m not moving away from WordPress anytime soon. There are going to likely be some major shifts in the community, but the shakeout will take time.
didn't @jack put out a bounty for a nostr github? i know you mentioned plugins but plugins are just a type of codebase... im one of the sad lonely devs using drupal.
The GPL requires the the source be made available. Blocking WPE from accessing the public source could be perceived as violating that portion of the GPL. I'm not a lawyer so I could easily be wrong.
I host my blog on the clearnet using Start9 + Cloudflare tunnel, but you could really do it on any computer as Ling as you can host your website on it.
Stripping the ACF plugin away from its developers, locking them out of the repository, forking it, renaming it, and forcing users to update to your new version seems pretty alarming.
Exactly. Someone builds a decentralized nostr repository for code, even if it’s just for WordPress code, and every dev in the world will take notice.
It stands for “advanced custom fields”, allowing users to add an huge range of content editing options to Wordpress posts. It is one of the most popular and most downloaded WordPress plugins ever.
in the end this boils down to the issue of naming and trust, isn’t it? who says plugin xyz is the one I want and is not confused with another one that is called xyz? we still did not solve this in a usable and scalable way, did we?
I don't think so. I think it's more so about contributions to development versus freeloading off Automattic's work than the TM stuff. I think the TM stuff is just the proxy war.
Sure seems like there’s a whole lot of “personal vendetta” to it, too.
I was always a big fan of Matt and I've especially followed it in the early days of WP. Automattic was always an inspiration as a company. - but I haven't followed it in the recent years and I don't know the current drama... my comment was more about developing an alternative solution (on Nostr for example). in a decentralized plugin repository naming and trust is the issue, isn't it?
As a WordPress professional, my current advice is to not change anything at all, which is exactly what I’m doing.
Casey R's avatar
Casey R 1 year ago
People should be aware that the WordPress software is free and open source and that will never change, as are the 60k free plugins in the repo, all maintained by the developers who provide them. The drama is between two big companies in the space. That's all. Your website is fine!
Casey R's avatar
Casey R 1 year ago
I wouldn't switch to a closed source alternative. The WordPress software is fine, no issues there at all.
Except the trust in the repo was violated when Matt stole a plugin away from its developers. You’re right, though – for the average website owner, this really doesn’t matter.
MikeMonty's avatar
MikeMonty 1 year ago
I left wordpress at precisely the right moment. Or bitcoin opened my eyes at the right moment… if it can be sabotaged it will. If you rely on the workings of others you and your project are at risk… hmm. 🤔
I couldn’t stand Wordpress and all its bloatware. I could never manage to build anything decent on it without paying for third party garbage, might as well have just used Squarespace.
MikeMonty's avatar
MikeMonty 1 year ago
HTML was apparently the way to go. What we traded for easily implemented templates…
It’s a huge ecosystem. Took me years to learn how to build quality, fast, custom sites instead of using bloated themes and premium garbage plugins.
MikeMonty's avatar
MikeMonty 1 year ago
Once upon a time I paid my rent customizing wp sites. I miss those days. But they’re dead now, and mullenweg just screwed shut the coffin…
Casey R's avatar
Casey R 1 year ago
Matt definitely has too much power over things, there's no denying that.
For now, I agree. Currently changing nothing about how I build websites. Subject to change down the road, but that was always true.
Thanks friend. Sincerely: this is a good example of what I meant about the future of open source. It will be hacker versus hacker eventually. Humans & their ego make them do dumb things. Witnessed it repeatedly.
Sincerely: while you may believe that I’ve seen enough corruption in the world to know how typical humanity reacts. Some always seek to destroy, exploit or make profit from others. If anyone in Open Source isn’t prepared for 1. more scams 2. people monetizing their work 3. Knowledge & data freely given will always be stolen & used for profiteering Example: Years ago “someone” stole pictures of me posted on Facebook ( by friends) & created a fake account. Someone finally told me I shouldn’t be posting pictures of myself online if I took my career seriously. 😳 Checked it out & had to prove to FB I was me. Apparently some catfisher or something. We already see big name accounts here being targeted & many fakes. We aren’t doomed to repeat the mistakes of previous generations but there is a **lot** of work to be done.