This story has been discussed in dozens of HN threads and many thousands of comments, but it's off topic in a Who Is Hiring thread; please see the rules at the top.
Sorry for breaking the rule, but IMO but this rule is kind of ridiculous. Are you at all concerned about job posts containing blatant falsehoods being allowed to persist on the site without comment?
The rule prevents the job threads, which large numbers of users find highly valuable, from falling apart into long threaded debates. Nothing prevents you from writing a post about the blatant falsehoods in a job posting here and submitting it as its own story. You just can't do it on these threads. This is an old rule, it markedly improved the Who's Hiring threads, and it's unlikely that this particular company's story is going to change it. (But I'm just a rando that knows the history here.)
I dunno, I just read about this drama and it seems like WP Engine is a shit company only interested in profits, and WordPress.org & .com are in the right...
In this case I’m not even making a judgement about the merits of WP Engine vs Automattic. IMO it is never OK to use your position as the sole steward of an add-on/extension marketplace to unilaterally take over a piece of software owned by someone else. It’s exactly the same as if Google “forked” uBlock Origin and took over the listing for it in their extension store at the same time. It’s completely against the spirit of open source, and any company doing it should not ever again be able to claim that they’re one of “THE open source companies in tech.”
WordPress.org is not Automattic’s platform (there is a lot of managerial overlap and both are ultimately controlled by the same person).
Our well documented issues with WP Engine does not change the fact Automattic has been one of THE open source companies in tech for the last 2 decades and continues to ship in the open. There is constant push internally to build more in the open.
Bullshit. For all practical purposes, WP.org is Automattic.
> Our well documented issues with WP Engine does not change the fact Automattic has been one of THE open source companies in tech for the last 2 decades
This is debatable but even if I grant this point, I’m saying that the reputation that you’ve built up over the last two decades is completely destroyed, and anyone who actually cares about open source and public stewardship of projects should stay far, far away.
