I think it probably would have been quieter, but people would be accusing him of not being transparent instead. I think it’s kind of nuts to not give Matt the benefit of the doubt while more information comes out. He is the party with a past that demonstrates good behavior and intentions.
He obliterated his past when he fired the Death Star (blocking access to the repository for all WP Engine sites). That's the whole point of the article!
WP Engine, a for profit company, should be providing what their customers need, not relying on free services from a foundation for required functionality.
Especially if they have a fraught relationship with the provider of those free services.
System76 provides the PopOS repos that are based on Ubuntu. They don’t freeload.
Canonical provides the Ubuntu repos that are based on Debian. They don’t freeload.
Were they ever asked to run a mirror of the plugin repo for use with their customers?
If the bandwidth/infra costs to support all of WPEngines customers were so much, then they must have, right?
If they were asked and refused that's certainly one thing. If they were never asked, and then when they refused the demands for money.. then it looks like matt was just looking for a wrench to hit them with and this one came to mind.
> Canonical provides the Ubuntu repos that are based on Debian. They don’t freeload.
At least for Ubuntu, the packages they distribute generally don't have the same checksum as Debian, so they're not the same packages (at least as binaries).
Also, "wordpress.org" is hard-coded as the plugin repo source all over WordPress.
It is like Matz founding a Heroku competitor and disabling ruby gems just for them. How is that not a dick move. It basically proves that Wordpress.org is not an independent foundation but Matt’s plaything.
Did you read the blog posts he posted on WordPress.org? That information, alone, direct from his mouth, is enough to remove any doubt. He's unhinged and dangerous and no one should feel safe with him in their supply chain.
If any of this is true why is it so surprising that wpe was cut off?
> WP Engine wants to control your WordPress experience, they need to run their own user login system, update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, job board, meetups, conferences, bug tracker, forums, Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcase. Their servers can no longer access our servers for free.
The reason WordPress sites don’t get hacked as much anymore is we work with hosts to block vulnerabilities at the network layer, WP Engine will need to replicate that security research on their own.
Why should WordPress.org provide these services to WP Engine for free, given their attacks on us?
