Matt Mullenweg says WordPress is “forking” Advanced Custom Fields, a plugin developed by WP Engine; ACF's team says the plugin was taken away “without consent”
It's super late at night on Thanksgiving weekend in Canada. Edward Targett / The Stack : Wordpress Wars: Forking crazy nuclear takeover triggers fury Luke Jones / WinBuzzer : WordPress Forcefully Takes Over Advanced Custom Fields Plugin Following Legal Dispute Karthik. Kc / Coinmonks : 9 Must-Have Cryptocurrency Plugins for WordPress: Accept Payments and More Hillary Keverenge / TechIssuesToday.com : WordPress - WP Engine fight continues with takeover of decade-old ACF plugin Simon Sharwood / The Register : WordPress saga escalates as WP Engine plugin forcibly forked and legal letters fly Nick Heer / Pixel Envy : Matt Mullenweg and WordPress Hijack the Advanced Custom Fields Plugin Ben Werdmuller / Werd I/O : WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin Matt Mullenweg : Everyone's An Owner — Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. Tim Kaye / ClassicPress : Automattic vs WP Engine Threads: Tom Warren / @tomwarrenuk : this entire WordPress situation is wild. A WP Engine plugin has been forcibly taken over by WordPress.org — which is owned by Matt Mullenweg https://www.theverge.com/... Mastodon: @chikorita157@sakurajima.moe : With the whole WordPress drama going on, it does come into question about the BDFL model with open source when you have a leader that is willing to burn the whole thing down since he can't get his way. — At some point, it does show the weakness of this model, and maybe we need a different and better model in managing open source projects. … Misty / @misty@digipres.club : Jesus. This feels like it's calculated to make every other third party dev on the official plugin server nervous. https://www.theverge.com/... Don Whiteside / @donw@mastodon.coffee : This shit is unhinged. Is there a plugin seller in existence not looking at this and wondering if it'll happen to them? — https://esq.social/... X: @wp_acf : We have been made aware that the Advanced Custom Fields plugin on the WordPress directory has been taken over by WordPress dot org. A plugin under active development has never been unilaterally and forcibly taken away from its creator without consent in the 21 year history of WordPress. @batuhan : The beautiful thing about @WordPress is the choice and the freedom. That's what makes this 20+ year old project relevant and powering almost half of the web. If people want to choose WPE, and support their freeloading, how to do that is even linked in the announcement for SCF. Ryan Duff / @ryancduff : In case you missed it, the WordPress accessibility team has suspended meetings until further notice because neither representative can log into .org because of the checkbox. this-is-fine.gif [image] Laura Elizabeth / @lauraelizdunn : Guess I can't contribute to WordPress 🤷♀️ [image] @wordpress : @lauraelizdunn Sorry, who are you? James M Snell / @jasnell : If you ever wonder why Node.js adopted a rule back when we got Node.js under the foundation that no one company can ever have a majority control in the technical steering committee... It's about avoiding situations like this. Trey / @treybastian : This is just wild... honestly. Imagine if NPM was like nahhh meta you don't get to control react, vercel does now. Jack Arturo / @verygoodplugins : We've just filed a cease and desist letter against @automattic and @wordpressdotcom for unauthorized use of our @wpfusion trademark at https://wordpress.com/... [image] Takis Bouyouris / @takisbig : So let's get things straight, @photomatt says they (ie @WordPress ) “forked” ACF, when actually they took it over. With its reviews, its user base, its support forum threads and its contributors, who god knows if they know. A fork might have had some dignity. [image] Kellie Peterson / @kellie : To be clear: @photomatt and @automattic have set a precedent not dissimilar to Amazon - encouraging the growth of an product built by another to then replicate it and introduce their own version of it. If you are a plugin developer you should be concerned. #wordpress #wpdrama Jordan O'Connor / @jdnoc : Matt Mullenweg saw how Sam Altman turned OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit and decided he was not being paid enough Dax / @thdxr : the wordpress situation just feels like someone not sleeping on a decision over and over Jeff Geerling / @geerlingguy : Looks like Automattic is forking individual plugins now? It's like the Drupal 8 / Backdrop situation, except with everyone bridge being burned down as we go. @wp_acf : Our ACF plugin has been taken over forcibly by wordpressdotorg without our consent. If you are a WP Engine, Flywheel or ACF PRO customer, you do not need to take any action and will continue to get the latest from the ACF team. If you have a site managed elsewhere using ACF, in Tyler Smith / @tylerlwsmith : WordPress plugin and theme developers: be aware. If you get in a fight with Matt, he might lock you out and fork your plugin. Dave Amirault / @ozskier : This is completely unhinged behavior from @photomatt. Over the last three weeks he's proven to be the biggest threat to #WordPress, open source software, the community, and the open web. I hope @wpengine's legal team grinds him into dust for this abhorrent behavior. Kaia Rhodes / @imkaiarhodes : We're witnessing a man single-handedly destroy the trust of the entire WordPress community and an ecosystem that powers half the internet. Heather Burns / @webdevlaw : For a project that told me to shut up about law, regulation, and project involvement in politics, they're certainly guaranteeing a future full of law, regulation, and political intervention in this project. I'll help write the casebook. Hashim Warren / @hashim_warren : Is it hyperbole to describe this as engineering violence? You distribute software on a marketplace, then one day your access gets cut off, and the platform takes over your project and takes your users. Eric L. Barnes / @ericlbarnes : Wow. Just wow. Matt is ruining the good will of the community. I don't know you'd ever want to use Wordpress with what all that has happened in the past few weeks. Jeremiah Prummer / @jeremiahprummer : WordPress as we know it is done. Unless Matt walks all this back, apologizes, and removes himself from https://wp.org/ moving forward. Even then... Ecosystems are built on trust, and Matt is destroying that trust. Big changes are coming. I'm sad about this. Rob Clark / @robclark : I cannot understate how much @photomatt's decision here threatens the longevity of WordPress. Platforms frequently fail not because of quality, but because there is too little buy-in from third party developers to extend and support it. And this forcible takeover is going to Peter Suhm / @petersuhm : If my livelihood depended on a WordPress plugin, I would start to get really concerned about this type of appropriation. Mark Blair / @mblair : @wp_acf This is nuts. This is a mission critical plugin for many. Michael Fischer / @mfischface : @wp_acf Another new low for, @photomatt. We will continue to pay for the premium version on the 100s of WordPress sites we manage and happily receive updates from your team. Thanks for building one of the best plugins on WordPress! Ryan Duff / @ryancduff : @wp_acf I'm so sorry... this is ridiculous at this point. @levelsio : I just want to suggest everyone who's still on WordPress now to move to https://ghost.org/ immediately At least until this absolutely crazy behavior by WordPress stops The people at Ghost are too humble to step in so I thought I'll write the tweet for them They have a Robin / @solarise_webdev : @wp_acf This is absolutely crazy, seriously saddened to see this happening. ACF has had a prime spot in my web dev toolkit for a long time. Happy to continue supporting the official version, there's absolutely no need for the attempt to take it out your hands, it's been given a lot of Johannes Siipola / @johannessiipola : @wp_acf Step 1: Block the plugin authors from accessing the plugin directory Step 2: Claim that plugin is now unmaintained and presents a security issue Step 3: Forcefully fork and rename the plugin, taking it over from the original developers Unbelievable stuff Jon Dingman / @dingman : @wp_acf It's time for Matt to redesign and relinquish all power and influence over WordPress. This has gone too far. Greg Robson / @greginbytes : @wp_acf I'll continue to use ACF Pro. @photomatt is undermining the entire system of trust in the plugin repository and deployment system. @wordpressdotcom appears to have no checks and balances. Is any commercial plugin developer safe now?! @dhh : This is totally crazy. Like if the operators of rubygems dot org just decided to expropriate the official Rails gems, hand over control to a new team, and lock the core team out of it. We're in uncharted and dangerous territory for open source now. What a sad sight. Forums: r/technology : WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin r/webdev : Wordpress.org takes over ACF plugin r/theprimeagen : Matt forked ACF r/WPDrama : Secure Custom Fields See also Mediagazer