Fireship pointed out that the board members gave themselves a generous severance package in the very brief interim, so that was very possibly the whole plan.
Yeah, if Mullenweg really did control a majority of the voting shares, the previous board are the villains in this story no matter what you think of Mullenweg.
That was my guess:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692654">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692654</a>
I'm surprised anyone still uses wordpress after this whole sh!tshow, but outside HN folks probably don't even know. Just reading about it about it puts me off from the product and company.
If I had to stop using all the software whose politics I find problematic I would have to earn a living breaking rocks.
WooCommerce.<p>Unless you want and can go with Shopify and go all in on their platform, WooCommerce is what you need to host an online store on hosting of your own choosing. Alternatives seem to lack the numbers to tackle issues when something goes wrong without too much downtime.<p>(WooCommerce being a popular WordPress plugin.)
Yeah, I'm left-swiping anything that involves working on it, outside of maybe being interested in helping people migrate to anything else. I don't know enough PHP to maintain one anyway, don't like what little of the language I do have exposure to, and want nothing to do with this toxic ecosystem.
its also hard to move off of
What makes it hard, these days?<p>I did plenty of WP back in the day and I agree, historically, but each of the strong answers I had in my mind (db integration, editor, plugins, themes) are weakened substantially by the AI agents' ability to port a working site to a new framework. I totally agree for normal users still but for devs taking jobs on this do you think the barriers to switching have come down in size?
It certainly is. But I won't be recommending it for new projects. Imagine how bad that would make you look.
It says he has 84% of the voting shares. Is there any possible way that the board could have been successful? Regardless of Mullenberg, (and I know he's controversial) a coup that is pre-ordained to fail seems like value destroying negligence.
Wordpress does not seem long for this world. How much of the Wordpress ecosystem is pure wasted resources, trying to be accommodating for all possibilities? As people see how easy Claude or Codex makes it to get off flat price Wordpress hosting and on to usage based platforms like Vercel, Wordpress usage will fade out. Feels like bloatware has no place in they coming world of AI customized software builds.
Most of the organizations/departments running wordpress aren't interested in customized software builds and all of the infrastructure that requires. They want something they can pay a simple monthly fee for, and host it with a company that deals with security, backup, etc.
So many people in this thread completely misunderstand what WP is being used for and by who. Most users simply have no idea that Automattic exists and probably wouldn’t care if they knew what’s going on.<p>WP users want a mature, easy to use framework, with lots of plugins, and a tutorial that can show you how to get anything done. Wordpress is the piece of software that kind of defines that genre. The fact that every host offers a Wordpress package seals the deal.
1. Wow his profile picture is so extremely fluorescent<p>2. I guess I should move my blog off Wordpress
Come at the king you best not miss...
How does a CEO pull off resisting an ouster and firing the board?
Apparently corporate structure gave him power over the board. Historically this kind of structure was considered undesirable and illegal in a public company, but beginning in the 2000s there was this idea that "visionary founders" should be able to demand absolute control, ex: Zuckerberg
By personally owning 84% of the voting shares. This coup was doomed to fail from the start.
Being on the board is a Sisyphean effort based on the weighted voting setup. Some seem to be slower to realize this. At that point, they could quit and walk away with nothing, or as others have suggested, this could have been done deliberately to at least get a payday on the way out.
The same way Mark Zuckerburg does - he maintains majority control.
Looks like the Altman Maneuver...