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xnx 56 minutes ago [-]
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.
tptacek 20 minutes ago [-]
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.
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.
legitster 2 minutes ago [-]
I still have one project running on Wordpress.
It was also the worst absolute time to pull these stunts. Between static site generators, LLMs, and the open internet dying - he couldn't have picked a worse time to do his massive mask reveal power play. Wordpress was on the precipice of irrelevance and he gave it a massive shove.
bsoqk 25 minutes ago [-]
If I had to stop using all the software whose politics I find problematic I would have to earn a living breaking rocks.
sneak 18 minutes ago [-]
I don’t think that’s been true for 10 years or more.
ls-a 2 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
dgellow 20 minutes ago [-]
Deciding to not use Wordpress isn’t that hard though
stephbook 15 minutes ago [-]
I have an amateur website up and running where club members can book an accomodation.
Most other software wants more than the $100 one time payment that some random WordPress plugin demanded (VikBooking.)
krapp 10 minutes ago [-]
A lot of people use Wordpress for multi-user or business sites and there isn't a replacement that will meet their needs that also doesn't require a higher degree of technical knowledge than they have. Any alternative more complex than Wordpress's install or that doesn't have feature parity with Wordpress' plugins is going to be a no-go for most of them.
Freak_NL 18 minutes ago [-]
WooCommerce.
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.
(WooCommerce being a popular WordPress plugin.)
slopinthebag 45 minutes ago [-]
its also hard to move off of
collingreen 39 minutes ago [-]
What makes it hard, these days?
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?
slopinthebag 28 minutes ago [-]
its getting buy-in, especially from people entrenched in their workflows, convincing management and sometimes legal depending on what plugins are being used.
sixothree 37 minutes ago [-]
It certainly is. But I won't be recommending it for new projects. Imagine how bad that would make you look.
monkey_monkey 3 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
chaosharmonic 45 minutes ago [-]
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.
flerchin 1 hours ago [-]
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.
jordanb 58 minutes ago [-]
They could have known they wouldn't succeed but they could have decided their fiduciary duty requires them to either try or resign.
hoten 54 minutes ago [-]
Didn't they craft themselves a nice golden parachute if fired? Then proceeded to kick off events that would guarantee their dismissal?
That's less fiduciary duty and more hacking a payday.
throw0101a 31 minutes ago [-]
> That's less fiduciary duty and more hacking a payday.
A large golden parachute for firing a board member could be a disincentive mechanism to do it: a 'poison pill' of a kind.
They could have felt they were doing the right thing, and making a public statement of the situation, but knew it was a bit of a kamikaze tactic and so made it more painful for when the eventual backlash occurs.
fwipsy 4 minutes ago [-]
Regardless of intent, if true (haven't verified myself) it seems like a hell of a perverse incentive.
collingreen 38 minutes ago [-]
Getting out of a toxic job while failing up. Business can be strange sometimes.
doikor 53 minutes ago [-]
Yeah the minority share holders can’t sue them for not trying to do their job even if it lead to them getting fired. (They could have quit too)
If they truly believe the CEO was destroying the company/its value.
smoovb 33 minutes ago [-]
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.
sosborn 19 minutes ago [-]
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.
dghlsakjg 7 minutes ago [-]
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.
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.
pinkmuffinere 1 hours ago [-]
1. Wow his profile picture is so extremely fluorescent
2. I guess I should move my blog off Wordpress
eknkc 1 hours ago [-]
How the hell does this look like it is burning a hole in my screen?
It's an HDR image, I think.[0] At the moment, only some browsers show it as brighter—Firefox on macOS, for example, doesn't support HDR images and I had to open the page in Safari to see it for myself.
It's an 8-bit PNG of a magenta patch (with a dash of white), but the ICC profile is set to Rec.2020 PQ. So I think the high 255 values of 8-bit magenta/white will get mapped to very top of the PQ curve, which is like 10,000 nits (or whatever brightness your display can muster)
bloudermilk 60 minutes ago [-]
How does a CEO pull off resisting an ouster and firing the board?
jordanb 55 minutes ago [-]
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
doikor 57 minutes ago [-]
By personally owning 84% of the voting shares. This coup was doomed to fail from the start.
dylan604 44 minutes ago [-]
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.
VCFundedGenYer 48 minutes ago [-]
The same way Mark Zuckerburg does - he maintains majority control.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692654
It was also the worst absolute time to pull these stunts. Between static site generators, LLMs, and the open internet dying - he couldn't have picked a worse time to do his massive mask reveal power play. Wordpress was on the precipice of irrelevance and he gave it a massive shove.
Most other software wants more than the $100 one time payment that some random WordPress plugin demanded (VikBooking.)
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.
(WooCommerce being a popular WordPress plugin.)
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?
That's less fiduciary duty and more hacking a payday.
A large golden parachute for firing a board member could be a disincentive mechanism to do it: a 'poison pill' of a kind.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan
They could have felt they were doing the right thing, and making a public statement of the situation, but knew it was a bit of a kamikaze tactic and so made it more painful for when the eventual backlash occurs.
If they truly believe the CEO was destroying the company/its value.
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.
2. I guess I should move my blog off Wordpress
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1998201848008679424/OGH...
[0] see, for example, this submission from the front page a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49402521.