Open Source Tools And Their Communities... The Good The Bad, and the Ugly

I like trying different open source tools. That’s originally why I put this blog on Ghost and not WordPress. The latter is a tool I’m very passionate about.

I’m happy with my decision, especially after the latest negative diatribe/rant/freakout from Matt Mullenweg on X/Twitter, I’m starting to be glad I have this newsletter hosted on Ghost.

Matt Mullenweg went on a rampage last week on Twitter, when people in the WordPress community had some, calm criticism for one of his decisions. I don’t want to go into the whole drama here, because that’s not the point of this piece. If you want to seek out what the hell happened you can find it quite easily. It’s still smoldering weeks later.

Almost A WordPress OG

I’ve used WordPress since 2010-ish, I’m not one of the earliest adopters of the CMS, but I am early to the game. I’ve been active in my local WordPress communities in the Philadelphia area, for which there is quite a bit.

Sour Taste In My Mouth

But with Matt’s negative rhetoric on Twitter recently, it does sour me quite a bit on the project and giving back to a tool that I make a living using. I have yet to see an apology of any kind from Matt for his behavior.

Origins Of Ghost

Ghost’s core team came from WordPress. John O’Nolan the head poohbah here at Ghost was a core contributor to WordPress not to long ago.

I don’t have the full story of why John jumped ship and decided to make Ghost. But, I’m sure it was the bullsh*t that happens inside of the WordPress project. Maybe even from Matt himself. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Now am I giving up on the WordPress community? Hell no! I’m still active in a number of WordPress communities and meetups. But am I going to put Matt Mullenweg on pedestal like I once did? F*ck no.

You can see by how my language is getting more colorful. This latest controversy really got under my skin. It’s intentional that I show it. I’m not going to color my language to make it SFW.

Matt Medeiros, a Matt that I am very fond of and look up to quite a bit, both in the WordPress and podcasting space. Runs a great WordPress community and podcast called the WP Minute. You need to check it out. A previous podcast, Medeiros addressed his thoughts on this.

It’s worth a listen.

That’s all for now. What do you guys think about Mullenweg and the WordPress project post firestorm? Let me know, I’m interested in your views.

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Find Of The Week

RSS readers are a dime a dozen. And some are way more expensive than others. Feedly is on the pricier side but well worth it. It, of course, has AI that helps you find stories, but it also has a newsletter feature that gives you an email to get Newsletters filtered into your account instead of your main email account.

I bought in, way back, a lifetime account. So, I’m getting a lot of these new features for a lot less it seems. But, I’ve tried a bunch of different RSS readers and Feedly is the best by far.

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Until Next Week!

As always stay curious!

– Seth