https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-royalty-and-mad-kings-a8f79d16
Response to DHH | Matt Mullenweg (archive.ph)
Oh boy. Things are interesting.
I think this situation highlights how things don’t align between capitalism and open source: open source software is collaborative and shared. Tons of free work made available to all. Getting very wealthy on top of it, like Matt and DHH, is private and not shared. So we end up with CEOs talking like they’re simple individuals trying to contribute to the world, except that they’re now rich enough (as a result of luck, timing and collaborative efforts) that it makes them out of touch with the rest of the world just like the CEOs of much bigger companies.
You can just read a dozen of their blog posts to understand that. For people at the edge of collaborative work, remote work, cutting edge technology involving tons of automation, after a pandemic, they just write about expensive gadgets or ultra niche expensive hobbies instead of reflecting on the world and genuinely trying to change it for the best. There’s an opportunity right now to shift things dramatically with AI and driverless cars and remote work. Both CEOs should be obsessed by this or at least write about it. They don’t.
Contributing more to the world would be to open things more, to give people the best experience, each time we can. WordPress should be much simpler to deploy, maintain and transfer. WordPress should allow writers to use native apps from whichever device and operating system they use. WordPress should allow readers to customize page rendering the way they are pleased.
Still not the case after 20 years.
37Signals should make Hey an email client available to all devices and operating systems. For a better world, it shouldn’t be tied to an email address or a subscription.
Automattic and 37Signals have positioned themselves as “better than big tech” while behaving exactly just like big tech, from locking in customers to using trademarks and equity against folks. It just doesn’t align with their image, and in a crisis like the WordPress/WPEngine thingy, it shows.
This lack of incentive alignment in the open source world has always felt wrong to me. The veneer of coolness, the calculated greed. Socialize the work, privatize the profit. It’s all disappointing for the fact that the software world is so fluid and organic and multi-directional. Dictators might be useful in this chaos, but that never lasts.