Discourse announced layoffs today. From the post:

"Our revenue has been steady but our goal now is to reach profitability at a streamlined cost structure. "

I build workouts in Garmin Connect (web version). It's not great, but it works.

> I'm pretty sure WP Engine could patch Wordpress to use its own infrastructure, so this isn't a really as much of a security risk as people claim.

Patching core WordPress is straightforward, but there's also tens of the thousands of plugins and themes on WordPress.org. Until WP Engine can create a mirror of the plugin and theme repos, there will be security risks.

Mirroring is not difficult, I've done it in order to perform code analysis on plugins at scale.

Well, it definitely becomes harder when you cannot (officially) access any of the WP infra, including themes and plugins.

The cost of providing free ice-cream to WPengine is $218,685 or 7.9% of wordpress.org total income! ($2,768,057). But if the people eating up all the ice-cream you give them for free take you to court.... then you gotta cut off that ice-cream. WPengine should apologise and starting slinging cash to Automattic.

    WordCamp expenditures: $2,159,747 (82.81% of total expenses)
    Meetup expenditures: $229,571 (8.80% of total expenses)
        Total Meetup.com dues: $224,249
        Total Meetup Venue rental & exp: $5,322
    Operations: $218,685 (8.39% of total expenses) <------ HOSTING PLUGINS/THEMES ETC

What a shame. This feels like a defining moment for WordPress. I'm not optimistic this is going to end well for anyone in the WP ecosystem.

WP Engine hasn't acknowledged this yet, so I hope it's a bug or a mistake.

Confirmed by WP Engine: https://wpenginestatus.com/incidents/640187

That's some Sicilian Mafia "offering you protection" type of situation!

A link to yesterday's conversation after WP Engine sent their cease-and-desist letter to Automattic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41631912

In response, here's the cease and desist Automattic sent to WP Engine:

https://automattic.com/2024/09/25/open-source-trademarks-wp-...

There are three reasons I want to pay of my mortgage, even though my interest rate is 2.99%:

1. Minimize financial risk. There are no risk-free investments. There is no guarantee I'll have a high income in the future. And there is no guarantee that the value of my home will remain higher than my mortgage. 2. Peace of mind 3. I don't want to deal with mortgage loan servicers. My loan seems to get sold every couple years and I have to log into sketchy, outdated websites with web addresses like phhloansphereservicingdigital.bkiconnect.com.

1. If I put all the money I would have put towards the mortgage into savings and don't touch it then there is no risk. That money is FDIC insured and I get the interest monthly

2. I understand but see #1

3. This is completely fair but for 2.75% gain I'll put up with that

I'm surprised that memo leaked. Automattic is very open with employees and trusts them not to share internal information. While I worked there (2013-2018) I don't remember any news leaking.

Even when we do leak, it's thoughtful. You can tell whoever did it cropped out a bunch of stuff, including the text that would have tripped the Texts acquisition that wasn't announced at the time. I still don't love it, but at least it speaks to our hiring process finding people with high integrity.

Back then I was still excited about new OS X releases. I remember walking to Best Buy to purchase the physical copy on release day.