*NOTE*: This isn’t a normal blog post; this is a declaration of war. It is tactical and dirty because it was a dirty fight already before I got here.

Wait, I thought I was done fighting about free and open source software…

Yes, I distinctly remember closing down my old FOSS-focused blog, delivering my final battle report for the Great Linux Desktop Wars, getting one last laugh at the con artists I helped shut down, and moving on. The mobile market gives the read-only users their software, and we makers and doers have our laptops, so everyone’s happy. Android rules the mobile, Linux rules the server and industrial sector, it’s Miller time, right?

Dr. Roy Schestowitz, one of my old comrades in the FOSS wars, gave me a nice send-off in 2013. So yes, I must have properly retired.

Why is this still happening? Well, actually, a new thing is happening.

The Old Thing that was happening: Everybody had nothing  but desktops and laptops. Makers and doers, us working folk, needed these tools to make and do stuff, using Linux and command lines and programming. Read-only users, people who do nothing but consume, wanted computers to be dumbed down TV sets for them to drool on, while hunting us geeks down in the streets to brand our foreheads with the scarlet “elitist” and then force everyone to use Microsoft Windows.

(To make a long story short, OK?)

That thing stopped happening because hallelujah, mobile came along and saved us. The read-onlys could have their TV set in their pocket and never cared about our tools again. It’s been a loooooong time since I heard anybody attack a command line.

But here’s the New Thing happening: Now the read-onlys outnumber the makers 9-to-1, and they are in charge. The read-onlys want to dumb down our tools anyway because they want everybody to use mobile like them and can’t see why we need powerful, complicated tools to do stuff. If they can’t get us onto mobile, beside them, so that no work gets done, they want to break the tools we use on laptop so we’re screwed anyway. Out of spite.

Dangerous things happen when you put a read-only in charge of an open source software project, especially when he’s the CEO of the company that owns it, and is – stop me if you’ve heard this before – yet another trust fund baby born into wealth and prestige who spits on people who do work.

Again, I thought this was over. I don’t want to go back in the trenches, I thought everyone had learned that lesson!

This is about WordPress, Gutenberg, and Matt Mullenweg

Get used to those three terms, because you’ll be seeing them a lot around here in the coming months.

Yes, this time we’re fighting for the soul of WordPress. Forgot about that one, didn’t you, Pete? Yes, I did, like a dumbass.

Here’s the story so far: WordPress has used an editor interface (nominally based on tinyMCE) since the day it was born, and nobody complained about it, and all of us have been getting work done with it.

Take note: WordPress, run by 60 million websites, 33.6% of the top 10 million websites. The literal cornerstone of eCommerce itself. I would hazard a theory that what happens to WordPress has more impact on the world’s economy than all the world’s stock markets combined. You think COVID-19 took a kaka on the economy? Read on, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

So, WordPress is controlled by a company called Automattic, and this company is FORCING a new editor interface upon us called “Gutenberg.” Which starts out spitting on the memory of Johannes Gutenberg before moving on to spit on those of us who do work.

Gutenberg sucks. Gutenberg is limited in what it can do, but moreover is an interface which is heavily mouse-dependent, and anti-text. I will go into more detail on the many ways in which Gutenberg is a flaming dumpster later, but for now here are some reviews to get you started. There are 2062 one-star reviews of Gutenberg. As of this writing. Feel free to take screenshots, because Automattic actually removes criticism of Gutenberg regularly. No, I’m not kidding, that is one of the deleted ones, but you can see the subject in the URL.

All, and I do mean “all” of us in the blog community have been relying on a plugin for the past couple years to squelch Gutenberg and let us use the old editor. The old editor based on tinyMCE, which works like every common-sense text editor you have even seen, like Word, OpenOffice, Google Docs, Notepad, anything.

Well, that option is going bye-bye! Starting December 31 2021, the option to use the editor will no longer be available, to be replaced by this new anti-editor Gutenberg. See that <h2> header I put back there? You do that with shift-alt-2 in tinyMCE, without even lifting your fingers from the keyboard. Gutenberg takes that away. You have to use several mouse clicks now. Isn’t that stupid?

Well, get used to it. Gutenberg slashes away everything that ever made sense about any editor ever. Shortcut keys, commands, functions, features, that’s all going away. All to introduce a “block based” paradigm where you drag and drop stuff like a Tetris game. You know, because that’s how you write words. In “WORD”Press.

There’s more to this story than stupid though. There is also intentional evil, in the form of greed, ulterior motives, and hatred of people who get things done. I’m not exaggerating, and will back up every word of this with links to proof.

• The “ulterior motive” is because Automattic wants to “keep up” with (ugh!) Medium and Squarespace, two products that have been eating WordPress’ dust for years and pose no threat whatsoever.
• The money part is because Gutenberg will make Automattic money, or at least so it thinks. (spoilers: NO)
• The hatred of people who get things done… That part needs some introduction.

Blame Matt Mullenweg

 

Matt Mullenweg. He runs Automattic, which runs WordPress, and he wants Gutenberg to happen right goddamned NOW, like his ass was on fire, and it’s going to be rammed up all our asses too whether we like it or not. Which is unanimously “NOT” because at this point, every good word you hear about Gutenberg right now on the web is bought-and-paid astroturf.

Dude’s rich as all get out – he also owns Tumblr, if that tells you anything – and surprisingly enough for the guy behind WordPress, his hobby is photography, which is why his twitter handle is @photomatt. Ohhh, visual block editor interface, visual hobby, he likes pictures and not words, get it now?

Here’s just a few quotes from Matt Mullenweg regarding why Gutenberg belongs pounded up all our asses:

• “This will serve as the foundation for future improvements to WordPress, including blocks as a way not just to design posts and pages, but also entire sites.”
• “Users will finally be able to build the sites they see in their imaginations”
• “It’s an attempt to improve how users interact with their content in a fundamentally visual way”
• “it can be easy to forget the learning curve that exists for people being introduced to WordPress for the first time”
• “It was time for a design paradigm that allowed us to move past the messy patchwork of shortcodes and text.”

No, really, the guy in charge of WORDPRESS doesn’t like the messy patchwork of TEXT. Keep rereading that sentence until it sinks in.

Stop here and ask yourself one important thing:

If this was about users, then WHY TAKE THE OPTION AWAY? Why FORCE everyone to use your visual block-based opium if you have the slightest faith that it’s actually good? Why actually REMOVE features that people use? Why not leave tinyMCE in core and let users decide? We’ve been using the text-based web (It’s called WORD Press! DUUUUH!) for 28 years and counting with no complaint. Nobody, not one single user, asked for this. Every user, from hobbyist to industrial, will be crippled by this.

Now just imagine I took the time to draw a picture of Matt Mullenweg pissing on the face of Sir Tim berners-Lee, until I get around to drawing it. What does silly ol’ Tim know, said @photoMatt, the future of the WWW is BLOCKS dammit!

If you’re not screaming in outrage at the above quotes and wondering what’s so bad about them, go find an older computer person and ask them. Ask them why PASCAL and BASIC failed. Ask them why Microsoft Windows changed back from Windows 8. Ask them what killed GIMP. Ask them why we don’t all code in Scratch. Ask them why Pol Pot didn’t do so well running things in Cambodia (loosely connected via a common thread of anti-intellectualism).

Or just ask why whatever happened to Microsoft Bob:

Spoilers: Dumbing down technology always backfires in every direction at the same time. Veteran users hate you and leave, new users hate you and follow the veterans, everybody just hates you. And the track record for technology tools when a political fascist took them over is a landscape of devastation throughout history.

I repeat: This is one third of the World Wide Web economy in this man’s hands!

Billions and billions of dollars, whole industries, millions of professions, years and years of work about to be destroyed. Tutorials to become obsolete, plug-ins to stop working, compatibility broken, hundreds of bugs in the code reported and deleted without action. The life of everyone who has ever had to deal with WordPress is about to get harder, and the only justification for it is Matt Mullenweg’s ego.

We have still to yet scratch the surface of this disaster. Start with accessibility.

• Gutenberg is bad for accessibility
• Official finding: Gutenberg is REALLY bad for accessibility
• So bad that the leader of the accessibility team RESIGNED in protest of the forced rollout of Gutenberg!
• In the Core Web Vitals era, WordPress is out of touch, says Search Engine Journal

“Is it just me or is WordPress Gutenberg absolutely horrible?” – Read those comments. One user puts it: “There are 3 million+ subscribers to plugins that disable Gutenberg. That should tell you everything you need to know.”

The surface. Barely scratched. I’ll be blogging this for a long time to come, but this is just the warning shot. The world has 20 months from now to prepare for the Mullenweg eCommerce apocalypse, unless we can stop it.

…unless we can stop it!

May I propose: Sue him. All of us. Class action “The people vs. Matt Mullenweg.”

From now on, all of us can document every single hour we spend struggling with the new interface, fixing whatever Gutenberg breaks, explaining Gutenberg to clients, fixing Gutenberg issues for clients, rebuilding our eCommerce sites, keeping the IT and web design and security team overtime to fix Gutenberg problems, and all the ancillary costs that pile up. Bill Matt Mullenweg for those hours, and when he does not pay us, sue him for the damages. Don’t forget every penny lost in income while the crisis remains unresolved.

One third of the top websites on the Internet, I’m sure there’s some profit being made out there somewhere. And remember, this isn’t just about money. This is about stopping a power-mad dictator who wants to control everything posted on the Internet.

I didn’t mention Automattic is sniffing WordPress user data without consent to try to report good numbers about Gutenberg. Illegal in 28 countries and in violation of WordPress’ own plug-in guidelines.

You’ll be hearing more about this!