*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.

Continue reading “WordPress Belongs To All Of Us; Why Let Matt Mullenweg Take It Away?”