Michael:
[0:00] On this week’s episode, WordPress goes completely scorched-earth nuclear? Or are they just doing what’s right? This is people’s court, and you will decide. Or we all will decide, I guess.

Ryan:
[0:12] We’ll decide for you in people’s court.

Michael:
[0:15] We’ll decide what we think you can agree or not agree, and there we go. Welcome to Destination Linux, where we discuss the latest news, hot topics, gaming, mobile, and all things open source and Linux. My name is Michael, and joining me are the human emulators of tech enthusiasm, Jill and Ryan.

Jill:
[0:34] Hi, everyone.

Ryan:
[0:36] You know, it’s all simulation anyways. Who cares, right? Who cares? That’s what they say. It’s all simulation.

Michael:
[0:44] And it’s all, yeah, exactly. It doesn’t matter anymore. Now let’s get this show on the road toward Destination Linux.

Ryan:
[0:57] This week, our feedback comes from Rob. Rob has this to say. This is a comment on hiring and starting out for newbies or the FNGs. I don’t know what that stands for.

Michael:
[1:08] No idea what that means.

Ryan:
[1:09] It could be something bad. It could be something good. I have no clue.

Michael:
[1:13] Fresh new graduates, maybe?

Ryan:
[1:15] Oh, yeah. Fresh new graduates. Possibly, yeah. Let’s go with that. In the industry, when hiring kids out of school, I’ve looked for character traits rather than skills or experience, experience specifically candidates who have a technical aptitude have an interest in computers are interested in how stuff actually works rather than just being gamers or social media, kings or queens be able to communicate and have a work ethic to achieve the last one all they need to have done is held down a weekend or part-time job pretty much doing anything it just proves to me they will turn up and follow instructions and try to get the job done so rob if you haven’t listen to prior episode. We had a young person write in asking for advice, trying to get into system architect or system engineer or system administrator. They were trying to get a system administrator position, wanted some advice and things. So Rob kindly wrote in giving some advice from a hiring perspective, manager’s perspective, which I think is really appreciated. They go on to say, the way I always try to treat them is that I give them problems to solve or stuff to achieve with just enough guidance to get them going in the right way. For the first few months, it will take longer than spoon feeding them direct instructions. But the end result is you get engineers who can get stuff done and troubleshoot their own mistakes. Thanks again, Rob.

Ryan:
[2:35] So, Rob, first of all, really appreciate you sending this in. And a lot of kids who are trying to start out their careers are in this really frustrating situation, part where they’re like, they go for interviews and they’re like, well, you don’t have enough experience. And they’re like, okay, but in order to get experience, I have to get a job and I can’t get a job without having the experience. And so I really appreciate the fact, Rob, that you not only obviously hired students, but you thought about how you can direct them in a way that they’ll be most successful when you did that, which I think is really important because it is really important to have a mixture of all kinds of different employees, in my experience. When you have a very diverse group of people in thought, experience, age, you end up having a way more powerful team. In my experience of, shoot, nearly 15 years of leadership, that’s always been the case. A lot of managers and leaders will seek people out that think just like them, and they work just like them. And their teams will do good, but they’ll never be as good as that team that has a lot that kind of, I don’t know, engages that thought of thinking outside the box.

Michael:
[3:56] They’re innovative people.

Jill:
[3:58] Innovation.

Ryan:
[3:59] And so, Rob, clearly this is something that you’ve done, that you’ve thought a lot about. And when you brought them on, it is, as a manager though, you have to realize when you’re bringing somebody new on, it does have a ramp up period. And sometimes that can be very costly. If you’re in the middle of a project and you need to get that project done, you’ve got these deadlines, it’s really hard to be like, oh, let me hire a student that I’m going to have to ramp up through this and possibly have to do a lot of handholding and things with versus getting that person that’s got 20 years experience on the team who can basically hit the road running theoretically. Although sometimes that person with 20 years experience is a complete deadweight too. So you’ve Just because they’ve got experience doesn’t mean they’re going to be great in the job. I think this is great.

Michael:
[4:44] Sometimes they hit the ground running, and sometimes they just hit the ground.

Ryan:
[4:47] Yeah, exactly. I think this is great advice, though, overall. You know, you want to show that you have aptitude to do things. And a lot of resumes with young folks will put things like their hobbies or video games and all that type of stuff. Even if that is true, I mean, we all play video games here. I think it would be better off doing some of the advice like we talked about last time. You’re setting up your own home lab, you know, volunteering for bug hunting and fixing bugs.

Michael:
[5:17] Trying to do pull requests for a open source project, stuff like that.

Ryan:
[5:20] Yeah, exactly. I think that stuff is the type of thing that you want to list out and really show that you have a really strong work ethic. Because that’s the thing as a hiring manager that you’re thinking about is, okay, I’m going to have to handhold them a little bit. But if they’ve got really strong work ethic, and I don’t have to keep calling them and going, where are you at? Are you going to show up on time? Are you still working on this? Are you going to get it done? It’s a huge relief as a manager when you don’t have to worry about those things. So, Rob, fantastic advice. Really appreciate you sending in that feedback. What are your thoughts, Jill?

Jill:
[5:53] Oh, yeah, Rob, again, thank you so much for writing in with your fantastic hiring tips. This was, this is great. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve also always told my students that they have to have a good work ethic, be responsible, show up on time and have a good attitude. Just, just like they do when they come to my classroom, they got to show up on time and have a good attitude and want to get, you know, work done. And it was, it was extremely crucial in the industry that I was teaching, which was animation, where sometimes the students would have to work two and three days, sometimes without sleep. So because you have to get you have those deadlines, you know, whether you’re working in TV or film. So it was, it’s insane. It’s a little insane. So you have normal hours and then all of a sudden you go for several weeks without very little sleep.

Ryan:
[6:47] Yep, absolutely.

Jill:
[6:50] But as long as you have the passion and the enthusiasm to do it, you’ll get it done.

Michael:
[6:56] Yeah, proactiveness is a very powerful thing. Because if you like the whole work ethic thing, people will think, well, how do I prove that? You know, because once you have to have the job in order to say you have the work ethic, but there’s also elements that you could go be proactive. Like we’re talking about doing pull requests and stuff like that for developers. There’s also testing things that are like a home lab for assisted mans and all sorts of stuff you can do that you can answer the questions to prove that you have experience, even when you don’t have like a work experience. But also proactiveness is a very important thing in the sense that there is something that happens in every interview that younger people or and a lot of people in general don’t properly do is there’s standard questions. And they ask you these questions, even though you know that they’re going to ask it, they ask it because people fumble on them. Like, for example, where do you see yourself in five years? They don’t want you to say something that’s like a generic thing. They want you to tell them the process of how you’re going to get to it. And what the bigger thing is, they’re going to ask you the question of, do you have anything to ask me? Like, do you have any questions for me? If you do not, it will sound like you didn’t do your homework. So have at least a couple, maybe three or more. And then that way you’ve proven that you’re proactive and that will help it much faster in the interview.

Ryan:
[8:20] Yeah. And if you want some sample questions to ask at the end, just use some from our lightning round interviews. I’m kidding. Don’t do that.

Michael:
[8:31] Okay. First of all, Ryan’s suggestion is absolutely awesome. And I would like to know how many people pick muffins over cupcakes when you’re being interviewed. Don’t actually do that, but I would love to know.

Ryan:
[8:45] It would be a funny skit.

Jill:
[8:46] You know what, though? But that’s a great point is to have something fun to lighten up the interview with. Questions like that are always fun.

Ryan:
[8:53] You got to make sure it’s the right room for that.

Michael:
[8:55] You have to gauge the room for sure.

Ryan:
[8:59] That one I would use with caution and uh yeah maybe if you don’t care about getting the job you know just roll the dice and try it like hey what’s your favorite candy bar that’s my question what you should do is have three.

Michael:
[9:12] Real questions and then finish it off with a silly question you shouldn’t actually do that but that’s a way you could do it without coming across as being.

Ryan:
[9:21] Like just nonsense great advice that Rob gave to us just completely obliterating these poor souls ability to ever get a job, you know?

Michael:
[9:28] So to be serious though, do not use the lightning round questions. Listen to Rob.

Jill:
[9:33] Thank you, Rob.

Ryan:
[9:34] Listen to Rob.

Michael:
[9:35] Be proactive and listen to Rob.

Ryan:
[9:37] Yeah, there you go. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for your feedback. Look, you could be part of the show. This is a big part of our show every single week. Your feedback matters. It makes this show better by having you write in and tell us your thoughts, comments, things that you’ve went through, struggles, feedback on the show. You can even write us about why you’re disappointed Michael hates Peanut the Squirrel. These are things we’re all trying to figure out.

Michael:
[10:02] How dare you put that on me in the show? He’s been saying that for the last 20-30 minutes before we started the show to the patrons.

Ryan:
[10:12] And now he’s putting…

Michael:
[10:13] Don’t put this on me. I have nothing to do with any of that.

Ryan:
[10:16] You should have reported those people.

Michael:
[10:20] People, I have nothing against Peanut. Ryan is making stuff up.

Jill:
[10:25] Off topic. Eek! There goes a squirrel.

Ryan:
[10:28] Oh, look, Squirrel. All right. Send in your comments to destinationlinux.net/comments if you’re still listening.

Michael:
[10:37] Squirrel is really high.

Ryan:
[10:37] Or go to destinationlinux.net/forum and put your comments there, your thoughts, your questions. It may get picked to be part of the show. And if it didn’t get picked, don’t think it’s because you didn’t send a good question. It’s likely because Michael forgot to send it to me. And that’s why it remained a show.

Michael:
[10:53] 100% knew he was going to say that. And I felt like that was coming. And then when he said it, I realized it might be true.

Ryan:
[11:02] Yeah, sometimes.

Michael:
[11:04] There have been times where I have not sent you things because I forgot. Like a week later.

Ryan:
[11:10] Yeah, so we’re going to move on, Michael. Move on, okay?

Ryan:
[11:13] You’re telling me WordPress that there’s something going on here. And there’s some drama, some tea, as my wife would call it. There’s some tea going on with WordPress. And we’re going to cover it here?

Michael:
[11:28] We’re going to cover it here because I want to.

Ryan:
[11:31] Is it hot sizzling tea? Is it boiling?

Michael:
[11:34] It’s nuclear, in fact. Scorched earth nuclear.

Ryan:
[11:39] WordPress is just like, I don’t know, it seems so innocent. It’s just a little website building program. What could possibly be wrong here? I’m fascinated. Let’s go.

Michael:
[11:49] Well, basically it boils down to money, but we’re going to get to that in a second.

Ryan:
[11:53] Oh, well, yeah.

Michael:
[11:54] So for those who don’t know if you’ve never heard of wordpress i highly doubt that because you’re in this space watching this show but if you haven’t wordpress is a content management system it’s a piece of software that helps you build a website and be able to manage a website and that sort of stuff and it’s basically powering around 45 percent of all websites it is a staggering amount of so like front page.

Ryan:
[12:20] It’s like front page.

Michael:
[12:21] Get out you’re not allowed to have this conversation.

Jill:
[12:24] No comparison.

Ryan:
[12:27] You said get out.

Michael:
[12:29] You’re not allowed to have this conversation now.

Ryan:
[12:31] I loved the front page back in the day. Front page is underrated.

Michael:
[12:34] You would.

Ryan:
[12:35] Yes. It was so good.

Michael:
[12:37] You hate peanut and you love front page. That’s exactly what it is.

Ryan:
[12:41] You hate peanut.

Michael:
[12:42] No, you do.

Ryan:
[12:43] You’re a scroll hater.

Michael:
[12:44] This is a nonsense conversation.

Jill:
[12:46] We should go back to the text editor days of making web pages.

Ryan:
[12:49] That’s when it was great.

Michael:
[12:50] Please no. Please no. So WordPress is a very popular, very powerful in terms of how much of the web it’s been running software. And there is a little bit of some conflict happening in the WordPress community. You could call it drama. You could call it tea for some reason if you wanted to. And it’s basically that the the founder of WordPress and Automatic and the foundation and all that stuff has decided to make some moves that has been questioned by a lot of people, even including leading to mass resignation of the company Automatic, which he also found or founded and runs.

Ryan:
[13:38] So it’s like mass resignation as in like two people left or what?

Michael:
[13:42] As in over 150. The actual number, I don’t know because there was two different sessions and we only know how many people left from one offer. So there was like a severance package offer saying that if you want, if you don’t agree with what we’re doing, you can leave. and 159 people left at that point but they said they only gave like three months severance pay and then they also said uh okay if some people were saying they would have left but they couldn’t because they don’t they didn’t that that’s not enough time and not enough severance or whatever and then they did it again later for nine months severance pay but you only had four hours to let them know inside of slack that you were going to leave so it was there’s some weird stuff here so weird.

Ryan:
[14:28] Okay so rob will agree this is not a great way to run a company yeah not a great way to run a cop company.

Michael:
[14:34] Uh yeah this is odd no.

Ryan:
[14:36] Matter what the rest of the story is, Hear me out, WordPress, because I know you’re listening. I got you, right? You’re like, oh, how do you know? We’re not watching you through your phone. We just know. We know you listen to the show. You’re not doing good leading. This is not leadership. You don’t act like this. You don’t tell people if you don’t like it, go. This is not some dictatorship where you’re running some army through a battle for a battleground earth to save the planet, right? You’re running a company where you want people to collaborate and feel part of something to help build it. you don’t you don’t do threats like that yes you can but that makes you a jerk and you don’t want to be like that you want to be the person that supports and likes fluffy ninjas fluffy tailed ninjas unlike michael who hates the little squirrels stop.

Michael:
[15:25] Trying to put this on me it is not true it is nonsense you can’t say something that’s valid and then completely destroy that by I’m making me yell at you for.

Ryan:
[15:35] Saying stuff that’s not real. But they are fluffy-tailed ninjas.

Michael:
[15:38] They are fluffy-tailed ninjas. I agree, yes.

Ryan:
[15:39] They go from tree to tree like little ninjas.

Michael:
[15:41] Yeah, exactly. It looks like they don’t even jump. They’re just there at some point. You see the flight, but you don’t see the jump. Yeah, exactly. But anyway, back to the actual topic. Oh, yeah. So, I agree. It is weird that that’s happening, but it gets a little weirder. Oh, God. So, yeah.

Ryan:
[16:02] We really didn’t have to. We could have stopped there.

Michael:
[16:04] Guys yeah that was enough that was enough but let’s give some context because a lot of people don’t know how the wordpress structure works because it’s a little more not necessarily sketchy but once you know this you kind of see like this is a little weird because there’s a word it’s a weird in my opinion because it’s like, When you talk about having different competitors, then, you know, you’re working with competitors and the open source aspect is one thing. But people are saying that his leadership is not great. But when it comes to WordPress, he’s basically the sole leader of everything because the WordPress foundation was founded by him and he runs that foundation. That’s what manages the WordPress.org website. website as that’s what provides the service of the cms of the of the entire process of wordpress it’s also the uh owners of the trademark for wordpress and automatic is the company that matt also founded and owns and runs and that one owns wordpress.com woocommerce askimet which is like the spam thing i didn’t.

Ryan:
[17:16] Know they had all of that stuff.

Michael:
[17:17] And jetpack and a bunch of others There’s actually like a huge list. They even also, which was completely irrelevant to the topic, but they also bought Tumblr and Pocket Casts.

Ryan:
[17:27] Really?

Jill:
[17:27] Yeah, Tumblr. Yeah.

Ryan:
[17:29] Jeez.

Michael:
[17:30] And apparently they’re going to open source Tumblr by turning it into WordPress. I don’t know.

Jill:
[17:38] I had no clue.

Ryan:
[17:38] Tumblr was still a thing. That amazes me too.

Michael:
[17:40] That’s a good point too. Yeah. And also the Pocket Cast purchase is kind of out of left field. Like, why are you getting into the podcast app world? Sure. Fine. but uh still kind of combine.

Ryan:
[17:51] Yahoo with tumblr and like aol and make one big retro company one.

Michael:
[17:58] Giant i think they kind of tried to do that at some point but my space.

Ryan:
[18:02] To throw my space in there yeah why.

Michael:
[18:03] Not do it all but sorry so the foundation was created by matt it he it’s ran by matt automatic is a company that is created by matt and ran by matt and then there’s also the services like WordPress.com and Pressable, all controlled by Automatic. And more importantly is that the trademark is controlled by the foundation and the sole exclusive right to use the license of the trademark is to Automatic. So, Why is it structured in that way? I don’t know, but that’s how it’s structured. And it’s basically saying that Matt has pretty much control over whatever he wants to do. And this is kind of like people are, people are saying this is the cause of why it’s so messy is because one person can make an out, like a, they can make a decree that this is going to happen. And then all of a sudden there’s no option. That’s, that’s what’s going to happen.

Ryan:
[18:56] I mean, Matt founded this. He spent his, you know, probably unbelievable amount of work at the beginning um untold amount of work to make this thing possible and wordpress has become one of the staples of open source software in the way of when i say staples of something you can say hey what’s something that’s open source that’s really popular out there um that people probably don’t even know is open source necessarily they just use it because it’s just great software and wordpress would be one of the ones that a lot of people would mention there’s a lot of articles that are constantly out about the plugins having, major security holes and things in them that makes wordpress a lot less interesting to me but i mean in general you have to realize that you have to realize that like the web in general is just a very big target so anytime you have a web building service wordpress gets uh is going to be heavily targeted and it is heavily targeted, but they’ve done a lot of work, um, to, to kind of clean that stuff up and to try to fix those security holes. WordPress is one of those companies I hold in high esteem. So I’m really surprised Matt. That I’m hearing about this here.

Michael:
[20:08] Maybe he doesn’t like Speed Night.

Ryan:
[20:09] Yeah.

Michael:
[20:10] But so this is some. I’m not sure why you’re being so specific with his name.

Ryan:
[20:18] Well, I need Matt to know that like.

Michael:
[20:20] Oh, OK. I’m pretty sure he runs WordPress.

Ryan:
[20:25] No. To know that I’m not happy what I’m hearing about.

Michael:
[20:28] Oh, OK. Gotcha.

Ryan:
[20:30] Matt, his leadership stuff is unnecessary. You’ve done good work.

Michael:
[20:34] What you were saying is interesting, though, because you’re talking about how like he’s done a lot of great stuff and yeah because he he did wordpress in an open source way way before open source was the thing that people do for like marketing and stuff this was like 2003 so we’re talking about like the era that open source was barely around for even a few years and using that as a way to build the system and and and it’s it’s a fantastic system i mean there are issues i have with it overall but they have provided an ecosystem in a community that people can build companies like i did so i many years ago built a website development company and wordpress was a foundational piece of that and and there’s many other options as well but wordpress was there because it was such a good thing and, what you said many other.

Ryan:
[21:27] Options i was just throwing front page in there and stuff.

Michael:
[21:29] It was Definitely not front page. No.

Ryan:
[21:31] Okay.

Michael:
[21:32] No.

Ryan:
[21:32] That’s interesting. That’s how I started founding my web company.

Michael:
[21:36] So. Front page. So anyway, point is, I’ve have decades of experience with WordPress or at least 15 plus. And WordPress is great in a lot of ways. The plugins are hit or miss because the plugin issue is more like it’s a plugin community.

Ryan:
[21:54] You never know what you’re going to get. Everyone can build plugins and put them in there. And some are great for one version.

Jill:
[21:59] But not another. Yes.

Ryan:
[22:01] Yeah. They don’t get updated quick enough.

Michael:
[22:02] I mean, that’s an issue of like the third party developers and stuff. Sure. Sure. but there are things that annoy me about wordpress we could talk about if you want towards the end let’s let’s get back to the drama what’s happening because like yeah let’s that’s what i’m saying more about matt let’s let’s get to let’s talk about what matt did at word camp okay what’d you do before we get to that wp engine is also a part of this whole drama and they’re a third-party company that hosts more wordpress sites than automatic and contributes, fairly minimally to WordPress.

Ryan:
[22:35] Okay, let me get this straight. I want to make sure I understand. So Matt owns WordPress, WordPress org, all these WordPress org hosts WordPress sites for you and stuff if you don’t want to do your own hosting.

Michael:
[22:48] So technically Matt owns Automatic, which is a company. He founded and controls the foundation, but he doesn’t own the foundation because it is a separate, it is a nonprofit organization.

Ryan:
[22:58] Nonprofit.

Michael:
[22:59] So there’s that. He owns WordPress.com, which is the hosting service. The foundation technically controls WordPress.org, which is the open source project side.

Ryan:
[23:10] So clearly, a very confusing kind of system. And then you’ve got this WordPress engine company. This WordPress engine company that’s not associated with that.

Jill:
[23:20] WP Engine.

Michael:
[23:21] WP Engine.

Ryan:
[23:22] Okay.

Michael:
[23:23] It is.

Ryan:
[23:24] Okay. So you’ve got WordPress Engine.

Michael:
[23:26] We’ll get to that. It’s very distinctive. We’ll get to that in a second. It’s not WordPress engine, it’s WP engine, and therein lies the problem. Or at least that’s what Matt says.

Ryan:
[23:37] Matt, it’s Matt.

Michael:
[23:40] Matt says that.

Michael:
[23:43] Thank you. So at WordPress US this year, which is a couple weeks ago, So Mullenweg, or Matt, accused WP Engine of extracting from open source and encouraged the community to boycott them and vote with your wallet and use something other than them. He doesn’t necessarily say use WordPress.org only, but he does say don’t support them. Yeah. And there was also a post after this at WordPress.org labeled WP Engine is not WordPress. And in that comment or in that blog post, it says that WP Engine is a cancer to WordPress and that unchecked cancer will spread.

Michael:
[24:32] Jeez matt uh yes did matt write this matt apparently yeah apparently geez and one of the reasons is because they’re alleging that um wp engine is using their the branding and the trademark wrong by using the wp part of it confusing people into thinking that wp engine is an official company or somehow connected because of the wp people think it means wordpress engine which technically it makes sense like what you did yes and it makes sense you would think that because that’s what wp would mean in the context of wordpress however in the context of the actual company name wp means nothing it’s just the letters and there’s a lot of looking at their logo for.

Ryan:
[25:22] Wp engine and it’s just a you know it’s a very generic logo it’s not like wordpress’s logo in any way and i’m looking at their page it doesn’t look like they’re trying to copy wordpress’s design or anything it looks very generic i mean.

Michael:
[25:36] It’s clearly word clearly you’re looking at it now are you you’re looking at it right now yes yeah so right now they have like little notifications that you click the little one next to the word wordpress and it takes you to the footer that says we’re not affiliated to wordpress we’re not an official company or anything like that and i forgot the actual disclaimer they used but it’s basically that. Before this whole thing came out, WP Engine did not have any disclaimer on their website that I could find that said that they were not associated. They never said that they were, but people were confused by it because they just assumed it was.

Ryan:
[26:13] I could see that. I could see some confusion there. I mean, WP Engine is pretty close. If you were just searching, let me just go to Google here and just do an interesting little search of WordPress hosting service and see which ones come up first here. WP Engine is number one and WordPress.com is number two under the sponsored links. WordPress hosting is number one on the non-sponsored links.

Michael:
[26:42] Which one is?

Ryan:
[26:44] The WordPress.org. .org.

Michael:
[26:47] Is not the hosting site. That’s the site where you get the software. Which is the first hosting site.

Ryan:
[26:53] Yep. We’ve got Forbes article on the 10 best WordPress hosting services, then WordPress.com.

Michael:
[27:00] Okay, WordPress.com.

Ryan:
[27:02] And then Bluehost, and then Dreamhost, and then Hostinger, and then Reddit.

Michael:
[27:07] Those all make sense.

Ryan:
[27:08] I actually don’t see anything but, you know, in the sponsored section, anything related to WP Engine. And their little tagline under there says, WP Engine provides you with smart tools to design, build, and launch your website with ease. 200,000 customers trust WP Engine to host their WordPress website. So, and their logo, again, does not look like WordPress in any way, I would say.

Michael:
[27:30] Yeah. So the WordPress trademark is really the issue. And there was even a thing before the talk, there was reports that Matt sent some messages to WP Engine to get them to basically give a trademark usage license and pay royalties and stuff like that of 8% of, I guess, all of their profit. Who knows? Oh, wow.

Ryan:
[28:01] This is like back in New York when you ran a mafia and you’d go to the pizza shop and you’d be like, hey, you want some protection? You got to pay as part of your profit. And then you beat them up and then they give you 8% of their profit just because you’re offering protection that they didn’t need from you type of thing.

Michael:
[28:18] Yes. It sounds very eerily similar.

Ryan:
[28:23] Okay. So pay us 8% because your name sounds like.

Michael:
[28:28] Because people are confused by you using something that we said you could but if you that’s fine we don’t want.

Ryan:
[28:34] You to stop if you give us eight percent of your profits got it okay interesting that’s uh fascinating.

Michael:
[28:42] So there’s a lot to this and we’re going to get to it but uh before we get to all the stuff there’s before if you’re just new to this topic and you’re just learning about it like ryan is um there’s a lot of stuff to this and we have our own takes on this but there is a right way to have done this and i don’t think matt did the right way and that’s where the drama comes from yeah you should have asked 12.

Ryan:
[29:09] Percent matt eight percent is the wrong way.

Michael:
[29:11] 42 come on exactly.

Ryan:
[29:14] Go for the.

Michael:
[29:15] That’s the perfect number obviously you go away So after this talk happened, after the blog post happened, Matt and Automatic said, We’re, uh, so actually we should say it that way because automatic is spelled with two T’s on the mat part. So it’s automatic.

Ryan:
[29:37] Oh, that’s why he did that. Probably.

Michael:
[29:39] Yeah, exactly. And, uh, anyway, WB engine sent a cease and desist to, um, to them saying, uh, stop saying the stuff you’re saying. Also retract the things you’ve said and all of that. Cause they call it a cancer.

Ryan:
[29:54] You know, it’s pretty hard.

Michael:
[29:55] Right. I mean, it’s a little harsh. It’s a little harsh. but there are uh and also people were reporting that it was a theoretically saying it’s like extortion or whatever but uh that’s you know your perspective um but automatic responded with a counter cease and desist which they um also went another step beyond that and banned wp engine from wordpress.org.

Ryan:
[30:18] Oh wonderful and this.

Michael:
[30:21] Started a legal battle where wp engine sent uh started a lawsuit suing uh automatic and word or whatever i don’t know who’s all involved in the actual uh lawsuit because i mean basically it’s matt but you know whatever.

Ryan:
[30:33] Well you know who wins here the lawyers the lawyers are the lawyers are gonna love the community’s not winning matt it’s not winning wp engine’s not winning but the lawyers they’re winning here man they are loving this yes yeah because both sides.

Michael:
[30:48] Are getting lots of money from it with their lawyers.

Ryan:
[30:51] Yeah they’re like oh let me get my lawyer on the horn and have them send a cease and desist oh yeah well my lawyer is going to send a letter to you uh telling you you’re a dummy head and then all this stuff keeps going and the letters that was not.

Michael:
[31:03] A quote by the way.

Ryan:
[31:04] We don’t know if anyone actually called.

Michael:
[31:06] Anybody a dummy head that might be.

Ryan:
[31:07] Too far they called him a cancer that’s way better, this is uh this is really ridiculous uh yeah this whole thing sounds really ridiculous and And it’s upsettingly ridiculous because we’re in an open source community and Matt is And WP Engine need to understand that none of them would have been successful if it wasn’t for all the volunteers that have helped out over the years and the users who have worked on WordPress to make it popular and used WordPress. And the people you’re hurting are the users now of WordPress because now you’re wrapping them up in your drama because you as adults could not sit down with each other and figure out a solution in the open source world. Instead, you want to drag everybody through the mud. And this is what happens when lots of money gets involved. Because I’m just guessing here, Matt’s probably not middle class. I’m guessing he’s got a couple million.

Michael:
[32:06] Pretty confident he has lots of money.

Ryan:
[32:07] Yeah.

Michael:
[32:08] I mean, so basically the amount of money in theory is, we’re talking about hundreds of millions.

Ryan:
[32:15] And is WP Engine brand new? Did it just pop up?

Michael:
[32:18] It is not brand new. In fact, it’s hilarious in some ways because WP Engine was started in 2010.

Jill:
[32:25] Yeah it’s been around for.

Michael:
[32:27] Years and it gets somehow there’s there’s so much craziness in this because not only was it fine matt invested in wp engine in the beginning oh lord matt in like 2011 or something and also just real quick the open source message that ryan said 100 percent all of it we’re all in agreement there of course war open source is important it’s it’s necessity but it also might have been required because it turns out that WordPress did not start out of nothing. It was a fork of something else, which was also GPL and open source and had to be open source in order to fork it. And so who knows if the actual.

Ryan:
[33:14] You know, whatever, someone who’s done the history review of this, let us know. But here’s the thing. Uh, Matt, I’m going to tell you this. Listen to me. All right? Just me and you right now. Nobody else is around. In my opinion, you’d be a coward not to show up on the show and give us why you’re going through this. Like a good reason. Like, come on the show. We’ll give you a fair interview. We’ll open mic it. We’ll let you, like, tell us what, in your words, is going on here.

Michael:
[33:42] And we won’t edit anything.

Ryan:
[33:44] We won’t edit anything. It doesn’t look good. WP Engine, same offer. You want to come on the show. we’ll let you come in and tell your part of the story because the problem with us reporting on this from this view up here is we only see what gets out in the public in the news and maybe there’s a bunch of other stuff going on that we don’t know about but i can tell you both none of this is good for open source community nothing you guys are doing right now is helping the open source community whoever’s right or wrong it’s just you’re damaging a really great product that both of you have done very well off of. And you could find a solution here behind closed doors without dragging things through the mud. But the last thing I want to say is, Matt, I read about your blind blocking your employees on this site called Blind, which I didn’t even know existed. This is some site where employees can kind of talk about their employer, their bosses, and it’s kind of like a glass. What is that one called Glassdoor?

Michael:
[34:41] It’s like Glassdoor.

Ryan:
[34:42] I like that type of thing. But you have to use a company email to sign up for it and things.

Michael:
[34:46] It’s not required, but they do recommend doing that.

Ryan:
[34:49] Yeah. And apparently, if you do that, allegedly, in Matt’s company, then he gets the emails and gets to know that you’re on there and then can kind of like track your comments and stuff, which is creepy and not very open source.

Michael:
[35:05] And honestly, Matt- I feel like it’s a way to block it entirely.

Ryan:
[35:07] Matt, as a leader, you should be looking for the feedback. And there’s going to be feedback where you had a really bad employee and you fire them and they tell you you suck and all that and you kind of ignore that at times. But then there’s feedback that are coming from really good employees who really love the company, but they’re really frustrated with how things are going. And instead of looking at that negatively, like, how can I get rid of them or I’m going to block them? You should really be looking in the mirror going, how can I fix these problems within my company and make it a better place to work? That’s what real leaders do. And I just don’t feel like when I see that on top of the 150 employees leaving, which is a lot, I think that’s like 14%. If I did the math correctly as an entire employee base, that’s really showing you that something you’re doing is wrong. And you probably need to check yourself. But with that being said, Don’t be a coward. Come on the show. Let’s talk about it. And we can figure this thing out. And there’s an open source community because you have an amazing product here.

Jill:
[36:13] Yeah.

Ryan:
[36:13] And this is a super important product and project for a lot of people. And we got to get fixed. We got to solve it. That’s how I feel about it. Anyways, my thought, Jill, what are your thoughts?

Jill:
[36:24] Oh, boy. So I understand some of the grievances towards WP Engine. like matt says you know not donating to the wordpress foundation um that is just not very cool so i agree and also to be clear.

Michael:
[36:40] Not donating ever to.

Jill:
[36:42] Yeah ever yeah and that’s their statement though we don’t know that.

Michael:
[36:46] That’s what that’s what matt said.

Jill:
[36:49] Yeah yep and um also there’s no revision history for posts just to save money it’s honestly a bad policy that’s that’s something a lot of us users like to use is a revision history.

Michael:
[37:03] Yeah, it’s very important. If you make a mistake, go back and change it and all that. Or maybe some, maybe you’re working collaborative with someone else and they make a thing, then they accidentally delete your stuff. If you don’t have a revision to get it back. I didn’t know that WP Engine didn’t do that until this whole thing happened. I didn’t know about blind either until this whole thing happened. But it’s funny because I never really got why WP Engine was selected by people. I always saw their services as overpriced and not very useful. That’s just my perspective as a person who’s a web dev. And I never really got it. But there are a lot of people who use it, apparently.

Michael:
[37:43] So I’m curious why. But it also is important.

Ryan:
[37:48] One more thing I want to say, though. This is really important because you mentioned this, And it just came to me that, you know, the reason why your employees go to blind.com or whatever it is, I don’t think it’s blind.com’s blind something to talk about their employment is because they don’t feel like they have an outlet. that they would actually be listened to within the company. That’s why they go external. So if your leadership was doing what it was supposed to, and you had a system within your company where people could actually have a grievance and be taken seriously, they wouldn’t need to go to this alternate site to go vent. And when you read those comments on that site from your employees, what I see is a lot of people who love that company, love the projects and can’t stand the leadership. And so something’s really wrong when you have those two situations happening. I just wanted to kind of.

Michael:
[38:38] Also just real quick to kind of like add to that part. It’s like where, you know, in the old days you know, before tech had these kinds of websites you could do there was the analog style where companies and owners and managers would have a box that you could anonymously put notes in and no one would know who said what and we’d still get the feedback, but the people would be protected from backlash and all that sort of stuff. And that’s been happening for decades. So it’s actually good to get information and even anonymously from people who are working for you so you can get those grievances if they have them. You can get feedback to improve. So I agree that it’s kind of weird to block that sort of stuff. But it’s more sketchy about even, like I would never even would have cared that that was a thing, that that service existed and never knew. And then you go and block people’s ability to use it so that they have to ask you. Yes, allegedly, 404, this media is saying that, that you’re blocking their access

Michael:
[39:42] to even sign up and use it. Yeah, that comes off as very weird.

Jill:
[39:46] Yeah, the other grievance I know that he has against WP Engine is lying. The brand is confusing. WP Engine? I mean, we’ve both, even Ryan earlier said it wrong. WordPress Engine. No, it’s WP Engine.

Ryan:
[40:01] But I mean, obviously it stands for WordPress.

Jill:
[40:04] Yeah.

Michael:
[40:05] I mean, it does and it doesn’t, technically.

Jill:
[40:08] Yeah.

Michael:
[40:09] Nuance is fun.

Jill:
[40:10] Yeah, it is confusing and they really should change their name. But it also isn’t cool that Automatic is charging WP Engine to pay 8% of its revenues, which violates open-source principles.

Michael:
[40:26] Well, they wanted to make them that, but they’re not doing that. So when you say it violates open-source principles, could you expand on how it violates?

Jill:
[40:37] It’s supposed to be an open-source product where you share with the community.

Michael:
[40:44] Just don’t like basically on the ethics of it is what you’re saying.

Jill:
[40:48] Yeah. On the ethics. Yeah.

Michael:
[40:49] Gotcha.

Jill:
[40:50] That’s the good word for it.

Michael:
[40:52] I mean, I think, I think that’s a good point. That’s a fair point. And also I feel like there’s a lot of nuance to this, that it’s kind of hilarious because this fundamentally is caused by WordPress and automatic themselves. Obviously they’re making this weird attack happening.

Ryan:
[41:12] They have some points though. They have some valid points.

Michael:
[41:15] They do.

Ryan:
[41:16] I’m focused on WordPress because Matt has some problems that have clearly popped up that I can see very clearly based on his employees’ comments and stuff that I want to cover. But WP Engine, if you’re not contributing back, then this is the same argument we had with Red Hat and Rocky Linux. This is the same thing we were talking about with other projects that are derivatives of Ubuntu, of whether they’re giving back. If you’re using somebody else’s work… and you’re using a name that’s eerily similar to the actual company, then you should be taking some of those revenues. They shouldn’t have to ask for the 8%, by the way. You should be trying to give to the, at least to the open source part, percentages of your revenue to keep that project going because you don’t exist without it. And your contributions should also be upstreamed back up to WordPress. And so, you know, WP Engine, you’re invited to come on the show too, because you’re not in the clear here by far at all either. It’s just none of you are handling this situation correctly. To me, this is a whole Red Hat, Rocky Linux feel to it. It’s the same kind of concept.

Michael:
[42:28] I mean, I think it’s a little different because there are some specific nuances that are different with WordPress situation than the Red Hat situation. Because in my opinion, Rocky Linux is doing something that is wrong. And you could argue that Alma Linux was originally because I think anyone who is making a clone of another product that is basically just taking this thing and slapping a new label on it like you did something, I feel like that is unethical. But that’s just my perspective. As far as technically wrong in terms of licensing with the GPL license, no, there’s nothing wrong with that. But also, there’s nothing wrong with what WP Engine did in a lot of ways. So with the license, you’re allowed to do that. As long as you give the source code for the binaries that you are providing, the asterisk here, the little loophole here, is that WP Engine does not provide binaries, they provide a service. So technically, they don’t have to provide anything. And that is a sketchy situation for sure, but it is, it is what it is.

Ryan:
[43:40] Look at me walking the gray line, you know what I mean?

Michael:
[43:42] Yes.

Ryan:
[43:43] Yes. Now, when it comes to like earlier.

Michael:
[43:46] I was just real quick, just real quick. I do think it’s important to say that WP Engine is in a different situation than they were in 2010. In 2010, they were a company that was founded and, you know, people were, they were happy to be a part of the community and the WordPress and all that stuff. Now they’re owned by a private equity firm, and so they’re probably trying to squeeze as much money out of it so they can destroy it, which is what typically private equity firms do.

Ryan:
[44:13] In Michael’s opinion.

Michael:
[44:14] In my opinion of things that I’ve seen.

Ryan:
[44:18] So, your opinion is WP Engine may be doing some things that are a little sketch. Which, in my opinion.

Michael:
[44:30] WP Engine has done nothing legally wrong, whether it is trademark or whether it is related to software or whatever, because the GPL allows you to do this. If you don’t like that the GPL allows you to do it, don’t use it. Use something else. Now, the other part is they haven’t done anything wrong in terms of the branding because they haven’t purposefully confused people. In my opinion, it’s very hard to make that claim because WP Engine, there’s no trademark on the letters WP related to WordPress. It’s not. The trademark does not cover it. They say that themselves on WordPress website. The foundation website says that. Then also on the WordPress.org website, you go to the About section. There’s a section specifically for domains and how you name things. And it says that you can’t use the word WordPress in your company name because of the trademark, but it specifically says, try using WP or something else. So they’re telling you that, yes, they are telling you to use WP.

Ryan:
[45:36] Which makes it going to use an analogy like, OK, I’m going to start a burger chain called BK. But it’s not nothing to do a Burger King. OK, nothing to do a Burger King. you know like it’s it’s kind of kind of similar but if burger king said hey you can’t use burger king but you can use bk if you want don’t then you’re kind of giving people permission to do that so uh i don’t know matt who’s the wp engine owner who’s the person that i want to say their names the.

Michael:
[46:06] People the people i don’t know their names anymore.

Ryan:
[46:08] Because i mean the guy who founded it is not owning well come on the show so i’m an equity firm our person.

Michael:
[46:15] And uh there’s a ceo that is a separate person if you wanted to say that name.

Ryan:
[46:19] Yeah yeah ceo.

Michael:
[46:21] Uh i think their name is heather i don’t i don’t remember for sure heather but i.

Ryan:
[46:25] Want to show heather.

Michael:
[46:26] Um but it so that there’s a lot of to it and this is just like the tiff of the iceberg you would imagine that we’ve said so much that this this is where it ends it’s not there there are more there’s more things um and we’re not going to go into everything because But I do want to say one thing. I feel like the confusion that people have with WP Engine being WordPress Engine, I understand where that comes from. But I also feel like it’s partly on Matt’s fault because they don’t do very good or very good marketing or good anything related to explaining what is official and what isn’t. So, for example, WordPress.org is the open source project website. Simple. Cool. WordPress.com is the premium managed hosting service that they provide. Okay, cool. Great. Where on WordPress.org do they tell you about WordPress.com? Nowhere.

Michael:
[47:36] Nowhere. They tell you on the hosting page in a small little text at the bottom of a couple paragraphs that says you can get started for free. So they only tell you about the free plan. They don’t tell you about the premium part. Then they give you four other companies that you can use instead for hosting, which all of them are managed hosting services. Three of them are not specifically in the same level that we’re at WP Engine. They do also all kinds of hosting, like Hosting Air and Bluehost and Dreamhost. They do all sorts of hosting. But then there’s one called Pressable, and it’s basically a direct competitor with WP Engine that Matt also owns. So, that means WordPress.com and Pressable are owned by the same company doing the exact same thing for no apparent reason. They promote one of them on that place specifically and nowhere else. And it’s not like they’re trying to balance the promotions that Pressable is like the very top one they promote. And it just, it’s so confusing because if you go on WordPress.com, you don’t see anywhere that they have anything to do with actually making WordPress. you don’t if you go to pressable you technically don’t see anywhere where they said that either like if you dig deep enough you’ll see them talk about how wordpress.com and pressable are the same people but that doesn’t explain that they’re the same people who make wordpress like it’s messy.

Ryan:
[48:59] And then website is not very good it’s not no wp engine wp engine is a way better looking site than pressable well.

Michael:
[49:07] It’s also the fact that there’s just so much clutter in.

Ryan:
[49:11] Yeah pressable site actually looks in my opinion looks like one of those sites that I wouldn’t trust because of how it’s like a spam site thank you that’s what it looks like to me, like they need to do some work on that but interesting I did not know all of that either Michael you’ve done truly great investigation work you’re the Batman of this episode we’re very proud of your detective work here and things, I don’t know Jill do you have anything you want to say to finish this off and we can move on Yeah.

Jill:
[49:43] So I wanted to mention, I’ve been to actually several WordCamps. And one of my favorite ones was the last time I went to here in Los Angeles in 2018 with the Linux Chicks of Los Angeles. And, you know, there were a lot of great talks. And one of my favorites was about techniques to use to make your WordPress sites more accessible, which I currently use today when maintaining WordPress sites.

Ryan:
[50:07] And you mentioned WordCamp because it’s put on by WordPress? Yeah.

Jill:
[50:11] Yes.

Michael:
[50:11] Yes.

Ryan:
[50:12] Okay.

Jill:
[50:14] And Matt does speak there too. Nice.

Ryan:
[50:18] So you’ve met Matt.

Jill:
[50:19] Yeah, I have seen him speak. Yes. It almost kind of made me cry a bit because WordPress has such a vibrant and active open source community. The internal chaos just saddens me greatly. And I fear for its open source future. and i’ve had a lot of friends personally who came into linux because of wordpress so you know we’ve had this this this shared group of people for, community back and forth for years and a lot of people started at you know going to word camp and then some people started going to scale and then went to word camp so there’s always been this back and forth and it’s how we’ve grown the community and it’s it’s just sad to see this like going down it seems like going down the tubes yeah.

Michael:
[51:09] It does so i just want to follow up one thing because jill what you were saying is very important and it’s it’s it’s reminded me of something else the i’ve been contacted by people since this all happened and i made a very in-depth video on my channel about this because of the so i had there’s a there’s if you want all of the details there’s well as much as i could find in the period of when i did it you can go check out that video we’ll have it linked in the show notes but because of that video and because of all this stuff and people know that i’ve done web dev in the past i’ve had multiple people contact me directly and ask me what are solutions to get away from wordpress because of all this mess and there’s not a lot if you want to drop in replacement that doesn’t really exist unless you get one of the forks and the forks do there are forks and it’s it’s it kind of makes me feel a little, I don’t know, torn because Ryan is talking about how Matt is doing stuff that is, um.

Michael:
[52:11] Like, leadership, bad leadership. And I agree. But also at the same time, he’s doing things that show that he gets open source and he gets it. Because when this whole thing happened, a couple of forks were made. And then they made a blog post about the forks, promoting the forks on the WordPress.org website to acknowledge that they exist, acknowledge why they were made, and also to tell people if they want to go, you can. and it’s just it’s interesting because there’s so many things like where he gets certain things right but and also i agree ultimately that what wp engine is doing something unethical and taking software doing nothing back or doing the bare minimum like technically they don’t have to do anything legally like license wise that that’s at least that’s my understanding the gpl but they, they should want to even if they don’t give money back they should put a lot of money into development to improve it as much as possible and all that sort of stuff or all the plugins that they make for themselves to put it in the the plugin market on wordpress.org some of their stuff is but not everything most of it’s not as far as what i’ve looked at and it’s just it’s weird because part of me feels like the open source advocate is like yeah get wp engine because they’re taking advantage of it and then the whole, Why are you doing it this way side kicks in and goes like, it’s just like, it’s a mess.

Ryan:
[53:40] You’ve got, it stinks because you’ve got a product that’s so important. Like we mentioned before, you’ve got a leader who obviously built something great. So they’ve got a lot of skill and talent, Matt, but then Matt is making a lot of mistakes here. I feel like with his own employees and how he’s going about it. The fact that you have 150 people leave, you know, is testament to that.

Michael:
[54:03] You shouldn’t be wanting to say, when that happened, you shouldn’t have said, well, fine, go if you’re not on our side. What you should have thought is, why are they leaving?

Ryan:
[54:13] Right. Why aren’t they on my side? What could we have done differently?

Ryan:
[54:16] How can we handle the situation maturely? A great alternative, by the way, that I’ve played with that I like, Michael probably won’t agree yet, but I think it’s worth looking at, is Ghost. I really enjoy Ghost. I think it’s a fantastic option to look at if you want to try something different than WordPress.

Michael:
[54:33] Um so yeah okay it’s it’s ghost is good if you are doing something that is not doesn’t need to be super complicated because i’m pretty sure it’s built in no js it’s very different it’s not a drop and replacement it’s an alternative there are no drop and replacements except for the forks and you can find links in the show notes for those but uh also grav is a good one too g-r-a-v oh yeah that is but that’s an alternative that’s an alternative uh and it’s really interesting it’s It’s a very cool project because it’s a flat file, no database system, but it’s still dynamic. It’s a very cool concept. But yeah, so there are options, of course. There’s Joomla and Drupal, and you can try out any of these, and that’s fine. However… The simplicity of WordPress is still the simplicity of WordPress. People like it. I mean, the amount of people who, yeah, the amount of people and also branding, they have a very powerful brand. And the amount of people who I have done websites for who specifically ask for WordPress, having no idea anything about what WordPress is or what a CMS is or any of that stuff will still actually ask for that. that’s a sign of its dominance and that people have reasons to like it. I have also reasons I don’t like it, but you know, that’s for another time.

Ryan:
[55:54] Yeah. I’m going to start a company by the way, that does all of the maintenance and things for your website, but it’s based on ghost. I’m going to call it go host, go host, G host.

Michael:
[56:07] And call it G host.

Ryan:
[56:09] Go host.com. Go host. it’s gonna be really fire you’re gonna love it uh anyways i.

Michael:
[56:16] Thought you’re gonna say i’m gonna name it boo like.

Ryan:
[56:19] Boo oh that’s a good one boo there you go see that would be way different i feel like wp engine there’s something to be said there but it’s been around forever like all the sudden this is a problem matt i think it’s a problem because all of a sudden they’re making a lot more money than what matt’s company.

Michael:
[56:35] I feel like they’re making a lot i think that’s part of it also they’re making a lot of money when giving nothing back but also yes that’s a horrific there that if that’s true they’re massive jerks and i cannot support them at all however like it’s an ethical conversation the trademark doesn’t make any sense because of the whole you can use wp and that’s what they’re doing and all they had to do is go into the website and say hey we’re not affiliated and then they’ve solved any claim that you said that they you know that that’s it’s just it’s just a mess that it in and also in the uh there was like text message or something that he said that they were gonna he’s gonna go scorched earth nuclear that was the joke about me in the yeah matt so in the intro we were saying let me look up a picture.

Ryan:
[57:23] Of matt i don’t think matt can go scorched earth anything i’m.

Michael:
[57:26] Just guessing but let’s let’s look at but also the fact that you’ve seen matt in person.

Ryan:
[57:32] Jill does he look.

Michael:
[57:33] Like he.

Ryan:
[57:33] Could go nuclear on the no i’m looking at Matt right now. There’s nothing that says nuclear scorched earth about Matt.

Michael:
[57:41] You know what’s crazy is that also, just so you know, I watched the talk that he was talking about WP Engine and stuff and in the talk he seemed reasonable about it and it’s like, yeah, vote with your wallet. Sure, I agree with that. Vote with your wallet. And then it’s like, Then it gets worse and worse. And then you’re doing things against your own employees and you’re doing things against people who happen to use WP engine, because you have to, if you use WP engine, you’re, you’re not supposed to use WordPress.org as in like, you’re a customer of WP engine. They, you have to check a box when you log in on WordPress.org that says you’re not affiliated with WP engine in any way whatsoever, financially or otherwise. And it’s just like to, to go that depth. I don’t get it. And, but also you watch the, you watch the video at the talk and he seems like a very nice person and he seems like he gets it and it’s just the there’s such a broken dichotomy there like i i just i don’t know what to think going on matt yeah quit.

Ryan:
[58:40] Being a coward come on our show um you’re really not a.

Michael:
[58:44] Coward that is the that is the best way to get someone to join your show as a guest is to call him a cow yeah come.

Ryan:
[58:50] Score a sticker at matt.

Michael:
[58:53] Okay okay he does have lots of money so don’t come scorched earth on us at all.

Ryan:
[58:57] Come Scorched Perth on this! Scorched Perth, Matt.

Michael:
[59:02] Come on. You should come on the show. We are making jokes because we don’t get it and it’s just a weird situation. But we are probably the most fair interviewer ever going to have. But also, we have people who come on our show who thank us and ask to come back on the show because they enjoy it so much.

Jill:
[59:24] Yeah.

Michael:
[59:25] Not only will it be good for you in terms of getting everything out in the open, but I also I think you’ll enjoy it because, you know, we’ll talk about all whatever random stuff.

Ryan:
[59:35] We’ll bring up the sports earth thing too, Matt.

Jill:
[59:37] Yeah. We’d be honored to have you on too.

Michael:
[59:39] 100%. That’ll be fun.

Ryan:
[59:40] No, we will give you a very fair shake here. I really do want to know your take on this, Matt. Like, I want to know about this thing with WP Engine. I want to know what’s going on behind the scenes, what you can talk about legally. And I want to know about the employee situation, most importantly. Honestly, out of everything, that’s the one that upsets me the most is reading the employee comments and some of the stuff going on of like, well, just leave blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because you’ve got some super talented people. I know that because of what WordPress is today. So let’s get it fixed. Come on the show. Heather, also Heather over at WP Engine. Maybe Matt won’t come on the show. Maybe you will come on the show and let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about your take on it. Maybe you are giving back or trying to give back and they won’t let you and all this stuff. There could be all kinds of stuff uncovered.

Ryan:
[1:00:26] Come on the show is the point. And we’ve done it again, Michael. We went an hour on one topic when we have like 14 topics to talk about on the show. We have a problem. This is a new problem, by the way, that’s popped up again. This used to be a problem for the show. We fixed it. Way back.

Michael:
[1:00:42] Years ago.

Ryan:
[1:00:43] It used to go like four hours per topic.

Michael:
[1:00:46] There was one episode where we legitimately recorded for like four hours. Like that has happened. That was years ago.

Ryan:
[1:00:55] We have this pattern coming back where we can’t get through one topic because we’ve just got so much to say.

Michael:
[1:01:01] I feel like we need to skip… Some stuff, but we don’t, we shouldn’t skip everything we need to do. We can’t just have just one positive.

Ryan:
[1:01:10] We need the gaming in here, Jill. Can you give us, can you give us something positive like in gaming? Cause now I’m all mad. Matt is going scorched earth over here. Uh, Michael hates the little squirrel probably because he’s too nutty.

Michael:
[1:01:24] Not true. You need, you need to stop saying that.

Ryan:
[1:01:26] I love parody because it’s too nutty. Come on. That’s hilarious.

Michael:
[1:01:30] I didn’t hear, I had already turned off whatever you were saying because of your nonsense that I didn’t hear you say that, so.

Ryan:
[1:01:36] Or Peanut.

Jill:
[1:01:38] All right.

Ryan:
[1:01:38] What you got for us, Jill?

Jill:
[1:01:40] Okay. So every decent person on the planet loves doggos. Good doggies. And knows that all dogs are certified American Kennel Club good boys. So our game this week takes our best friends off this planet and into a galactic adventure. and you know they’d probably want to sit at the window and and put their head out to no win but you don’t want to do that because they’re in space yeah no jill they had to.

Ryan:
[1:02:12] Leave the planet because matt went scorched earth.

Jill:
[1:02:14] So good boy galaxy is described as a vibrant sci-fi platform adventure game where you help Maxwell the dog explore unfamiliar worlds, make strange new friends, and contend with mysterious forces by jumping, shooting, slicing, shrinking, warping, and drilling. And the game has all kinds of features. There’s many different Jam-packed levels with multiple routes that are really fun. And you can make 50-plus friends and collect their friendship cards. And upgrade your blaster with special abilities. Also, you can find hidden areas and take on a variety of boss battles. And Goodbye Boy Galaxy is a really fun 2D Metroidvania-style platformer that has a nice story and beautiful, energetic, old-school artwork. I just love the artwork and how vibrant it is. It’s so beautiful. And the game combines platforming, shooting action, exploration, and even a little puzzle solving with several mini games thrown in. And I love games that have little mini games, you know, in because it makes it so unexpected. And it’s just great.

Ryan:
[1:03:38] What was one of the first games, Jill, you remember where you could play a game inside a game? Do you remember like when you could go up to an arcade for the first time in a game or a console and you could actually, I’m trying to think of games that did that, but they’ve always made an impression on me when that happened where you could like, you’re playing a game, but you could go up to an arcade in the game and then play that. And there’s like a little.

Michael:
[1:04:00] Like you could have like a snake game or something.

Ryan:
[1:04:02] Yeah.

Jill:
[1:04:03] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:04:03] Asteroids or something like that.

Jill:
[1:04:05] Gosh. Yeah.

Michael:
[1:04:06] Those are cool. I remember any game that ever did it. And I loved every game that did it. That’s weird.

Jill:
[1:04:10] I remember Q-Bert had some really fun Easter eggs in it that were kind of mini games.

Ryan:
[1:04:16] There you go.

Jill:
[1:04:18] Yeah.

Ryan:
[1:04:18] But yeah, so this has little mini games, not the ones I was talking about.

Jill:
[1:04:22] Yeah. So Good Boy Galaxy is only $24.99 on Steam and works great on the Steam

Jill:
[1:04:29] Deck and supports our Linux penguins out of the box.

Michael:
[1:04:32] Jill, let’s skip ahead and talk about a project that is named after Ryan.

Jill:
[1:04:37] Okay. So our tip this week is to check out a lesser-known privacy-focused app called Ryan. No, it’s called OpenSnitch.

Ryan:
[1:04:46] First of all, I never snitch. Snitches end up in ditches and with stitches.

Jill:
[1:04:53] OpenSnitch is like a new Linux interactive application firewall inspired by Google. One you might know of, have heard of, Little Snitch. Open Snitch actually features interactive.

Michael:
[1:05:07] Hold on a second.

Ryan:
[1:05:07] Michael’s high school name was Little Snitch.

Michael:
[1:05:10] Little Snitch.

Jill:
[1:05:13] Yes.

Ryan:
[1:05:13] You knew it was coming, Michael. You couldn’t stop it. It was like in slow motion. No. I tried.

Michael:
[1:05:20] I tried. You could see me unmute and start to try.

Jill:
[1:05:25] So OpenSys features interactive outbound connections, filtering, blocking ads, trackers or malware, domains system-wide, and the ability to configure a system firewall from the GUI using NF-tables, which is awesome. Also, configuration of input policy, which also allows inbound services, et cetera, et cetera, and managing multiple nodes from a centralized GUI. Open Snitch, or otherwise known as Ryan, features security information and event management integration as well.

Ryan:
[1:06:06] Why, Jill? What did I do?

Michael:
[1:06:07] Got him.

Ryan:
[1:06:08] First of all, what did I do? You know? A little snitch over there.

Michael:
[1:06:12] I think this little snitch over there i think this joke tip 100 is fair because apparently i’m little snitch and you’re open snitch i don’t know which one’s worse is.

Ryan:
[1:06:21] That a hacker name those are hacker names like crash and burn.

Michael:
[1:06:24] Crash and burn yeah yeah it’s like um what was his name uh crash override that’s what it was oh yeah but but but here’s here’s the thing the whole uh, little snitch and open snitch is kind of good because in a way that little snitch is one of those ironic nicknames where it’s like a little person, you know, they, you call a big person, little or tiny. It kind of fits in that way.

Ryan:
[1:06:49] Yeah, it does.

Jill:
[1:06:51] Yes.

Michael:
[1:06:52] And it’s also the same thing for you, too, buddy, because you’re very close-minded. So Open Snitch is…

Ryan:
[1:07:01] That was really good, Michael. Hey, look at you.

Michael:
[1:07:05] Thank you.

Ryan:
[1:07:05] Up in your checkers game.

Jill:
[1:07:06] Oh, you boys, stop playing Quidditch.

Ryan:
[1:07:09] Quidditch.

Michael:
[1:07:10] You should Quidditch, Ryan.

Ryan:
[1:07:13] You Quidditch first.

Jill:
[1:07:18] And uh one of the other cool tips for open snitch is that you can combine it with simple scripts to scan for open ports and keep your network security really tight and rpms or devs can be downloaded from the open snitch github page listed in our show notes or installed from your distributions package manager.

Ryan:
[1:07:37] This is a great little tool you need to check it out it is

Ryan:
[1:07:40] great little tip in there for the scripts as well a big thank you to each and every one of you for supporting us by watching or listening to destination linux however you do it we love your faces come join us in our discord join in the conversation let us know what you think about the wp engine wordpress drama which side are you on are you on neither side because we’re kind of on either side i feel like if you summed it up like we kind of see some mistakes on both sides there but i want to know what you all think um and if you want to support the show go to tux digital.com/membership become a patron watch the show live we record every wednesday, and you can hear all kinds of shenanigans that never make it on the show.

Michael:
[1:08:19] Yeah and even if you don’t make it live it’s okay because you still get to access to unedited versions of the show so even the like you you watch this show and you’ve if you’ve never been a patron you’re watching this show and you’re like man this people these people are off they’re they’re off out of their minds or they’re uh they’re they’ve lost they’re off their hinges you’re correct or, you’re correct also but you have no idea how much more of that is on the unedited version it gets there is a lot of fun you’re missing out on so go to tuxdigital.com/membership and become a patron and you get a bunch of cool stuff including the patron only post show so if you do come live you can talk to us afterwards and make fun of how off the hinges that we are If you want to talk to Michael about why.

Ryan:
[1:09:04] He hates Peanut the Squirrel. Like, I don’t get it.

Michael:
[1:09:07] And also, you can talk to Ryan about why he continues to push lies about my hatred of squirrels. It’s a little cute squirrel. I agree. It’s very upsetting as you’re pushing lies about me. It’s very ridiculous. So, you can go to tuxdigital.com/membership to do all of that and more. And you can also go to tuxdigital.com/store to get some awesome merch. We have hats, mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, and so much more. tuxdigital.com.

Jill:
[1:09:31]/store and make sure to check out all the amazing shows here on TuxDigital that’s right we have an entire network of shows to fill your whole week with geeky goodness head to tuxdigital.com to keep those linux penguins marching everybody.

Michael:
[1:09:46] Have a great week. And remember, the journey itself is just as important as the destination.

Ryan:
[1:09:53] Unless the destination is a scorched earth.

Michael:
[1:09:57] I was about to do the exact same joke.

Ryan:
[1:09:59] No way. Yes. I love it.

Michael:
[1:10:02] The exact same joke.

Jill:
[1:10:03] I knew you were thinking that. That was so funny.

Ryan:
[1:10:07] Oh, man. Matt’s never coming on the show.

Jill:
[1:10:11] Not a chance.

Michael:
[1:10:13] There’s no way.

Ryan:
[1:10:14] Matt, if you come on the show, I’d have mad respect for you after all of that.

Michael:
[1:10:19] Yeah, if you’re willing to deal with us after all this, I mean agreed, mad respect I mean.

Ryan:
[1:10:26] You can do.

Michael:
[1:10:27] It, Matt So, we will be sending this, for those who are watching, we will be sending this to both of them to see if they want to join the show, Thanks for watching the show, everybody We’ll see you next week and yeah.