Before I begin I’ll state I know Mark O’Sullivan personally, I’ve know him for 8 years and I’ve even loaned him money, he’s a stand-up guy, he shares my love for Zardoz and he knows it. I don’t know Matt Mullenweg out with brief smatterings on his blog and the semi-dysfunctional WordPress “support” forums (at least when I was in there).
There’s a little bruhaha over the latest Lussumo Vanilla release. Mark, the sole developer, has decided to add sponsored links, fair enough, that’s up to him, in the same breath he also tell people how to remove them with one line of copy n’ paste code. Simple huh? Apparently not for Matt Mullenweg, who chimes in his 2 cents worth.
Now I use WordPress, I’ve used it for years now, it fits my needs, but that said it doesn’t mean you have to like the developers and the actions of Mullenweg have rubbed me the wrong way, and this pretty much stems from his cloaking escapade a few years ago. But I do find it funny that Matt would criticise one form of advertising while accepting another even if he did denounce it once caught red handed, but doesn’t everyone, I’m sure even Michael Vick will soon enough if he hasn’t already… But I digress. I’m in the belief that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, and yes, I have said that Mullenweg is a bit of a two-faced douchebag in this matter, multiple times, epecially as my comments on his site about this were deleted (or not approved, whatever).
Duncan Riley at TechCrunch has also called him out on this, prompting a spiraling list of comments that varies from Duncan and Matt arguing while and lot of the “I am a big fan of WordPress and see nothing wrong with Matt is doing!” people sucking down the WP kool-aid. Heaven forfend that someone calls out THE Matt Mullenweg on shady spamming practises… Don’t you know who he is???
Unlike Duncan, I don’t have a problem with Matt and Automattic making any money off of WordPress, but he shouldn’t criticise Mark making any money off of Vanilla, that’s Mark’s decision to make, and frankly, I’d probably do the same if offered.
I do find it funny, though, that the people complaining in Mark’s blog post aren’t members of the forum, in fact the Lussumo forum has been pretty quiet about this, they’ve been told how to remove the link so they aren’t kicking up a fuss over a pretty small issue… Unlike some…