Slightly off topic but maybe some parallels. I recently had a plugin developers who were holding me to ransom over their latest plugin version. They actively stopped the old version of the plugin working unless you resubscribed. I worry that what will damage WordPress more if developers use the ransomware model.

A lot of businesses make money from the foundation WordPress has provided, if it’s demonstrable that you start to abuse that i can understand that nice people start to get legal.

1. You ruined the WCUSA ending
2. You aired your dirty laundry
3. You’ve fractured the community
4. You attempted to extort WPE (no, I’m not a customer)
5. You hijacked temporarily the ACF plugin (yes, I’m a customer)
6. You adversely affected over a million WPE customers who had nothing nothing to do with any of this
7. You attempted to strong-arm a host who actually does contribute a lot to WordPress (hosting, WordCamps, LOCAL, ACF, Genesis, support WordPress customers with hosting issues, etc. etc.)

Your behavior has been perceived as unprofessional. It’s not about taking sides; it’s about building the community which you have now harmed.

I wish for you to go away and ride off into the sunset. You act as if you own our Open Source community, and guess what, you don’t Matt.

I attended my first WordCamp this year and had the privilege to be a speaker at WCUS24 and initially your approach shocked me and I felt as thought it came across “arrogant”.

Now that I have done research and based on what has been communicated thus far, I understand your motives and I stand with you on this.

It is unfortunate that WPengine customers are suffering and perhaps other hosts can provide support. Perhaps it is a bit aggressive but I totally get it.

My hope is that people hold Salt Lake to the same standard and that this is dealt this in a manner that allows WordPress to thrive.

I wish you all the best!

The seating arrangement, intentional or not, was indicative of an interviewer placing themselves forward and in a self-promotional position. Facing the camera rather than the interviewee .

Theo repeatedly made the point that Matt should have handled things better . Regardless of the value of this critique, no viewer wants to have to wade through a repetition of this point – ad infinitum .

Presumably Theo thought repitition would be a good setting of the scene for his transparent and nacissistic pitching for a job as Matt’s dispute resolution consultant towards the end of the session . Delusional . Sad . Embarrasing .

Despite my concerns about the motives of the interviewer it was interesting and informative to hear Matt’s clarifications . Hopefully WPEngine will respect their customers enough to come to a reasonable settlement of this long running saga .

As far as I know, he don’t publish podcast format.

Anyway, Lex needs to be next.