I feel as if I should say something, because my site is very much hosted on a WordPress instance (via a hosting service that isn’t WP Engine).
I don’t support what Matt Mullenweg is doing, I think he’s being insanely petty and ultimately (as someone on reddit said, and I like the comparison) this is going to go over as well as the 37signals drama did some years back where the founders outed themselves as Pretty Shitty People.
Were I more flush with income, I’d be looking for greener pastures. But alas, this site costs me less than $10 a month to run, and given that, well, I’m not exactly flush with income at the moment, I need to keep it cheap. I’m still keeping eyes out, but I also doubt there’s much out there at this price point that offers worry-free hosting without fear of bill shock.
I just hope this whole drama doesn’t blow back on other WP hosting providers, because otherwise I’m gonna have some hard decisions to make.
I also really hope that like, Matt calms the fuck down and gets off his high horse. Or gets forced off it so someone not so petty can take over.
EDIT: Since I’ve seen a few calls for action for people to ditch WordPress/it’s so simple, just do x, you have no excuse! I’m just going to put all that to bed right now.
I don’t like what Automattic is doing, but arguably I’m only here, using WordPress, because of the hosting package it’s attached to. It’s cheapo dollars per month, traffic is unlimited, and storage is unlimited within reason. The nearest alternative has a 10GB storage limit which is probably whatever, but also only lets you renew annually. Which means I have to pony up for a full year in advance. As I am 1. on fixed income, and 2. having to deal with increased costs due to my roommate up and ditching me earlier this year, I simply don’t have the funds available all at once to pony up for an annual plan. It has to be month to month. That’s the only way I can justify keeping this shindig running. Otherwise we’d be back on Blogger (and dealing with it regularly just…being weird, and also at the mercy of Google.)
It would be nice–assuming Automattic starts going after other providers provided WP Engine doesn’t kick their teeth in–if my host allowed us to jump to a different CMS on the cheapo plan, but I doubt that’s coming.
tl;dr my financial situation doesn’t really allow me to use anything but WordPress at the moment.
Could I also self host? Sure, I guess. But then I have to deal with securing my home connection and being on the up and up with securing my home network whilst exposing a general webserver to the outside world, and given my ISP is less than ideal, the uptime would be…not good. It’s a bunch of overhead I don’t want to deal with.
Lastly, for anyone who may have spare space for someone like me on their server/plan/instance and is thinking “hey, maybe I can help a guy out!” I appreciate the consideration, but I must also respectfully decline. If only because I’ve actually taken up friends on these offers before, and damn near every time it usually ended in misery and pain. I’ve been burned so many times by friends with spare resources suddenly and unexpectedly ripping the floor out from under me that I wouldn’t feel comfortable unless I control the whole stack. If that means this whole thing folds and I end up back on Blogger counting up the days it somehow remains standing, so be it.
If it also means just redirecting xodium.net to a static page full of links to my social media, that’s just as well, I guess.
I’d hope it doesn’t come to that, but I’m also preparing for whichever way this whole shitshow goes. Because if Automattic steamrolls WP Engine I fully expect other hosting companies to see working with WordPress as a liability and noping out.