njbentley1
The math works out when I think about it but for some reason I’m still floored by the fact that $12 only gets you 10 pages of paper for an entire year.
The thing that all of my customers had in common before they started hosting their website with me was that they were paying companies like WP Engine and EIG tons of money for (in my humble opinion) a terrible hosting platform. They all complained their websites were slow, customer support was nonexistent, etc. They had very little knowledge of the web and bought the first thing they clicked on when doing a Google search for “best wordpress host.”
That context partially informs why I agree with Matt’s decision to go after WP Engine. The rest of my agreement stems from my belief that open source is only successful if people contribute back. Sure, licensing-wise people are under no obligation to do so, but let’s face it — you wouldn’t have a successful business without those people that created the project in the first place.
Do I agree with how Matt is doing this? No not really. I think there are probably better ways to address predatory companies like WP Engine that harm the community & reputation of Automattic far less. I’ve seen some excellent ideas in this thread.
Google’s entire business model is dependent on personal data. AOSP may have privacy features that are verifiable but Google Play Services is not open source and undoubtedly collect lots of data for Google. Most AOSP-based phones all largely include GPS. Sure, you can limit what access GPS has but then you’re sacrificing features. The majority of people probably opt-in.
In contrast, Apple doesn’t need your data for most of the products / services they sell. Privacy is a selling point, so they’re incentivized to build robust privacy features. I’d love to see more commitment to open-sourcing underlying technologies but imo Apple is way more privacy conscious than Google.
I will however give Google credit for their privacy initiatives in recent years. They seem to be taking it more seriously.