[wp-hackers] Putting the P in WordPress

[Matt Mullenweg]

On 7/6/2010 2:42 PM, Chip Bennett wrote:
> I believe that the issue here involves equally the underlying impropriety of
> the filter and your perceived attitude toward those who are asking for the
> filter's removal.

I'm sorry if my words did not convey my understanding and empathy for 
people who are against the filter -- email is not great at that -- but I 
having read every message in this thread I think I have a pretty good 
grasp of it.

> By imposing on end users your purpose - regardless of how noble - of
> correctly spelling "WordPress" you are violating the very freedoms you
> espouse.

That statement is hard for me to accept because the freedoms provided by 
the GPL are completely intact and, to me, sacred. I have spent the 
majority of my adult life spreading them to millions of people and I 
feel to compare this trivial issue to removing them should invoke some 
form of Godwin's law, and I will not respond to any more messages along 
that thread.

> This function should have been written as a plugin from the very beginning.
> Bundle it with core if you must (surely it is - at a minimum - more useful
> than Hello Dolly, after all).

I think you also fundamentally misunderstand the point of Hello Dolly.

> As for me: what concerns me most is the "slippery slope" consideration of the
> core development team's response to community outcry regarding this function
> being added to core.

One of the hardest things about developing software for an audience as 
large as WordPress' is maintaining a balance between community feedback 
(where community > 1% of users) and developer feedback (this list, the 
~1,200 active people on Trac).

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
http://ma.tt | http://wordpress.org | http://automattic.com