Cancelled before it was cool (Is WordPress unethical?)

DID YOU KNOW? 🤔

I got cancelled by #WordPress in 2010—long before cancel culture was even a thing.

This battle happened on a few fronts:

• Public shaming

• Removal of attribution from my Themes on wordpress.com (a violation of the GPL)

• Customer poaching

That last point is the most interesting, as it was an ETHICAL DISASTER.

#WordPress—ostensibly an open source foundation—was now playing favorites, violating its own licensing, and engaging in dirty tactics behind the scenes to influence the entire community.

Here’s an excerpt:

“[WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg] reached out to me to try to get me to switch to Genesis, had [Genesis owner] Brian Gardner give me an all access pass to all the Genesis stuff for free, and offered to publicize my blog if I did it…”

“…I think he found me because the old DIYthemes site had a link to it on the home page with a testimonial.”

Pretty unbelievable stuff.

And all because I refused to bend the knee.

But look who’s still standing today, fam 😎

I will never bend the knee.

I am an unstoppable creative force.

This is precisely why you should trust me over all other software providers—

I have taken everybody’s best shot, and I’m still here holding the line and staying true to my principles.

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