[dollars5]

Just today alone - there are two posts in Techcrunch blog accusing of Pligg in some way or other.

1] How Grey Is Your Valley: Making Money From Open Source - there they mention that Matt Mullenweg (chief of Automattic) says Pligg is one of the "open source projects for profiteering from their code" - not sure whether he would have mentioned such a thing - I am not sure how we steal or used WP code??

2] Largest Pligg Partner Defects After Announced Sale - here Mike creates an "Anti-Pligg" stand from Videosift - though dagmaggot haev made it clear that he only mentioned that the move from their site to use custom code is a result of their need. More details at http://forums.pligg.com/pligg-news/8...echcrunch.html

Not sure why - just give your voices on this - pls.

[dollars5]

Just to update this thread, recently Matt has replied at Techcrunch How Grey Is Your Valley: Making Money From Open Source as follows:

1. I never criticized Pligg for selling their site, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

2. I did criticize Vanilla for selling links to spam sites promoting casinos, home loans, and mortgages embedded in every download of the software. If you posted those links in a comment Akismet would block them as spam. Just because you can make money from something doesn’t mean you should. It pains me to see other developers make mistakes similar to the one I did even years later. I took the links down within a day of the article you linked as soon as I was able to get online.

3. WordPress.com was designed to mirror WordPress’ code as closely as possible even though it would have been easier to branch. We did this so the time and money we invest in that platform directly benefit WordPress.org, and vice versa, aligning the economic and social incentives. We’re not legally required to give back code under the GPL, but I think we’d be dumb not to give as much as possible. WordPress development has sped up since Automattic was founded and numerous other companies have adopted WordPress as their platform (including Techcrunch) and many more contribute back like we do.

4. I wrote numerous anti-spam plugins before Akismet, including a peer-to-peer decentralized approach, they just did not remain effective over time the way Akismet has. Akismet now has plugins for or is built directly into more than 25 other platforms besides WordPress, so obviously there has been a market demand and appreciation for the product. I think it’s rather rude to suggest I’d deliberately cripple WordPress to profiteer from spam.

5. I have no idea what you mean by “your valley,” or why it would be grey or not.

It is now very much evident that Techcrunch is just making up stories rather than reporting the facts - damn them....

[Yankidank]

Well I guess any coverage is better than none at all. I did feel a bit offended though from today's news items on TC.

[dollars5]

It is good to see the sportive spirit of Yank - any coverage is always good.

I think we should personally contact Mike or Duncan Riley on a clarification.

EDIT:
------
Seems like arguments between Mike and Duncan are heating up - read the comments at How Grey Is Your Valley: Making Money From Open Source

[chuckroast]

Opps Busted!
digg com/tech_news/TechCrunch_Caught_Fabricating_a_Story

[dollars5]

Dugg, thanks for limelighting it.

[EarthFrisker]

Don't care what others think. The critics are everywhere. All they know how to do is be critical. It's like that old saying

"A critic is like a legless man that teaches running"

Also remember there is no such thing as bad publicity if your company is not a multi-billion dollar operation that everyone knows about.

The more press the better for any site.

Mike

http://www.earthfrisk.com

[davemackey]

I don't think the coverage was overly negative. TechCrunch writes a bit sensationalist headlines, but so do all blogs/news media - its a way to hook readers.
David.

[dollars5]

The headlines were not offensive - but the made up content - in both cases (Matt and Dag) have made it clear that they never said anything against pligg as written by TC.