In this episode, John James Jacoby and I have a lengthy discussion about why the WP- prefix is being blocked when submitting a plugin to the directory. There’s a lot to unpack surrounding the story such as context, information available at the time, handling the situation, reporting the story, and figuring out how to resolve the issue. Considering the amount of time we spent on this topic, I’m fairly certain we scaled the peak of mount wp molehill which prepares us for the next one we’ll have to climb.

We also have a great conversation about Automattic’s recent round of funding, the stock buyback programs, and the job descriptions for new positions that are available at the company. For example, check out the one for Head of Creative Talent Development. Last but not least, we discussed what it means or doesn’t mean when people refer to the core team as opposed to an individual on that team.

Stories Discussed:

• Blocking WP From Being Used in A New Plugin Name Is Not as Bad as It Seems
• Improve checks on non-viable plugin names to prevent abuse
• What does it mean when people refer to the core team
• John’s thoughts on being nominated to speak at WCUS and the session idea proposed by Josh Strebel
• Funding, Buyback, and Hiring
• A Big Orange Heart Is Looking for Artists and Writers
• New ways to subscribe to the WP Mainline podcast

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode eight of the WP mainline podcast for Thursday, August 19th, 2021. I am your host, Jeff Chandler joined by John James. I love you Jacoby.
Speaker 2 00:00:30 Hi. I love you too. Oh, hi, everyone. Starting to show
Speaker 1 00:00:33 Off with a bit of positivity, cause we’re going to dive right into the negativity.
Speaker 2 00:00:39 Well, that’s it. Everyone have a good day. Thanks for listening. And we’ll see you next week. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 00:00:44 Well, I mean we could, we could wrap it up like a nice, a nice type burrito. We could wrap this up right now and probably still be filling
Speaker 2 00:00:53 I’m hungry. Now we should wrap it up. Wrap it up. Wow. No,
Speaker 1 00:00:57 No, no. I am hungry though, as well. Anyways, welcome everybody. We’ve got a lot to talk about this week. Uh, let’s start off with, uh, an interesting story that has made the rounds. Now there’s a lot to get into not a different aspects. I’ve been thinking about revolving around this story, but, uh, it turns out that a fellow by the name of Joe Youngblood posted on Twitter, that we’re press was claiming, but well, he, he, he says in his tweet that we’re press is now claiming that the WordPress foundation has demanded that developers stop allowing WP to be used in plugging names. And in his tweet, he published a screenshot from context he had with the plug-in review team. And in that screenshot, it says, we know, and yet they reached out. They meaning the WordPress foundation and asked us to for now prohibit the us