Top all-time · #1232
Dries Buytaert
Personal blog · dri.esprogrammingwebwriting
Dries Buytaert's personal blog at dri.es covers programming, web and writing. Since 2017, 59 different Hacker News readers have linked it 86 times, most often “Solving the Maker-Taker Problem”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Dries Buytaert is the founder of Drupal and Acquia. Explore his blog, photography, and projects.
Most-linked posts?
- Solving the Maker-Taker Problem10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2024-10-02
- My solar-powered and self-hosted website3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-10-16
- Balancing Makers and Takers to Scale and Sustain Open Source3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-09-23
- Nostr decentralized social network protocol, love at first sight3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-16
- The Third Audience2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-15
- How to Remove YouTube Tracking2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-06-28
- The web's broken deal with AI companies2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-07-02
- Website migration costs are going to zero2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-10-28
- Drupal looking to adopt React2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-10-02
- Drupal CMS 1.0 Released2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-15
What Hacker News says?
There is a "back-channel" way for most sites: sitemap.xml Many sites have it, since it is helpful for SEO. Examples: https://www.1500days.com/sitemap.xml (Wordpress) https://dri.es/sitemap.xml (Drupal, illegible though) https://aaron.axvigs.com/sitemap.xml (Drupal, legible)
Comment linking /sitemap.xml
on “Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites”Submitted Funding Open Source like public infrastructure as a story · 265 points
HN discussionMore info: https://dri.es/how-to-remove-youtube-tracking
Comment linking /how-to-remove-youtube-tracking
on “Hundred Rabbits is a small collective exploring the failability of modern tech”Submitted My solar-powered and self-hosted website as a story · 193 points
HN discussionSince you mentioned MySQL, there's this nice story about co-founder Michael “Monty” Widenius[1]. Also MySQL history/timeline[2] is nice example how you can go from 80% revenue drop(after going open source) to $1B acquisition. [1] https://blog.openocean.vc/founder-stories-a-hackers-hacker-6... [2] https://dri.es/the-history-of-mysql-ab
Comment linking /the-history-of-mysql-ab
on “Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money”Submitted 'Source available' is not open source, and that's okay as a story · 131 points
HN discussionhttps://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker-problem Good thread on reddit too: https://old.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fup9gb/solving_...
Comment linking /solving-the-maker-taker-problem
on “Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]”Submitted Drupal is now light-years ahead of its reputation as a story · 130 points
HN discussionLong post, writing this for myself as well: The players - WordPress is open source, under GPLv2; a least since 2011; - WordPress is managed by the WordPress Foundation since 2010 with Matthew Charles Mullenweg as director; - Automattic is a private company that owns and runs WordPress.com, whose CEO and founder is Matthew Charles Mullenweg; - WP Engine is a separated company that uses Wordpress that makes money by h…
Comment linking /solving-the-maker-taker-problem
on “Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]”Submitted Solving the Maker-Taker Problem as a story · 81 points
HN discussionI hope Matt considers placing all the community resources of Wordpress into the foundation, including Wordpress.org, constituting an actual board, contributing funds, and setting up a governance and contribution system that matches the open ethos of the license and community. I think this is an area that Drupal gets right, and Dries wrote an interesting post about it in October: https://dri.es/solving-the-maker-take…
Comment linking /solving-the-maker-taker-problem
on “WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction”Submitted Solving the Maker-Taker Problem: Lessons from Drupal to WordPress as a story · 7 points
HN discussionMatt isn't being held to a higher standard, he's being held to a different standard, a standard he chose. WP Engine is a company that chose to build a business around a piece of software released under a license that permits their commercialisation of the software. Matt is an individual who chose to release software under a license that permits companies to build a business around the software and has then chosen to…
Comment linking /solving-the-maker-taker-problem
on “The ACF plugin on the WordPress directory has been taken over by WordPress.org”Submitted My solar-powered and self-hosted website as a story · 6 points
HN discussionWe have no idea, really. Based on public posts only, Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, founder of Wodpress completely lost his mind and went into war against WPEngine for unclear reasons (many suspect it's money pressure perhaps from investors). He claims they don't contribute to Wordpress and WPEngine says while they don't contribute to the core product they contribute aplenty to plugins, sponsor camps and documen…
Comment linking /solving-the-maker-taker-problem
on “Some Automattic employees accept severance package offer”Submitted Open Source is four kinds of economic goods as a story · 4 points
HN discussionNo Roman general ever decimated his legion twice. Matt should go on vacation and beg Dries Buytaert to clean up his mess because he's the only guy talking sense. https://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker-problem
Comment linking /solving-the-maker-taker-problem
on “WordPress retaliation impacts community”Submitted Can we save the open web? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThat's at the heart of this discussion. There are two legal entities at play here: automatic, a for profit company, and the WordPress Foundation, a non-profit. It's believed that the latter carries independent governance over the open source project. As it turns out: that's likely not the case, and there's a potential conflict of interests. That doesn't imply it's a bad model. Drupal is governed in a similar fashion…
Comment linking /solving-the-maker-taker-problem
on “WordPress retaliation impacts community”Submitted My First Web3 Webpage as a story · 4 points
HN discussionA number of people have dealt with the maker/taker issue, for example Dries, the founder and BDFL of the Drupal project: https://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker-problem I think we're pretty far removed from the original issue of WP Engine and WordPress and people are just trying to deal with the fallout from Matt's nuke-the-entire-ecosystem approach he's elected to take.
Comment linking /solving-the-maker-taker-problem
on “Secure Custom Fields by WordPress.org”Submitted The freedom to leave is what makes customers stay as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Is there even support for this in our compilers? What would support look like? FPGA offload has been a very active area of compiler research for more than a decade. I like this paper for example https://dri.es/files/fpl05-paper.pdf
Comment linking /files/fpl05-paper.pdf
on “Intel Xeon processor with FPGA now shipping”Submitted The web's broken deal with AI companies as a story · 3 points
HN discussion>Isn't the WPF-Automattic relationship more or less the norm with companies that have 'open-source business models'? No, it's not, and I think that's the crux of most of the controversy. One quick comparison would be Drupal: https://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker-problem
Comment linking /solving-the-maker-taker-problem
on “Automattic Hit with Class Action over WP Engine Dispute”Submitted Generating image descriptions and alt-text with AI as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> How many other people were there that didn't find the type of success you did? They were just as lucky to be at that conference at that time as you. Ha that's right. What I must have seen but failed to put into words is https://dri.es/drupal-sucks-less : > All content management systems suck, Drupal just happens to suck less. — Boris Mann at DrupalCON Amsterdam, August 2005. Typo3, Tikiwiki, Phpnuke (heaven forbid…
Comment linking /drupal-sucks-less
on “The Role of Luck in Life Success”Submitted Drupal Celebrates 20 Years as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThank you for sharing. This is exactly the kind of problem that centralised social networks give us, but which most people will not understand because for most people this will not happen. I think it is important that we solve the problem of centralised social networks. And I think Nostr has the right idea. Nostr differs from ActivityPub in that identity is not tied to the instance that you use. To quote someone els…
Comment linking /nostr-love-at-first-sight
on “Jack Dorsey has set a 10 btc bounty for Nostr based alternative to GitHub”Submitted Is Open Source recession-proof? as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
