andyjohnson0
12 hours ago
> Doing so would not only enrich affluent lawyers but damage the brand of WordPress worldwide, resulting in regular folks and small businesses looking for the exits.
I seriously doubt this. Even the majority of tech people are unaware of this dispute. And most businesses are too busy to care.
p1necone
12 hours ago
> Even the majority of tech people are unaware of this dispute. And most businesses are too busy to care.
I still don't understand what the hell is going on and I see posts about it on HN every couple days. Who is the original wordpress and who is the fork. Is there a clear "bad guy" in this?
throwup238
12 hours ago
> Is there a clear "bad guy" in this?
It’s more like dumb and dumber than good vs bad.
FireBeyond
12 hours ago
I'm at a loss - what exactly has WP Engine done that is "dumb"? As far as I can see, it's an umbrella for "will not cave to Matt's every wish".
atonse
12 hours ago
I’m honestly not sure what they’ve done wrong (or illegally). But it seems like Mullenweg has alienated a lot of people by what seems to be very erratic behavior.
I am curious to see what many WP employees think of all this.
anonymoushn
12 hours ago
Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic. WP Engine is the other party in the current drama.
soared
12 hours ago
I believe the short of it is, create a massive business built on Wordpress but contribute zero funding or resources back to Wordpress, and then bicker with wp throughout this drama.
Arainach
12 hours ago
>contribute zero funding or resources
Demonstrably not true. Matt may not be happy with the amount of resource, but people associated with WPE make all sorts of contributions to the Wordpress community.
The Wordpress license does not require any contributions. If they wanted that to be forced they should have licensed accordingly. To demand payment to Matt's for-profit company and withhold access to the non-profit Wordpress.org is a shakedown akin to demanding protection money, full stop.
0cf8612b2e1e
12 hours ago
So…did everything they are legally allowed to do? I get Redis and Elastic Search are mad at Amazon, but that’s what happens when you release code under an open license.
Also, the recent ACF business would show that WPE were being stewards of one of the backbone plugins of the ecosystem.
runako
12 hours ago
If WP was supposed to have a new class of license (let's call it "transactional source"), they really should have published with that license.
Instead, they licensed under Stallman's GPL2. Given his general ethos around freedom of software, I would honestly be curious to hear his thoughts on using trademark as a cudgel to arbitrarily prevent otherwise-permitted uses of GPL-licensed code.
ValentineC
11 hours ago
WordPress was a fork of b2/cafelog to start with [1], which meant that they had to stick with the GPL.
[1] https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/the-blogging-software-dil...
runako
11 hours ago
Correct, which adds to the reasons they really shouldn’t be trying to shake down users.
snowwrestler
11 hours ago
Building a massive business out of an open source project is by itself a huge contribution to the project. Ecosystem growth is a tide that lifts all ships.
lesuorac
11 hours ago
Can't wait for Linus to start badmouthing everybody that offers linux hosting.
belorn
11 hours ago
As a hosting provider, getting into a conflict with people who you have a software and service dependency on could be described as non-recommendable, especially if there is no formal contract involve. There are a few historical examples of companies being based on accessing free apis of youtube/social networks and then having their access removed suddenly, killing the company over night. Initiating lawsuits in response to a trademark dispute (a dispute that had yet to become a lawsuit) managed to escalate things fairly fast.
Mistletoe
12 hours ago
bossyTeacher
12 hours ago
> Is there a clear "bad guy" in this
In real life bad guys mostly don't exist. It is fiction. In real life you have people with no power and people with power.
labster
12 hours ago
On one side is a big corporation that doesn’t give back very much to the open source community on which it profits. On the other side is an executive who will do everything in his power end the aforementioned abuse, including his nonprofit directing money into his for-profit, and even destroying the entire software ecosystem and individual developer’s livelihoods.
Consensus seems to be that the Matt/Automattic is worse than WP Engine, if only through stupidity and hubris.
gamblor956
9 hours ago
WPE maintains a number of community plug-ins and until last week was the single biggest corporate sponsor of WordPress community events.
salesynerd
9 hours ago
Not siding with either Matt or WPE, but I think just sponsoring community events should not be giving back enough. If I remember clearly, companies like Google, Microsoft, etc. spend substantial (to the community) monetary and non-monetary support to many open-source projects, in addition to sponsoring community events.
gman83
12 hours ago
I have dozens of clients on WordPress and I've not heard from a single one. I'm pretty worried personally, though.
bigiain
11 hours ago
We've had 3 queries so far out of about two dozen clients on WP/WPEngine.
We are _actively_ making contingency plans. But our best estimate at this stage is that WPEngine will provide a suitable way to keep all our WPEngine sites running at least in the short and medium term, but we are also making disaster plans in case this all goes, as Matt intends, "nuclear".
Matt keeps talking about how he's doing this "for the WordPress Community", but as I commented elsewhere:
So far as I can tell, when Matt talks about "the WordPress Community", he means:
- Matt
- the people who didn't quit Automattic last week
- _maybe_ the WP core developers who don't work at Automattic, so long as they keep their criticisms to themselves
And the community of people who _use_ WordPress to run their websites, and the people who help them to do that, and the 3rd party plugin and theme developers who make WP work for so many different kinds of websites - can all go and get fucked.belorn
10 hours ago
I can see how clients that have sites hosted on WPEngine can be a bit concerned. Did you receive any queries by people who do not have anything hosted by WPEngine, but rather simply have a wordpress site on some other hosting company/self-hosted?
I work at a hosting company and we have received zero questions, and we have a fair larger number of clients who sites are built on wordpress. In terms of going nuclear, anything regarding trademark will have zero impact on our clients.
bigiain
9 hours ago
Yeah. One of those clients is hosted on GCE. She is quite technical and plugged into general IT news, and they are in the middle of due diligence with potential investors though.
> In terms of going nuclear, anything regarding trademark will have zero impact on our clients.
Is that true if Matt/Automattic win against WPEngine, and he starts using that as precident and starts demanding 8% of revenue as his standard shakedown on anybody who's used the "WordPress" trademark to generate revenue?
belorn
15 minutes ago
Yes, it is true. Websites built on wordpress do not generally use wordpress trademark to generate revenue. Its not recommended to have footers that says "built on wordpress", nor is recommended to keep the default website icon. If the client is, say a medical company that sells medical products, any reference to wordpress would be unprofessional to have on their company website.
Is that client of yours a web developing company that focus on wordpress in their marketing?
chairmansteve
12 hours ago
Why are you worried? I am struggling to understand why anyone cares. I am not a WordPress user though.
The WordPress code is available to WPEngine. How are Mullenweg's actions damaging them?
fortyseven
12 hours ago
So you don't use it, or understand anything about what's going on, apparently, but you have big opinions on it contrary to those who actually do know what's up. Brilliant. No notes.
chairmansteve
10 hours ago
I don't see any opinion in my post. I am literally asking why this is important. Are you a troll?
edanm
4 hours ago
I think the phrase "struggling to understand why anyone cares" implies that you think no on should care.
Maybe that's not what you meant. I have no dog in this fight. Just telling you why someone would assume you are expressing an opinion.
SAI_Peregrinus
9 hours ago
Automattic are claiming they own the trademark on WordPress, WP, etc, when it comes to CMS software & hosting of that software.
WP Engine is a prominent hosting provider for WordPress, who also contribute several very popular plugins.
Automattic have sued WP Engine. Automattic have blocked WP Engine from updating any of their plugins, or anything else on wordpress.org. A vulnerability was found in a WP Engine plugin, and Automattic have taken it over (but are not doing any maintenance). Automattic's CEO went on a number of unhinged rants here and elsewhere.
Brian_K_White
9 hours ago
You very clearly expressed the opinion that no one should care what Matt has done.