jkaplowitz
14 hours ago
Matt is in large part mischaracterizing, although not outright lying about, the court's ruling. If you follow the link he provided to the ruling itself, many of the dismissed claims were dismissed "with leave to amend" (basically WPEngine has to fix their allegations), and one was dismissed for the reason that it should instead be asserted "as an affirmative defense if appropriate later in this litigation." There were some claims dismissed in a way WPEngine can't fix, but not many, and others were upheld.
I have no connection to either side here, nor am I a lawyer, but I do know how to read a legal opinion.
In case Matt removes the link to the actual ruling from his post, and also simply for HN readers' convenience, here it is: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/169/wpengine-i...
DannyBee
5 hours ago
Lawyer here-100% agree. Calling this a win is super super strange. The only claims that were dismissed were long shots anyway and will just be amended except for extortion.
The court didn’t even find that there wasn’t extortion, just that you can’t privately sue over the kind of extortion claimed here. Which means California could actually still sue over it, just not WPEngine.
Amusingly, the court also refused to take judicial notice of several documents Automattic submitted because WPEngine said they were not authentic copies of the documents.
Overall this is emphatically not a win. They knocked out roughly no interesting claims, knocked out zero claims permanently (the one claim that can’t be amended could still be sued over by California, and they actually might because it’s California), and will have just made themselves work arguing the same claims again once amended.
They will still end up in trial in 2027 or 2028.
The only usefulness of this would have been as a delaying tactic but I don’t see how that benefits Automattic given the PR disaster they made of this
nchmy
4 hours ago
It's only super strange if you have no knowledge of who Matt is. Poor attempts at misdirection is his status quo.
jkaplowitz
2 hours ago
Thanks for that informative analysis and extra details!
gpm
13 hours ago
Just the claims where dismissal was outright denied are also potentially (up to judge and jury at later stages) enough for some pretty devastating damages... I second that this was a loss for Matt. It wasn't even "a draw" where the plaintiffs have to try again with an amended complaint (not that they will necessarily not bother to amend).
> I have no connection to either side here, nor am I a lawyer, but I do know how to read a legal opinion.
Describes me as well.
echelon
13 hours ago
I really don't get the engineers on HN sometimes.
I get that Matt based WordPress on open source software initially, but 99% of the work that became what WordPress (and by extension, WP Engine) is today was done by him and his company.
WP Engine contributes nothing back. They're just leaches on an open source license.
They're doing what AWS and the other hyperscalers have done. Making bank on other people's hard work because "pure" open source allows for third party commercialization without compensation. (Or even giving back, as is with WP Engine's case. IIRC, they're not a top contributor to the open source code.)
Shouldn't we be angry at the appropriators that take everything and give nothing back?
AWS is 99.999% closed source. They're taxing the industry and contributing to increased centralization. Much of what made the early web so exciting has been hoovered up by these open source thieves.
Google for taking WebKit, snatching the web, and then removing Manifest v2 amongst other crimes.
Again - I think the community is attacking the wrong person here. Matt acted immaturely, but he's the one that put in the work. Not WP Engine.
gpm
13 hours ago
No amount of altruism or engineering work entitles you to lie/cheat/extort/defame/...
When you publish something under an open source license, you entitle the rest of the world to use it to get rich. That's what the license says on the tin, what the licenses have always been advertised, etc. I have absolutely no problem with AWS or WPEngine using that entitlement, nor do I have any problem with any software engineer (or software engineering organization like AWS) choosing not to publish source code they didn't promise to. Even if I wasn't of this opinion though - I don't see how someone violating this supposed prohibition could possibly entitle Matt to lie/cheat/extort/defame/...
Edit: I know it's off topic to talk about flagging, but can we consider not flagging the comment this is in reply to? I think it's generated valuable discussion for people learning about this case... even though I strongly disagree with the author.
echelon
12 hours ago
This open source purism only benefits the leeches.
This is the same defense I see repeated for Amazon and Google, and they're two of the biggest destroyers.
Honestly OSI and their definition of "open" has been a scourge. Google and Amazon encourage this thinking because it benefits them.
You can have non-commercial "fair source" for customers that prevents vultures from stealing your hard work. That's ethical, yet it gets dunked on by OSI purists.
You can demand that profiteers be required to open source their entire stack. But these licenses are discouraged and underutilized.
But when this keeps keeps happening again and again and continues to be met with victims blaming -- I'm disgusted by the open source community's failure to be pragmatic and sustainable.
You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy. And so what did they take and take and never give themselves?
Open source has a problem.
kstrauser
11 hours ago
Open source, and Free Software especially, isn’t about pragmatism, or at least not only pragmatism. It’s about user freedom.
And I only hear people complaining about shared source and other proprietary software licenses when the people using them claim they’re open source so that they can piggyback on that goodwill without actually participating. It’s perfectly fine if someone wants to release stuff under a closed license. They just don’t get to do that and then brag about their open source contributions.
swiftcoder
8 hours ago
> It’s about user freedom.
I think it's worth asking "who is the user?" in this type of scenario. Because to my mind, AWS or WP Engine aren't really "users" per se - they are resellers that provide services to end-users, and the end-users are the only ones whose rights we should be particularly concerned about
Of course, most of these licenses were written before reselling open-source software was a hugely valuable endeavour, so they make no distinction between resellers and end-users...
growse
4 hours ago
They're using the software to achieve a useful aim (build a business that offers a service).
Difficult to get a purer example of a "user" than this.
nine_k
10 hours ago
There are things that are compact but build an interoperability ecosystem around them. Various compression algorithms, cryptography algorithms, communication protocols benefit from having a permissively-licensed implementation. Producing a closed-source fork won't make much sense, and where it does, won't damage the ecosystem. If I invented a new image compression format, I would like to see it supported everywhere, including all possible closed-source software.
There are things that are complex enough, and build an ecosystem on top of them. Producing a closed fork may split the ecosystem, and strangle the open branch if it. These things should use a copyleft license, or maybe dual strict copyleft + commercial license. Linux, Python, Postgres, Grafana, Nexcloud are good examples.
WordPress did it almost right, it uses GPL v2. But to force contributions from hosters, they should have used AGPL, which did not even exist at the time.
tsimionescu
8 hours ago
Your whole outlook is against the philosophy of Free Software. The whole point of free software is user freedom. If users can get better/cheaper services from WPEngine than they can from WordPress, and this is putting WordPress out of business: good. Companies should compete on services, not by enforcing a software monopoly.
This is better for users than the alternative. Since they're using open source software, they can always switch back if WordPress starts offering better services, or switch to some new company that can do it even better than either in the future.
alganet
an hour ago
Free software has nothing to do with making services cheaper.
jazzyjackson
11 hours ago
If you're mad about what someone can legally do under your license, get a better license
drob518
6 hours ago
Bingo. This is the crux of the whole thing.
KingMob
10 hours ago
Thing is, whenever they use, or switch to, a "better" license, people get mad about that too.
bonzini
10 hours ago
People get mad about appropriating a term ("open source") that has had for 20 years a clear definition (among others "no discrimination against field of endeavor", "license must not restrict other software") for licenses that violate it.
nubinetwork
10 hours ago
Not the developer's problem. Don't like the license? Don't use the software.
(Note, I'm not defending anything that MM has done, but you're allowed to change your license, even if users dont like it.)
drob518
6 hours ago
Well, yes and no. You can change it, but only going forward. A change doesn’t mean that WPengine would have to stop using it. They would have what they have, but they wouldn’t be able to use anything new, developed under new license terms. And I think a lot of the community would walk away from Wordpress and side with WPengine. There would be a high profile fork.
evanelias
3 hours ago
> You can change it, but only going forward.
I don't believe this is correct in this case; realistically, I don't think they can change it at all. As far as I can tell, the WordPress contribution process doesn't involve a CLA or CAA.
That means any license change for WordPress would require getting agreement from every single third-party contributor whose code is still present in the codebase; and/or, removing or rewriting code where the contributor (copyright holder) does not agree. In practical terms, that isn't going to be possible.
WordPress itself is also a fork, which further impacts the situation if any ancient b2/cafelog code is still present in the codebase.
The key point here is that without a CAA, third-party contributors still own the copyright to their code contributions; and without a CLA, the project owner has no legal authority to re-license that third-party code in ways which violate the contributors' license.
The "change it going forwards" thing generally only applies if a CLA or CAA was used; or if the previous license was a permissive one and the new license terms don't violate the old license terms in any way.
ljm
6 hours ago
Let the chips fall as they may, no?
If there was a way to make changes entirely free of consequence, everybody would be doing it.
drob518
5 hours ago
Yep, agreed. IMO, Matt just has sour grapes that someone was able to build a superior business.
sokoloff
9 hours ago
The developer getting mad about their own choice is fundamentally different from other people getting mad about their choice.
Yoric
7 hours ago
Sadly, I can testify to that.
gus_massa
3 hours ago
If you don't like that, just use AGPL that force SAAS to publish the modifications.
justin66
3 hours ago
Seriously. I don't even understand what the argument is about.
bigyabai
12 hours ago
> You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy.
For source-availible software, you do. Someone "stealing" your code is table-stakes, if that turns your stomach then open source licenses aren't for you. You can sell your software and enjoy all the same protections of copyright that FOSS benefits from, instead. Microsoft built an empire doing that.
It's no use crying over spilled milk if the software is freely licensed. There just isn't. If a paid competitor can do a better job, it will inevitably replace the free alternative - that's competition. When you try to use fatalist framing devices like "open source has a problem" you ignore all the developers happily coexisting with FOSS. The ones who don't complain, many of whom spend their whole lives never asking for anything but the right to contribute.
If that's a problem and you dislike your neighbors, you're the one who needs to find a new neighborhood.
MangoCoffee
8 hours ago
>This open source purism only benefits the leeches.
I don't understand what open source purism even is.
You pick a license for your software, and now you're mad because people are making money off of it. Then why even go with an open source license?
Do what Bill Gates did tell people to pay up for using Microsoft software, because Microsoft software isn't open source.
What are you crying about?
evanelias
2 hours ago
> I don't understand what open source purism even is.
I believe GP is referring to the behavior of users, not the developer. That is, an increasingly large segment of the industry refuses to touch software using non-OSI-approved licenses. Open source purists view non-OSI "source available" licenses with the same disdain as fully proprietary closed-source software.
In turn, this situation makes it extremely hard for independent-minded developers to form businesses for any software that doesn't lend itself well to SaaS. Massive companies can afford to release things as FOSS, but smaller/bootstrapped businesses effectively cannot.
Compare this to a few decades ago: the industry used to be less dogmatic regarding licenses, and there were a lot more smaller independent software vendors.
raincole
9 hours ago
This is not "open source purism," dude, what are you even talking about? This is just choosing a proper open source license.
Elinvynia
8 hours ago
OSI was literally started by the leeching megacorps (look at their list of sponsors this is not some grand conspiracy) to shame people away from creating more fair licenses.
They are already angry enough that they had to consider AGPL as open source because it meets all their criteria.
pessimizer
12 hours ago
The extortion was to get them to contribute or pay somebody to contribute. And the threat was to withdraw his own resources.
graeme
12 hours ago
The threat was to "go nuclear". Among other things
* Start a smear campaign
* block people from wordpress.org unless they ticked a loyalty checkbox stating they weren't affiliated with wpengine
* Take over and null Advanced Custom Fields, a WPengine plugin
* Block wpengine from wordpress.org, which is baked into wordpress, refuse to name a price for access, refuse to allow development of any alternate plugin hosting system
* Ban wordpress.org accounts of anyone who spoke up in favour of wpengine
* Start specific campaigns to poach wpengine clients
* start a website listing the staging urls of all wpengine customers and cite which ones left wpengine
I'm sure I've forgotten some things. The deal with extortion is you may have a legal ability to request money you are not legally entitled to. You may have a legal ability to take certain actions. But what is often not legal is threatening to take certain otherwise legal actions UNLESS you are paid money you are not legally entitled to.
The extortion claim was dismissed as the judge found there's no civil extortion tort under California law. California prosecutors haven't seen fit to file charges, so no formal proceeding.
But you're being rather blithe in your description.
gpm
12 hours ago
If we're listing them in detail personally I think one of the most offensive (though least commercially relevant) offenses was to attempt to use public resources, the trademark owned by a 501c3 charity, fraudulently transferred back to Matt, to extort them. Both since that's obviously fucking wrong, and they were already only making nominative use of the trademark (i.e. using it to refer to WordPress's product) which they have a free speech right to do.
echelon
12 hours ago
This was all shitty behavior.
But WP Engine was equally shitty (even if it's "legal" - OSI purism has no sense of justice) to steal his company's lunch, from their decades of hard work, and contribute absolutely nothing back.
Again, it reeks of the same foul behavior we see from the hyperscalers.
sonofhans
10 hours ago
Just to be clear, by “steal his company’s lunch” you mean “use software his company published in the manner specified by that software’s license,” right? It’s a funny definition of theft.
drob518
6 hours ago
Exactly. “You complied with our license. How dare you!”
kstrauser
11 hours ago
But them behaving badly (or not; I don’t know enough here to agree or disagree) isn’t the legal issue. Matt is in court for allegedly harming WPE’s business in violation of law and contracts, which has monetary damages WPE can seek to recover.
If you call me names, you’re misbehaving and should be called out for it. If I retaliate by knocking over your fence and spraypainting your cat, you get to sue me even though you were the one who behaved poorly, but legally, to start with.
TL;DR Matt claims WPE acted unethically, which is shameful. WPE claims Matt tried to ruin their business, in ways they say are illegal.
echelon
11 hours ago
I agree with everything you've said.
By the letter of the law, WPE is squeaky clean. But by kumbaya ethics or community spirit or whatever you want to call it, they're scummy vultures.
They're dipping into the "take a penny" jar and not replenishing it.
I can't square this with any sense of justice or morality.
bonzini
10 hours ago
> But by kumbaya ethics or community spirit or whatever you want to call it, they're scummy vultures.
ACF was so important to the ecosystem that Automattic felt the need to grab it after they kicked out the maintainers. Doesn't that go against the story that WPEngine was contributing nothing?
growse
4 hours ago
> But by kumbaya ethics or community spirit or whatever you want to call it, they're scummy vultures.
> They're dipping into the "take a penny" jar and not replenishing it.
> I can't square this with any sense of justice or morality.
Speak for yourself. Other people have different values and therefore interpretations of what's "moral" or "just".
If you want to make the argument that the only use of open source that's moral is one in which the user contributes back, that's fine. But I think you'll find yourself in a minority.
andrewflnr
11 hours ago
It's not equally shitty. Actively lying or smearing someone else is at least one level above freeloading on shittiness. WPE has explicit permission to freeload. No one gives explicit permission to drag their name through mud. Sorry, "both sides" won't cut it here.
gpm
11 hours ago
I don't agree that WPE's behavior was shitty (as already discussed), let alone "equally" shitty. Even if I did though, so what? Two wrongs don't make a right. Shitty behavior doesn't justify someone else's lying/cheating/extorting/defaming/... Even criminals, real ones who have done far worse things than anything that happens in a business dispute, have the right to seek recourse via the legal system.
closewith
10 hours ago
Would you care to disclose your identity?
The last time I encountered someone making these points, they had a financial bias. Is that true for you?
photomatt
11 hours ago
I wrote a blog post about this: https://ma.tt/2025/09/externalities/
btown
11 hours ago
To say that 99% of what became WordPress was "done by him and his company" completely ignores the rich ecosystem of free and non-free plugins that have driven its value. A competitive landscape of hosting solutions like WP Engine drives increased demand for that plugin ecosystem; such demand, in turn, increases the value of WordPress and the company that shepherds its development.
My sympathies would lie, say, with a small development team, with minimal third-party contributors, for whom donations would make a massive difference in their ability to focus on their passion project, being stiffed by the AWS's of the world without as much as a corporate sponsorship of the project. Or even a small startup who sees a large behemoth supplant their ability to drive revenue via hosting.
My sympathies do not apply to $7.5B companies. At that scale, if your core product is open source and you're not continuing to innovate (including on business models beyond mere hosting) to stay ahead of competitors who are using your product the way the entire contributor community (not just you as the creator!) licensed it to them, there's no moral high ground.
hn_throwaway_99
11 hours ago
> They're just leaches on an open source license.
This mentality drives me bonkers. If you don't want other people doing what they want with open source code, then don't open source it, at least not under a permissive license.
People are upset with Matt (though not necessarily the commenters you were replying to - TBH I thought it weird you posted your comment implying they were "attacking" Matt when they were simply pointing out the actual reality of the court ruling) because he wants to have his cake and eat it to: he wants to get all the benefits of open source (i.e. faster adoption and ecosystem creation) but then thinks he can be arbiter of some rules he made up in his head about "how much" someone who makes money off WordPress needs to give back.
kimixa
11 hours ago
So many times I've seen people complain about situations that would have been solved by choosing the license that actually matches how they intend others to use their work.
Some engineers seem stuck to the idea that if they choose a permissive license, people will still contribute back for some idea of "community" or "goodwill" - while really the license itself is the declaration of expected behavior.
By choosing a license, you're explicitly setting how you intend that code to be used - if you want don't /really/ want other people to monetize your work with no feedback, for example, that is what the license is for. If you don't want people to "leech" on your work, then choose one of the (many) licenses that disallows that.
acoustics
10 hours ago
This might not be charitable, but my perspective is that some of the advocates want it both ways.
I would be interested in seeing an MIT/BSD licensed project saying, from the beginning, something like "This project is available under a permissive license, but I have a strong ethical expectation of my users to give me money if they build a product off of this work. I am fully aware that I can't legally enforce this, but I will certainly call you out publicly for your greed and lack of respect for my wishes."
My hunch is that many advocates would hesitate to put this in their project Readme, because they know that some companies might actually comply... by not using the code. (Call me naive but I think this is plausible.) They would rather give the impression that the code is truly no-strings-attached, because that would help drive adoption. Then later they can come back and say they ought to be given a cut.
gsliepen
8 hours ago
> My hunch is that many advocates would hesitate to put this in their project Readme, because they know that some companies might actually comply... by not using the code.
Definitely. And not only companies; even Debian rejected some packages because the upstream owners added restrictive "desires" on top of the actual licenses.
drob518
6 hours ago
Yep. And the reality is that 99.99% of open source is driven by a single contributor. I used to live in the open source world and talk with companies who were thinking about releasing something as open source and the biggest myth I had to disabuse them of was the idea that lots of contributors would show up to work on the code. In rare cases with high value projects that does happen, but mostly not. Honestly, GitHub was the best thing to happen to open source because it made it much easier to get the code and create PRs. In the old days, you had contributor agreements, emailed patches, etc. The bar was a lot higher for a contributor.
frou_dh
6 hours ago
These days I honestly suspect tons of people do not think about the license they choose for their projects AT ALL and just reflexively put MIT. Like, if they were sleeping and you prodded them and said "license", they would mumble "MIT".
flomo
9 hours ago
Yeah, and this is blatant when it is VC startup type stuff. But on the other hand you have say Redis, which seemed to be just some legitimate OSS cool but boring infrastructure for a long time, patches welcome. And then it becomes some VC 'cloud solution'. And everyone has to adapt (or pay).
acoustics
12 hours ago
Permissively licensed software is intentionally designed to be used by anybody for any reason with essentially no restrictions beyond attribution. Advocates of permissive licenses explicitly reject the argument that commercial users ought to have any kind of obligation to the authors. "Thief" seems like a category error here.
For people who want to make money down the line, what is so hard about selling commercial licenses? Or better yet using GPL so that your software is still open source but the big commercial users will still want to pay you for a separate license?
gpm
12 hours ago
WordPress is GPL - the GPL, like all "Open Source" (using OSI's definition) licenses enables commercial use, and that is a subset of one of the FSF's core principles (The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose).
acoustics
12 hours ago
I haven't been following this conflict: have the terms of the GPL been broken?
gpm
12 hours ago
By WPE - I don't think anyone has even claimed that informally - since they don't distribute software and WordPress is GPL not AGPL it would be hard to. Moreover they (according to themselves) use an unmodified version of WordPress which would make it next to impossible. Of course according to Matt they use “something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress” but “is not WordPress.” And is a “cheap knock off” or a “bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code.” [1] but there's still no claim that they distribute that simulacra.
By Matt - no one has claimed it formally but I think there's at least a plausible claim that he has violated part 6 with his attempts at extortion, which requires "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein". Especially clearly as it pertains to any existing nominative use's of the WordPress trademarks within the unmodified WordPress code (which trademark law in no way prohibits WPE from using, and Matt demanded were changed).
[1] Taken from the complaint https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...
nchmy
11 hours ago
ps wordpress dot com is the most bastardized simulacra of wordpress in existence
photomatt
10 hours ago
It was pretty different in a way that brought millions of people into WordPress, but it has evolved in a way that makes a lot of sense to people, clarifying what WordPress is, what the host is, and what the application layers on top of it are. And the new AI / Telex / Studio stuff is super cool.
nchmy
4 hours ago
Why do you have to pay for using plugins on wp dot com, which are free everywhere else in wordpress, Matt?
highwaylights
11 hours ago
> I get that Matt based WordPress on open source software initially, but 99% of the work that became what WordPress (and by extension, WP Engine) is today was done by him and his company.
Wordpress became as successful as it did because of the open-source license.
If you were starting a website of your own using a tool just like this, and it wasn’t up on GitHub with a fully open source license, would you use it or look for an alternative that met those criteria?
Wordpress extracted significant value from the open-source license itself (and probably wouldn’t exist today without it). I’m not sure they realise that.
omnimus
2 hours ago
Exactly. It's very convenient to claim that somebody else benefits from the open license when there have always been dozens of competitors behind wordpress ready to take their place.
There are even commercial WP competitors with highly superior product like Craft CMS or Kirby CMS. And you know what? They make fraction of what Automattic does. The strategy to offer free product and then make money on addons and hosting is clearly superior. But let's no mistake WP is for Automattic more like open-source freemium NOT some ideologically pure charity.
jchw
11 hours ago
I really don't think it's fair to say the community is attacking Matt. Some people may be unfairly hounding Matt, but I think for the most part people are just pointing out that Matt is saying things that are misleading, without much prejudice to whether or not the situation was fair to begin with. It can be true that WP Engine is a leech and that Matt violated the law at the same time; the courts only care about the latter.
Unfortunately, though, people are really wont to loop the open source sustainability question into everything, even if it's only tangential (in that the WordPress situation is related to it in general, though it has little to do with the actual case here IMO.) Thus, like a broken MP3, I feel obliged to point out that not everyone universally agrees that we need to "defend" open source in this way.
Open source and free software are ultimately movements whose primary concerns are the rights of the users of the code with open/free licensing, not the developers; except of course by virtue of developers themselves being users. I think this is getting lost or perhaps intentionally ignored simply because people want the model of monetizing free/open source software by selling it as a service to work and be sustainable. Philosophically, open source doesn't care if it's fair what WP Engine did or how Matt can make a living, and this is definitely both for better or worse, but trying to alter these characteristics will result in something that is less universally applicable than open source, so I think it's moot. (Of course, the most philosophically suitable response to SaaS is AGPL, but again, AGPL is mostly concerned about the rights of users, not the rights of developers.)
I totally can see how the sustainability issue is a huge problem, but if there's absolutely no way to make open source software more sustainable in the long term without changing it into essentially a different movement, then we're just going to need something else (i.e. Fair Source.) However, even if open source proves unsustainable for some models of software, it clearly can do great for other software, so it's probably here to stay, plus we still have many avenues we can go down to improve matters (I think that government funding for open source is brilliant, and it has shown some promising results already IMO.)
I say all of this as someone who would definitely love to be able to just work on open source full time... but I want it to really be open source.
madeofpalk
6 hours ago
> WP Engine contributes nothing back. They're just leaches on an open source license.
To me, its not right that if you follow this open source license legal contract that there's then an additional, arbitrary set of restrictions that you must also follow.
If you don't want companies from making money from your own source project, don't license it in a way that lets them. It's really not that hard.
> Google for taking WebKit, snatching the web, and then removing Manifest v2 amongst other crimes.
IIRC Manifest v2 was never a part of WebKit. Chrome introduced it in it's browser after they 'took webkit'. Google has continued to contribute to Webkit (and Blink), and is a good example of open source development.
alextingle
12 hours ago
If AWS or WPEngine release their sources, then they are upholding their end of the bargain. Why shouldn't they make money, if they can?
If they are not releasing their sources, because of inappropriate licences, then that's what licenses like AGPL are there for.
I've got much less of a problem with AWS making money than I do with Canonical replacing GPL code with knock offs designed to cut the community out of code sharing.
lll-o-lll
11 hours ago
It’s not AGPL though, and AGPL would have solved the underlying problem. GPL existed to force companies to release changes so “I can have it also”; and that’s a political view, the whole “free as in freedom”. Cloud wasn’t accounted for in this pre-centralised internet. 2001 (B2), is long before AGPLv3, but if you have the same ideology, that’s what you want. You built a thing using GPL based code, I want it also.
Freedom is never a given, it must be continually fought for or lost.
gpm
10 hours ago
WPE says they use WordPress unmodified from the upstream source (which they contriubte(d)) to. The AGPL would not have changed anything in this dispute.
omnimus
6 hours ago
It's way more nuanced. Wordpress became popular thanks to convergence of many things including work done by PHP and shared hosting providers (and of course linux). WP itself is not that special CMS but it was main platform people knew about where you can easily self-host and thus be in control/independent. I can't understate how much this is THE main feature. And this is mainly thanks to the PHP/hosting not WP itself.
In that ecosystem everybody depends on everybody. It is also shared open competitive market. But importantly more people use WP the better for everyone.
When you start to throw your weight around thinking you should be getting more because it's all your doing... you will upset the balance. People will call you out. Because they want and need the ecosystem to stay open.
For example think about PHP itself... should they be upset and also want more? The creators of PHP didn't become millionares quite the oposite. Why aren't they entitled to some of the pie? Or Linux? Or what about the guy that cofounded Wordpress but never was invited to be part of Automattic?
ksec
11 hours ago
>I really don't get the engineers on HN sometimes.
There are two different group of engineers on two different end of political belief and spectrum ( political here might not be the right word ). Unfortunately there hasn't been a healthy debate on HN about this since 2013 / 2014.
We ends up with big tech getting the hate, it doesn't matter what they do anymore. And no one is even willing to defend them going against the vocal HN comment's majority. Since WP Engine isn't big, the leaching hurt doesn't count. And of course Matt acted immaturely, which doesn't buy him much vote. It is forever more like a popularity contest.
We have seen the pendulum swinging back in the past 2 - 3 years. Where HN give credit to big tech even if they dont agree with them. ( I was surprised when someone on HN wrote something good about Meta ).
If there is anything we have learned or should have learned over the past 10 - 20 years. It is better to have a healthy disagreement written or spoken out, rather than being one sided on the topic and silent on another.
safety1st
10 hours ago
I don't think it makes sense to bring Big Tech into this, nor would I say opinion runs along a spectrum/binary. Neither WPE nor Automattic are Big Tech.
The main problem with Big Tech is that they're all criminals, they increasingly break the law at vast scale and the legal system seems incapable of doing anything about it. The issue of primary concern with them is a matter of law and society, namely are we a society of laws? Or one where the powerful merely purchase the justice system they want to have?
With WPE vs Matt, WPE has broken no laws as far as I know, and if Matt has, he probably isn't powerful enough to subvert the justice system to his will.
nine_k
11 hours ago
No matter what my personal opinion one may have, it should not change the way one interprets a legal document, should it?
mmcnl
11 hours ago
There is no obligation to contribute back. That's the whole point of open source. It's irrelevant how much WP Engine contributes.
misnome
8 hours ago
Also, uh, they did contribute back, and to the ecosystem.
That they didn’t is pure lies and FUD from Matt who retreats back to the position that it “Wasn’t enough”…
charcircuit
12 hours ago
There is more to giving back than just source code. They can and do offer a service to host instances of WordPress for others to provide value to the WordPress community.
immibis
7 hours ago
WP Engine literally paid for the conference at which Matt said WP Engine never paid for anything.
Also, Matt gave them permission to do what they're doing.
Also, Matt did to someone before him (that nobody remembers including me), what WP Engine did to Matt. So he doesn't really have a leg to stand on here - if WP Engine is bad, Matt is bad.
nofriend
13 hours ago
Matt cites three claims that are dismissed (antitrust, monopolization, and extortion), which based on my skim are really two claims. The first, as you say, is dismissed with leave to amend. The second is dismissed without leave to amend. The first is given the opportunity to be amended, but the dismissal demonstrates serious flaws in the legal argument that they will have difficulty recovering from. I think it's fair for him to celebrate this as a win.
duskwuff
13 hours ago
I'd add that some of the WPEngine claims which have been dismissed were reaching quite a bit, e.g. that blocking WPEngine's access to wordpress.org constituted "computer hacking" under the CFAA.
gpm
13 hours ago
I agree, but note that the "computer hacking" (1030(a)(5)) CFAA claim survived, outright.
Only the extortion (1030(a)(7)) CFAA claim was dismissed, and it was dismissed with leave to amend.
duskwuff
12 hours ago
Right. The surviving CFAA claim involves Automattic's takeover of WPEngine's plugin listing. I think this is a stronger claim, since it actually involves unauthorized access (rather than blocking access), and the judge seems to agree.
photomatt
12 hours ago
This could set a very dangerous precedent if it goes through.
gpm
11 hours ago
As one of the people being highly critical of Matt in this thread, I actually mildly agree with this. The CFAA interpreted broadly is a terrifyingly overbroad law, and while I don't approve of the conduct of seizing the plugin (and could see, for instance, a unfair business practices claim based on it) I think I'd prefer it if the courts interpreted the CFAA narrowly enough to not include an app store updating an app with something other than what the developer put in it.
photomatt
11 hours ago
Thank you!
3np
13 hours ago
Considering how obviously in the wrong he is, it might not be too off calling that a win for him.
0zeroto1one
3 hours ago
From a strategic standpoint, this is exactly what you’d want: the judge cut through the noise, dismissed the flimsiest claims (many with leave to amend), and signaled that only well-substantiated allegations have a path forward. That’s a strong opening for Matt and Automattic.
This isn't uncommon in proceedings like this.
system2
11 hours ago
>In case Matt removes the link
It is sad how his reputation is.