[philsquared_]

The problem I have with this is simple and has to do with the lack of separation of entities.

Automattic is a competitor with WPEngine. Wordpress.com is a competitor with WPEngine. Wordpress.org and the Wordpress Foundation IS NOT a competitor with WPEngine.

There is a dispute between Automattic and WPEngine. The resources of Wordpress.org and the Wordpress Foundation should not be leverage in this dispute.

The fact that those boundaries are crossed means that anyone who is in competition with Automattic might have any and all ecosystems that Matt has any control over leveraged against them if they upset Matt or Automattic in any way.

It is very poor taste and changes the perspective of the product. Instead of a professional entity who will engage professionally it is now a form of leverage that a single person could wield against anyone who crosses them.

To be clear these same exact actions can be taken against anyone who insults one individual. This look is embarrassing.

[tomphoolery]

> The fact that those boundaries are crossed means that anyone who is in competition with Automattic might have any and all ecosystems that Matt has any control over leveraged against them if they upset Matt or Automattic in any way.

There was never a boundary in the first place if it's the same guy doing both things. WordPress has always had this veneer of "community-driven", which is what they hide behind when people get their sites exploited, but Automattic really holds all the keys here. Just because Matt replies with an `@wordpress.org` email vs. an `@wordpress.com` email doesn't mean he's a different person all of a sudden.

[datahack]

If that’s the case, I’d like to hear from Matt about this. I’ve known him for years, and I don’t think he is unaware of conflicts like these. In fact I’ve seen him be deeply thoughtful about complex problems in the past. He’s not perfect (who is?), but he really does try.

Given that he has been pretty reasonable about stuff like this in the past, I don’t find myself inclined to ascribe bad intent until I hear from him personally.

Seems like the kind of situation where only one person can answer.

Am I off?

[SSLy]

Compare and contrast with the OpenAI old board vs sama drama the other day. And the end result of non-profit being steered by the for-profit entity.

[petre]

> they hide behind when people get their sites exploited

It's all in the GPL under "no warranty" and the license is attached to the WP source.

[sjs382]

> The problem I have with this is simple and has to do with the lack of separation of entities. > Automattic is a competitor with WPEngine. Wordpress.com is a competitor with WPEngine. Wordpress.org and the Wordpress Foundation IS NOT a competitor with WPEngine.

> There is a dispute between Automattic and WPEngine. The resources of Wordpress.org and the Wordpress Foundation should not be leverage in this dispute.

> The fact that those boundaries are crossed means that anyone who is in competition with Automattic might have any and all ecosystems that Matt has any control over leveraged against them if they upset Matt or Automattic in any way.

Can an action like this put the WordPress Foundation's 501c(3) at risk?

And if so, how likely is it to actually become a legal problem?

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Were it to go to trial, legal discovery would be fun. How many internal conversations were had about, “Those jerks at WPEngine are eating our lunch”. Rather than, “I am truly concerned about how the trademark is being confused by this one specific successful company. Whatever can we do?”

[snowwrestler]

WP Engine could file a complaint with the IRS about tax exempt status abuse. But that would be a heck of an escalation, and even more damaging to the WordPress ecosystem than Matt’s ridiculous actions so far.

But it wouldn’t have to be them. Any U.S. citizen can file such a complaint, even anonymously. That said, it would likely not be pursued by the IRS unless it was written based on detailed accurate knowledge of tax exempt regulations, and clear proof of abuse.

[flutas]

> The resources of Wordpress.org and the Wordpress Foundation should not be leverage in this dispute.

I honestly wonder if it crosses any legal boundaries. From what I can tell, it's essentially the non-profit acting on commands from the for-profit.

Basically the equivalent in my mind to a "in-kind donation".

[that_guy_iain]

To me, I think it's more that it shows they're one entity and then it is a massive issue about the tax write offs Automattic will have been claiming for years. But, I guess we'll see because WP Engine is going to come out swinging on this. They have to.

There is also the fact that WP Engine sponsored a WordPress Foundation event and then was kicked out of it because of this dispute. The WordPress foundation accepted 75k knowing what WP Engine was doing and then didn't honour the deal.

[kgwgk]

If the non-profit is doing something for the benefit of the for-profit it’s the reverse of a donation - unless you really meant a “donation” from the foundation to the company.

[that_guy_iain]

> The fact that those boundaries are crossed means that anyone who is in competition with Automattic might have any and all ecosystems that Matt has any control over leveraged against them if they upset Matt or Automattic in any way.

I think the fact those boundaries have been crossed will be a massive legal issue for WordPress.org and Automattic since they'll have problems proving they're two separate entities and they will have been using that as a charity as a tax write-off. What is the penalty for tax evasion where you create a fake charity to write tax off of? It's prison, right?

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Not that I think it would happen, but that would some outcome. Attempting to squeeze a competitor only to land in jail for tax fraud.

[AlienRobot]

Have you read this? https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/23/wp-engine-sends-cease-and-...

>Last week, in a blog post, Mullenweg said WP Engine was contributing 47 hours per week to the “Five for the Future” investment pledge to contribute resources toward the sustained growth of WordPress. Comparatively, he said Automattic was contributing 3,786 hours per week. He acknowledged that while these figures are just a “proxy,” there is a large gap in contribution despite both companies being a similar size and generating around a half billion dollars in revenue.

It seems to me that it isn't a simple "dispute." Automattic is contributing to WP org, but WP Engine isn't. If WP org was completely neutral, they still would have reasons to side with Automattic over WP Engine on this.

[munbun]

That’s really not a fair statement from him given:

1. Based on their github orgs, there is effectively no separation between wordpress.org and Automattic.

2. The core WP contributors trac has a long history of not really being welcome to new contributions. Outside of the design decisions coming from Automattic, third party contributions either die in multi-year deliberations or get directed to the plugin system.

3. The development culture around WP, which largely revolves around the plugin ecosystem - has always trended towards paid plugins over OSS software.

[that_guy_iain]

The quote says WP Engine is contributing. WP Engine also gave WP.org 75k in sponsorship money, I would say that's a contribution. It's also important to know that after WP.org took that 75k sponsorship money, they kicked them out of the event they sponsored.

[ttul]

I suspect that his figure on the number of hours is somewhat cooked up and biased. Did he cite a reliable and reasonable source of data that we can all consult to check the veracity of this claim?

[rgbrenner]

this dispute is with wordpress though. “wordpress” is not a generic term. if i called my company “MSengine”, and described it as “the most trusted microsoft platform” (a phrase i copied straight from wpengine.com)… i would get a cease and desist almost immediately.

even in the open source community, there are dozens (probably more) linux distros that have been told by ubuntu to rename their projects from “ubuntu x” to something else, for example. there are no trademark grants contained in the gpl or any of the popular open source licenses.

the only mystery is why they’ve waited so long to enforce their trademark.. but matt says they’ve been working on a deal “for a while”.. and i guess we’ll have to wait until the court case to see what that means.

[kadoban]

The WordPress trademark guides say explicitly that "WP" is allowed to be used by others. Several other parts of the wording the WP Engine uses are also explicitly allowed. So your whole first two paragraphs are mistaken.

[patmcc]

Trademarks are largely (but not exclusively) about preventing consumer confusion. I can offer a course called "Learn how to use Excel like a pro" and not get sued by MS, as long as I'm not making it seem like I'm Microsoft.

Just like DigitalOcean can say "We will rent you an Ubuntu server". We can argue about whether calling something "Wordpress Hosting" or "Hosting a Wordpress site" is different, but I think WP Engine is being perfectly reasonable. "Wordpress Hosting" is as generic as Kleenex and Xerox at this point.

[mdasen]

Earlier this month, WordPress explicitly said that their trademark didn't cover "WP"

https://web.archive.org/web/20240901224354/https://wordpress...

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.

They changed the wording as of this dispute with WP Engine:

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

Trademarks need to be defended to be valid. If I started a website "YC Hacker News", Y Combinator would need to defend their trademark (if they think they have one over "YC Hacker News") or the fact that I'm using "YC Hacker News" means they don't have a trademark over that. WP Engine has been around for over a decade. Automattic and the WordPress foundation didn't have an issue with it for such a long time. If you think someone is infringing on your trademark, you can't just let them use it and come back a decade later and change your mind.

In this case, WordPress has even less argument. If Y Combinator said "you can use 'YC' and 'Hacker News' in any way you see fit," they couldn't later come back and say "nooooo, YC sounds like Y Combinator and people get confused!" The WordPress Foundation explicitly allowed everyone to use "WP" in any way they saw fit and disclaimed all trademark over "WP".

Yes, lots of companies/foundations wouldn't have allowed the generic use of "WP" for anyone to use. In this case, they explicitly allowed it and also didn't have a problem with WP Engine's use for well over a decade.

They waited so long to "enforce their trademark" because they don't have a trademark on "WP". They explicitly said so. Now they're trying to create a trademark on a term that's already been in generic use for a while - and explicitly blessed by the WordPress Foundation.

I certainly understand Automattic not liking the fact that they're doing (and paying for) the development work on WordPress while many WordPress users pay WP Engine instead of Automattic/WordPress.com. However, the ship has sailed on claiming that people aren't allowed to use "WP". From where I'm sitting, this feels similar to Elastic, Mongo and other open-source companies disliking it when third parties make money off their open-source code. Of course, WordPress (and Automattic's WordPress.com) wouldn't be the success it is without its open-source nature (just ask Movable Type).

[larodi]

Wordpress is past its prime. A nice api based platform will replace it very fast. The whole wp concept is wrong from 2024 perspective, cause much of it is API calls from web already and not PHP/html loads.

They will try to move towards enterprise infrastructure with v7 but will probably fail as their (third party) devs are not that good.

I’ve actually seen a lot of PHP code for Wordpress, wrote some, and the only way to get it right today is to make use of a GPT, cause their (WP’s) internals are so many and so weird and inconsistent sometimes.

[closewith]

> Wordpress is past its prime. A nice api based platform will replace it very fast. The whole wp concept is wrong from 2024 perspective, cause much of it is API calls from web already and not PHP/html loads.

I wonder are you very young? People were saying this a decade, even 15 years, ago

[usaphp]

> There is a dispute between Automattic and WPEngine

I think the dispute is in fact between the org and wpengine.

Wpengine doesn’t contribute to the core as much as they promised, and prohibits their employees to do so.

[threeseed]

WPEngine has no obligation to contribute anything.

This is not how open source has or is supposed to work.

[InsomniacL]

> I think the dispute is in fact between the org and wpengine.

Automattic sent the cease and desist to WP Engine.

[mthoms]

Incorrect. Dot org is not involved. https://x.com/wpengine/status/1839246341660119287

[davidandgoliath]

Gets even more wild when you consider Automattic invested in WP Engine's Series A in 2011, despite all this insidious trademark abuse commencing in 2010.

No chance this is personal.

[croes]

Isn't that the same what MS does with VS Code?

Open Source so that VS Codium exists but Codium can't access MS's extension store.

[ensignavenger]

VS Code is a product of Microsoft Corp, not a nonorofit foundation. Wordpress.org is a nonprofit foundation, and as a nonprofit, there are rules they have to follow that for profit organizations don't have to.

[PeterZaitsev]

If MS Does it, does it make it right ?

[troyvit]

Does Automattic follow wordpress.org's copyright rules? If not then I see the hypocrisy. If so then I don't.

Also it seems wordpress.org kept their resources open to WPEngine until WPEngine sued wordpress.org[1] (not wordpress.com according to the blog post).

So if wordpress.org is getting sued, why would they keep their resources open to the litigant?

[1] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/

[lolinder]

Part of what's so weird about the communication from Matt here is that WordPress.org is not getting sued by anyone—indeed, as far as I can tell WP Engine isn't suing anyone.

All that happened is that WP Engine sent a cease and desist letter to Automattic. WordPress.org misrepresenting the situation is not a good look.

[eXpl0it3r]

The dispute (on the surface) is about trademark not copyright and Automattic has an exclusive license to the trademark.

[mthoms]

No-one is being sued (yet) and wordpress.org was not targeted in any way. Matt is being dishonest by repeating this lie anywhere and everywhere. Including on the very page you linked.

WPEngine sent a cease and desist letter addressed to, and targetting only, Matt Mullenweg and his for profit company Automattic. WPEngine are explicitly not targeting wordpress.org in the letter. You can read it here: https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Cease-and-De...

Side note: wp.org is indeed mentioned a couple times in the letter but only when referencing Matt's blog post on the site, the trademark rules, and some technical information around the revisions feature. The "demands" part of the letter address Matt and Automattic exclusively.

Matt knows that an attack on dot org would rally everyone to his side, which is why he is repeating this lie over and over. He is trying to use the community as shield.

This is also (IMHO) why he shut off access to dot org. He wants WPEngine to be seen taking some sort of action against the community.

Matt is constantly shifting between "Matt from Automattic" and "Matt from the WP Foundation" wherever it suits him. It's sickening. He needs to be removed from the foundation immediately.

https://x.com/wpengine/status/1839246341660119287

[DannyBee]

100% - i raised exactly this issue in the legal claim concerns.

This is a remarkably bad plan from a legal perspective.

[norswap]

True, but in this case we can simply judge based on the actions taken.

The claims (trademark violation, no contributing anything back) seem pretty sensible and borne out in practice.

WordPress is an open source project stewarded by a foundation that set rules for its use. If you don't follow them there are consequences. As simple as that, really.

These rules (paying a license or contributing back) seem sensible too.

Normalizing people leeching off the work of other doesn't seem like a good approach.

Some people might disagree with the philosophy — perfectly fine! They can write their own blog engine and release it in a permissive open-source license and make copyrights freely available to anyone. This is a blog engine, not exactly antitrust material.

[lnxg33k1]

It's not really crossing the boundaries, in this kind of situations I don't know if people is misunderstanding genuinely or they do the interests of corporations because they have interests in WPEngine. WordPress.org is not going against all competitors of WordPress.com, is going against a competitor that has high load towards free resources of WordPress.org, having many customers, but not contributing anything towards those free resources. And WordPress.org has banned that leecher from keep stressing their systems for free with no contributions. When Matt said to go to pick another WordPress hosting instead of WPEngine, WordPress.com wasn't mentioned either.

[fluidcruft]

Wouldn't that risk be mitigated if WPEngine were more engaged with supporting development?

[mplewis]

What difference would that make?