[shabgzer]

I'm wondering what any lawyer here on HN has to say about how much of a claim WP Engine has against them being banned from the WP.org plugins repository. My layman's understanding of the law tells me that they have no claim whatsoever; you can't assert rights from something that's provided for free, let alone something so expensive to run. The only claim they may have is related to it being used as a means to extort them, but that is a separate issue.

[eXpl0it3r]

Not a lawyer, it likely becomes an issue, because a) by Matt's own words wordpress.org is operated and maintained by Automattic employees and thus b) the blocking essentially leads to competitive disadvantage and a general conflict of interest.

But maybe there's also some law that can be leverage, that you can't just block one company, especially if it's some common good or so.

[pclmulqdq]

In the real world, if you tell people X and insist that X is true, X becomes something of a binding promise on you. In this case X is "you can use the letters WP to imply WordPress in your branding."

There are several torts around this sort of thing, like promissory estoppel.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Not a lawyer, but I assume WP.org can ban whomever they like. Now, if they did it because WP.com asked them to, the non profit status becomes a question. Furthermore, WP hardcodes the URL for the resource, meaning you cannot self host the plugins even if you wanted.

[curiousgal]

Yeah well in the real world circumstances are what matters. Something that may be benign is no longer so following his sad attempt at extorting them.