[HN Gopher] WordPress.org bans WP Engine
___________________________________________________________________
WordPress.org bans WP Engine
Author : openplatypus
Score : 226 points
Date : 2024-09-26 08:36 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| openplatypus wrote:
| Likely the aftermath of https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/22/matt-
| mullenweg-calls-wp-en...
| 3np wrote:
| Between all the threads, this video is the best for context I
| think. Juicy part start around 10min.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnI-QcVSwMU
| nailer wrote:
| > Mullenweg set up in 2005 to monetize the project he'd created
| two years previous
|
| Wordpress is a fork of an older project which was not made by
| Matt.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| It's important to point out, since probably the whole
| automattic is still leeching from b2 and hasn't added anything
| kgeist wrote:
| Just checked out the original version of b2 Wordpress was
| forked from and could immediately spot a SQL injection which
| I can use to take over the whole site: $log
| = $HTTP_POST_VARS["log"]; <..>
| $user_login=$log; <..> SELECT ID, user_login,
| user_pass FROM $tableusers WHERE user_login = '$user_login'
| AND MD5(user_pass) = '$password'
|
| Later it also stores the hashed password as a cookie.
|
| Some quality 2003 code :)
| admissionsguy wrote:
| Not necessarily if magic quotes are enabled!!
| hedgehog wrote:
| Oh "magic quotes", we hardly miss you.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| 2003? If I remember correctly, SQL injection has been in
| OWASP Top 10 until 2016
| kgeist wrote:
| The code is from 2003.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Yeah, I got that, it's just that could as well be more
| recent^^
| chx wrote:
| This destroys the Wordpress ecosystem in one move. Who is going
| to pick Wordpress after this for a project if the Wordpress
| leader can hamstring their site for reasons completely outside of
| their control?
|
| This entire debacle also hurts the entire open source community.
| Look, if you think there's a trademark violation then sue them
| for it by all means (but since they let this go for so many years
| the outcome of this likely will be cancellation of the trademark)
| but the rest? just don't.
|
| Edit: by "the entire debacle" I meant not this specific even but
| how WP Engine claimed Mullenweg demanded money, slandered them ,
| all that.
| tgv wrote:
| > This entire debacle also hurts the entire open source
| community
|
| How so? IIUC, WordPress blocks access to their servers. Those
| are not part of "open source".
| phoronixrly wrote:
| Open source has nothing to do with free support/development
| and... now apparently it needs to be said out loud that it
| has nothing to do with free hosting...
| DonnieBurger wrote:
| How about using the WordPress Foundation, a non-profit, to
| attack a for-profit's competitors. They could lose their tax-
| exempt status.
| shakna wrote:
| A nonprofit removed access to resources from a for-profit,
| with whom _they did not have a contract_. That 's a non
| starter.
| DonnieBurger wrote:
| There is more to the story than just this event. For
| context:
|
| https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Cease-
| and-De...
|
| https://automattic.com/2024/wp-engine-cease-and-desist-
| exhib...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Well, hang on, all over this discussion you have a
| Automattic employee being quite clear (in their
| understanding) that wordpress.org is something Matt
| benevolently lets the Foundation use.
|
| But as you'll read, there is so much murkiness to this
| that a mud bath would be positively transparent. The .org
| is not the foundation, but the foundation says that it
| pays for the .org, the .org is not the foundation but
| lives on the foundation's AS.
|
| I doubt much if anything will happen, but all this seems
| to be doing to me is shining a light on how the
| distinction between Matt, Automattic, WP.org, WPF, and
| WP.com all vary depending on Matt's needs, wants and
| priorities on any given day.
| JonAtkinson wrote:
| Because in a few months, people won't remember the details,
| but they will remember "the time the Wordpress guy abused his
| influence to damage the Wordpress ecosystem".
| pxtail wrote:
| Or, alternatively they could remember "the time the
| Wordpress guy smacked freeloader leeching off the Wordpress
| ecosystem"
|
| Apart from that - major turbulences in the WP and in
| general CMS world could be a positive thing. Maybe it's
| time for a new player in the space. Wordpress absolute
| dominance for basically decades kind of sucks air out of
| the space for competitors, there are some like Ghost and
| others but they are barely crawling compared to WP market
| share. Apart from that even fork within WP itself wouldn't
| necessary be a bad thing - some decisions and direction of
| the WP itself are questionable looking from developer
| standpoint like bringing to life insanely complicated
| React-based toolkit as WP editor building block, archaic
| conventions in the PHP codebase, lack of standardized
| patterns and guidelines for plugins creation and many more.
|
| Personally I would love to have PHP-based CMS, built either
| based on Symphony or Laravel with extensive plugins and
| theming, capabilities and resonable market share.
| chx wrote:
| A PHP based CMS based on Symfony with extensive plugins
| and theming, capabilities and some market share?
| https://w3techs.com/technologies/comparison/cm-drupal,cm-
| wor...
| pxtail wrote:
| Yeah, I recently looked into their "Starshot"[0]
| initiative to make their CMS more appealing and it's
| interesting to some degree, but we'll see when it comes
| out - presumably ~ Jan 15, according to the video
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wce6FkNN2Io
| chx wrote:
| I meant the entire debacle not this specific one. WP Engine
| claimed Mullenweg demanded money, slandered them , all that.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I don't use any their products, so I don't have any community
| insider insights, but based on what I've read so far, it seems
| like WordPress did the right thing.
|
| If another company is profiting from the '.org' ressources (very
| heavily I'd imagine) without contributing back, then they need to
| be cutoff.
| sureIy wrote:
| Makes no sense. Everyone is profiting off WordPress and
| probably 0.1% of those ever contributed back.
|
| Either you give away your product or you don't. It's obvious
| the guy is being an absolute PITA because he can. This isn't
| even his first time. Check out what happened with thesis dot
| com.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I don't think the issue is about WordPress, the open source
| software, but rather about using up ressources on the
| wordpress.org servers.
| 1116574 wrote:
| Yep, Matt (wordpress guy) has a dramatic writing style, but
| in essence WPE is using plugins, their security research,
| user system, theming store etc, without contributing back
| that much.
|
| Worth adding that WPE is owned by private equity, and they
| allegedly tried to remove the newsfeed from wp-admin to
| hide his (dramatic) posts about them
| dncornholio wrote:
| My company is also a heavy user of WordPress and never
| have contributed. We also hide those widgets. Do we need
| to be blocked as well then?
| Arnt wrote:
| Open source is a gift. There's etiquette involved.
|
| Suppose one of your developers writes on twitter that you
| _don 't permit_ contribution, and you fire that developer
| on the next day. What reaction do you expect from the
| people who pay for most of the development?
| cldellow wrote:
| I keep seeing people refer to this tweet. Can you share a
| link to it, please?
| Arnt wrote:
| I'm afraid not. I look at twitter only in incognito mode
| and don't have any history, and can't find anything now.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| Hiding the widgets isn't the main issue. If you infringe
| the WordPress trademark in commercial use, and ignore any
| attempt to make it right, and pursue legal action, W.ORG
| does not have to provide those free services to you.
|
| I'm guessing you are not size of WP Engine and Silver
| Lake, honest question, if you were, would you want to
| contribute back to WordPress?
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Does your company offer a competitor to what Automattic
| is offering, taking revenues from them, and make 500+
| millions in revenues a year? If the answer to those is
| yes then I'd probably keep quiet before Matt notices you
| :)
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Seems like you should act as if you will be.
| rglullis wrote:
| Is your company building a business with half a billion
| of dollars in revenue out the uncountable amount of man-
| hours put into Wordpress development?
| dncornholio wrote:
| We probably made a lot more then that in the past 20
| years.
| rglullis wrote:
| We are talking about yearly revenues here, and something
| tells me that your company is not in the business of
| selling services that depend on WordPress code being
| developed
| DonnieBurger wrote:
| I think the issue is using a non-profit (WordPress) to
| suppress a for-profit's (Automattic's) competition.
| Arnt wrote:
| I heard that there was an old handshake agreement that
| WPEngine should contribute so-and-so many developer hours
| to Wordpress per employee, but doesn't now and hasn't for
| a while. At some point the CEO of Automattic, which does
| contribute developer hours, blew up.
| sureIy wrote:
| I keep not getting it. WordPress.org is offered as a free
| download and it accesses the website FOR FREE. Complaining
| that people don't pay for free stuff is not a healthy
| mental state.
|
| WP Engine is no different from the million hostings that
| auto-install WordPress and "abuse" their resources.
| startages wrote:
| WordPress Foundation is paying for the servers, so I guess
| they have the right to choose who gets access or not. Using
| the resources as a single person or a small business is not
| the same as using them from a hosting company with millions
| of websites. Other hosting companies contribute to the
| foundation which keeps the service running. If WPEngine isn't
| contributing anything, it would be unfair for other
| contributors/sponsors. Especially that they are making a
| large amount of money from it.
| appendix-rock wrote:
| You're moving the goalposts. We aren't talking about who
| has a right to what. We're talking about what is and what
| isn't a deranged dick move.
| consteval wrote:
| It's not at all a dick move to block IPs that essentially
| DDOS your free services.
|
| Google, Amazon, you name it do this infinite times a day
| with crawlers.
|
| If you build a business on taking resources from some
| public source, on a large scale, you could very well be
| out of a business at any time. This has been the case for
| a long, long time. And nobody seems to take issue with
| it.
| sureIy wrote:
| How would you feel if WordPress.org suddenly decided to
| lock ALL installations across the world and ask for
| $800/site/month to access it?
|
| Is it their right? Sure. I don't think you'd be here
| defending them though.
| seb1204 wrote:
| As so often I think it would be beneficial for the
| conversation to provide some more context. Single user
| install generated load VS WP generated load on the
| infrastructure of WordPress.org
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| what do you mean profiting. .org is open source. where in the
| open source licenses you are supposed to pay the original
| maintainer a share of your revenue or contribute back in code?
|
| free software gives 4 freedoms. none of them say about
| contributing back. they only talk about freedom of source code.
|
| same for OSI approved licenses. they are either permissive, MIT
| aka, do whatever you want or like AGPL provide source code but
| none that i can think of forces downstream users to contribute
| back to main.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Think in _infrastructure costs_. A simple VPS is around $5
| /mo which is enough for some users. When you're running a
| company which has tons of users, all of them are doing
| updates, theme pulls and whatnot.
|
| _..and WPEngine channels all these requests to
| wordpress.org_.
|
| This creates tons of load on said .org servers. When you
| singlehandedly can increase the load number on an
| infrastructure, the owner of the infrastructure can tell you
| to stop. This is nothing to do with the four freedoms of
| software.
|
| SourceHut had to endure something similar due to Go package
| repository, and they made an agreement about the bandwidth
| management.
|
| I'm ha huge GPL fan, but this doesn't mean somebody can abuse
| their servers' resources _while making tons of money because
| of freeloading on somebody else 's servers_.
| bawolff wrote:
| Yes, but just because you can do something, doesn't mean it
| isn't a dick move.
|
| If you are offering an API to the public, generally its
| considered nice if you document what is considered
| reasonable traffic and if someone is going above it, give
| them some notice before cutting them off (unless the amount
| of traffic is so much its affecting availability).
|
| In this case, it doesn't seem to be about the amount of
| traffic at all. It doesn't seem like WPEngine was abusing
| the service at all but using it in the way it was expected
| to be used. It seems like the operator of the service has a
| financial interest in making WPEngine's life difficult, so
| they suddenly cut them off.
|
| Do they have the right to do that? Sure. Is it a dick move?
| Definitely. Especially since no notice was given and it
| doesn't really seem like the amount of traffic or other
| policy violation was the issue at hand.
| consteval wrote:
| > Especially since no notice
|
| I believe that for a long time there's been talk between
| wordpress and WPE. My understanding is that WPE is
| incredibly hostile when it comes to providing
| compensation. Their overuse of free resources wasn't a
| secret - it was known, and money was requested.
|
| Naturally WPE said no. But of course then your IPs get
| banned.
| bawolff wrote:
| Was it publicly posted what "acceptable usage" of the api
| is? Was the same standard applied to other users of the
| api?
| bawolff wrote:
| Was there ever any attempt to reach some sort of agreement on
| what appropriate usage would be?
|
| I imagine if this was the real issue, then WPEngine could
| probably sort out some fair solution to not use more than their
| fair share. I dont know much about this ecosystem but surely a
| caching proxy is not hard to setup.
|
| However reading between the lines, it sounds like the real
| issue is that WPEngine is more succesful which is making other
| players jealous, who are using their control over other parts
| of the ecosystem to give WPEngine the middle finger. In such a
| case its not really about resourse usage.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| We made many attempts to communicate and solve these issues
| long before it was made public.
|
| They were asked to contribute back, either in cash or in
| people hours and they refused.
| fortyseven wrote:
| Well, I hope the blow to the reputation was worth it.
| Regardless of what is claimed to have happened behind the
| scenes, the very public meltdown is what's going to live
| on. It's already sowing doubt internally, where I work,
| about recommending WordPress in general going forward.
| Spivak wrote:
| They're not though, WPEngine's users are the ones installing
| plugins. If I host my own WP site and profit off of it I'm sure
| I'll be allowed to download plugins. Why does that change when
| I hire someone to host it for me?
| robjwells wrote:
| Here's Matt Mullenweg's post on Wordpress.org announcing this:
| https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/
|
| There is some further discussion in the HN thread on the WP
| Engine incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41655578
| martin_a wrote:
| I don't understand what the actual problem is. What did
| WPEngine do to use "wordpress.org resources"? That article is
| very... non-informative.
| robjwells wrote:
| I believe in this instance he's referring to WP Engine
| installations of WordPress pulling from the WP.org plugin &
| theme registries.
|
| There is a longer story in which Mullenweg has claimed that
| WP Engine does not contribute sufficiently to the WordPress
| open-source project, and that the use of "WP" in their name
| supposedly created confusion and infringes the trademarks of
| the WordPress open-source project. WP Engine disputes this.
|
| Of course the elephant in the room is that Mullenweg is the
| CEO of a rival for-profit WordPress host (Automattic), but
| has made his claims against WP Engine from his position in
| the open-source WordPress project.
|
| Perhaps a board of non-Automattic WordPress project people
| would come to the same conclusions about WP Engine, but the
| current situation reeks of conflict of interest.
|
| Ultimately the ones paying the price here are the users of WP
| Engine-hosted WordPress installations, who have been cut off
| from plug-in and theme updates with no warning.
| asmor wrote:
| Automattic also has a very direct competitor in Pressable -
| who are currently running a WP Engine contract buyout
| promotion in their header.
|
| Horrid look.
| martin_a wrote:
| I see. What a BS. It's obvious that this is a business move
| by Automattic.
|
| Akismet was (is?!) bundled with every fresh WP
| installation. That is a product by Automattic, so why is it
| bundled with the Open Source "product"? It's an unfair
| competitive advantage over every other company/person that
| provides a plugin for that. Nobody cared or was just feared
| to pick up that fight.
|
| Drawing the line at WPEngine seems random, too. There are
| so many bigger or smaller competitors in that space, it's
| just somewhat random to pick them out and complain that
| they don't give back.
|
| Lousy move.
| miki123211 wrote:
| WP Engine is also claiming that Mullenweg tried to "extort"
| them. He allegedly asked WP Engine to pay astronomical
| amounts of money to WordPress, or he'd go on a smear
| campaign against them. THe demands were allegedly refused,
| and it seems that he has indeed started such a campaign.
|
| The claims were made in an official letter to Automattic
| that included proof in the form of screenshots, and that
| was written by a legal professional[1]. I personally think
| it's unlikely that an actual lawyer would risk their
| reputation and fabricate something like that.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41631912
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I personally think it's unlikely that an actual lawyer
| would risk their reputation and fabricate something like
| that.
|
| The various disbarred folks from Trump's 2020 legal team
| serve as a pretty effective counter example.
| fortyseven wrote:
| "How much can I poison the well of public opinion about
| my high paying client and get away with it."
| chuckadams wrote:
| Trump is notorious for not paying his lawyers, so as
| representation goes, he's left with a bag of mixed nuts
| to say the least.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _He allegedly asked WP Engine to pay astronomical
| amounts of money to WordPress..._
|
| If we use the word "astronomical" to represent a
| percentage of profits, what word do we use to describe
| the profits?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| WP Engine asserts they demanded "a significant percentage
| of its gross _revenues_ ", not profits. I'm not sure we
| know what their margin is.
| JimDabell wrote:
| Matt Mullenweg confirmed:
|
| > They had the option to license the WordPress trademark
| for 8% of their revenue, which could be delivered either
| as payments, people (Five for the Future .org
| commitments), or any combination of the above.
|
| -- https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/ce
| ase_de...
| whizzter wrote:
| Conflict of interest, perhaps. Reading about the issues
| though, gimping the product for pennies and then modifying
| customers sites to censor things.
|
| At some point, every bad behaviour in a software ecosystem
| affects other parties and even if his personal role does
| cause a conflict of interest all the things mentioned seems
| to point to a party that doesn't respect the ecosystem.
|
| Reminds me of the whole Elastic search vs Amazon stuff that
| seems to have mellowed down now.
| https://www.elastic.co/blog/elasticsearch-is-open-source-
| aga...
| asmor wrote:
| This is the equivalent of NPM, Maven or PyPi cutting off an
| enterprise artifact repository because they don't donate
| enough to keep those services running. Especially the lack of
| notice makes it an unprofessional garbage move.
| cies wrote:
| Does the notice need to be public? They are fighting for a
| while, I think WPEngine knew what Automattic demanded (and
| hence could foresee what happens if they continue). They
| were/are probably already working on an alternative.
| technion wrote:
| Imagine aws offers a hosted node application service.
|
| Then, because aws doesn't give anything back, npm blocks the
| aws ip range, and suddenly existing aws customers can't
| install modules or security updates.
|
| That's pretty much what happened here. I get the "you should
| give back" ideal, but make no mistake, this is because wp
| engine is eating their lunch.
| cies wrote:
| Automattic offers more than just the source code of WP.
|
| Anyone is still free to use the source, but the services
| they provide are not free.
|
| > Imagine aws offers a hosted node application service.
| Then, because aws doesn't give anything back, npm blocks
| the aws ip range, and suddenly existing aws customers can't
| install modules or security updates.
|
| It's a good analogy. AWS does it a lot, but it does so with
| open source projects that do not have much paid services.
| Reading from the article, Automattic provides many services
| (possibly paid, in some freemium model).
|
| I'd welcome if some projects manage to get AWS to give
| back. They do way too little if you ask me.
|
| > I get the "you should give back" ideal, but make no
| mistake, this is because wp engine is eating their lunch.
|
| Yes. Giving back could be a deal that involves money.
| danillonunes wrote:
| I understand it would be ideal for business to give back
| with money to open source projects, but this issue is
| being handled in the worst possible way by Matt.
|
| So WordPress code is FOSS, so you can theoretically
| change the code, except when you change the line that
| will keep revisions to cut your costs, if you do that he
| will yell at you.
|
| WordPress' repository is free as in beer, you can
| download all you want without paying. Heck, even WP code
| is setup so it downloads from there by default. Except
| when you happen to host in a company that has a very
| specific set of issues (alleged trademark issues +
| profits over a particular threshold + not giving back to
| community; other companies who have only one of those
| issues but not all of them are fine), then he'll block
| you.
|
| The main issue here is the lack of a clear contract of
| what you can or cannot do. Seems like he is just figuring
| out the rules along the way. This gives to external
| observers the impression that the whole thing is
| unreliable.
| consteval wrote:
| Open source makes absolutely zero distinction about how
| the source code is provided. You aren't required to keep
| a free-to-use service up to download your code. You only
| must produce it when requested.
|
| Not too long ago you would pay for disks containing open
| source software.
| Raed667 wrote:
| TBH i don't mind this, open-source means you can use the code,
| but you're not entitled to infra and services.
| asmor wrote:
| If you integrate your code to have hard dependencies on a third
| party server that is provided for free, that's as much part of
| an implicit social contract as is channeling a subset of
| earnings back at a project if you're successful. So it may be
| okay in this instance, but the no notice part is still bad.
|
| WordPress used to not even have a way to have plugins and
| themes that didn't ask to be updated via WP.org - so you could
| provoke an update to someone's private plugin if you knew its
| name. I know because I filed the bug that lead to it being
| fixed.
|
| But everything in this instance is making Matt and his company
| look bad. Their complaint seems to be that revisions are not
| enabled by default on WP Engine and this is somehow breaking
| the core philosophy of WordPress and the few bytes of text WP
| Engine saves are supposedly profit seeking, not a performance
| problem as WP Engine claims.
|
| Additionally, one of Matt's commercial ventures, Pressable, is
| currently offering to buy out your WP Engine contract if you
| switch to them. Breaking a competitors product and then
| offering to buy out their customers should be a red flag in
| choosing an open source solution.
| Raed667 wrote:
| I don't have a dog in this fight, but if you built a multi-
| million business around that code, it is just sane for you to
| patch the code so that your core business doesn't 100% depend
| on someone else's free service (plugin marketplace hosting
| for example)
|
| This entire situation screams drama but I can see where Matt
| is coming from, even though he could have handled things with
| more grace.
| seb1204 wrote:
| I also don't have a dog in the fight but reading for a few
| minutes I have the impression there have been previous
| attempts to engage with WPE to contribute. I might be
| wrong.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| Infra, services and trademarks. They are not part of the GPL
| license. Everyone is welcomed to use any GPL code as they see
| fit, as long as they are within their limits as outlined in the
| license.
|
| But this does not mean W.ORG has to keep providing these free
| services to you and your customers, and it does not mean you
| are free to use trademarks in a misleading way.
|
| Disclaimer: I work at Automattic.
| mikeyinternews wrote:
| I've been a WPE customer for about 3 years and have never
| been confused by the "WP" in their name.
| trvr wrote:
| It's not about WP in the company name. It's about loosely
| using the words "Wordpress" and "WooCommerce" all over
| their website in ways that violate trademarks.
| graeme wrote:
| Could you please explain in which way trademarks were
| violated? Nominative use is explicitly allowed according
| to long established caselaw.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use
| trvr wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but WP Engine is selling products on
| their website literally named "Core Wordpress". That
| seems like it might be a violation.
| graeme wrote:
| For there to be a violation there has to be a reasonable
| prospect of consumer confusion by the consumers in the
| target market. The page is labelled "Choose your
| WordPress Hosting plan"
|
| Someone who is in the market for Wordpress hosting is
| almost certainly aware they have Wordpress and that they
| need hosting for it. Wordpress is a nominative use to
| refer to the entity, and Core is an adjective which in
| context means central.
|
| Do you actually think there are meaningful numbers of
| people who have believed that WPEngine is actually
| wordpress itself? That would be the standard.
| Wordpress.com leads to much more confusion on a regular
| basis.
| trvr wrote:
| "Do you actually think there are meaningful numbers of
| people who have believed that WPEngine is actually
| wordpress itself?"
|
| Yes.
|
| "Wordpress.com leads to much more confusion on a regular
| basis."
|
| Wordpress.com has a license to use the Wordpress
| trademark. I don't believe we should be comparing
| Wordpress.com to WP Engine here.
| graeme wrote:
| Fair enough on wordpress.com. It still doesn't strike me
| as plausible that any reasonable person in a purchasing
| decision thinks WPengine is wordpress itself. I certainly
| haven't seen any such confusion online.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Would you agree that WPE automatically makes a mental
| connection to WordPress? I dare say this would not be the
| case if it was named Josh Mutton Engine JME
| subarctic wrote:
| I only know about this from the two hn threads I've read, but
| it seems like he could have at least announced this publicly
| a week in advance or so and given them a bit of time to self-
| host all this stuff before cutting off their access. Right
| now seems like he's trying to harm WPEngine by harming their
| customers and that doesn't make him look good.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I've used Wordpress self-hosted for a long time and this seems
| like a non-issue. WPEngine can use the Wordpress codebase but why
| should they be entitled to the services provided by Wordpress? I
| say this is a good thing.
| yreg wrote:
| > why should they be entitled to the services provided by
| Wordpress?
|
| They are not entitled to them, but Wordpress has previously
| decided to offer those services. Wordpress donors most probably
| expected that these services will continue to be provided to
| anyone.
|
| The controversial part is that now they apparently establish a
| policy that Matt Mullenweg (the owner of for-profit
| Wordpress.com) can arbitrarily ban competitors in case he
| doesn't like them.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| WordPress.org (the service that banned WP Engine) is not
| funded by donors. WordPress Foundation is the non profit
| entity that has donations.
| paulgb wrote:
| Interesting, so then who pays to run wordpress.org?
|
| I notice a donate link in the footer, which goes to the
| foundation, but to your point, the foundation seems to
| avoid saying outright that the funding goes to running .org
| (instead saying that Matt has been involved with them)
| https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| WordPress.org is operated by Matt Mullenweg as a free
| service that hosts plugins, themes, docs and more. It
| does not take donations, or as far I am aware, make any
| profits.
|
| Instead, people are encouraged to donate to the
| Foundation, which helps with the development of WordPress
| the software and organizes things like WordCamps.
| jacooper wrote:
| This is stupid, something like WordPress.org should
| obviously be under the foundation, as it's an essential
| part of the entire wp ecosystem.
| JimDabell wrote:
| Wait, so if somebody goes to WordPress.org, clicks the
| donate button, arrives at a page to donate to the
| WordPress Foundation, and donates, that money does not go
| towards funding WordPress.org?
|
| The blurb on the donation page reads:
|
| > Money raised by the WordPress Foundation will be used
| to ensure free access to supported software projects,
| protect the WordPress trademark, and fund a variety of
| programs.
|
| "Supported software projects" is a link that leads to a
| page that lists these software projects:
|
| - WordPress
|
| - WordPress Plugins
|
| - WordPress Themes
|
| - bbPress
|
| - BuddyPress
|
| It sure _looks_ like the WordPress infra and plugins are
| supported by the donations from the WordPress.org footer
| link. If the money is going elsewhere, where is it going?
| KomoD wrote:
| So why is it hosted on IP addresses associated with the
| foundation? %rwhois V-1.5:003eff:00
| rwhois.singlehop.com (by Network Solutions, Inc.
| V-1.5.9.5) network:Class-Name:network
| network:ID:ORG-SINGL-8.198-143-164-0/24
| network:Auth-Area:198.143.128.0/18 network:IP-
| Network:198.143.164.0/24
|
| >>> network:Organization:The Wordpress Foundation
| network:Street-Address:660 4TH ST # 119
| network:City:SAN FRANCISCO network:State:CA
| network:Postal-Code:94107 network:Country-Code:US
| network:Tech-Contact;I:NETWO1546-ARIN
| network:Admin-Contact;I:NETWO1546-ARIN
| network:Abuse-Contact;I:ABUSE2492-ARIN
| network:Created:20171214 network:Updated:20171214
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The funniest outcome to this little internecine WP fight
| would be an IRS investigation into the intermingling of
| Wordpress.org, Foundation, Automattic, Matt, etc.
| yreg wrote:
| Isn't WordPress.org connected to WordPress foundation? They
| have a Donate link in the footer.
|
| What about all of these: "user login system, update
| servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern
| directory, block directory, translations, photo directory,
| job board, meetups, conferences, bug tracker, forums,
| Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcase" - are all of those
| services provided by WordPress.org without funding from
| WordPress foundation?
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| > are all of those services provided by WordPress.org
| without funding from WordPress foundation?
|
| As far as I am aware, this is correct.
| swores wrote:
| I believe that you're mistaken and have flipped them the
| wrong way round: Wordpress.org is the official website of
| the open source project owned by the WordPress Foundation,
| while WordPress.com is the company owned by Automattic.
|
| https://wordpress.org/about/
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress#WordPress_Foundat
| i...
|
| https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automattic
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| I work at Automattic, owner of WordPress.com.
|
| I asked how WordPress.org is funded and will get details
| on that but I can tell you WordPress.org is not part of
| the foundation.
|
| Open source project and the WordPress trademark are owned
| the WordPress Foundation. WordPress.org has a license to
| use the name from the Foundation, as does Automattic.
| swores wrote:
| The WordPress Foundation links to wordpress.org as the
| official site for their project called WordPress, and
| wordpress.org directs donors to donate at
| wordpressfoundation.org so it's hard to see how you could
| be right, but if you can come back explaining that then
| I'll happily admit to having been confused by it all.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| Projects page of the Foundation
| (https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/) does not say
| those projects belong to the Foundation. It states:
|
| > Matt Mullenweg, the director of the WordPress
| Foundation, has been directly involved in the creation
| of, or coordination of volunteers around, a number of
| WordPress projects that espouse the core philosophy
|
| I'll admit this might sound confusing. Foundation came
| years after some of these projects were already
| established.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ had a page titled
| "Projects" that listed "death camps" as the first item,
| you would assume they're up to something, right?
| KomoD wrote:
| They do link to wordpress.org outside of that.
|
| https://wordpressfoundation.org/contact/
|
| says "a violation of our domain policy." and links to
| wordpress.org, why would their domain policy be on a site
| that isn't theirs?
|
| And then wordpress.org says "For various reasons related
| to our WordPress trademark", how can wordpress.org say
| "our" if the foundation owns the WordPress trademark and
| .org is not run by the foundation?
|
| > Projects page of the Foundation
| (https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/) does not say
| those projects belong to the Foundation. It states:
|
| But their site does say that money raised will be "used
| to ensure free access to supported software projects,
| protect the WordPress trademark, and fund a variety of
| programs." and links to the projects page that contains
| wordpress.org... but you said it isn't funded by the
| donations from the foundation
| danillonunes wrote:
| Ironic how this whole thing started with an allegation
| that WP Engine makes things confusing. I wonder if Matt's
| mom can tell the difference between WordPress Foundation
| and WordPress.org.
| slyall wrote:
| So you have:
|
| Wordpress.org which is directly controlled by Matt
| Mullenweg
|
| Automattic (ie wordpress.com) whose CEO is Matt Mullenweg
|
| and The WordPress Foundation which is run by (checks
| notes) Matt Mullenweg
|
| Yet you seem to think we should treat all three of those
| entities (Matts?) as separate and independant
| jeswin wrote:
| If like Matt says, they contribute little back to Wordpress then
| I am with Automattic on this. If you're a tiny org, you don't
| need to contribute back. But if you're making half a billion in
| revenue every year on top of someone else's tech, you need to
| stay involved and contribute back in a very significant way.
|
| Now one could say that the license allows that and it's legal.
| Sure, but so is cutting their free access off. If WPEngine is
| just leeching and spending nothing on improving the product,
| there's no way anyone can compete with them on price. Open Source
| is expensive, people need to be paid.
|
| Bottom line: Size matters. Meta's company-size based licensing
| (as seen in Llama) is a step in the right direction. FOSS
| projects should adopt it more widely where it matters.
| asmor wrote:
| This is a horrible way to go about it though. WP Engine users
| are still WordPress users, and cutting them off without notice
| is very shitty. I wouldn't trust WordPress for anything after
| this, if all that it takes to cut you off from updates -
| potentially security updates - is Matt Mullenweg not liking you
| (or your ISP).
| cies wrote:
| They could move their sites over to the WordPress.com, can't
| they?
|
| Since they offer competing services in the first place.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Is that supposed to make this blatantly anti-competitive
| behaviour okay?
| cies wrote:
| Sorry? Their service is... their service! They can extend
| of refuse service to whom they want.
|
| Automattic is releasing source code, which, in my book,
| is being super friendly to competitors. It seems to me
| you are holding the good guys (that release under FLOSS
| licenses) to a higher standard than any other company
| that keeps the source to them selves.
| n3storm wrote:
| WordPress.org is not "apparently" Automattic
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _Automattic is releasing source code, which, in my
| book, is being super friendly to competitors._
|
| WordPress is a GPL project.
| consteval wrote:
| How is it anti-competitive to stop people smashing your
| APIs? That shit costs money man. It's not free to provide
| web resources to hundreds of thousands of people.
|
| WPE is essentially DDOSing WP for free. Obviously that
| shit doesn't fly. Either pay up or get your own server
| and host your own shit.
| asmor wrote:
| WPCOM is a very limited WordPress - much more limited than
| Mullenweg is accusing WP Engine of being.
|
| The real competitor in Automattics portfolio is Pressable.
| Who are currently running a poaching campaign on their
| frontpage.
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| WordPress.com started out as a WordPressu (WordPress
| Multi User) provider. Just a place for people to quickly
| start their own blogs, mainly hosted on a WordPress.com
| subdomain. To learn more about WordPress MU:
| https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_MU
|
| "WordPress hosting" is a relatively new option on
| WordPress.com. Pressable is a more advanced WordPress
| hosting provider, built by Automattic.
|
| Disclaimer: I work at Automattic.
| prox wrote:
| Obviously you don't have to answer, but it feels like
| with Pressable as a product, WPE suddenly became a big
| competitor to the bottom line. It is here where the
| optics suddenly become shady. Like WPE has been running
| like they do for years, and now suddenly it is a big
| problem? Like why now?
|
| Personally I also don't like that the .org suddenly
| becomes weaponized. If this can be done to WPE, it can be
| done to anyone else really.
| dncornholio wrote:
| WordPress.com is actually doing the exact shady things that
| WP Engine does. Confusing WordPress.org users that they
| need a paid account to run WordPress.
| cies wrote:
| You need to pay for hosting right? Nothing new.
|
| Sure WP also has some freemium model, but I do not
| consider that shady.
|
| Have you seen the Automattic CEO talk (link to YT in
| other comment in this thread). I dont think he's in shady
| business: he's releasing loads of source code under the
| GPL!
| thekid314 wrote:
| He's also using the foundations copyright to target the
| primary competitor to his for-profit business, demanding
| that they invest in the profits of the for-profit
| company, at the expense of the WordPress open-source
| community. None of this looks altruistic or for the good
| of wordpress.org.
| mikeyinternews wrote:
| WPE isn't cheap and subscriptions are typically yearly
| contracts, so it's not that simple for those operating on a
| specific budget
| lolinder wrote:
| And herein lies the conflict of interest. WordPress.org is
| acting in the interests of Automattic at the expense of the
| community.
| bachmeier wrote:
| If you're running a large business and you don't have a plan
| in case a free resource provided by someone else goes away,
| you shouldn't be in business. It really is that simple.
| EasyMark wrote:
| "The market is merciless" is something a business should
| always keep in mind, at least when their existence isn't
| guaranteed for some reason.
| lolinder wrote:
| OP isn't talking about large businesses, they're talking
| about the hundreds of thousands of small businesses using
| WP Engine as a host.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Those small businesses are purchasing something from WP
| Engine. It's up to WP Engine to deliver, and it's
| ridiculous if a company that size fails to deliver
| because they were freeloading without having a backup
| plan in place. The fault is entirely on WP Engine (who
| sold the service) not Wordpress (who made no promises at
| all to WP Engine customers).
| dncornholio wrote:
| Where does it state that if you profit x amount of profit you
| should contribute back? What is the maximum amount of profit
| you can make?
| cies wrote:
| Do they have to state it? I think you simply get a phone call
| to pony up some cash when Automattic has you on their radar.
| jeswin wrote:
| > Where does it state that if you profit x amount of profit
| you should contribute back?
|
| It doesn't. But it doesn't say anywhere that you should get
| resources (like storage and compute) for free either.
|
| > What is the maximum amount of profit you can make?
|
| I don't know. But I can argue that someone bringing in 500
| million a year in revenue should be acting differently from
| someone bringing in 500k a year. If they contribute back
| little or nothing, no other player (such as Automattic) who
| contributes back will be able to compete with them.
| prox wrote:
| Apparently that's Matts problem, he says Automattic is giving
| a lot more back (4000 hours or so) and WPE is doing like 40
| hours.
|
| So yeah, is WPE in the right to not give back?
|
| At the heart of this is the same song of making money and the
| idea of fairness. I honestly don't know the groundrules here.
| fragmede wrote:
| ethically or legally? because they both matter, but they
| are decided in the court of public opinion and of law,
| respectively, but only one carries actual fiscal weight.
| prox wrote:
| Personally, and I need to read more, is that ethically
| the problem lies with sharing. Is Matt/automattic
| ethically obliged due compensation? I think not. WP
| Engine is its own company like automattic. Would it grace
| WPE if they do compensate with money or resources?
| Obviously, but then you might also want to put them in
| the foundation oversee committee if they do half of the
| work.
|
| The law, I have no idea in what direction this is going
| to go!
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Is Matt/automattic ethically obliged due compensation?
|
| This question here goes straight to the heart of things.
|
| WP.org is a 501(c)3 organization. Ostensibly, it has
| absolutely nothing to do with Automattic. Reality...
| appears to be somewhat different.
|
| If there were compensation due, it would not be to
| Automattic.
|
| WP.org has a board of directors, not a dictator.
| Ostensibly, Matt is the Chairman. Why would he be due
| compensation?
|
| The fact that such questions even arise shows just how
| ... murky ... Matt/WP.org/WP.com/Automattic's
| interactions are.
| EasyMark wrote:
| It's in your own self interest to know what you've built your
| business on and have a backup plan if the bottom falls out. I
| don't really have any compassion for them, but I do for their
| users.
| yreg wrote:
| If you have such expectations then clearly state the rules.
|
| - individuals and companies under $a yearly revenue can use the
| product for free
|
| - companies under $b have to pay $x
|
| - companies under $c have to pay $y
|
| Pretending that something is free to use and then getting
| disappointed when someone rich indeed uses that thing for free
| and fighting with them doesn't help anyone at all. (This is not
| specific to Wordpress.)
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I feel like there could be little need for rules if people
| had a little common sense, then if you have targets, other
| start doing the bare minimum, I'd rather have parasites like
| WPEngine put off
| EasyMark wrote:
| I agree, if I would making bookoo bucks off of someone
| else's "open"platform, you could be 100% sure I would be
| feeding the golden goose some grain to build some rapport.
| If I'm playing with it in my homelab, maybe not so much but
| try occasionally to donate if it's an OSS project that
| $10-50 makes a difference for.
| eli wrote:
| And if you didn't want to do that it would be appropriate
| for the OSS project to retaliate?
| consteval wrote:
| It's not retaliation to revoke free access to your web
| resources.
|
| If I scrape some website, I could be IP banned at any
| time. That's just how it goes.
|
| It's one thing to use web resources on a small scale, as
| a user. It's another to milk them dry and practically
| DDOS their servers. That can, and will, get you banned.
| Open source or not.
| nijave wrote:
| It is if they get mad you sent a cease and desist.
| eli wrote:
| Of course it's retaliation. Wordpress.org said as much in
| the announcement - they don't like WP Engine's business
| model, don't think they contribute enough upstream, etc.
| And therefore they cut off access to the wordpress.org
| update servers. Nothing about "practically DDOS" of the
| server.
| dingnuts wrote:
| in this case the "rules" you're talking about are licensing
| terms, so I have trouble interpreting your statement as
| anything other than "licenses wouldnt be needed if everyone
| would just use software the way the author wants"
|
| How is WPEngine a parasite? If you don't want people to use
| your code don't release it GPL
| consteval wrote:
| Has absolutely nothing to do with the license, the code
| was and is GPL-2.
|
| GPL-2 doesn't force you to allow free access to web
| resources. This is a separate problem altogether. You'd
| get banned even if they were closed source.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Does that mean every successful company needs to start
| financing Linux, curl, Postgres, Python, etc which are
| undoubtedly powering who knows how much internal
| infrastructure?
|
| Either you are a free license or not.
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| What you describe constitutes an ideal scenario, frankly.
| Similar to paying taxes for using roads for deliveries.
| BadHumans wrote:
| I would actually say yes, they should start doing exactly
| that.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Its not a crazy concept , the real world non-idealized
| version of your statement is called tax. We pay taxes for
| access to free public services.
| krapp wrote:
| It is a crazy concept, because taxes are coerced by
| governments under the threat of violence, whereas the
| freedoms of FOSS software are intended to be entirely
| non-coercive. To require compensation of any kind for
| access and the right to use and distribute code is
| contrary to the spirit of free and open source software.
|
| If people want to do that, then fair enough, just don't
| call if free or open source. And don't license your code
| under free or open source licenses if you care about
| getting credit or compensation or anything but maximizing
| software freedom.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > It is a crazy concept, because taxes are coerced by
| governments under the threat of violence, whereas the
| freedoms of FOSS software are intended to be entirely
| non-coercive.
|
| In doubt, you will have to enforce the freedoms of FOSS
| by going to a court (i.e. use the governmental "violence
| enforcement system"). On the other hand, if you pay your
| taxes "voluntarily", you won't be coerced by the
| government.
|
| In other words: in both cases threats of violence are
| involved.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Ok but taxes that are invented on the spot by an all-
| powerful ruler, and imposed by surprise, under immediate
| threat, do not have a great history in modern society.
| ankleturtle wrote:
| Free public services are a finite resource. Already
| existing software is not.
| ValentineC wrote:
| Software maintenance is a finite resource too.
| ankleturtle wrote:
| Software maintenance is not already existing software
| though.
| martin_a wrote:
| > If you're a tiny org, you don't need to contribute back. But
| if you're making [...] contribute back in a very significant
| way.
|
| I'd like to see the price list on this beforehand, so I can
| decide whether I want to be a tiny org or a big one. Where's
| that pricelist?
| consteval wrote:
| You don't get one. It's a matter of discretion. Don't be an
| asshole and you won't have problems.
|
| You'll find that the real world is filled to the brim with
| exceptions, discretion, and the under-the-table deals. The
| ones who succeed know how to coax and build them. The ones
| who fail demand hard rules. Typically, those "hard rules"
| start at 0, and you get nothing.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Don't be an asshole and you won't have problems.
|
| Unless you accidentally end up doing business with an
| asshole. Matt is definitely making himself look like a
| danger to do business with--maybe WP Engine just
| successfully baited him into acting against his community
| and killing trust and he's not actually as unhinged as he
| sounds here... but few people would be willing to bet money
| on that.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Meta's company-size based licensing (as seen in Llama) is a
| step in the right direction.
|
| We have been bitten by that hard in the past. As a small
| company (a few students, hardly 5 figure revenue) we've sold
| our product to a known household-brand to use as a gadget for
| an exhibition. In said product, we used a library that used
| revenue-based licensing. For some reason, the company behind
| that library heard of us having scored that customer and
| suddenly demanded insane amount of licensing fees. Luckily, the
| purchasing department of the customer offered to handle this
| and negotiate a deal; otherwise, this could have immediately
| sunk our company.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >If you're a tiny org, you don't need to contribute back. But
| if you're making half a billion in revenue every year on top of
| someone else's tech, you need to stay involved and contribute
| back in a very significant way.
|
| For example Sony sold more than 100 million units of PS4 and
| made billions of dollars from it and how much they contributed
| to the open source projects they've used in PS4? Take a look at
| OSS projects used in PS4: https://www.playstation.com/en-
| us/oss/ps4/
|
| Did they contribute anything? Did they contribute 100% enough
| or just 20% or 30%?
|
| If the software is open sourced and if license allows you to do
| anything with it then you are indeed free to do anything with
| it including selling products which include OSS.
| hobofan wrote:
| 1. This is pure whataboutism. Just because Sony doesn't
| contribute (I don't know whether they do or don't), doesn't
| make it right.
|
| 2. There is obviously a difference between "selling products
| that include OSS" and "selling OSS 1:1". It's not like Sony's
| firmware/dashboard is maintained by
| "OpenGamingConsoleDashboard" and they are selling a 95%
| repackage of that to their end users (also ignoring the
| hardware). This pertains to the software maintenance
| logistics layer and not the licensing layer. Sure, both in
| the Sony and WPEngine cases they are in the clear on the
| licensing, but that doesn't make for sustainable development
| of the underlying software. I'd also wager that if the OSS
| projects used in the PS4 would drum up enough of a social
| media stink, they'd have decent chances of getting some
| compensation (e.g. the TLDraw maintainers did that quite a
| few times successfully).
| KomoD wrote:
| They're not "selling OSS 1:1", they're selling managed
| hosting.
| consteval wrote:
| You're free to do it but nobody has to help you certainly.
|
| Ultimately it's a matter of common sense. Sure, if I leave
| out my "take one" bowl on Halloween and someone takes it all,
| there's no rules against that. But next year I might be more
| cautious and hand out the candy myself - now what?
|
| If you've built a business off taking all my candy and
| reselling it, you're fucked! If you had just been less greedy
| and taken, say, 10 instead of the whole bowl I might not have
| cared.
| spookie wrote:
| Sony contributes back. To FreeBSD even, they are even listed
| in their list of contributors.
|
| Hell they're one of the only 2 companies that let you compile
| android with their firmware for their phones. They even have
| instructions on their site.
|
| This is whatabouttism, but damn, they don't deserve this
| kinda talk.
|
| Example: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-
| src/blob/0abe05aeac29d997...
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Sony contributes back. To FreeBSD even, they are even
| listed in their list of contributors.
|
| I just used Sony as an example to tinker what is the
| definition of contributing enough that Matt Mullenweg was
| talking about:https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-
| engine/#:~:text=(To%20....)
|
| I don't have anything against Sony.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I think this issue is complicated and I have no answers.
| However, I do feel Wordpress is much more central to
| WPEngine's business than e.g. FreeBSD is to Sony's.
| rpgbr wrote:
| Under GPLv2, WP Engine has no obligation of pay the ransom Matt
| is demanding no matter the revenue they make.
| sinkasapa wrote:
| As far as I could tell, they weren't denied use of the code,
| just a bunch of other services that are not covered by the
| GPLv2.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| But nor does the WordPress foundation need to allow WP
| Engine, or any user, access to the plugin library.
|
| Chromium is Open Source, but Google is not required to allow
| Add On store access (even if they tolerate it from chromium
| forks).
| tylermenezes wrote:
| GPLv2 licenses the Wordpress code, not trademarks or the
| right to use Automattic's APIs.
| ValentineC wrote:
| Before this week, I didn't realise that the WordPress.org
| servers and plugin repositories fell under Automattic, and
| not WordPress Foundation.
|
| Some clarity would be nice.
| n3storm wrote:
| I wonder how much does Automattic contribute to the PHP, MySQL,
| MariaDB, jQuery, ... organizations?
| desas wrote:
| * https://thephp.foundation/ one of three platinum level
| sponsors * MySQL doesn't take sponsorships afaict
| * https://mariadb.org/about/#stakeholders one of several
| silver sponsors of MariaDB *
| https://x.com/SlexAxton/status/1839091643338862828 "I was on
| the board of the jQuery foundation during some of the glory
| years and @photomatt was the ~largest donor"
| georgehotelling wrote:
| What's the economic incentive for WP Engine to give back? They
| have a moral duty, sure, but as a business where is the profit?
| Anything they contribute to core will immediately be available
| to their competitors, so the naive read is that there's no
| competitive advantage in contributing back.
|
| However, if they can influence the direction of the project,
| they can align it with your business goals. That gives them a
| competitive advantage, that gives them an incentive.
|
| The challenge is that Matt is acting as a BDFL of the open
| source project. If Matt doesn't want your change added, your
| change isn't going to get added. There is no one to appeal to,
| Matt has absolute authority over the code that goes into the
| open source project that WP Engine's business is built on. Matt
| is also the CEO of WP Engine's competitor, Automattic.
|
| This conflict of interest has come to a head in the past week
| and shone a spotlight on the lack of community stewardship of
| the WordPress project.
|
| Keep in mind that Automattic requires its employees to get
| approval for any paid side gigs related to software because
| Matt believes that it creates conflicts of interest. You cannot
| work on WordPress for Automattic during the day and then
| freelance making paid WordPress plugins at night, due to the
| misaligned incentives. The fact that Matt isn't being paid a
| salary for his work on WordPress is irrelevant, given
| Automattic's equity is tied to the value of WordPress.
|
| I think private equity skews heavily towards value extraction
| over value creation. I think that people who build businesses
| off of open source have a moral obligation to give back to the
| projects. I think that giving Automattic money to spend on WP
| core work will make WordPress better.
|
| However, breaking the trust of the community does exponentially
| more damage to the future of WordPress than any freeloading
| company. The community trusts that the trademark licenses will
| not change to target them. The community trusts that their
| software will benefit from security updates and the plugin
| ecosystem. That trust is the foundation of WordPress and this
| week's actions have done damage.
|
| Matt talked about going nuclear, and I think that the metaphor
| is apt, because when the smoke clears we may be left with no
| winners.
|
| (I'm a former Automattic employee who roots for open source,
| WordPress, Automattic, and the vision of the open web Matt
| Mullenweg has shared.)
| digging wrote:
| > What's the economic incentive for WP Engine to give back?
| They have a moral duty, sure, but as a business where is the
| profit?
|
| Avoiding this exact situation which kills their business
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Avoiding this exact situation which kills their
| business_
|
| This situation is not going to kill WP Engine.
| patmcc wrote:
| This situation might kill one of WP Engine or
| Wordpress.com, but I sure wouldn't bet on it being WP
| Engine that ends up in the grave.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| I think the problem isn't just that WP Engine doesn't
| contribute. I read that they pledged to, then had an internal
| policy not to contribute, and fired an employee for telling
| this to Matt on Twitter.
|
| If that is really the case, WP Engine had to be exceptionally
| antagonistic against WP dot org for things to end up like
| this, but most people are treating it as if it is a simple
| conflict of interest between WP dot com and WP Engine.
|
| >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.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/23/wp-engine-sends-cease-
| and-...
|
| I really think they could have handled the PR better by
| providing more information about the decision on the official
| announcement. "Uses WP but doesn't contribute back" is
| something that applies to too many. "Built whole business on
| WP, pledged to contribute, but then didn't" is something that
| applies to very few.
| ankleturtle wrote:
| > But if you're making half a billion in revenue every year on
| top of someone else's tech, you need to stay involved and
| contribute back in a very significant way.
|
| Revenue is a red herring. It is not an appropriate measure to
| determine if and how much one should contribute to an open
| source project.
|
| Instead, we should measure the need to contribute by the burden
| one places on the project.
|
| Do you request features or bug fixes? Contribute appropriately.
|
| Do you request support? Contribute appropriately.
|
| Do you simply copy, install, and run the existing software? No
| need to contribute.
| wg0 wrote:
| Redis, Elasticsearch, Mongo and now WordPress - it seems that
| Open source is as good and only good when you and only you can
| sell it. The moment someone else starts to make money or more
| money then you could have off your effort, does things better
| than you to market/host/package your open source project, the
| moment things to start to fall apart.
|
| None of the Open source ethos survive of sharing together,
| learning together etc.
|
| EDIT: typos
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| WordPress has been around for a long time, and there is no
| change to how open it is. It is GPL code, Automattic is not
| forking it and selling access to the fork.
|
| We are just asking WP Engine to contribute back to the project
| that they are basing their entire business on.
|
| This is primarily a trademark infringement issue, we asked them
| to give back to be able to use the trademark we have the
| license for.
| DonnieBurger wrote:
| Are you going to be "just asking" other businesses as well?
| Or does it only apply to competitors of Automattic?
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| As long as competitors of Automattic does not infringe on
| the trademarks owned (in the case of WooCommerce) or
| licensed (WordPress) by Automattic, I don't see any reason
| for us taking any action.
|
| I would personally ask everyone to at least try to
| contribute back to the open source projects they rely on
| though.
| prox wrote:
| Honestly I tried at one point, but the community was
| rather hostile and unwelcoming.
|
| I help out with Godot sometimes and it's far more
| welcoming and low friction.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > This is primarily a trademark infringement issue...
|
| There's a pretty standard way of fighting those out.
| jeswin wrote:
| > The moment someone else starts to make money or more money
| then you could have off your effort
|
| Company A spends X% of their revenue on improving the product.
| Company B spends nothing. Company B will be able to price their
| product lower, and take Company A's customers. It's not
| sustainable.
|
| The solution is to ask Company B to pay up (in cash or
| resources), and not be leeching.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Company A spends X% of their revenue on improving the
| product. Company B spends nothing. Company B will be able to
| price their product lower, and take Company A's customers.
| It's not sustainable.
|
| Then don't make an open source product.
|
| What you can't do is try to earn the goodwill that comes with
| open source, but also expect the profitability of a
| proprietary product.
| Spivak wrote:
| Don't try to base a company around developing and selling
| open source is a lesson that folks will keep learning again
| and again. You have to make money doing something else and
| if your core competency isn't that something else you'll
| lose to someone where it is.
|
| If you want to sell software then sell software.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| WP Engine is not winning because it's cheaper. It is a better
| product than what Automattic offers.
|
| That's why this action by Matt is ridiculous. WP Engine has
| grown the overall WP market through good product development
| and investment. That has produced positive effects for the
| many companies and people who make their money developing and
| supporting WP sites for clients.
| TheHippo wrote:
| It is not about the code. It is about using other company's
| server resources.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| But they're OK with the use of those resources if WP Engine
| contributes more code, which makes it... at least _partially_
| about the code?
| pxtail wrote:
| > None of the Open source ethos survive of sharing together,
| learning together etc.
|
| Could be because of that missing part of "sharing together"
| replaced with "taking and not giving back anything in return"
| fortyseven wrote:
| Ethically it may be the right thing to do, but there is no
| obligation to do so unless it's in the license. If you want
| to thumb your nose at WPEngine for that, fine, but that's
| about as far as that goes.
| petercooper wrote:
| Postgres, notably, has not had these problems. There's a
| thriving ecosystem, despite the trademark, and many providers
| offer "Postgres" services without Postgres' core organizations
| or contributors getting their undies in a twist over it.
| evanelias wrote:
| That's largely true, but there definitely have been
| incidents/drama in the recent past. Two that come to mind:
|
| https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/statement-from-the-
| pos...
|
| https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/trademark-actions-
| agai...
|
| Also worth considering that EDB is backed by Private Equity,
| and there was some other very recent incident that seemingly
| directly resulted in OtterTune folding.
| mdasen wrote:
| I think a difference there is that Postgres doesn't have a
| for-profit semi-attached to it.
|
| There are certainly companies that do work on Postgres, but
| Postgres wasn't founded by people looking to make a business
| and its development isn't driven by one primary company (to
| my knowledge). Postgres started as an academic research
| project by Turing Award winner Michael Stonebraker. Berkeley
| released it under a BSD/MIT-like license. It just has a long
| history of being independent of any company that's the
| primary driver of its evolution.
|
| That's not to say there aren't companies like EnterpriseDB,
| Neon, Citus, and others that haven't driven certain aspects
| of it, but they just don't get the same kind of control over
| the project.
|
| Crucially, no one can really feel like someone else is making
| money off a project that's primarily their work. I think
| companies in the Postgres ecosystem all understand that even
| if they're a big fish in the Postgres ecosystem, they aren't
| coming anywhere close to having built 25% of the value in
| Postgres. It's hard to "get your undies in a twist" if you
| acknowledge that you've probably gotten more from the
| historical contributions than you've contributed - even if
| you're a stellar contributor today.
| jaggs wrote:
| Wonderful to see how HN supports a private equity grab rather
| than a company which has consistently championed open source for
| decades. Matt could easily have sold out, but he didn't. He built
| the whole thing from scratch (I remember him answering support
| emails personally), it would be nice to cut him some slack
| against a bunch of corporate raiders. But hey, what do I know?
| throwbmw wrote:
| Agree 100 percent. Perhaps the present generation doesn't know
| about the early days of Wordpress. Also, all this wording may
| be because Matt is very committed and so emotional about the
| protection of open source projects
| hackerbeat wrote:
| 100%
| Sebb767 wrote:
| It looks like Matt is using the WordPress non-profit to attack
| a competitor. Additionally, he cut off services to that
| competitor with the clear intent of disrupting their service
| and customers and talks about trademark infringement, despite
| their use of the trademark clearly being covered by their very
| own guidelines, and, to literally add insult to injury, he
| describes the situation in very emotional language.
|
| It's not like I don't see Matts side, but the way he is acting
| is extremely unprofessional and looks like a temper tantrum.
| WPEngine might be a large business, but so is Automattic and
| this kind of scorched earth-approach is hard to support.
| consteval wrote:
| You're not obligated to provide free services to people you
| don't have a contract with, and who are openly hostile to
| negotiation. This could've easily been avoid by either not
| mooching off free resources, or by just playing nice.
|
| If I build my business on scraping X.com and then X bans my
| IPs, that's on me. They don't have to provide me free
| internet access to their content, that's a privilege. And
| this happens literally thousands of times every single day.
|
| Still, entitled business owners try it out and then want to
| turn around and cry when their free cash cow turns away.
| DannyBee wrote:
| "You're not obligated to provide free services to people
| you don't have a contract with, and who are openly hostile
| to negotiation."
|
| If you choose to accept all comers, you get to accept all
| comers. If you decide to then boycott one specific group,
| particularly when it is a competitor of the person
| announcing the boycott, it may in fact be illegal.
|
| This is easily solved by having principles ahead of time
| and adhering to them (IE we only serve people/companies
| meeting the following criteria). This did not happen here -
| instead they have applied a boycott to a specific group
| after the person involved threatened them as competitor.
|
| Look up "concerted refusal to deal", etc.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > You're not obligated to provide free services to people
| you don't have a contract with, and who are openly hostile
| to negotiation. This could've easily been avoid by either
| not mooching off free resources, or by just playing nice.
|
| I'm not arguing that they are obligated to provide free
| services. What they did was suddenly pull the plug on a
| free, public service for one specific user, which just
| happens to be a competitor. Also, this was without any
| announcement and clearly intent on interrupting the service
| for mostly unrelated third parties (namely WPEngines
| customers), just to hurt WPEngine.
|
| As to them being hostile to negotiation, we don't know what
| happened behind close doors. But from the facts that were
| publicly presented, Matt wanted an amount of money, has (so
| far) not presented any reasonable legal basis for it and
| has overall been pretty emotional, so I do believe WPEngine
| when they claim that the demand was unreasonable and in bad
| faith on his side.
|
| If this would have been a calm announcement that WP will
| cede any free hosting services to for-profit WordPress
| resellers, with a reasonable timeline for migration, he
| would have my full support. Maybe I could even get behind
| singling out WPEngine, if the case was solid. But the way
| this happens, Matt just looks like the bad guy.
|
| > If I build my business on scraping X.com and then X bans
| my IPs, that's on me. They don't have to provide me free
| internet access to their content, that's a privilege.
|
| But someone allows free passage on a toll bridge for
| everyone and suddenly decides to just deny your transport
| business specifically and publicly insult you, it looks a
| bit different. Especially if the owner of the bridge just
| _happens_ to run a competitor for your business, things do
| look a bit fishy. I mean, fair enough, but this move was
| clearly intended for maximum damage and someone doing that
| does not at all look like the reasonable party, sorry.
| DannyBee wrote:
| You really don't get it.
|
| Matt seems incapable of clearly separating his roles as:
|
| Person involved with WP foundation
|
| Person who is head of Automattic
|
| Person who contributes/whatever to wordpress
|
| This is _highly_ dangerous from a legal /conflicts of interest
| perspective, and will result in problems for the _Foundation_ ,
| and the _Community_ , and for _Matt_.
|
| I don't support it because it's private equity grab or
| whatever, instead i don't support it because it's dangerous,
| arguably highly unethical, and appears like using your power
| against a competitor you don't like more than it looks like
| "trying to save the open source community from a private equity
| grab"
|
| He could easily solve all of these things by recusing from
| actions the foundation considers against his company's
| competitors, etc.
|
| That would be the clearly ethical thing to do. Instead he
| doubles down and appears to use all power available to him to
| stomp out a company that is the main competition for his
| business.
| rado wrote:
| Always found it interesting that the core WP lacks CDN support,
| caching, multilingual etc out of the box and leverages the paid
| WP.com, while using open source contributions.
| throwbmw wrote:
| Related:
|
| https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/
| joshstrange wrote:
| This is _so_ rich coming from Wordpress who offers a bastardized
| version of Wordpress themselves on Wordpress.com
|
| I wish I had never given Wordpress any money.
| Communitivity wrote:
| My empathy is with Automatic on this one, but I still think it's
| the wrong move.
|
| "Now one could say that the license allows that and it's legal.
| Sure, but so is cutting their free access off. If WPEngine is
| just leeching and spending nothing on improving the product,
| there's no way anyone can compete with them on price. Open Source
| is expensive, people need to be paid."-jeswin
|
| If companies can't use Open Source without the risk that the
| project could ban them from using it, even if the company adheres
| to the letter of the license (if not the spirit), then most
| companies won't use Open Source. Most companies I've dealt with
| would rather pay for commercial software and offload the risk
| onto the software company that use an Open Source project they
| view as risky in any way. Companies can already view Open Source
| projects as risky in a number of ways: lots of drama/turnover in
| a project, a single BFDL controls everything, viral license. For
| many projects the rewards from using it outweigh these risks.
|
| However, all the above risks can be evaluated before a company
| decides to build using an Open Source project. If projects are
| seen as able to block availability unilaterally without a license
| violation, that's a risk that can't be evaluated before investing
| perhaps millions using it. Of course, this would all be evaluated
| and we'd live in a better world if companies heavily using an
| Open Source project decided to allocate 1% of the software
| engineering budget as a donation to that project.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _Most companies I 've dealt with would rather pay for
| commercial software and offload the risk onto the software
| company that use an Open Source project they view as risky in
| any way._
|
| This seems less applicable when the company is using the
| software to offer it _as_ that commercial cut-out.
| timeon wrote:
| I'm do not want to talk about whole thing, I do not know what
| to think about that but:
|
| > If companies can't use Open Source without the risk that the
| project could ban them from using it...
|
| Isn't this more about infrastructure (wordpress.org)? All
| plugins are still downloadable and able to install via SFTP.
| troyvit wrote:
| > If companies can't use Open Source without the risk that the
| project could ban them from using it, even if the company
| adheres to the letter of the license (if not the spirit), then
| most companies won't use Open Source.
|
| But access to wordpress.org's servers has nothing to do with
| Open Source. WP Engine is free to use and modify the WordPress
| code to their heart's content. They just don't get to use the
| wordpress.org servers for free anymore.
| slouch wrote:
| The software running on those servers was built by
| volunteers, some of which are now scrambling to help their
| clients who are blocked from using that software.
| troyvit wrote:
| Sure. The software is free. Why should the server be free?
| hedgehog wrote:
| Is the .org infrastructure built or operated by volunteers?
| It doesn't seem like that part is even open source.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| I'm a little surprised WPE didn't have some kind of contingency
| plan for this in place already, even if it was just to handle a
| Wordpress.org outage.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Discussion on official post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41652760
| wfjackson3 wrote:
| This is one of the worst attempts to handle a corporate dispute
| that I have ever seen. Forget all of the he said he said
| arguments for a second and see what a random person who decided
| to use WordPress will see.
|
| If Automatic gets mad at the company I use to host this site,
| they will randomly start holding my site hostage by deactivating
| services. No host is safe. I probably shouldn't use WordPress.
|
| I don't care who is wrong or right here. This is peak "cutting
| off your nose to spite your face" behavior.
| philsquared_ wrote:
| 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.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| if we're going by the trademark policy, it also says you
| can't use the wordpress name in the name of your project or
| service.
|
| and arguing that "wp" doesn't mean "wordpress" and
| therefore is allowed, is exactly the same as me selling
| "msengine" for microsoft products, and telling everyone
| "ms" doesn't mean microsoft. we all know what it stands for
| for, and if you weren't sure, you can jut scan the page and
| see it's clearly associated with wordpress. if that's the
| basis of the legal defense wpengine wants to make in court,
| they are truly f'd.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > The abbreviation "WP" is not covered by the WordPress
| trademarks
|
| Straight from the Wordpress trademark page that was just
| recently changed to talk shit about a competitor:
|
| https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/
| rgbrenner wrote:
| microsoft doesn't have a trademark on "ms" either. like i
| said, if wpengine is hoping to go into court and explain
| that wp is not related to wordpress, while selling
| wordpress services... i dont think its going to go well
| for them.
|
| this is going to be just as flimsy of a defense as
| "mikerowesoft"
| tapoxi wrote:
| yeah but Wordpress.org explicitly said "using WP is
| okay". if they turn around and say "no it's not" that's
| promissory estoppel
| lolinder wrote:
| Up until this dispute the WordPress trademark policy
| contained this:
|
| > The abbreviation "WP" is not covered by the WordPress
| trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see
| fit.
|
| Now it's been updated to say this:
|
| > 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.
|
| It's pretty clear that WP Engine has been in compliance
| with the old trademark policy and that the new one is
| acknowledging that they don't have legal standing to
| demand anything about the WP abbreviation (not least
| because they waited so long to complain about the usage)
| so they're instead inserting a petulant and childish
| slight.
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20240101165105/https://wordpre
| ssf...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| It also explicitly says you can't use "Wordpress" in your
| product names, and WP Engine is doing that. I thought it
| might be common, but the other big providers do not use
| WordPress in their product names.
|
| Essential Wordpress
|
| Core Wordpress
|
| Enterprise Wordpress
|
| https://wpengine.com/plans/
| mdasen wrote:
| 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).
| beerandt wrote:
| The whole standard for trademark law is whether it causes
| confusion in commerce.
|
| Sounds like they might have a not-great ip lawyer.
|
| Your don't have to claim WP to claim it's being marketed as
| an abbreviation for your trademark, within your market.
|
| I'm not saying it's a winning argument, but better than
| whatever the legal framing/ posturing of 'WP isn't our TM'
| is. Bad PR, if not bad legal take.
| patmcc wrote:
| Except Wordpress even _explicitly suggests_ using wp in
| the domain: https://wordpress.org/about/domains/
|
| >>>we ask if you're going to start a site about WordPress
| or related to it that you not use "WordPress" in the
| domain name. Try using "wp" instead, or another
| variation...
| beerandt wrote:
| Yea- same point though. Bad IP advice / strategy.
|
| Don't condone confusing ip policy if you don't want to
| end up with confusing product names, especially in a
| resurgence of 'the domain name is the product' of
| unlimited tlds.
| patmcc wrote:
| Definitely bad IP advice, but I think it helps WP Engine
| to be able to say "look even all the various 'official'
| Wordpress sites said our name was fine for years".
| flutas wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tomphoolery wrote:
| > 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.
| sjs382 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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?"
| ttul wrote:
| I kind of want discovery to happen in this situation.
| otterley wrote:
| Civil discovery isn't a public process. The parties don't
| get to share what they discovered with the public, and
| sensitive information is frequently redacted before
| documents are provided to the opposing party.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I was more thinking that this would be government
| intervention regarding the non-profit status. Discovery
| would still be secret, but probably a smoking gun there
| that the organization is not independent of the
| commercial entity.
|
| As far as I am aware, the WP.org"s (or is it the
| foundation?) actions are distasteful, but they are
| allowed to ban whomever they like.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > The parties don't get to share what they discovered
| with the public
|
| Well certainly.
|
| > and sensitive information is frequently redacted before
| documents are provided to the opposing party.
|
| In this case that kind of sensitive information
| absolutely wouldn't be able to be redacted (successfully)
| because those conversations would be entirely germane.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| 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.
| usaphp wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| WPEngine has no obligation to contribute anything.
|
| This is not how open source has or is supposed to work.
| DannyBee wrote:
| 100% - i raised exactly this issue in the legal claim concerns.
|
| This is a remarkably bad plan from a legal perspective.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| 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.
| ttul wrote:
| 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?
| ValentineC wrote:
| The numbers are on WordPress.org's Five for the Future
| website:
|
| - https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-
| future/pledge/automattic/
|
| - https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/pledge/wp-
| engine/
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| 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.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > 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?
| troyvit wrote:
| 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/
| eXpl0it3r wrote:
| The dispute (on the surface) is about trademark not copyright
| and Automattic has an exclusive license to the trademark.
| troyvit wrote:
| Arg, thanks for clarifying that. I misused that term.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Incident: Wordpress.org has blocked WP Engine customers from
| registry_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41655578 - Sept
| 2024 (84 comments)
|
| _WP Engine is banned from WordPress.org_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41652760 - Sept 2024 (53
| comments)
|
| _Automattic has sent a cease and desist to WP Engine_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41642974 - Sept 2024 (10
| comments)
|
| _Open Source, Trademarks, and WP Engine_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41642597 - Sept 2024 (48
| comments)
|
| _WP Engine sent "cease and desist" letter to Automattic_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41631912 - Sept 2024 (254
| comments)
| rmccue wrote:
| Also: _WP Engine Must Win_
| -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41653480
|
| (Disclaimer: my submission and post. I am a WordPress core
| committer and built the REST API for it.)
| rpgbr wrote:
| _Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org
| leadership ASAP_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41620051 (31 comments)
| kotaKat wrote:
| Matt's really out here with the cars covered in hammers that
| explode more than a few times and hammers went flying everywhere.
| dcchambers wrote:
| I understand why Matt is frustrated and I sympathize with the
| situation, but I don't think his approach is going to win him any
| public favor nor have a long term positive payout.
| lioeters wrote:
| Anyone who may have had sympathies for his arguments are all
| turned off now that he's gone on a "scorched earth" path. He
| dragged the non-profit foundation into a business spat
| involving Automattic and WP Engine, or maybe even between two
| rich guys, Matt Mullenweg and Lee Wittlinger at Silver Lake,
| who owns WPE.
|
| Using the org website to make a nasty post slandering WPE.
| Spreading it via the built-in news metabox on every WordPress
| dashboard. The org's plugin repository to block WPE's
| domains/IPs specifically.
|
| That's a single person wielding power in his domain, maybe all
| legal, but the org should be making decisions as a group and
| community.
| tomphoolery wrote:
| This went from "hey you guys shouldn't use WP Engine because it's
| not Real WordPress" to "WP Engine is violating trademarks and
| isn't welcome in the WordPress community anymore" really f'in
| quick!
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| Publicly, perhaps but we've been trying to resolve these issues
| with WP Engine for at least 18 months now.
| lolinder wrote:
| Just as an FYI: this is a really really bad look from the
| outside. Your CEO's comments and the new trademark policy
| sound borderline deranged, and this step of banning them
| dangerously destabilizes the ecosystem.
|
| WP Engine may be just as bad as you say, but if so they just
| successfully baited you into making yourselves look like the
| bad guys.
| graeme wrote:
| What are the issues? Nothing publicly articulated so far
| appears to have breached any licensing terms or trademark
| law.
|
| If there are issues then Matt would do well to clearly
| articulate the problem.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| What does Wordpress.com contribute upstream to THEIR dependencies
| I wonder...
| nijave wrote:
| I have a hard time being sympathetic for Matt given what I've
| read so far. The C&D WPR sent shows plenty of quotes about Matt
| threatening to talk poorly about WPE unless they pay up.
|
| If WPE is abusing WordPress infrastructure then sure, block them.
| It seems like corporate politics with WordPress.com are deeply
| entwined here.
|
| As other commenters have pointed out, it's very unclear what the
| relationship between Automattic, WordPress.com, WordPress.org,
| and the WordPress Foundation are. In the very least, it seems a
| conflict of interest to have the same person running all of them.
|
| From Matt, they were asking for 8% of revenue to license the
| WordPress trademark and donations to Automattic.
| https://www.reddit.com/user/photomatt/
|
| Why not ask for donations to the WordPress Foundation or donate
| infrastructure/mirrors if that were the actual point of
| contention...
| trebor wrote:
| I have used and developed in Wordpress since 3.2. Mullenweng is a
| dictator and maverick, and I'm not convinced that he's good for
| the Wordpress ecosystem.
|
| But neither are highly customized WP hosting platforms.
|
| Revisioning, especially since the post_meta table was added, is a
| huge burden on the DB. I've seen clients add 50 revisions,
| totaling thousands of revisions and 200k post meta entries.
| Important enough to call disabling it by default a "cancer"?
| Chill out Matt.
|
| Revisions aren't relevant past revision 3-5.
| orf wrote:
| What database is burdened by 200k rows? That's tiny.
| trebor wrote:
| It's the excess, unaccessed content. The indexes haven't been
| well optimized in MySQL (MariaDB is better).
|
| But still. A lot of small companies only pay $20/mo for
| hosting ...
| orf wrote:
| But a database can handle tens of millions of rows with
| those resources.
|
| If you're worried about excess, why even use Wordpress? My
| god - serving rarely updated static content with a
| database? Stupid. The entire thing is excessive and
| wasteful.
| lolinder wrote:
| Open Source outgrew the Free Software movement by being
| intentionally pragmatic and business-oriented, but the seams are
| really starting to show, and I'm increasingly interested in
| seeing a resurgence of the principles of the Free Software
| movement.
|
| > To use free software is to make a political and ethical choice
| asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with
| others. Free software has become the foundation of a learning
| society where we share our knowledge in a way that others can
| build upon and enjoy. [0]
|
| The constant battles in Open Source communities over who is
| allowed to use "their" software and for what seem to stem from a
| completely different outlook on freedom than the FSF puts
| forward. Free Software is produced out of a desire to ensure
| maximal user freedom and freedom of information--it's an ethical
| stance one takes, and as such it doesn't become less valuable
| when people make money using your work, if anything it becomes
| _more_ valuable. You contribute to it because it matters, not
| because you expect to get anything out of it besides the software
| itself.
|
| I'm not sure if Open Source is another casualty of the increasing
| commercialization of the web or if it's always been this way, but
| I think it's high time we take a second look at the ethically-
| driven development principles of GNU and the FSF.
|
| [0] https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Fuck WP Engine and their hollowing out of free software for their
| own profit.
| lolinder wrote:
| What harm is done to the free software by WP Engine using it?
| Is it somehow more difficult to share WordPress code than if
| they didn't exist? Are they breaking the license terms?
|
| This conflict doesn't feel like a Free Software conflict, it
| feels like a repeat of what we saw with Mongo & Elastic &
| Hashicorp--a company that founded itself on being Open Source
| came to regret the side effects.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| As a follow up, explain how Wordpress.com isn't using free
| software for their own profit.
| rty32 wrote:
| Somewhat off-topic: WordPress has proven that there is still a
| market for WordPress-style CRM and managed solution even in 2024.
| Why hasn't a strong, open source competitor emerged over the
| years? Because if there is an alternative, this article would be
| much less relevant, and the events may not have happened in the
| first place. Is it because CRM, especially the dynamic kind, is
| no longer cool, and developers are not interested in this area
| any more?
| stock_toaster wrote:
| Seems very similar to AWS and Elastic, Mongodb, etc.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| Am I in the minority where I hope that this creates a larger
| ecosystem of open-source content management systems? I use
| Umbraco because I am effectively given a blank slate to create
| any type of website I wish, and it doesn't come with any
| templates or document/content types by default. I've put an
| enormous amount of work into customizing the software, prior to
| there being decent documentation (yet the best documentation is
| the actual code, which I've studied for over a decade). My sales
| people still have to regularly fight the "why not Wordpress?"
| question from business leaders, even though I can run on less
| than the minimum requirements, and am able to provide security
| fixes quickly while keeping everything in Git. I would hazard
| that my solution is more custom tailored to individual clients,
| without needing to jump through hoops, and can break down
| individual parts of a page into easier to reason about properties
| (textbox for page title, RTE for general page content, custom
| sidebar content pickers for reusable sidebar content).
|
| Back in 2013 when I got started with Umbraco, it was more about
| trying to emulate what users wanted from Wordpress, but over the
| years it became more about a custom tailored experience for each
| type of "content" one might want to create in a website. "Posts"
| that allow categorization, tagging, and listing in date/time
| order. Company directories that list individual company profiles,
| which have a profile thumbnail and full-size image, fields that
| can be labeled on an index page for things like phone, email,
| fax, etc. while also providing a full profile page for further
| details. Photo and video galleries, that make it easy for an end
| user to paste in YouTube videos, or link to a photo thumbnail and
| full-sized image with a lightbox effect, but also a full page for
| SEO purposes.
| btown wrote:
| Part of the value proposition of Wordpress is that it doesn't
| depend on a single developer or team having decades of deep
| knowledge of a system like Umbraco; any number of contractors
| can be parachuted in, at least in theory, to take over a site
| design if the content is in Wordpress. I would venture to say
| that many companies opting for Wordpress know that they don't
| have a culture that can retain devs with decades of experience,
| and value the popularity of a platform like Wordpress... even
| if the assumptions it's based on, in regards to rendering
| Images and Words in specific ways, are far from ideal and
| indeed introduce varying degrees of inner turbulence.
|
| (Nice username, btw!)
| stock_toaster wrote:
| Interview with Matt Mullenweg about his side in all this a little
| bit ago:
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6F0PgMcKWM
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