[HN Gopher] Mullenweg threatens corporate takeover of WP Engine
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Mullenweg threatens corporate takeover of WP Engine
Author : rob
Score : 70 points
Date : 2024-10-01 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.therepository.email)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.therepository.email)
| markx2 wrote:
| It never was about trademarks ....
| eli wrote:
| I mean, yeah, he's been pretty clear that about that and the
| trademark complaint was awfully light on evidence of actual
| trademark issues. He doesn't like their business model, doesn't
| think they contribute enough upstream, etc.
|
| But that's just not something you get to control when you
| license your software as GPLv2. Some people are gonna use it in
| ways you don't like.
|
| He should have just done an marketing campaign about why you
| should host with Wordpress.com instead of WP Engine. Instead
| he's torched an insane amount of goodwill for seemingly no
| return.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| WordPress.com isn't a good comparison to WP Engine. For
| starters, you can't install plugins, because you're renting
| out a single site on a multisite network and any custom
| plugin code would trivially violate the paper-thin isolation
| between tenants. WP Engine provides separately containerized
| servers and databases so you can do whatever.
|
| It's like the difference between getting an account on a
| Mastodon instance versus a specialized Mastodon instance
| hoster.
| desas wrote:
| WordPress.com allows plugins on the business and e-commerce
| plans. Sites with plugins are hosted in isolated
| environments. This has been the case for years and years.
| wmf wrote:
| Don Mullenweg is going to make them an offer they can't refuse.
| dopamean wrote:
| He's going to need at least a couple billion dollars. I cant
| imagine Silver Lake would accept any Automattic stock in the
| deal. It'd have to be all cash.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| I think he's threatening to sue or extort them for 51% of the
| company, or something like that? If I were him I would spend
| less time talking to his terrible lawyer and more time talking
| to a mental health professional.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Mullenweg told The Repository, "When you're right, you can
| talk. When you're wrong, [the lawyers] tell you to shut up. My
| lawyers are fine, they're like, 'go for it!'"
|
| Lol.
|
| That sounds like something no lawyer has ever said.
| atonse wrote:
| Lawyers don't advise you on what is right or what is wrong.
| That's what priests do.
|
| Lawyers advise you on what is legal and what isn't, and what
| opens you up to liability.
|
| He seems quite confused.
| pier25 wrote:
| Sounds like he's a bit delusional
| karmajunkie wrote:
| yeah, one has to wonder if he and elon musk are shopping at
| the same dealer...
| rideontime wrote:
| > WP Engine removed the news widget from its users' dashboards on
| September 24, reportedly breaking thousands of sites in the
| process
|
| Is the "breaking thousands of sites" claim supported by any
| actual evidence, or is this just something Matt said?
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| There's been no dispute around if WP Engine removed the news
| widget or not from their managed installs. Matt claims that
| removing that widget fundamentally breaks Wordpress and thus
| broke all of WP Engine's sites.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Wait, wait - you mean when he wrote
|
| > the story of how WP Engine broke thousands of customer
| sites yesterday in their haphazard attempt to block our
| attempts to inform the wider WordPress community regarding
| their disabling and locking down a WordPress core feature in
| order to extract profit.
|
| ( https://web.archive.org/web/20241001091653/https://wordpres
| s... )
|
| he just meant that they disabled the news widget? I assumed
| that tweet I couldn't see replies to was a thread about them
| accidentally breaking customer's external-facing sites by
| mistake when they took out the news widget, not that he's
| defining "removed this widget" as "breaking customer sites".
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I can say that zero sites were broken by the disabling of a
| news widget. On the other hand, disabling updates sure was a
| breaking change I had to respond to immediately!
| floating-io wrote:
| I wonder what would happen if WP Engine suddenly decided "Hey,
| we're going to rename the business, stop using the trademarks,
| fork WordPress, and start a new thing with our existing
| customers."
|
| Would it take off? Would it tank? I believe WordPress is GPL, so
| I don't see why they couldn't (as long as they could legally fork
| or counter things like WooCommerce, that is).
|
| It's a bit different from the situation with OpenTofu and similar
| since WP Engine would only need to keep their existing, highly
| invested customers to get a good start. The rest is a matter of
| marketing.
|
| T'will be interesting to see how this ends.
|
| (Note: I'm not saying that there is or is not merit to
| Mullenweg's or WP Engine's position. I haven't studied the
| situation enough to have an informed opinion there.)
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| Honestly, I'd be all for a fork. Wordpress is dying a slow
| death. The only way forward I see is to break with the history
| that's holding it back and make radical changes to its
| architecture. Matt will never do that. Perhaps WP Engine can.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| WP Engine could legally do this, but if they had the
| development resources to do so, Matt Mullenweg probably
| wouldn't be doing legally questionable and morally
| reprehensible things to try and coerce WP Engine into funding
| WordPress itself. Maintaining a fork of WordPress with its own
| independent development priorities would involve a lot of work.
|
| What WP Engine will most likely do is run their own plugin
| repository mirror, strip off whatever trademarks they don't
| feel legally empowered in using, and move on. WordPress cannot
| legally exclude WP Engine from using WordPress code.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| WP Engine can't afford to get even a single developer to work
| on Wordpress. How do you imagine them handling a fork?
| jeltz wrote:
| WP Engine contributes 40 hours per week according to Matt
| himself. They should probably contribute more, but 40 hours
| is a single developer.
| elwebmaster wrote:
| It would be an utter failure. WP Engine is just a hosting
| provider. Their entire business model is based on the name
| recognition of Wordpress. And Wordpress itself is built on
| ancient technology. So you are saying leave the brand and take
| the ancient technology then try to make it successful under a
| completely new brand? It's a nonsense.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I think the bigger problem would be, would they be willing to
| invest the engineering resources to do all that.
|
| If the crux of the argument is that WP Engine doesn't give
| back, I wonder how likely it would be that they'd be willing to
| do that.
|
| Of course, if they were willing, they'd be allowed to do that
| and might even find success. I've often wondered why a host
| hasn't tried to do a more focused WP-fork and the main
| conclusion I've come to is that they just aren't willing to
| invest the significant resources that that would require.
|
| It wasn't a host, but CraftCMS was born out of ExpressionEngine
| (not the code; the Craft code all unique) and the makers of the
| most popular EE plugins being frustrated with the core EE
| direction.
|
| Craft has a thriving business and EE has been sold several
| times and is much smaller than it was, so it ultimately worked.
|
| But that was in some ways the opposite of this scenario; you
| had some of the largest ecosystem members who were unable to
| contribute meaningfully to core (because of the
| license/structure of EE at that time), opting to do their own
| thing.
|
| I don't anticipate any of the major hosts willing to invest
| what it would take to build/maintain their own WP fork.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| Searched the USPTO trademark site, no trademark for "WP"
| registered by the WordPress Foundation.
|
| WP is GPLv2. Is WP Engine distributing their modifications
| without releasing their changes?
|
| No trademark issue, license seems fine. From what I can tell this
| is nothing.
| luckylion wrote:
| The Trademark is for WordPress, not WP. The name "WP Engine"
| isn't the alleged problem, it's their usage in their hosting
| packages like "WordPress Core".
| atonse wrote:
| Ok so if they changed their plans to "Core" and said
| "Includes vanilla WordPress" is Ma.tt going to have an issue
| with it?
|
| This really doesn't seem to be much about Trademarks, but
| more like what every other open source project complains
| about, that someone ELSE made a ton of money from the open
| source project, not them (even though that someone else is
| following the original license).
|
| Couldn't they have just changed the license to WP? It
| wouldn't have affected most customers.
| luckylion wrote:
| I don't know what he would or would not have an issue with,
| I'm just saying what his claim is.
|
| Personally, I don't care either way, I don't like either
| party.
|
| Automattic isn't a good steward of WP and has a lot of
| conflict of interest that they don't want to acknowledge
| and WP decisions are "what benefits wp.com" first.
|
| WP Engine is an aggressive sales company that also has
| hosting attached. They're extremely overpriced, the GoDaddy
| of WP Hosting. Whenever I hear somebody uses them it's a
| strong indicator that they're making enough money but have
| no technical knowledge on the team.
| riffic wrote:
| are we now conflating Automattic with the WordPress
| Foundation?
| jeltz wrote:
| Matt certainly is.
| luckylion wrote:
| Who has the exclusive commercial license to the WordPress
| trademark?
|
| Following the money brings clarity. It's pretty obvious
| that .com controls .org.
| mdasen wrote:
| They probably can't change the license for WordPress. It's
| under the GPL and it looks like WordPress doesn't require a
| contributor agreement assigning copyright to someone else.
| They'd need to get every contributor to agree to relicense
| it.
|
| There's also the question of who would relicense it.
| Automattic doesn't own the WordPress trademarks and if
| there were a contributor agreement, it would likely be
| assigning the code to the WordPress Foundation, not
| Automattic.
|
| The WordPress Foundation non-profit doesn't have a good
| incentive to put a restrictive license on it. Part of the
| problem is that the WordPress Foundation doesn't seem to be
| truly independent of the for-profit Automattic. The point
| of creating a non-profit to hold the IP of an open source
| project is to prevent stuff like this from happening.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| From the WordPress Trademark Policy
| (https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/)
|
| _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._
|
| Someone should have stopped him from making the rambling
| statements he's made.
|
| If it's a trademark dispute, limit the the public statements
| to the trademark issue. Don't muddy the waters with demands
| for revenue share or upstream code contributions.
| luckylion wrote:
| Again, it wasn't about "WP", it was about "WordPress" (and
| "WooCommerce"). Don't focus on "WP" just because the
| company name is "WP Engine". It's not relevant to this
| matter, their claim of trademark infringement is about
| "WordPress" and "WooCommerce", not about "WP".
| miiiiiike wrote:
| Unfortunately many of their public statements have
| focused on the "WP" in "WP Engine". See my above comment.
|
| Their messaging around this has been messy and rambling.
| The drowning out any point they're trying to make with
| their own messaging.
|
| Who can say the offer "WordPress" hosting? How much do
| they have to pay? That question was dodged several times
| in the interviews I've listened to.
|
| If it's a trademark issue, make the claims and let the
| courts figure it out.
|
| Stay focused or stop talking.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Regardless what they want, they have very limited rights
| to anything over that. Nike can say that you can't name
| you new sneakers Nike. Can probably say that you can't
| name your business "The Nike Store" even if all you stock
| is Nikes, but can not cannot say that you cannot _refer
| to_ Nike by their actual name to state that you sell Nike
| sneakers.
|
| WordPress is the name of the software that they provide
| services about. There is no way to control who can simply
| state that fact.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| "For example, many people think WP Engine is "WordPress
| Engine""
|
| Remember he only just now updated that policy to say that,
| and tried to make it retroactive.
|
| https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt Scroll down or
| search to "But Matt wasn't done."
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Oh look, it's not the first time they accused people of
| violating terms that did not exist, and then updated the
| terms after the fact. And in this case the sites were
| doing nothing wrong even by the updated terms anyway.
|
| https://adland.tv/wordpress-shuts-down-several-feminist-
| blog...
|
| 2018 is a long time ago, and an honest mistake false
| positive once in a while is no crime, but I still don't
| see any excuse for the lack of integrity to do something
| like modify terms after the fact and yet still try to
| apply them retroactively.
|
| That's not an accident or a mistake. It is dishonest,
| deliberate, and part of a consistent pattern with today.
| chomp wrote:
| "WP" is not at dispute here.
| hshshshsvsv wrote:
| This is what happens when you raise billions in VC money.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| I have used WordPress in the past for various projects, and have
| upgraded it for customers far more than I would like to recount,
| but all of this is making me not want to use WordPress for
| anything moving forward.
|
| This does not feel like a stable foundation/platform to build a
| future on.
| monetus wrote:
| These were my thoughts exactly, regardless of the outcome. If I
| had something deployed and could move it, I would be migrating
| off of WordPress right now.
| humblepi wrote:
| It's like if someone rewrote Elon Mudzk in PHP.
| wenbin wrote:
| If I understand correctly, Automattic and WP Engine generate
| approximately the same revenue?
|
| The creator of WordPress would undoubtedly be extremely
| disappointed... they should have achieved much greater success.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is a pretty one-sided summary of the situation and, despite
| citing the Theo Browne interview, leaves out from it that WPE and
| WordPress and Automattic have apparently been in protracted
| negotiations about this for over a year. Users are understandably
| shocked by this outcome, but it seems implausible to claim that
| WPE was.
|
| I think it's also useful to note that Mullenweg wasn't demanding
| 8% of WPE's revenue, but rather an allocation of WPE revenue to
| WordPress ecosystem development (by staff members on WPE's own
| team), with the revenue to Automattic (or whoever, I forget) as
| an in-kind payment option.+ That is a much more reasonable-
| sounding ask than simply forking over cash to Mullenweg's own
| business.
|
| I'm not following this closely enough to vouch for the way
| Mullenweg is handling any of this (though: at this point I
| assume/hope he has counsel reviewing what he's saying!) but it
| would be weird to me at this point to see WPE cast as the "good
| guys" here. This seems like another one of those "it's just a
| bunch of guys" scenarios.
|
| + _This is according to Mullenweg, of course, but he had Theo
| Browne reading emails to WPE off his laptop during the interview
| to back the claim up._
| aimazon wrote:
| "Negotiation" invokes visions of term sheets and boardrooms but
| what Matt actually meant by "negotiation" (as revealed in the
| interview) was emails in which he expressed displeasure at the
| lack of contribution from WP Engine, and only in the days
| before WordCamp did any sort of terms arrive at the table (the
| 8% demand). Matt has acknowledged he escalated things in the
| space of days, not years. The emails read out are birthday
| party invites, not term sheets.
|
| I agree that WP Engine cannot be characterised as "good guys"
| given it's a bottom-line driven machine that will chew up and
| spit out all in its path, and Matt has earned credibility
| through decades of _community-minded_ WordPress stewardship,
| but let 's not pretend this is some business deal that went
| sour, it's Matt using every inch of leverage he has to cause WP
| Engine pain because of his moral objections to the private-
| equity machine taking money away from his _community-minded_
| company.
|
| Obviously WP Engine were never going to pay Automattic tens of
| millions of dollars per year, Matt knows that, we know that,
| it's a side show. He was just saying things to ruin their day.
| Just like the millions of dollars per year in costs incurred
| running WordPress.org that Matt has wheeled out to justify
| causing WP Engine pain by cutting them off from plugin updates
| (Cloudflare have offered to host WordPress.org for free; Matt
| has not accepted the offer).
| corobo wrote:
| I wish he'd just do whatever he's going to do already. Dudes just
| coming off as having a bit of a manic one at this point.
|
| Two things that are true:
|
| - Big businesses built off the back of an open source software
| should absolutely chuck a bit back to said software
|
| - Matt is messing with peoples' bread and butter to win his
| little slap fight which is a complete dickhead move.
| jeltz wrote:
| And they do chuck a bit back. Matt just thinks it is not
| enough.
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