[HN Gopher] WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic- Order on Motion for P...
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WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic- Order on Motion for Preliminary
Injunction
Author : kbarmettler
Score : 325 points
Date : 2024-12-10 23:20 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.courtlistener.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.courtlistener.com)
| minimaxir wrote:
| Yes, they did use Matt's Hacker News comments against him. (p24)
|
| The more relevant outcome of WPEngine getting the injuction is in
| Section F (p40), which includes removing that WordPress login
| checkbox.
| talldayo wrote:
| I feel like photomatt's comments are going to be enshrined in
| the same way the Dropbox one was. He talked up such a huge game
| but everyone knew he was in the wrong - we need to intercept
| cocky executives before they incriminate themselves in media
| res.
| kbarmettler wrote:
| I agree if we're talking from the perspective of his lawyers.
| From the wordpress community perspective, I think we
| benefited from Matt's extraordinary outspokenness here. It
| made all the bad acts very easy to bullet point in this
| injunction!
| barthvr wrote:
| Maybe he'll have to step back like Linus had a few years
| ago.
|
| And maybe give the wp.org domain ownership to the
| Foundation, making WP a bit more reliable and resilient to
| one's actions.
| nchmy wrote:
| That wouldn't change anything - he IS the foundation.
| speckx wrote:
| Curious as to what was the Dropbox comment? Can you please
| share or link? Thanks!
| lolinder wrote:
| Congrats, you're one of today's lucky 10000:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
|
| Also worth reading the poster's follow-up years later and
| the ensuing discussion. Graeme's observation about the
| significance of the comment is super important:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661824
| RainyDayTmrw wrote:
| And in case anyone needs it, the 10,000 number is
| referencing this: https://xkcd.com/1053/
| dang wrote:
| Time for another episode of "The Case for 9224" (not
| criticizing you! it's just my hobby, apparently)
|
| That comment has gotten a bum rap over the years. The
| commenter was trying to be helpful with Dropbox's YC
| application (that's what "app" meant on HN in 2007). Back
| then, file synchronization was widely thought to be a
| solution-in-search-of-a-problem. I've been trying for
| years to get people to understand this (starting at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275, then https
| ://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..
| .), despite knowing that you can't argue with the
| internet.
|
| The comment only became infamous years later [1, 2],
| after Dropbox was clearly a success--so this a massive
| case of hindsight. If people would only read all three
| comments, instead of stopping at the first, they'd see
| that the exchange was pleasant and successful [3]. But a
| meme is more fun. It didn't exist, so it had to be
| invented [4]!
|
| Compare that with the other infamous-HN-comment-
| from-2007, "did you win the Putnam" [5], which got
| pilloried in real time. No hindsight fallacy there!
|
| If the hivemind had empathy (which alas it does not),
| people would stop to consider how they'd feel about
| getting publicly mocked over decades for something they
| posted with good intentions at age 22 [6]. Alas, this is
| how the internet works--not much any of us can do about
| that. It's amazing, though, what a good sport BrandonM
| has been about it all this time. That part of the story
| is actually real, so we should celebrate that too.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6138488 (August
| 2013, i.e. 6 years later) seems to be the earliest
| reference on HN itself.
|
| [2] _April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306 (Oct 2013)
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9272 from Drew,
| and then https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9479
|
| [4] https://www.whitman.edu/VSA/trois.imposteurs.html
|
| [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079, but don't
| miss the witty and graceful concession
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35350)
|
| [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661824
| echoangle wrote:
| I never interpreted these comments as mean-spirited, it's
| just funny how the comment is completely wrong on
| hindsight. Kind of like the 640 kB of RAM thing or horses
| being better than cars.
|
| I don't think the point is that the people saying it at
| the time were stupid, it's just interesting that people
| can come to completely wrong conclusions which seem
| reasonable at the time.
| blahlabs wrote:
| It would be this one, I'm sure.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > we need to intercept cocky executives before they
| incriminate themselves in media res.
|
| Please don't, just let them.
|
| Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.
| browningstreet wrote:
| There's a community of users to think about...
|
| I think Matt needs to be replaced, and while the "what" may
| be arguable, he loses hard on the "how".
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| These people care little of the potential consequences,
| they operate from a particular mental model in that
| regard [1]. The harm will be done. When they swan dive
| from a reputational and legal perspective, step back and
| the problem solves itself.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42371295
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Why intercept them? I don't want douchebags like that to
| succeed in their douchebaggery. I want them to mouth off.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| Matt hasn't commented here in 57 days. I wonder what changed
| from, paraphrased, my lawyer okayed this communication[1] and
| now.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41726961
| legitster wrote:
| https://ma.tt/2024/10/first-amendment/
|
| The lawyer thing was hilarious. Someone actually claiming to
| be his lawyer was on the HN threads and anytime he was asked
| a question the response was a version of "Oh, I hadn't heard
| about this. I can't answer that."
| minimaxir wrote:
| > After this post, I will refrain from personally
| commenting on the WP Engine case until a judge rules on the
| injunction.
|
| Well, a judge did indeed rule on the injuction.
|
| He just retweeted this tweet about the case:
| https://x.com/brian_essig/status/1866640985842692452
|
| > This is actually bullshit. Agree with him or not, the
| court is forcing an open source maintainer into providing
| services to a user. What's next, a company finds a bug and
| a court orders a maintainer to fix it?
| smsm42 wrote:
| That's not an accurate description. An accurate
| description is that the court is ordering an open source
| maintainer to stop treating one particular user in a
| hostile and exclusionary manner. Now, you can object to
| that too, but there's a serious difference. It's like
| fixing a bug, but intentionally excluding some particular
| user from getting the bug fix - it's not the same as
| fixing a bug. Fixing a bug anew requires additional work,
| and forcing somebody in un-contracted work is usually
| hard. Allowing a user to access the bug fix everybody
| else can access requires just stopping being a jerk, no
| surprise the court is much more willing to grant such
| kind of relief.
| DannyBee wrote:
| It's funny because i literally explained in the original
| thread how this actually works legally, and that's
| exactly what happened.
| solardev wrote:
| Can you link to that explanation, please, for those of us
| not well versed in how this works?
| Kye wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41726903
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| It's always lame when somebody's arguments get shut down
| in court and then they just repeat the same failed
| arguments after.
|
| Like, come up with some new material.
| adolph wrote:
| _what they're trying to do is ask a judge to curtail my
| First Amendment rights._
|
| I've heard about corporations being persons too but a
| person claiming to be a corporation is a new one. Has that
| regal "L'Etat, c'est moi" ring to it.
| demetris wrote:
| I don't think he claims to be a corporation here.
|
| What he says is that, because wordpress[dot]org is his
| personal site, telling him what to do with it would
| violate his First Amendment rights.
| bawolff wrote:
| Its still stupid. The first amendment doesn't mean you
| can do literally anything you want.
| dboreham wrote:
| I've come to realize that for some people the law is
| considered in a Big Lebowski manner: "that's just, like,
| your opinion, man".
| rphillips wrote:
| First amendment right is against the government; not other
| companies and individuals.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Almost certainly the lawyer either A) did NOT ok it, B) OK'd
| it and then realized that was a huge mistake and reneged, C)
| was replaced by a different lawyer who made it very clear it
| was an awful idea.
|
| Matt is pretty clearly a terrible client from a client
| control perspective. He's simply not good at doing anything
| but exactly what he wants to do.
|
| As I have said elsewhere, he is now in this situation solely
| due to his own actions, having gained almost nothing and lost
| a lot. He'll lose more if this goes to trial.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Given the amount of downvotes his comments attract, I
| wouldn't be at all surprised that he just behaved like a
| normal human and decided to stop posting on a site where
| everyone seems to disagree with him.
| Havoc wrote:
| Pretty sure everyone except Matt saw that one coming
| legitster wrote:
| TL;DR: This is a huge verdict against Automattic. To get an
| injunction like this is a really high bar - you have to prove
| that you have a winnable case AND that you/the public is actively
| being harmed right now and it can't wait until trial.
|
| The injunction covers almost everything relevant - returning ACF,
| taking down the website tracker, removing the checkbox, etc.
| Basically return everything as it was before Matt became a
| supervillain the day of Wordcamp.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This is a huge sign that the case against Matt is a slam dunk.
| The writing in injunctions like this is indicative of the
| court's thinking based on the pleadings, and they have
| basically regurgitated the complaint while adding on more
| evidence from Matt being an ass on social media, which suggests
| that the judge has a strong preference.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Right - not just a preliminary injunction but basically the
| Court dismisses basically every argument put forth by
| Automattic in all even claims as "not withstanding scrutiny",
| "not supported by evidence", and "a consequence of their own
| actions". Throughout the document, there is -very- little that
| says Automattic's defense to any of this has any substance.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Uh, yeah, and in fact, the judge found likelihood of success on
| the _tortuious interference claim_ which basically never
| happens, and so didn 't bother to deal with the unfair
| competition part.
|
| That's remarkably bad for Automattic - tortuious interference
| is often a throwaway claim.
|
| The judge here clearly does not think much of Automattic's
| positions.
|
| I wonder if Neal found the merit yet[1].
|
| [1] https://automattic.com/2024/10/03/meritless/
| flootz wrote:
| I don't know if Neal has found the merit yet, but Automattic
| seems to be losing their company lawyers at a pace of one per
| week since a couple of months ago. That seems a pretty good
| indicator of where the legal department of the company sees
| things going towards.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Here, Mullenweg's "statement that he had the right to disable
| WPEngine's account access and to make changes to the ACF plugin
| for the sake of public safety[,]" see Opp. at 27-28, is belied by
| the declarations of WPEngine's executives stating that the
| claimed vulnerability was minor [...]
|
| @photomatt literally screwed himself over by talking about his
| actions here, when everyone was screaming at him to shut the fuck
| up. Will he start listening now?
|
| In short, what this injunction does is a) remove the checkbox, b)
| return ACF to WPEngine, c) restore access to website, d) no bond
| required.
| chris_wot wrote:
| I'm not sure how many people (including myself) told him to
| stop talking about the case on Hacker News. He never listened.
| mikae1 wrote:
| Wasn't it good that he kept talking though? Sorry for being
| crass, but I'd prefer him loosing this case.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Agreed.
| kristofferR wrote:
| But that's a weird thing to do. Why advise people to do
| stuff detrimental to the world?
| Jare wrote:
| Trying to help people be better versions of themselves is
| a good thing.
| kristofferR wrote:
| But this wasn't about trying to help someone to be
| better, it was to help them avoid facing consequences for
| being bad, like advising a wife beater about concealer
| options for his wife (overly dramatic example, I know).
|
| "You should stop doing dumb/illegal stuff, it might
| impact you" is very different advice than "You should
| stop talking about the dumb/illegal stuff you do, they
| may stop you".
| perihelions wrote:
| Here's the HN thread that's an exhibit in this court filing
| (screenshot on page 24),
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821336#41821399 ( _"
| Secure Custom Fields by WordPress.org (wordpress.org)"_)
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Tried to get bond for an amount covering bills for two years;
| lol. This gives me more hope than most things I've read lately
| bawolff wrote:
| Makes you wonder if they really thought that would work. I
| guess it never hurts to shoot for the moon.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| +1, something about landing among the stars. I think Matt
| wanted to _be_ one; this had a very astroturf feel - making
| himself the champion... and now, lol. But I repeat myself!
| digitalPhonix wrote:
| I sort of wish the court did a hand wavy estimate of the
| marginal cost of providing service to WPEngine (Automattic was
| claiming the bond was to cover the cost of service) and ordered
| a bond of something like $0.01
| jcranmer wrote:
| This is the preliminary injunction, which needs to be issued
| relatively quickly to preserve the status quo for the
| litigation, so the court isn't going to ask for anything it
| doesn't already have. Automattic only asked for covering the
| _total_ cost of website hosting, which was clearly too high,
| so the court didn 't have sufficient information to be able
| to make any reasonable estimate.
| rglover wrote:
| Rooted in speculation about why this meltdown occurred in the
| first place: be very careful about taking money, as well as the
| amount and who from. My guess from day one is that Matt was put
| under pressure from investors and this was the only "fix" he saw.
|
| A real shame to see such a great legacy flushed for zero ROI.
| lolinder wrote:
| I've often wondered if his emphasis on how private equity was
| ruining WordPress was him telegraphing his frustration with his
| own investors at Black Rock while technically abiding by his
| contract with them. It's interesting to consider that his
| performance could have been a type of malicious compliance with
| their demands--going so far overboard that he intentionally
| destroys the whole ecosystem as a kind of revenge.
|
| It's probably more likely he just went nuts, but it's fun as a
| head canon.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| As amusing as that thought is... I think he could have done
| that without misrepresenting _[the 'contracts' of]_ open
| source software so readily.
|
| He stood to gain from this little knife twist, we all may
| still lose. Who knows what misconceptions were born/the
| downstream effects. WPEngine was never under any obligation
| to Matt himself/Automattic/WordPress/the Foundation
| _[whatever distinction - if any - that may offer!]_...
| outside of the license.
|
| I don't believe it's a question of distance overboard, it
| started there! To quote Kendrick: _" colonizer"_
| legitster wrote:
| > his own investors at Black Rock
|
| Blackrock does not at all operate the same as a private
| equity and it's a huge pet peeve of mine when people lump
| them in together. Usually they are confusing Blackrock with
| Blackstone.
|
| All Blackrock does is manage wealth and investments on behalf
| of individual clients. One of the ways they do this is by
| sticking private assets into funds for their clients. It's
| more akin to Vanguard than anything to do with private
| equity. There's no reason to believe BlackRock would be
| breathing down their necks when all they do is broker the
| funds on behalf of their clients.
|
| Automattic DOES have private equity backers though like Tiger
| Global, Insight, ICONIQ, and more.
| lolinder wrote:
| Fair enough. /at Black Rock/d
| kbarmettler wrote:
| Thank you very much for this clarification!
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| People often confuse BlackRock, an asset manager, with
| Blackstone, which is a private equity firm. However, I
| doubt Blackstone counts low enough to have bought part of
| Automattic. Blackstone also owns a considerable portion of
| BlackRock.
| daemin wrote:
| Which company whose name started with Black was the PMC
| in that case?
| vetrom wrote:
| That was Blackwater (
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company) ),
| no relation.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Someone should found "BlackFire" and "BlackAir" to
| complete the ancient elements.
| rodgerd wrote:
| The BlackElements existed in harmony until one day etc
| jrflowers wrote:
| I like how confident this post is.
|
| Blackrock absolutely has private equity operations which
| they do not hide even a little bit
|
| > Private equity is a core pillar of BlackRock's
| alternatives platform. BlackRock's Private Equity teams
| manage USD$41.9 billion in capital commitments across
| direct, primary, secondary and co-investments.
|
| https://www.blackrock.com/institutions/en-
| us/strategies/alte...
|
| They also do more traditional asset management, but saying
| they "do not operate at all the same as a private equity"
| is like saying that Jack In The Box "does not operate at
| all like a taco place" despite the fact that you can buy a
| taco at every one of their locations.
| legitster wrote:
| > Our platform takes a holistic approach to investors'
| private equity portfolios and is designed to offer
| strategies and solutions that align with client
| objectives and deliver persistent outperformance.
|
| I get your point, but again, they are doing this _on
| behalf of clients_. And 49b is less than a percent of
| their holdings. So I would still think of them as a
| brokerage.
|
| This would be like calling Uber a restaurant company just
| because they launched UberEats.
| chii wrote:
| > This would be like calling Uber a restaurant company
| just because they launched UberEats.
|
| an apt comparison.
|
| Some people dislike how ubereats operate.
|
| The dislike of private equity is not unfounded, but also
| the problems don't actually stem from private equity at
| all, but from bad/misaligned incentives. People tend to
| want to assume that private equity buying a business will
| retain the same incentive as the original owners - but
| the reason why PE would buy a business is _because_ the
| original owners weren't being perfectly efficient (aka,
| stingy).
|
| This has nothing to do with private equity per se, and
| has everything to do with capitalism at it's core.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| they are doing this on behalf of clients
|
| That's what _all_ private equity firms do. They get paid
| to manage private equity funds. The managers don 't
| usually put up most of the money. It comes from outside
| investors.
| linotype wrote:
| $42 billion at Blackrock is nothing. They manage over ten
| trillion dollars.
| echoangle wrote:
| Shouldn't you compare the sum to other private equity
| firms, not the rest of black rock? If they are a
| significant player in the space, I don't think their
| other assets matter when saying that they operate in the
| space.
| myst1c wrote:
| No, Matt is just a classic CEO exhibiting symptoms of
| narcissist personality disorder who's now getting served in
| court and doesn't realise how much he earned it.
| rglover wrote:
| Sure seems like it.
| myst1c wrote:
| I agree with the theory about him telegraphing the
| frustration with his investors through his accusations of
| the fight against "evil private equity." That is so, so
| typical. Enough accusations form a whole letter of
| confession with these kind of people.
| legitster wrote:
| Matt went on a Youtube channel last week to partake in a
| Wordpress speed building challenge, and he got frustrated
| several times using his own product:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqY5bje8D2o
|
| He spent years squashing anyone who complained about
| Gutenberg, and then he calls WPEngine a cancer and accuses
| them of offering an inferior version. All to find out that
| he's not even familiar!
| taytus wrote:
| I would say, negative ROI at this point.
| wlonkly wrote:
| Matt has claimed[1] before to be "post-economic", i.e. has
| enough money that it doesn't matter to him anymore. It's hard
| not to see this as personal, not financial.
|
| [1] https://x.com/sereedmedia/status/1839394786622722432
| chx wrote:
| had
|
| WPEngine (and a horde of Emanuel Urquhart lawyers led by
| Rachel Kassabian) are taking him to the cleaners. This won't
| be pretty. A preliminary injunction is not easy to get, it's
| really likely WPEngine will win at least something.
| xnx wrote:
| > It's hard not to see this as personal, not financial.
|
| Despite not needing the money, Matt seemed to be very upset
| that WPEngine was making money.
| hooverd wrote:
| In terms of cognitive impairment that's like being kicked in
| the head by a horse every day.
| avree wrote:
| That was before he made tons of horrible angel investments -
| https://pitchbook.com/profiles/investor/106035-94#exits you
| can see how many of his portfolio are out of business or near
| death.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Isn't that pretty normal for angel investments? It's a
| numbers game.
| bawolff wrote:
| That sounds like what every person pretending to be rich but
| isn't as rich as they claim to be, says.
| ookblah wrote:
| I dunno, I mean he could have applied the "fix" in a more cold
| and calculated method. Tons of PE companies out here doing the
| same and squeezing the stone without resorting to random
| personal attacks of those they disagreed with. Everything just
| had this air of pettiness to it instead.
| wmf wrote:
| The difference between an MBA and a hacker who lucked into a
| profitable business.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think this is fair. I think wordpress had every right to cut
| WPEngine off, but
|
| 1) the fact that subbing in his fork of their plugin killed
| already purchased "pro" user features without warning was an
| illegitimate attack on the "pro" customers themselves (who
| probably have a case against him personally),
|
| 2) the pretense that he was doing it for "security reasons"
| because there was an exploit (every single part of everything
| about wordpress has an exploit in a random month) shows that he
| _thought_ he was doing something unjustifiable; he should have
| been clear and open about why he was forking, and not do anything
| that broke people 's installs, and
|
| 3) the behind-the-scenes harassment was just over the top. He
| should have just made his demand, and when they turned it down,
| sent a follow up explaining how he was going to cut off access so
| they could coordinate doing it cleanly. Instead he was
| intentionally optimizing for chaos _and saying this in private
| communications over and over again._
|
| He could have done almost all of the same things, and just
| refused to update "pro" users to the fork and instead refer them
| to WPEngine's alternative setup. Instead he ranted and raved
| ominously behind the scenes, trying to make it as clear as
| possible that this was extortion _when in essence it wasn 't._ It
| was all of the fake snarkiness in public and in private, attempts
| to poach employees, threats to destroy the company, and
| insinuations of security problems that _made it extortion._
|
| WPE is going to win this because Mullenweg seemingly has no
| ability to emotionally self-regulate. Real teenage swatter vibes.
| And I think he was in the right, and I think that without all of
| the crap, they'd probably have backed down and started
| contributing.
|
| They'll probably end up getting a remedy where he has to help
| them set up and maintain their alternative plugin directory, he
| might have to pay them damages, and he might even end up having
| to allow _everyone_ use of the mark freely. Then what does he
| have? He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > the pretense that he was doing it for "security reasons"
| because there was an exploit (every single part of everything
| about wordpress has an exploit in a random month) shows that he
| thought he was doing something unjustifiable
|
| Not to mention the threats posted online to other plugin
| developers, "we can and will find an exploit in your plugin and
| do exactly the same to you if we want" indicated it had very
| little to do with security. I'm sure he had Automattic
| employees pulled onto finding even the most trivial of exploits
| just to be able to do this.
|
| > they'd probably have backed down and started contributing
|
| WPE contributes probably in the seven digit a year range to WP.
| The very conference that Matt went "nuclear" at was sponsored
| by WPE to the tune of $75K (and for insult on injury, they were
| denied the ability to attend, and I believe all references to
| them were removed, but the money was kept).
| InsomniacL wrote:
| > I think wordpress had every right to cut WPEngine off
|
| Even though wordpress.org is built/maintained by volunteers
| such as WPEngine who were all told it's a "community asset",
| "nobody owns it but wordpress", "it's maintained by the
| foundation".
|
| Volunteers who now find out from court documents that
| wordpress.org is the personal website of Matt who can do
| whatever he wants with it?
|
| Volunteers who are now banned from the thing they helped build
| for simply voicing disagreement with actions which are accepted
| by most as extreme/unwarranted?
|
| Even volunteers who work on WordPress (not w.org), who built in
| to the Core reliance on w.org infrastructure after being lied
| to that it's owned by the Foundation.
|
| I think in this specific case, they have absolutely no right
| and the injunction supports that.
| onli wrote:
| The explanations in the injunction with regards to clients'
| contracts of wpengine does not read like he ever had any right
| to cut wpengine off. And his argument about how trademarks
| somehow gave him a right to ask for money from a wp hoster was
| never valid. I don't think he ever had a right to cut off
| wpengine, neither legally nor ethically. The case will be a
| complete loss for WordPress, and matts statements probably
| didn't even change that all that much, they just make the
| decision easier and add additional charges to lose, like the
| blatant extortion.
|
| (It's thinkable to ask for money from entities accessing the
| plugin registry, making it a paid api. But not a fee from a
| company just for using a Foss software. The license doesn't
| allow that.)
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I hope Matt considers placing all the community resources of
| Wordpress into the foundation, including Wordpress.org,
| constituting an actual board, contributing funds, and setting up
| a governance and contribution system that matches the open ethos
| of the license and community.
|
| I think this is an area that Drupal gets right, and Dries wrote
| an interesting post about it in October:
|
| https://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker-problem
| recursivegirth wrote:
| This is pretty on the nose considering Matt's latest blog
| post[1]. I feel for Matt in some regard, and I do think the
| lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS developers are required to
| provide software with warranty. However, I say that with not
| fully understanding the seperation of actions between
| Automattic the company and Matt in his own personal capacity.
|
| [1] https://ma.tt/2024/12/drupalcon-singapore/
| duskwuff wrote:
| > I do think the lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS developers
| are required to provide software with warranty
|
| 1) This is a preliminary injunction, not a decision. An
| injunction which resets a situation to the former _status
| quo_ pending a decision isn 't all that unusual.
|
| 2) I don't think the issue here is so much a "warranty" as
| much as that Automattic (et al) set out to discriminate
| against WPEngine to obtain a business advantage. If
| Automattic wanted to shut down the WordPress plugin
| repository entirely, they'd be within their rights to do so.
| (It'd be business suicide, of course - but the point is that
| they _could_.)
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Given that OSS litigation typically spans decades an
| injunction might as well be a decision
| lolinder wrote:
| For the purpose of preventing action by the defendant,
| yes. For the purpose of setting binding precedent that
| affects the outcomes of other lawsuits, not at all.
| duskwuff wrote:
| The open source nature of WordPress is largely irrelevant
| to this case. Neither party is contesting the copyright
| status of WordPress or its plugins.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >and I do think the lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS
| developers are required to provide software with warranty
|
| If Matt hadn't tried to extort WP Engine he would have been
| perfectly within his right to say "large hosts have to pay to
| use the WordPress plugin directory". The injunction is purely
| about one specific company who was allegedly harmed by
| Automattic.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > I do think the lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS developers
| are required to provide software with warranty.
|
| Not really. The court order is to restore things to the
| status quo of 3 months ago, to require that Matt undo all of
| the things he specifically had to single out to do to fuck
| over WPEngine. If Matt hadn't specifically singled out
| WPEngine, and instead decided to stop providing the website
| to _everybody_ , there wouldn't have been much of a case
| anyone could bring.
|
| > However, I say that with not fully understanding the
| seperation of actions between Automattic the company and Matt
| in his own personal capacity.
|
| As I understand it, everything Wordpress is Matt in three
| trenchcoats. Certainly, that's how he's pushing it in his
| defense filings in this lawsuit.
| eXpl0it3r wrote:
| I don't see this happening, as it would de-throne Matt and Matt
| hasn't shown any "remorse", any understanding of him being the
| issue and that there's a clear conflict of interest. No, in
| fact he keeps doubling down [1] on claiming that all of
| his/Automattic's efforts are happening for the good of open
| source and the community.
|
| [1] https://x.com/automattic/status/1866644684057248090
| linotype wrote:
| If anything, he probably thinks he did nothing wrong and will
| complain about the media and the courts like Elon.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| He doesn't live on the same plane of reality as you or I.
| stonogo wrote:
| Advocating, in other words, the creation of a sort of
|
| _Automattic for the People_
| jzb wrote:
| He would argue that Matty got a raw deal.
| sonofhans wrote:
| Bravo. I haven't listened to that record for ages. Thank you!
| ivraatiems wrote:
| As much as the US justice system is deeply, deeply flawed, it is
| one of the few places where very wealthy people ever hit the
| "find out" stage after fucking around. Some recent examples,
| apart from this case, certainly include SBF going to prison, Elon
| Musk being forced to buy Twitter, Alex Jones' enormous civil
| judgment, and so on.
|
| I'm not saying I have _faith_ in the system, exactly, especially
| when it tends to only do this at the behest of _other_ very
| wealthy people demanding it, but it is nice to see.
|
| Matt Mullenweg, if you're reading this (and we know you read HN),
| feel free to not listen to your attorneys and continue to attack
| random individuals and companies randomly because you decide you
| don't like them, or whatever. It will surely end well for you and
| definitely not with more massive own goals like this one. (And if
| you are Matt Mullenweg's attorney, and reading this because he
| decided to follow my bad advice instead of your good advice,
| well, I'm happy to take a steak dinner in appreciation of the
| massive bill you'll soon be sending him.)
| tofof wrote:
| Alex Jones' loss of infowars has been rejected by the judge,
| who seems intent on handing it to the assets Jones transferred
| to his parents to shield them instead. You might want to
| reevaluate.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| That's not an accurate description of what happened, and in
| any case, I was referring to the massive approximately $1
| billion judgement against Jones, which isn't going anywhere
| regardless.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Matt's attorney - or someone claiming to be him - was saying
| that Matt is in the right and everything he's posted since the
| start was cleared by him. On here and on Twitter.
|
| That jives with Matt's claims that his lawyers were on board
| with all of his nonsense (and now, probably legally
| incriminating!) posts. But it could also have just been someone
| LARPing.
| echoangle wrote:
| Since Matt was personally commenting in the threads, I think
| he would have made a comment saying that the person claiming
| to be his lawyer isn't actually his lawyer.
| davidt84 wrote:
| Unless the person claiming to be his lawyer was actually
| Matt.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| In almost every example you cited, the very wealthy people were
| also very stupid and violated bedrock principles of the court
| system in a way that could not be swept under the rug.
| Specifically:
|
| - Elon Musk put it in writing that he was going to buy Twitter
| with no due diligence. Contracts are nine tenths of the law; no
| court in the world is going to get you out of one because the
| biggest value the court system has to the wealthy is contract
| enforcement.
|
| - Alex Jones never actually argued the merits of the defamation
| case against him. He didn't even show up to court. Judges have
| wide latitude to rule against people who don't show up to
| defend their cases, because otherwise _nobody_ would be dumb
| enough to actually defend themself in a (neutral) court of law.
|
| - One of the few things US law can actually still protect you
| against is all the classic failure modes of banks and
| investments, both because the wealthy demand protection for
| their wealth and because the less-wealthy have been fleeced by
| investment fraud for so long that the list of memestock victims
| includes Issac Newton. SBF did the one kind of financial crime
| that the system actually cares about[0].
|
| Today's system is corrupt on the margins: it needs to at least
| provide the appearance of impartiality, because the wealthy
| still rely on it being an impartial arbitrator of competing
| interests. In 1500s England, wealthy people didn't get
| divorces, they got annulments, where they paid a priest to go
| squint at Bible verses and find _something_ to explain why the
| marriage was spiritually invalid. The wealthy person gets to
| sidestep the rules, but only if someone can find their desired
| loophole. Sometimes, they can 't.
|
| And then sometimes a Henry VIII comes along, tries to have it
| both ways, gets told no, says "fuck that, I'm the church now",
| and completely replaces the partially corrupt system with a
| completely corrupt one. Matt Mullenweg seems to be playing at
| the same bit, doing ideological purges of Automattic and such;
| but he doesn't own the WordPress community, and he doesn't own
| the law.
|
| Enjoy it while it lasts, because it might not survive convicted
| felon / ex-President / President-Elect Donald Trump, depending
| on how many of Big Tech's Henry VIIIths come running to Trump
| for protection from countries that actually enforce their
| antitrust laws.
|
| [0] This also goes for Martin Shkreli; whose first criminal
| charge was for running a Ponzi scheme, not for jacking up the
| cost of generic drugs to exploit FDA regulations on sole-
| supplier drugs.
| ookblah wrote:
| I stopped following it for a bit after the initial drama after
| Matt had repeated meltdowns and showed his true face in all of
| this. It was just tiring try to fight all the non-stop
| gaslighting which was probably part of the strategy. Any leg he
| had to stand on was betrayed by his tantrums. Good to see some
| movement.
| chris_wot wrote:
| > Defendants' arguments in opposition do not persuade otherwise.
| They assert that "[t]he public is not, and will not, be subject
| to any harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction" noting
| that WPEngine implemented a workaround for Mullenweg's
| interference with its access to WordPress. Opp. at 33. Not so. In
| his reply declaration, Prabhakar explains that the temporary
| solution "is impractical for many reasons." Prabhakar Reply Decl.
| P 4. Without access to wordpress.org, those who use WPEngine's
| plugins "would not know that their plugins require update[.]" Id.
| Many do not know how to update plugins manually. Id. For those
| that do, if they manage several websites, and those websites run
| multiple plugins, the process of performing manual updates would
| be too onerous and time consuming to be workable. Id. Moreover,
| even if WPEngine's workaround did not present the difficulties
| Prabhakar describes, the costs associated with its
| implementation, as necessitated by Mullenweg's conduct, supports
| the issuance of injunctive relief.
|
| Ouch. The court is basically saying that they need to implement
| the preliminary injunction for the wider public good. Rather puts
| the lie to several assertions by Mullenweg.
|
| In fact, it's not at all looking good for Mullenweg or
| Automattic.
| valunord wrote:
| It feels as if Automattic doesn't do a complete paradigm shift
| and become truly open with their software everyone is going to
| give up on them entirely - at least everyone with significant
| talent and investment.
| anon7000 wrote:
| I agree with you that Automattic needs a paradigm shift
| (massive leadership change, probably), but I don't think the
| openness of their software is the problem.
|
| Just because they have a huge number of OSS projects. Most of
| it is open source, even things that really don't see 3rd party
| contributions (like https://github.com/Automattic/vip-go-mu-
| plugins, https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso,
| https://github.com/Automattic/redvelvet-lib,
| https://github.com/Automattic/newspack-plugin,
| https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-ios)
|
| Automattic has other issues (leadership, especially!!) but
| software development happens largely in the open. Just look at
| the GH issues and PRs in the WP-calypso and Gutenberg
| repositories, and you'll see even a lot of technical discussion
| and planning happening completely public. You can even chime in
| if you want :)
|
| Automattic has lots of issues. But they simply have much more
| open software development practices than nearly any other tech
| company (most of which are completely private and closed
| source). I just don't think this is the core problem.
| throw646577 wrote:
| Ehh. I speak as a pretty long-term WP-oriented developer who is
| no fan of WP Engine for reasons that are defined by having used
| their product when I say:
|
| This was the only sensible and just outcome.
|
| The "Secure Custom Fields" thing is one of the most egregious
| things to happen in open source for at least a decade. Just
| crazy.
|
| Hopefully Matt understands he has become self-limiting and steps
| back from some of his positions/takes off one of his too many
| hats.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > restoring WPEngine's and Related Entities' access to
| wordpress.org in the
|
| > ...
|
| > slack.wordpress.org); and
|
| That is going to be a very awkward slack channel.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| Anyone taking bets if he will obey the injunction? My feeling is
| that his ego will not let him do so.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's a good way to find that judges also have fairly hefty
| egos, and the ability to jail you for impacting it.
| barkingcat wrote:
| I'm taking bets matt will just do a "I bet you my ego is
| bigger" and end up going to jail for contempt of court for 10
| years.
|
| And then the day he gets out he'll continue the feud.
| echoangle wrote:
| More like 10 days, contempt of court starts small and only
| accumulates if you keep doing it. I think he would get the
| message after the first time. But he's got lawyers, there's
| about 1% chance he's going to jail for that.
| spankalee wrote:
| Can anyone here summarize the legal principle involved here?
|
| Why does Matt legally have to provide services to people he
| doesn't want to, even if he's morally wrong or generally being an
| asshole?
|
| To my non-lawyer and only-watching-from-the-sidelines self, the
| ACF situation seems more clearly actionable, but the other things
| are very interesting.
| crowcroft wrote:
| I get the impression this injunction is really just saying that
| WPEngine's legal case has some veracity, and Automattic's
| actions seem to be retaliatory and/or not legal (depending on
| the eventual outcome of the actual case), and so is saying
| everything needs to be set back to where it was, while the
| courts work through an actual legal decision.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| It's not a long document, but to take one of the example torts
| mentioned: torturous interference with a business contract is
| illegal, even if you own the means of interfering.
|
| Could matt/automattic/wordpress.org/wordpress.com (they all act
| as the same entity: matt) have withdrawn services in a way that
| didn't tortiously interfere with a business contract? Of
| course. But he didn't, because tortiously interfering with
| WPEngine's customer contracts was his primary goal. His
| complaints about cost were secondary at best, and seem to have
| been entirely a pretext.
|
| To add more perspective: withdrawing services from everybody
| usually requires one to simply stop working and/or paying
| bills. To withdraw services from WPEngine, matt had to
| consciously expend time/effort/money, just to interfere with
| WPEngine's customer contracts. Doing nothing would have been
| less work and cost matt less.
| sonofhans wrote:
| "Tortious interference" is wrongful interference in others'
| contractual or business relationships. Wordpress does not have
| to provide free services to anyone in particular, only to honor
| their legal agreements and treat their users equally. In this
| case they did not; they took action specifically to damage
| WPEngine.
|
| Matt may even be morally correct in some ways, but that doesn't
| give him the right to use his position as Wordpress leader to
| damage the business of someone who competes with Automattic.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > remove the purported list of WPEngine customers contained in
| the "domains.csv" file linked to Defendants'
| wordpressenginetracker.com website (which was launched on or
| about November 7, 2024) and stored in the associated GitHub
| repository located at
| https://github.com/wordpressenginetracker/wordpressenginetra....
|
| Considering the only changes [1] [2] have been to add more sites
| to the list I guess there's going to be a second hearing to
| enforce the injunction.
|
| [1]:
| https://github.com/wordpressenginetracker/wordpressenginetra...
|
| [2]:
| https://github.com/wordpressenginetracker/wordpressenginetra...
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