Who pay's for this legally? Automattic or Matt personally?
Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
221–230 of 717 posts
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
To go to Matt’s for profit entity, for his for profit entity to direct as they wish. “I demand you give resources to your for profit competitor for them to use as they wish. And I’ll pretend to be wearing my non-profit, independent hat while demanding it.” Is it any surprise this has gone the way it has?
OR to the non-profit entity.
The term sheet is here [0], the money option offered was only to Automattic. The other choice was 8% of developer time to WordPress itself, which is arguably under the control of the non-profit, but no one is quite sure at this point what the distinction between the two even is.
[0] https://automattic.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/term-sheet...
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#223Howdy, Matthew Charles Mullenweg from the lawsuit here. One thing I'm surprised they disclosed is on page 35 that Heather Brunner at WP Engine was interviewing for a job at Automattic. That's why we were spending so much time together 1:1 without her team there in the meetings I posted here: https://automattic.com/2024/10/01/wpe-terms/ They lied that it was to run WordPress.com, though, she wanted to be the Executive…
Thanks for participating here.
While others are stating that you should not, the court of public opinion delivers results (including to Wordpress) a lot faster than the formal court system. So get ahead.
In general it’s better better the hear authentic voices than none or lawyered-up PR consultants, and this site has hammered companies that do so in the past.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#224After some seriously bad experiences with them I hope WPEngine loses their shirt. WRT their headless tooling the advertising versus the reality is insane. They held one of our clients hostage asking for $10k/month, we left for Kinsta for low hundreds per month and have had nothing but performance improvements and great support. I frankly don't like WordPress at all and don't really care about this lawsuit, but was bu…
I moved to WPEngine from a self hosted job, money well spent. I've never had a lick of trouble, and even though I'm pretty proficient at hosting LAMP apps, it's much less effort than self-hosting.
If you ported an already working app then you missed out on the unmitigated disaster of Atlas Content Modeler, which was advertised as production ready but slowly became abandonware without them ever really acknowledging it. I hope you never need to consume your content via GraphQL, because they absolutely can't handle it at reasonable traffic loads.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#225Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Automattic employs ~100 people that work full-time on WordPress.org. I can appoint them into positions on WordPress.org, if I think that's appropriate.
So wordpress.org is effectively for-profit Why did your legal officer today post in a blog post that its a non-profit?
There are so many legal entities here that appear completely intertwined: The WordPress Foundation, Automattic, Audrey Capital, WordPress Community Support PBC, etc. Conflicts of interest are a problem even if they aren't acted upon. It's going to get ugly.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely true and all of his communication - this thread, he’s given some interviews, etc. is very odd for a legal strategy.
Right, this all feels like (and I'm not trying to be rude with this, I'm speaking from experience) a mental break. Or he's got some sort of vendetta that he feels burning everything down is worth it over. Some of his comments from the other day on reddit have already been used in this very lawsuit, you'd think he would know to shut the hell up at this point if it's #2.
could even be a little from column A, a little from column B
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#228The more I read through the history detailed in the complaint, the more sad I become about the state of affairs. I am still on WP Engine's side because I believe Matt has gone way off track, but on the other hand, it has to be acknowledged that Matt has very selflessly helped grow WordPress into what it is today. The hosting bills for WordPress.org's plugin repository for instance can't be cheap, god knows how they f…
> The hosting bills for WordPress.org's plugin repository for instance can't be cheap, god knows how they fund it. The CEO of Cloudflare already offered to host it for free: https://x.com/eastdakota/status/1841154152006627663
Sure now that it's in the news and can give them good PR, but a week ago they weren't the ones paying for it.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#229Howdy, Matthew Charles Mullenweg from the lawsuit here. One thing I'm surprised they disclosed is on page 35 that Heather Brunner at WP Engine was interviewing for a job at Automattic. That's why we were spending so much time together 1:1 without her team there in the meetings I posted here: https://automattic.com/2024/10/01/wpe-terms/ They lied that it was to run WordPress.com, though, she wanted to be the Executive…
Don't lawyers usually advise their clients to stop talking about it when they're sued? Or is that one of those cliches that isn't true
I have seen a couple founders post to HN like this during legal action. Its embarrassing, even if I enjoy reading the content.
Of course its possible that these posts are happening through consultation with a lawyer/PR or something but often it feels like someone using their “inside” voice in the outside, and reads like unforced errors.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trademark originally belonged 100% to Automattic. It transferred it to the Foundation, and retained the commercial license and the ability to commercially sub-license. The Foundation gave me a license to run WordPress.org. This has all been public, though I agree it's complicated and not widely understood.
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