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Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

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Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#321

Post by dboreham »

photomatt wrote: post #84
aimazon wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Thanks, I carry a co2 and carbon monoxide monitor. Co2 where I'm at is 572. I do own a place in Montana, and I meditate several times a day. I have not threatened to take down WordPress.org. WPE's preservation requests do complicate things, legally, though, for the Slack and forums that W.org offers. Both Cloudflare and Fastly have reached out offering CDN services to W.org, which we're considering. Cloudflare also s…

> I do own a place in Montana

Did not know that.

Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#322

Post by wise_young_man »

photomatt wrote: post #68
mikeyinternews wrote: post #58

I hope Matt can supply his legal team with conversations that would somehow justify his behaviour. From my (incomplete) reading of the complaint, he (Matt) does indeed look very "petulant". It's almost like he's intentionally self-destructing, which is why I hope for his sake that he has more tangible evidence to share, especially after reading section 201.

Yes this is part of their smear campaign, just like their last C&D. They're cherry-picking stuff to try and make me look bad, while not addressing the core issue of their trademark violations. They want me to stop telling their customers about their bad behavior.

How can you use the trademark defense after over a decade of non enforcement? They and others in the space are highly likely covered under fair use.

Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#323

Post by pensatoio »

iambateman wrote: post #195
photomatt wrote: post #57

Howdy, 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…

Matt, thanks for engaging here and for all you’ve done with WordPress. My college internship was working on “Standard Theme” in 2009. We haven’t met but I’m Stephen. I don’t expect you to take questions from an internet stranger, but since you asked… What rules does Automattic enforce for all companies who operate businesses built on WordPress? In other words…when does a business owe 8%? There are thousands of busine…

Check out his interview on The Primeagen. They couldn’t pry a direct answer to that exact question out of him.

Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#324

Post by neltnerb »

function_seven wrote: post #249
fhfhfhjfnfnfmf wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What blog was this? Matt’s agents post in so many different places it’s hard to keep track. Edit: found it. Wow. This guy has the worst lawyers. https://automattic.com/2024/10/02/wordpress-trademarks-a-leg...

I love how he explains that “consideration” was conjured from thin air. I own a car. I want to drive my own car on weekdays. To accomplish this, I give my car to Jimmy, and he promises to let me use it on weekdays? Using the same analogy as in that post, apparently this is a valid contract with “consideration” because I gave Jimmy my car and, “in return,” he gave me my car back Monday–Friday. I’m no lawyer, but I can…

I also do not get it, I don't know why consideration is even relevant for a donation.

I assume someone wanted to restructure things so that a fully owned trademark was owned by a non-profit instead, with them retaining commercial rights.

Why would either side want to minimize the donation size? It reduces taxes for the commercial company and the non-profit doesn't care about income tax.

I don't know if the site is accurate but it's odd to bring up considerations for sure. I don't see anything immoral or unethical about want to restructure so that a non-profit handles the non-profit stuff.

Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#325

Post by nailer »

dopamean wrote: post #248

I cant imagine why in a million years Heather would consider leaving WPE to work for Automattic. It makes literally no sense.

Likewise. Leadership role at successful business versus less important role at less successful business.

Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#326

Post by metamichael »

bigiain wrote: post #310
anon7000 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was explained elsewhere, but Automattic has the commercial trademark rights, so licensing money wouldn’t be transferred to a non-profit foundation.

Yeah, but according to the filing, Matt had Automattic transfer the ownership of the trademarks to the foundation, they had the foundation grant the exclusive licence back to Automattic. If those trademarks are asserted to be worth billions, there are presumably reporting and tax obligations for both the ownership transfer and the licence grant agreement.

WordPress Foundation: Owns the trademark

Automattic: Owns the commercial right to use and sell the license

This is done because the WordPress Foundation is non-profit. The legal intricacies of this have been worked out a long time ago. You want to use the WordPress license? Then you'll have to buy it from Automattic.

Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#327

Post by shrubble »

dopamean wrote: post #248

I cant imagine why in a million years Heather would consider leaving WPE to work for Automattic. It makes literally no sense.

I readily admit that I have no knowledge about WPE’s internal affairs and I have no animus against them.

That said a company above a certain size can have multiple issues that could cause a person to consider leaving; such as internal politicking, the private equity firm making management decisions that are distasteful, or even just a loss of the company’s original tight-knit community of employees turning into “another corporate entity”.

Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#328

Post by busterarm »

Mystery-Machine wrote: post #87
photomatt wrote: post #57

Howdy, 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…

Since you're trying to get WP Engine to pay for "WordPress" trademark, by contributing back to open-source, because you feel they should, since it made them rich, I was wondering how many open-source projects did Automattic contribute to financially? Aside from WordPress, I'm sure you stand on the shoulders of giants such as Linux, nginx, MySQL, JavaScript libraries (or maybe you should call it ECMAScript, because yo…

https://ma.tt/2024/09/charitable-contributions/

Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#329

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

greyface- wrote: post #94
jasonlotito wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The agreement wasn't about their license to the [GPL] code," And "WP Engine will cease and desist from forking or modifying [non GPL code]" You are misreading it.

> License: GPLv3 https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/woocommerce-gatew...

How can a plugin be GPLv3 when the core is GPLv2?

//edit: apparently the core is v2 or later.

Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

#330

Post by prox »

safety1st wrote: post #198
photomatt wrote: post #57

Howdy, 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…

Hi Matt, great that you're participating here and I'm broadly supportive regarding your concerns with the trademark and WP Engine's conduct. However I do not understand why you chose to make 1.5 million enemies in the WordPress community in one weekend by shutting down their ability to update plugins with zero warning and consequently reducing the security of their websites. To be entirely blunt it's all damage contr…

Well said, I hope that there will be forum to discuss the ethos of these actions and see if there isn’t a better way to go about this, and how we can strengthen the community of open source.

An interesting article was written by Dries (Drupal Founder) and others.

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