Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
601–610 of 717 posts
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire thing makes money and serves the purposes of people using it even for free. It's a well-engineered product whether you want to accept it or not. Unlike more than half of the tech world that's unprofitable and is just a fart in the wind of tech memory.
No, it's not well-engineered (speaking with over 25 years as a professional software engineer), at least the portions of the code I have looked at. Things I vaguely remember (it's been ten years since I looked at it) are lack of data normalization (and not in a performance optimizing way), template includes that depend directly on order of inclusion and variables in other templates, very little code isolation, and PH…
Ah yes, the infamous 12-year-old fractal of bad design article which is almost entirely obsolete.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
[flagged]
A decade and a half ago it was "BlackBerry" not "Blackberry". Now get off my grassy hill.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#604Matt Mullenweg is a hypocritical troll who hides his greed behind a false defense of open source.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sure but which is it: Mullenweg behaves like a mafia boss extracting concessions from anyone trying to build a business on WordPress, or he's unfairly singling out WP Engine? Success with the latter potentially encourages the former.
All these WP Engine threads are full of people alleging--either directly or through insinuation like you're doing here--of Mullenweg extorting other WordPress hosts. I've seen no evidence of this though; do you have any?
You continue to suggest I’ve insinuated he is extorting others and I have done no such thing. Please stop that. A protection racket does not need a quorum of victims to be distasteful or illegal.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#606Howdy, 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…
>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.
yup. I'm about to make a new site and I dont care about the platform, I just want to write. but I'm not gonna use wordpress ever again now, probably. Matt seems friendly but this is evil CEO garbage
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can a plugin be GPLv3 when the core is GPLv2? //edit: apparently the core is v2 or later.
Correct, it's gplv2 or later. v2/v3 GPL compatibility is also sort of an abstract thing - it gets talked about a lot (IE do the terms have to actually conflict as applied to a given situation or only conflict in theory) , but you also can't file a lawsuit with a claim of "GPL incompatibility". You'd have to file a claim for breach of contract or infringement (or both). This matters because if, for example, your main…
I do not believe it is legally "GPL v2 or later" at all. The original b2 license was GPL v2. There was no or later version option in the original b2 license. Given that WordPress is a derivative work, it has to keep the same or compatible license. Which "GPL v2 or later" is not.
Note how the original license is GPL v2 at [0], then the "or later" header is added much later at [1] seemingly out of nowhere.
[0] - https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blame/04c9051a7d765cb...
[1] - https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/commit/8cbd92f9f8269a...
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using the resources of the non-profit you control to kneecap a competitor to the for-profit you control makes that a bit more complicated. I think it's obvious WPE wouldn't be in the clear with Matt even if they went and hosted a mirror/cache of the WP.org packages.
wp.org is not a non-profit, despite the name. The actual non-profit [1] had expenses of $41k in 2022, which wouldn't come anywhere near paying for wordpress.org infrastructure and personnel. I guess Wordpress is going the RHEL route. You can clone it, but can't use their trademarks or infrastructure. [1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205...
> wp.org is not a non-profit, despite the name.
Automattic's associate legal counsel begs to differ [1]:
> Let’s apply this to the WordPress trademarks (also called simply “marks”). The WordPress Foundation owns the right to use the WordPress marks for non-commercial purposes. It can also sublicense out this right for particular events (e.g., WordCamps) and to people supporting the WordPress project and community. The Foundation also licensed the name WordPress to the non-profit WordPress.org, which runs a website that facilitates access to WordPress-related software.
(Take it up with them, not me.)
[1] https://automattic.com/2024/10/02/wordpress-trademarks-a-leg...
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
At first the idea that a $1000/hr associate planted a typo or two intentionally made me laugh but the more I think about it the more I think that's exactly what someone playing 4D chess with a lawsuit like this might do.
I doubt it. I've been involved with a similarly priced law firm once for an investment in a company I had a small stake in. They misspelled the names of multiple people, fixed it in the next draft version after it was pointed out to them, and then had it pop back up in some of the names a few versions later.
Sounds like they could use a content management system that retains revisions.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>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. yup. I'm about to make a new site and I dont care about the platform, I just want to write. but I'm not gonna use wordpress ever again now, probably. Matt seems friendly but this is…
> but this is evil CEO garbage
Correction: this is Evil CEO vs Evil CEO garbage. Casting WPEngine as some sort of saint is highly inaccurate.