This feels like a classic "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". It appears the more Matt talks, the more he tarnishes the reputation Wordpress has.
Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
31–40 of 135 posts
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#32When this story first emerged, I was somewhat sympathetic to Matt/Automattic. But geeze, he is just looking worse and worse. Between this tantrum and threatening a former employee over a very innocuous statement [1], his credibility is pretty low in my opinion. [1] https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/nice-guy-matt-mullenweg-c...
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Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#33This is getting embarrassing. I was a big fan of Matt's before this whole charade started but he's basically flushing 20 years of goodwill down the drain for not a whole lot in return. As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine (and a hand-forcing by Automattic to implement a retroactive licensing agreement)?
As I understand it the claimed trademark infringement is WPE saying they ‘provide WordPress hosting’. If they are successful can anyone built an opens source hosting business?
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Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#34When this story first emerged, I was somewhat sympathetic to Matt/Automattic. But geeze, he is just looking worse and worse. Between this tantrum and threatening a former employee over a very innocuous statement [1], his credibility is pretty low in my opinion. [1] https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/nice-guy-matt-mullenweg-c...
Kellie's article is a well-written and reasonable response to mean-spirited bullying. It makes me wonder why a lot of people think it's good to have Silicon Valley companies run by trolls. Is that really the way to build successful businesses?
Edit: added missing word "companies"
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#35> "Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case."
I don't think I have ever before seen, in an official public statement, a "The lawyer we just hired always beats the lawyer they just hired!" boast, and it seems ridiculous - it's almost even hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer rather than that their case should win on merit.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#36This is getting embarrassing. I was a big fan of Matt's before this whole charade started but he's basically flushing 20 years of goodwill down the drain for not a whole lot in return. As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine (and a hand-forcing by Automattic to implement a retroactive licensing agreement)?
As I understand it the claimed trademark infringement is WPE saying they ‘provide WordPress hosting’. If they are successful can anyone built an opens source hosting business?
It would give a lot of power to trademark policies.
Mozilla has one of the stricter trademark policies but it's for a good reason and the community mostly trusts them. WordPress not so much.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
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Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#38From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.
Yes, that's why WordPress silently and secretly licensed back the WordPress trademarks to Matt's for-profit company without telling anybody. For the good of the customers.
That's why they forced the new boondoggle editing UI that everyone hates. For the good of the customers.
That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers.
Matt also seems very proud of his new, shady lawyer, who failed to disclose that he had cases before the Supreme Court when he endorsed Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for open spots. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have since reciprocated by ruling for this guy's clients every time, in several cases with decisions that confounded even conservative legal experts. So, it would seem Matt found a dirty lawyer to represent his dirty case. (EDIT: Katyal is the lawyer who suggested corporations should be immune from anti-trafficking laws because it would be bad for business and got his endorsee pals to bless corporate wage theft. He's the kind of lawyer companies turn to when they want to get away with something truly evil.)
We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality
Based on Matt's gross misrepresentations of reality on yesterday's thread, the only party to this case making gross mischaracterizations of reality is Matt.
If WordPress were truly an independent, community-led organization like Matt claims, he would have been forced out by now for the harm he's inflicted upon it.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I understand it the claimed trademark infringement is WPE saying they ‘provide WordPress hosting’. If they are successful can anyone built an opens source hosting business?
I am not sure which way this will go, but WPE's website was using the word "WordPress" in every possible way before they 'cleaned it up' a few days ago. I am not sure whether it was trademark infringement, but they did seem to be leaning heavily on the trademarked term. I compared WPE's website to Dreamhost's (as I am familiar with the latter as a provider of hosting for WordPress-based websites), and the latter used…
Fair enough - I can see there are limits but the material in Automattic’s lawsuit didn’t seem that problematic. Not sure how the law can distinguish between ok and too much use of ‘WordPress’.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I understand it the claimed trademark infringement is WPE saying they ‘provide WordPress hosting’. If they are successful can anyone built an opens source hosting business?
I am not sure which way this will go, but WPE's website was using the word "WordPress" in every possible way before they 'cleaned it up' a few days ago. I am not sure whether it was trademark infringement, but they did seem to be leaning heavily on the trademarked term. I compared WPE's website to Dreamhost's (as I am familiar with the latter as a provider of hosting for WordPress-based websites), and the latter used…
I’m not a lawyer, but why would they remove uses of WordPress from their website right before suing Automattic if their position is that they weren’t violating the trademark?