51–60 of 135 posts
> "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.
> "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.
When 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...
> "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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If WordPress won on the trademark infringement issue, it would be a fundamental rewriting of trademark law as it exists in the U.S. today. Companies even competitors are allowed to use trademarks when they are making factual statements, like "we provide Wordpress hosting" as long as they make it clear that they are not the trademark holder (i.e., confusing customers). Even before they revamped their website, WP Engin…
In that case I have no idea why Automattic would attempt to try to get WPE to license the trademark.
He admitted to violating labor laws and non-profit tax laws, and perpetuated several ongoing torts. He had a very productive day; it explains why he had to hire one of the most sadistic corporate lawyers in America.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steve Jobs was famously mean, and had a 'flexible' relationship with the truth. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/5l3hys/commen...
But he was also famously reasonable at times when most people would have been just mean. [0] He had a complex and conflicting personality. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o
> "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.
Selecting a lawyer with a proven record, and expressing confidence in them are not "hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer". They're smart strategies, whether you decide to take the case to court, or seek a settlement (on either side).
When 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...
Far out, this whole thing is links to links to links, is there somewhere I can read a summary of this whole stupid drama?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Selecting a lawyer with a proven record, and expressing confidence in them are not "hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer". They're smart strategies, whether you decide to take the case to court, or seek a settlement (on either side).
I agree that it is of course smart to choose a lawyer you think can win, it's the public statement about the lawyer's track record that seems crazy to me, not the hiring decision.
What about this “seems crazy”?
As far as I can figure, from watching Matt's recent interviews and my own conjecture...
Matt's seen his open source creation go, over the course of 20 years, from a hobbyist product to now one with a multitude of companies creating billions of revenue from it.
But as it's grown certain companies are now huge and flush with VC cash. Which does change the equation. In the early days it might be reasonable to turn a blind eye to trademark infringement when it helps all boats rise, but now things are very imbalanced.
IMHO WPEngine is rent-extracting in the same way that AWS does with many open-source solutions. Customers want products not source-code and are prepared to pay for packaged value-added products compatible with Wordpress. But none of this revenue is going back to the developers and fostering the development ecosystem in any meaningful way. If opensource projects like Redis & Elasticsearch could have had developers hired from 8% of revenues from those AWS sales imagine how much better off those projects could have been.
As Wordpress itself is open-source Matt doesn't have any levers except the name Wordpress. As anybody in open-source should know - the code might well be open for forking but the name is very protected. Just because the trademark hasn't been entirely well enforced doesn't mean the protection is lost - the right always belongs to the trademark holder to use and enforce how they please as unilaterally as they wish. Trademarks can lose their protection if they start referring to generics but that's not the case here. Wordpress doesn't mean generic CMS - it's always referring to a Wordpress source code hosted by various companies.
Matt's clearly acting emotionally and not terribly logically - that's clear for everyone to see. But I do think its with the long term intention of making a more sustainable community.
Ultimately WPEngine can just rename their company and the only lever Matt has over them goes away.
Or they can embrace the name and pay a fair licensing cost - a rate significantly lower than if they were licensing some other commercial CRM software.