Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know about that, it’s normal to name a business after the founder. For example JCPenney, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Disney, Boeing, Wells Fargo. The reference is also quite oblique.
King Gilette
Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
641–650 of 717 posts
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#642The Stripe attribution stuff that WPEngine is accused of sounds potentially illegal. I don't think Automattic's trademark claims are fundamentally going to hold up. From the complaint: "WPE’s nominative uses of those marks to refer to the open-source software platform and plugin used for its clients’ websites are fair uses under settled trademark law, and they are consistent with WordPress’ own guidelines and the pra…
They forked an open source plugin and changed the affiliate code in it along with their other changes. How could that be illegal?
Sounds like something that WooCommerce should have in their license or something. idk sounds like a pitfall to me. Why would anyone pay WooCommerce anything then? Just fork it and change the attribution code.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#643Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you able to name of the publishers that you say run massive WP installs? I do know they exist of course, Sony being one. I’m coding up a little something that I feel is more modern and superior compared to WP, and I’d like to learn what their business requirements and use cases are that keep them on WP. Thanks in advance!
I don't want to discourage you...but there's so many WP alternatives out there that are supported by bigger companies, have a big ecosystem around them with agencies and developers for many years. Why would massive WP installs switch to "a little something"?
I just see the opportunity to provide developers and users a better experience using modern tooling, and feels open and simple enough for anyone to download and use without worrying about security vulnerabilities.
Something that feels powerful and safe; like WP of 10 to 15 years ago.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding: "WordPress is managed by the WordPress Foundation" The Foundation doesn't actually manage anything though, does it? WordPress.org is managed and owned by Mullenweg personally.
Yeah... I did this in a hurry (about 15min) before work, and HN doesn't allow edits after some time so let me complement the information. AFAIU: 1/ The WordPress Foundation is a proper non-profit and has as mission guarantee the "open sourceness" and ensures all WordPress projects are under the GPL license. 2/ The Foundation holds the trademarks to WordPress, WordCamp, BuddyPress, WP-Cli and they define the rules of…
I understand some points differently:
> It does have responsibilities about the open source licenses and holds the trademarks to WordPress, plus has a team that is paid by the Foundation to seek these interests as a non-profit.
The Foundation hires no employees directly. Automattic sponsors some people to work on Foundation stuff.
>> WordPress.org is managed and owned by Mullenweg personally
> Not necessarily, he did start it and is the main director, but the Foundation serves WordPress and, in theory, as a non-profit could have a different director.
The WordPress.org domain and website, including the centralised plugin and theme repositories used by millions of sites, are not run by the California public benefit corporation known as the WordPress Foundation.
Instead, they are allegedly run by another of Matt's companies named Mobius Ltd.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#645Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He should never have been allowed to be involved in WordPress.org once he was working at Automattic. I'm not sure that last part makes sense. For starters, there's a chronological issue -- Matt co-created the open source WordPress project in mid 2003, founded Automattic in mid 2005, and founded the WordPress Foundation in 2010. But even setting that aside, who exactly would/should have prevented him from serving in…
It was a conflict of interest when his policies at Automattic were in direct conflict with his role in the Org. The reality was he used them both to achieve his aims and as a dictator. The Org should have been run by the community for the good of WordPress, not the good of Matt or Automattic.
I suppose I'm just unconvinced about the severity of the "conflict of interest" claims, which have been said by quite a few people in these threads (I don't mean to single you out in any way!) but without concrete, unambiguous examples rising to the level of clear wrongdoing or malicious intent.
I know you gave some examples alleging bad behavior up-thread, but in those cases it isn't clear that the specific core problem related to a conflict of interest with Matt having dual roles at Automattic and the Foundation.
Or for instance, regarding "the good of WordPress": my impression is that Matt's various organizations are by far the largest contributors to WP core development, so it's hard to argue an overall trend of not acting in the best interest of WordPress. Stated another way, if Automattic were to go out of business, WordPress development would be significantly impacted. I think this means "the good of WordPress" and "the good of Automattic" are synergistic and intertwined.
At the end of the day, developing and maintaining a major open source project is very expensive. Someone needs to pay for it, and when a majority of that cost is paid by a single entity, that entity will naturally have disproportionate control. If major ecosystem members aren't contributing their share (as is alleged in WPE's case), I don't see how an entirely community-driven approach would be successful.
To be clear though, with respect to WP's situation, I don't have a dog in this fight and am neither condoning nor condemning the behavior of the parties involved.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#646Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
As someone who had to handle four websites that suddenly stopped getting Wordpress security updates and updates for plugins because of how you handled this I don’t very much care to hear about “their” bad behavior. You have no checks and balances so we paid the price. I hope people stop using Wordpress in droves. I hope you have to worry about your business the same way you suddenly made people have to worry about th…
How is it even legal for wordpress.org (a public nonprofit) to take these actions on behalf of a for profit?
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#647Earlier quoted context omitted.
> make 1.5 million enemies in the WordPress community in one weekend by shutting down their ability to update plugins with zero warning AWS and Digital Ocean run local Ubuntu download servers and do not depend on Canonical to run their business. WPEngine is a hosted service and could make very simple changes to download updates from their own servers.
> WPEngine is a hosted service and could make very simple changes to download updates from their own servers. This all kicked off when he publicly accused WP Engine of “butchering” WordPress for disabling revisions: > What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for i…
I'm sorry but WP-ENGINE lost my vote when they started quoting evangelizing and ambassadorship events as "contributions". Everyone knows that's a 50/50 self-marketing and brand outreach. I don't understand why people are taking WP ENGINE's side, in the past 5 years, the evils and exploits of VC investments have been widely documented. This is a clear and present danger/example of what is wrong with VC in America. Look at VC in other parts of the world, they are heavily regulated for this particular reason. This industry has taken the premise of the movie "pretty woman" and escalated to new hights of corporate GREED.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#648Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who had to handle four websites that suddenly stopped getting Wordpress security updates and updates for plugins because of how you handled this I don’t very much care to hear about “their” bad behavior. You have no checks and balances so we paid the price. I hope people stop using Wordpress in droves. I hope you have to worry about your business the same way you suddenly made people have to worry about th…
How is it even legal for wordpress.org (a public nonprofit) to take these actions on behalf of a for profit?
> How is it even legal for wordpress.org (a public nonprofit) to take these actions on behalf of a for profit?
There are three (or more) entities using the WordPress name now and confusing the heck out of a bunch of commenters, all of them controlled by Matt:
- The WordPress Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and the owner of the WordPress trademark.
- WordPress.com/Automattic is the company suing and being sued, and the exclusive commercial licensee of the trademark. They also pay people to work on the Foundation, and on WordPress.org.
- WordPress.org is a website personally run by Matt [1], through another company he owns called Mobius Ltd.
Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#649Re: Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
#650Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate spelling mistakes in professional work as much as anyone, but the spell-checker would not catch "principal" being used for "principle".
This is actually one of my favorite uses for contemporary AI technology. It very much can (and does) catch this type of spelling error. Google Docs does this for me quite often. It's not always right -- but it often prompts me to review exactly this type of situation. It's pretty amazing, really.
Yeah several spell checkers are context aware like grammarly (I haven’t used it in a long time though).