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Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

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Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

#71

Post by ValentineC »

everfrustrated wrote: post #60

The popcorn value on this saga is awesome! 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 earl…

> 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.

WP Engine also acquired, and continues to maintain, projects like Advanced Custom Fields [1] and Local [2].

Local used to have pro features, which became free for everyone after the acquisition [3].

[1] https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/reflecting-on-two-...

[2] https://wpengine.com/blog/better-together-wp-engine-and-flyw...

[3] https://localwp.com/pro-for-everyone/

Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

#72

Post by finnthehuman »

nickff wrote: post #70
finnthehuman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sentiment that a lawyer is so good they will overcome this challenge rather than conveying that the lawyer will prove the questions of law and fact resolve it in their favor... it just... well... seems like the kind of shit that's for a TV show where it's not about contesting facts and law.

Lawyering is not just about knowing the law and proving facts, for an example of this, I recommend the book about Theranos: “Bad Blood”.

Yeah, ofc, the lawyer skill gradient exists and causes slam-dunk cases to be decided in the "wrong" [0] direction. It's just odd to say you will win because the lawyer is that good, makes it sound like you might be wrong but are going to win simply because you have better council.

[0] There's gotta be a fancy latin-sounding lawyer word for this, right?

Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

#74

Post by FireBeyond »

rglover wrote: post #11

This 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 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)?

Not just a retroactive agreement, a retroactive rewriting of trademark usage. Up until a few days into this dispute, the appropriate text on WordPress's site explicitly permitted people to use "WP" as they saw fit (as much as they can, as I don't believe they have a trademark on WP, just WordPress). Matt hastily edited things to imply WPEngine was in violation.

Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

#75

Post by FireBeyond »

stego-tech wrote: post #23
trog wrote: post #21

Regardless of which side you're on, so far the one thing that seems clear here is that the lawyers are going to be the real winners here. When that is happening between two companies I generally don't care about it that much, but I hope open source doesn't turn out to be collateral damage here.

Exactly my thinking as well. All this bickering managed to do is convince me to setup my blog on Ghost instead of anything WP-related. Both parties seemingly suck, and I wish them both the worst. In the meantime, this is a great excuse to promote WP-alternatives and improve upon them just in case this whole thing goes completely pear-shaped.

> Both parties seemingly suck

What exactly sucks about WPEngine, specifically?

Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

#76

Post by m348e912 »

kevinlangleyjr wrote: post #44
m348e912 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine I'm only slightly following the dispute between Automattic and WPEngine but it might have more to do with WPEngine rewriting the payment identifier on Automattic's open source Woo Commerce ecommerce plugin. WPEngine's payment identifier rewrite results in WPEngine getting a cut of ecommerce payments processed through their hosted si…

If you read through the lawsuit, that's not even the case.

I understand what's in the lawsuit, I am just speculating on what might have been the last straw that led to the lawsuit.

Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

#77

Post by FireBeyond »

gamblor956 wrote: post #38

From 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…

> 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.

On the very same day Matt released a press release patting himself on the back for doing so, and how deeply devoted to the community he was. Indeed the press release specifically talked about how this ensured WordPress would never be unduly influenced by for-profit companies!

Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

#78

Post by FireBeyond »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #18
rodgerd wrote: post #3

Yesterday: "My lawyer says I can say what I want." Today: "We have hired a lawyer."

Eh, my day-to-day lawyer and the firm I'd hire if a big company sued me and my company are different. If I were in Matt's position I'd have probably taken everything to a single firm that could handle all conceivable work, but it's not uncommon to do otherwise. The first lawyer he refers to may be actually Automattic corporate counsel, too, and you'd definitely want an outside firm on this suit. Though any lawyer sho…

> Though any lawyer should have told him to shut up.

Yeah, it's not exactly a contentious legal opinion, "Don't go on a massive, selective, foot-in-mouth comment spree that just raises more questions and problems than it answers on social media after being served with a suit."

Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

#79

Post by ValentineC »

FireBeyond wrote: post #77
gamblor956 wrote: post #38

From 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…

> 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. On the very same day Matt released a press release patting himself on the back for doing so, and how deeply devoted to the community he was. Indeed the press release specifically talked about how this ensured WordPress would never be unduly influ…

The various articles back then also omitted that the trademark licence is perpetual and irrevocable.
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