Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
101–110 of 135 posts
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#102The legal victory is almost moot, even if Automattic is found to have acted in their rights. How does any Wordpress developer know they are not going to be next? Or all of the third party plugin providers? Or theme makers? All of them heavily use Wordpress branding in their services, few contribute to the open source. The precedent being set here is wild , and every Wordpress organization becoming a Mullenweg persona…
> How does any Wordpress developer know they are not going to be next? Or all of the third party plugin providers? Or theme makers? All of them heavily use Wordpress branding in their services, few contribute to the open source.
Easy, just don't be too successful.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that thread, Matt instantly jumping to a "you are against me/you must be the enemy" is suuuuch a red flag that he has Main Character Syndrome.
I think naming his company AutoMATTic really says it all.
To be fair, this was actually a common thing for blogging software companies at the time! Six Apart (makers of Movable Type) was named after the six-day age gap between the company's founders. And Tumblr Inc was originally Davidville Inc, David Karp's consulting company.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think naming his company AutoMATTic really says it all.
To be fair, this was actually a common thing for blogging software companies at the time! Six Apart (makers of Movable Type) was named after the six-day age gap between the company's founders. And Tumblr Inc was originally Davidville Inc, David Karp's consulting company.
Now that's a bit of trivia I did not know.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or... hear me out... Matt has the legal acumen of a pissed-off pre-teen and he thought this was clever. Occam's Razor and all that.
The lawyer they've hired is a very serious guy who is concerned about his long term reputation. It's unlikely he would hostage his fortune to someone who was a "pissed off-preteen." Reasonable people may differ but I don't believe you have correctly assessed the players and the sum of forces at work in this situation.
I have sites on WPE and I've worked for a major WP plugin developer. I've been in and out of the community since 2010. I know the players pretty well.
Matt has sabotaged any chance of a good result for him and Automattic no matter how good this lawyer is. And even if he wins in court he's already lost in the court of public opinion. Its over.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#106[flagged]
works for me... > Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality—and reserve all of our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engi…
They changed the URL and didn’t immediately set up a alias, so people were hitting an error page for a bit.
I guess whatever mediocre blogging software they’re using didn’t handle it automatically, or maybe they just don’t know how to use it.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lawyer they've hired is a very serious guy who is concerned about his long term reputation. It's unlikely he would hostage his fortune to someone who was a "pissed off-preteen." Reasonable people may differ but I don't believe you have correctly assessed the players and the sum of forces at work in this situation.
I have sites on WPE and I've worked for a major WP plugin developer. I've been in and out of the community since 2010. I know the players pretty well. Matt has sabotaged any chance of a good result for him and Automattic no matter how good this lawyer is. And even if he wins in court he's already lost in the court of public opinion. Its over.
We have been using and building WordPress sites since 2006. I have no experience with WP Engine but I bear them no ill will. I think the "court of public opinion" is very difficult to assess and dominant players can take a very very long time to die.
Matt may need to step down if your assessment is correct but that's distinct from what happens to Word Press as a platform.
My sense is that the Word Press negotiating position is stronger and WP Engine will either have to fork or make a much larger contribution. But I may be wrong. If that does not happen then I believe that the private equity players will do a lot more damage to open source communities because a "harvesting paradigm" will continue.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#108# A Statement from Automattic Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality—and reserve all of our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies aga…
In case anyone was wondering I also reserve all of my rights related to this and all other matters.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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’.
This is exactly what trademark law is set up to do: https://www.uspto.gov/page/about-trademark-infringement
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#110From 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…
“failed to disclose?”
In what world was anyone in the Senate unaware that Neal Katyal, the _former acting U.S. Solicitor General_, was suing the Trump administration over its travel ban on behalf of _the entire state of Hawaii_?
Furthermore, while I just don’t care about this WordPress case and I hate Gorsuch with the fires of a thousand burning suns, but I cannot stand people arguing in bad faith, no less than *The Washington Post* let the whole world know before Katyal introduced Gorsuch that this was the case. [0]