Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org • Hacker News Board

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#61

Post by metamichael » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 4:13 AM UTC

ValentineC wrote: post #58

neilperetz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote: "In explaining how the license agreement between the foundation and Automattic happened, the post says that 'In order to effect a valid license agreement, there needs to be an actual exchange of value from both sides, which lawyers call "consideration." Indeed. And there was a lot of Consideration given in this exchange. Automattic owned 100% of the WordPress trademarks. Automattic's "Consideration" was to…

> Indeed. And there was a lot of Consideration given in this exchange. Automattic owned 100% of the WordPress trademarks. Automattic's "Consideration" was to give all the non-commercial use of those trademarks to the WordPress Foundation. If I understand your comment correctly, you are saying that Automattic is still the owner of the WordPress trademarks, and granted licenses for non-commercial use to the WordPress F…

It's clear from what he's saying that Automattic once OWNED the trademarks, but transferred those trademarks to the WordPress Foundation, and thus Automattic is NO LONGER THE OWNER of said trademarks.

What Automattic has is an exclusive license to use and sell the commercial licenses of the trademark.

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#62

Post by jonnypants83 » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 4:42 AM UTC

metamichael wrote: post #61

ValentineC wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed. And there was a lot of Consideration given in this exchange. Automattic owned 100% of the WordPress trademarks. Automattic's "Consideration" was to give all the non-commercial use of those trademarks to the WordPress Foundation. If I understand your comment correctly, you are saying that Automattic is still the owner of the WordPress trademarks, and granted licenses for non-commercial use to the WordPress F…

It's clear from what he's saying that Automattic once OWNED the trademarks, but transferred those trademarks to the WordPress Foundation, and thus Automattic is NO LONGER THE OWNER of said trademarks. What Automattic has is an exclusive license to use and sell the commercial licenses of the trademark.

I don't think that's clear.

>Automattic owned 100% of the WordPress trademarks. Automattic's "Consideration" was to give all the non-commercial use of those trademarks to the WordPress Foundation.

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#63

Post by neilperetz » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 6:54 AM UTC

mthoms wrote: post #59

neilperetz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the question and it deserves a lengthier blog post reply that I will work on and share. In the interim, some brief thoughts on the topic that may be relevant. The WordPress community operates on an open source, non-commercial basis. The community decides what is included in each release of WordPress, how it's tested, what documentation accompanies it, etc. Because the WordPress Foundation, not Automattic…

Neil, thanks for your response. But (as you noted) there is still lots of confusion. >Because the WordPress Foundation, not Automattic, owns the WordPress trademarks for non-commercial use, Automattic has no control or veto of what code is stamped with the WordPress label. Respectfully, how the "code is stamped" wasn't the question, and nobody was worried about that. What people were worried about around the time of…

Hi mthoms. The question you asked is: "how can The Foundation grant wordpress.org a license if the licence granted to Automattic is exclusive? Wordpress.org as you know, is not a non-profit."

One need not be a non-profit corporation to engage in non-commercial use. Distributing open source software at no charge is not a commercial activity.

An analogy might be you or I volunteering at a community event. We are individuals, not non-profit corporations, however we would be engaged in non-commmercial activity.

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#64

Post by jonnypants83 » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 8:10 AM UTC

neilperetz wrote: post #63

mthoms wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neil, thanks for your response. But (as you noted) there is still lots of confusion. >Because the WordPress Foundation, not Automattic, owns the WordPress trademarks for non-commercial use, Automattic has no control or veto of what code is stamped with the WordPress label. Respectfully, how the "code is stamped" wasn't the question, and nobody was worried about that. What people were worried about around the time of…

Hi mthoms. The question you asked is: "how can The Foundation grant wordpress.org a license if the licence granted to Automattic is exclusive? Wordpress.org as you know, is not a non-profit." One need not be a non-profit corporation to engage in non-commercial use. Distributing open source software at no charge is not a commercial activity. An analogy might be you or I volunteering at a community event. We are indivi…

Do you consider a site privately owned by Matt that advertises Matt's commercial products to be non-commercial because it also hosts open source code?

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#65

Post by slouch » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 11:06 AM UTC

mattl wrote: post #6

photomatt wrote: post #2

I'm very excited to have Mary on board. :)

Can you clarify if "Executive Director of WordPress.org" is the same job as "Executive Director of the WordPress Foundation"? I know you personally own wordpress.org and not the foundation (as many people suspected) so this is unclear.

Executive Director of WordPress.org is simply a job title at Automattic. Josepha found out about the WP Engine ban from wordpress.org in real time along with the rest of the community.

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#66

Post by wasteduniverse » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 11:16 AM UTC

neilperetz wrote: post #36

nchmy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how poorly written that article is (and how he has no control of his client), its not clear that Neil is actually a real lawyer

Despite our sometimes fervent wishes, lawyers don't control clients. We are not puppeteers.

[dead]

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#67

Post by slenk » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

neilperetz wrote: post #47

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"that" was referring to your reply to their straightforward yes/no question being anything but.

So you interpret "is there any part of the Wordpress cluster of organizations that do not ultimately answer to Matt?" as being a YES or NO question? I interpret it as a request for information about what is Matt's role in the ecosystem and I was gathering information to share about that. However, if you are not interested in factual information, the answer is: YES, there are various parts of the the Wordpress cluster…

Which ones aren't under his control? HR? Legal? Because no sane person would be letting him do this

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#68

Post by ThisIsOli » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

neilperetz wrote: post #49

mthoms wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neil, Thanks for participating. I have an honest question: How do you reconcile your post [0] claiming that Automattic controls all commercial aspects of the trademark with Matt's previous claim that "the most central piece of WordPress’s identity, its name, is now fully independent from any company" and that Automattic had "give[n] up control" of the marks? [1] [0] https://automattic.com/2024/10/02/wordpress-tradema…

I appreciate the question and it deserves a lengthier blog post reply that I will work on and share. In the interim, some brief thoughts on the topic that may be relevant. The WordPress community operates on an open source, non-commercial basis. The community decides what is included in each release of WordPress, how it's tested, what documentation accompanies it, etc. Because the WordPress Foundation, not Automattic…

Are you saying that Matt has never and will never veto a contribution that the contributor team has agreed on?

Are you also saying that Automattic employees have not led and had controlling power on teams that are making commits to WordPress?

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#69

Post by mthoms » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:57 PM UTC

neilperetz wrote: post #63

mthoms wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neil, thanks for your response. But (as you noted) there is still lots of confusion. >Because the WordPress Foundation, not Automattic, owns the WordPress trademarks for non-commercial use, Automattic has no control or veto of what code is stamped with the WordPress label. Respectfully, how the "code is stamped" wasn't the question, and nobody was worried about that. What people were worried about around the time of…

Hi mthoms. The question you asked is: "how can The Foundation grant wordpress.org a license if the licence granted to Automattic is exclusive? Wordpress.org as you know, is not a non-profit." One need not be a non-profit corporation to engage in non-commercial use. Distributing open source software at no charge is not a commercial activity. An analogy might be you or I volunteering at a community event. We are indivi…

Thanks Neil. I disagree strongly about dot org being non-commercial. Jetpack and Akismet (Automattic commercial products) have been "featured" plugins since time immemorial. That means they show up ahead of 60,000 other plugins, every time. There is massive commercial benefit to that.

Just one more question if you don't mind -

Where does this distinction between commercial and non-commercial use come from? The trademark assignment does not appear to make any such distinction: "..an exclusive, fully-paid, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sublicensable right and license to use and otherwise exploit the trademarks...".

Re: Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org

#70

Post by pluginvulns » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 3:41 PM UTC

neilperetz wrote: post #53

pluginvulns wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have any questions, but there are possibly several inaccuracies in the post you wrote. At least the information appears to contradict other information provided on your side. The post has been updated to say that "The Foundation also licensed the name to the website WordPress.org, which facilitates widespread access to WordPress-related software at no charge." Websites presumably can't have trademark license…

You wrote: "In explaining how the license agreement between the foundation and Automattic happened, the post says that 'In order to effect a valid license agreement, there needs to be an actual exchange of value from both sides, which lawyers call "consideration." Indeed. And there was a lot of Consideration given in this exchange. Automattic owned 100% of the WordPress trademarks. Automattic's "Consideration" was to…

You need to keep reading the rest of what we wrote there. We were not disputing that explanation of a consideration. We are saying there can’t be a consideration in a donation and two employees of Automattic contemporaneously claimed it was donation. Either there wasn’t a donation or there isn’t a valid license agreement.

You also didn't address the other issues at all.