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WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

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Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

#151

Post by DonnieBurger »

Crazyontap wrote: post #52

So, ACF injected notices into everyone's dashboards to push their own legal agenda. It’s a move that reeks of self-interest more than community benefit. While everyone’s ready to grab their pitchforks at Matt, this actually sounds somewhat reasonable. Still, given its impact, this could easily be seen as a breach of trust. Definitely a move that's going to stir the pot.

I believe you may have the story confused. Please correct me if otherwise.

WordPress was the one who injected notices into everyone's dashboard. This started because the WP dashboard shows the blogs from wordpress.org, and then they published this post: https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/

The result was WP Engine removing the widget that shows wordpress.org blogs on their installs.

Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

#152

Post by skywhopper »

rmbyrro wrote: post #60
vintagedave wrote: post #6

> It’s not clear what security problem Mullenweg is referring to in the post. Where is the CVE? What risk is there continuing to use the original plugin? No details at all. This results in fear: we don't know if the original is safe to use. > Going forward, Secure Custom Fields is now a non-commercial plugin Does this imply that Wordpress is potentially going after a revenue stream from WPEngine? If the plugin had Pr…

> This results in fear: we don't know if the original is safe to use. The exact result intended by Matt, I presume. He wants to scare WPEngine's customers away from their services. At this point, this looks more like a war between personalities.

Who’s the other “personality”?

Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

#153

Post by prox »

karel-3d wrote: post #141
mikl wrote: post #137

1. Release your code as open source. 2. Make a fortune. 3. Complain that people are freeloading. 4. Abuse your power as project founder to punish them, torching the community trust you’ve built up over decades. 5. Profit? Whatever Mullenweg hoped to gain by undermining WPEngine can’t possibly be worth the damage he’s done to WP and his own company.

If I understand it correctly, the core of the dispute is trademark and that WPEngine somehow implies WordPress affiliation. I can see both sides of the story here, but the scorched earth strategy doesn't seem to be very effective for building trust

The wording you use “effective for building trust” is a misnomer. As someone who uses ACF, I am suddenly an outcast in the world of Matt/Wordpress.org? And people who I know make money from plugins, are they next in line for the hostile take over treatment?

This IS a violent breach of consumer/user trust. Whatever you thought before of this takeover/stealing, this is what trust gone looks like.

Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

#155

Post by DonnieBurger »

skywhopper wrote: post #147
karel-3d wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand it correctly, the core of the dispute is trademark and that WPEngine somehow implies WordPress affiliation. I can see both sides of the story here, but the scorched earth strategy doesn't seem to be very effective for building trust

I think the trademark issue is weak in this case anyway. WP Engine has been around for 14 years with that name, and has been part of the Wordpress community. But absolutely nothing about a trademark dispute excuses the lies, unethical behavior, and just downright personal animus Mullenweg is pouring into this takedown.

Speaking of potential trademark issues, it looks like "Secure Custom Fields" retains some ACF branding:

https://x.com/TDKibru/status/1845178985308881146/ https://archive.is/sjuHl

Ironically, Automattic is actively taking legal action against a premium plugin reseller for trademark infringement on modified WooCommerce plugins: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fqw2eh/automatt...

Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

#156

Post by bdcravens »

huskyr wrote: post #146
mikl wrote: post #137

1. Release your code as open source. 2. Make a fortune. 3. Complain that people are freeloading. 4. Abuse your power as project founder to punish them, torching the community trust you’ve built up over decades. 5. Profit? Whatever Mullenweg hoped to gain by undermining WPEngine can’t possibly be worth the damage he’s done to WP and his own company.

I think the only reasonable course of action for Automattic would be for Mullenweg to step down and for them to make a mea culpa, but i doubt that will happen. Given that half of the web runs on WordPress, i wonder how many people will actually move away from WP as a CMS. Maybe if there is a succesful community fork.

They could also buy WP Engine. Or vice versa.

I doubt it will result in a mass migration. Many wouldn't move to a fork. We are very engaged in this kind of news, but the kinds of users who use WordPress often aren't. Our small company actually uses WP Engine, and I asked our owner (who also handles content, marketing, etc, and who I report to) if he had heard of what was going on, and he hadn't.

Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

#157

Post by that_guy_iain »

karel-3d wrote: post #141
mikl wrote: post #137

1. Release your code as open source. 2. Make a fortune. 3. Complain that people are freeloading. 4. Abuse your power as project founder to punish them, torching the community trust you’ve built up over decades. 5. Profit? Whatever Mullenweg hoped to gain by undermining WPEngine can’t possibly be worth the damage he’s done to WP and his own company.

If I understand it correctly, the core of the dispute is trademark and that WPEngine somehow implies WordPress affiliation. I can see both sides of the story here, but the scorched earth strategy doesn't seem to be very effective for building trust

>If I understand it correctly, the core of the dispute is trademark and that WPEngine somehow implies WordPress affiliation.

No, the core of the dispute is Matt wants either money from WP Engine or for them to contribute to WordPress. He's using the trademark as leverage. However, their usage of WordPress does not imply affiliation instead saying stuff "We bring WordPress to the masses".

The use of WP in their name was them actually following WordPress' trademark policy where they asked people not to use WordPress in their names but WP.

Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

#158

Post by that_guy_iain »

bdcravens wrote: post #156
huskyr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only reasonable course of action for Automattic would be for Mullenweg to step down and for them to make a mea culpa, but i doubt that will happen. Given that half of the web runs on WordPress, i wonder how many people will actually move away from WP as a CMS. Maybe if there is a succesful community fork.

They could also buy WP Engine. Or vice versa. I doubt it will result in a mass migration. Many wouldn't move to a fork. We are very engaged in this kind of news, but the kinds of users who use WordPress often aren't. Our small company actually uses WP Engine, and I asked our owner (who also handles content, marketing, etc, and who I report to) if he had heard of what was going on, and he hadn't.

They actually sold their stake in WP Engine... Maybe they realised that was a bad move.

Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

#159

Post by mananaysiempre »

dangsux wrote: post #17

[dead]

Both Mrs Bakewell’s fourteen-year-old son and the couple of guys setting up the large company’s microsite are both downstream of what’s in among the larger web dev community, they’re just lagging behind it by several years (possibly; I wouldn’t be so sure about the fourteen-year-old).

There are of course platforms (it’s always platforms) that have survived losing their in-ness and are still in widespread use (even PHP, arguably), but those are generally described as proven, reliable, stable, well-supported, and so on. I’m not convinced that at this point Wordpress still has that road open to it, instead of only the usual slow decay of widely-deployed software, but either way I don’t think that a transition to a legacy status is a nonevent. It just takes some time to show up in the deployment statistics.

Re: WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin

#160

Post by DonnieBurger »

shprd wrote: post #19
sccxy wrote: post #10

Mullenweg is hijacking existing users with supply chain attack.

> supply chain attack. Where's the "attack" part? I thought that was a crucial part in the definition

This is how users will unknowingly update from ACF to Secure Custom Fields:

https://x.com/Brugman/status/1845195750550143424

https://archive.is/u6ZbY

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