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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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does WPE contribute? I ask from a place of curiosity. Code, money?

They have an equivalent of 1-2 full time people working on it, they sponsor the WordPress conference, and they make a couple really important plugins almost everyone uses

I agree with this take, professionally. People have generally saw their investment as a positive, whether its deemed "enough" or not

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

#202
I think it is interesting spotlight on bigger picture - marketplaces and distribution channels. Linux distribution maintainers for example can modify the open source software they include to their liking. What about Docker ? Github ? What those folks can and can't do is likely not to be question of (Open Source) license but rather what agreement you have with them...

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That post seems to be about forking open source plugins which cost money. From what I can tell they did fork this plugin but are not offering its premium features for free. Just to preempt people arguing with me, please note that this comment isn't meant to be an ethical defense of them one way or the other, but just a factual correction.

It's a freemium plugin though, the advertisements for the pro-version and the update-funnel are how you pay for it. If WP had only fixed the error but not removed all of those things & and hadn't claimed authorship themselves ("By Wordpress.org", and putting themselves at the top of the contributors while they're certainly the one with the fewest contributions), that argument would be different, I believe. Would word…

Marketplaces work best when they’re not tied directly to the products, and when they’re not run by Lord of the Flies.

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

#204
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is our in this context? If you are a party to this dispute, why on Earth would you comment publicly?

It really is strange Automattic's lawyers haven't clamped down on any public comment. Have any of WP Engine's people been as free with commentary as Automattic employees have been? If I were an employee at a company being sued I wouldn't say anything related to it even without an order from legal because I wouldn't want to have to risk answering for it in the trial. Why dangle yourself out there as a target for the o…

Lawyers can give advice, but clients make the decisions. One of Automattic's lawyers appeared in an earlier thread and strongly suggested that Matt is ignoring his advice.

I haven't seen any comments from any WP Engine employees. They have an adult CEO, though, so I'm sure she told them not to comment on it.

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

#205
post #58
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Injecting code that creates misleading or malicious dashboard warnings is a supply chain attack, even if it’s the intent of the supplier and not a malicious third party interfering with the supply chain.

> misleading or malicious dashboard warnings Who did that? WP Engine was the one making these before the change

Matt did when he posted his vitriolic rant to every WordPress install.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I disagree with this definition of freeloading. They've offer a free, open source, very popular plugin for Wordpress, according to the Wordpress.org's plugin page, with 2+ million installs. Wordpress forking and taking over the plugin seems like they've accepted the code/contribution.

Not contributing back to the project you're basing your business (eg. the smallest example being infrastructure they are cut off from). Honestly zero sympathy for WP engine, and I don't really see a better way to force them to pay.

They contribute in both plugins, core developers, and conference sponsorships. “Don’t contribute anything” is pure lies from Matt conveniently excluding anything he doesn’t want to count.

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

#207

The whole thing is confuinsing. It turns out WP Engine is not part of WordPress (despite the name) and has never contributed to WordPress. WordPress are trying to take more control of their name/trademark.

They do contribute, that’s a lie.

Also, the wordpress trademark policy _explicitly_ listed what they were saying as OK until it was updated last week when they refused to pay his protection racket.

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

#208
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have the worst social media team I have ever seen: https://x.com/WordPress/status/1845121130207535524

This is wild. Surely Matt isn't tweeting from the official account - marketing would not allow that, right?

It is absolutely Matt tweeting.

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

#209
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't this whole thing start because Automattic was complaining that WPEngine wasn't contributing much to the Wordpress development but competing with them for free?

That one of Matts claims. Personally I suspect the actual trigger was WPE removing Automattic's affiliate key from WooCommerce and costing them $m/y of revenue.

That's not even a true claim, because there are two separate plugins, one is WPE's and one is Automattic's. WPE doesn't force you to use theirs, it's a total lie.

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

#210
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is strange Automattic's lawyers haven't clamped down on any public comment. Have any of WP Engine's people been as free with commentary as Automattic employees have been? If I were an employee at a company being sued I wouldn't say anything related to it even without an order from legal because I wouldn't want to have to risk answering for it in the trial. Why dangle yourself out there as a target for the o…

Lawyers can give advice, but clients make the decisions. One of Automattic's lawyers appeared in an earlier thread and strongly suggested that Matt is ignoring his advice. I haven't seen any comments from any WP Engine employees. They have an adult CEO, though, so I'm sure she told them not to comment on it.

Matt has actually complained on the official WordPress Twitter account that the WPE CEO hasn't commented on it. It's really bizarre. Honestly, he doesn't sound well. There's no way he can be this reckless and be in his right mind. He's worth a ton of money, so I don't know if anyone can actually get him under control or get him out.
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