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WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

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Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#101

Post by gg82 »

bongodongobob wrote: post #87
bigiain wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those concerns are kinda the raison d'être for WPEngine. For anywhere small enough to not have an IT department, or so large and where the IT department has effectively become obstructionist to other department's jobs, just buy marketing their own WPEngine subscription and let them do their thing. I think people who work in an "IT Department" sometimes have a too narrow view of the rest of the world. Both ignoring th…

I'll just ignore the "IT pushback comments", as if we don't have real actual reasons for pushing back against the stupid shit people with no experience think is a good idea. The main problem, security aside, is when shit goes south (and it will at some point), IT will be asked to handle something they didn't set up, don't know anything about, and will be looked down upon when they can't get it working quickly. As lon…

And then people bypass IT for things that IT would be happy to help them with and end up getting called in to fix some non-standard thing that has become critical to their work.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#102

Post by Terr_ »

sfmike wrote: post #97
tptacek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Abuse of position" is not generally an actionable claim.

just for monopolies right? And for hosting online and software that does it(two verticals of wordpress) there are hoardes of options.

> just for monopolies right?

I suspect that's still not actionable in the way the parent poster means, since AFAICT there no private right of action: You can't sue, only petition some government agency to bring their own lawsuit.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#103

Post by nottorp »

busterarm wrote: post #79
firecall wrote: post #4

> Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” In my experience, WordPress itself could be called a Cancer to the Web. The amount of new clients I've picked up who needed help rescuing broken and malware ridden WordPress sites is... well, it's more than I'd like as I really do not enjoy WordPress LOL

That's on the customers. I used to work at a shop that used WP and it was a huge force multiplier. We were WP Engine customers and at some point we moved to Pantheon.io and then we moved to a static site with an internal-only WP frontend for content editors. We had 2 developers, a PM, 20-30 content writers and $5B ARR. Websites were strictly for marketing/leadgen. Even when we switched to building a static site, we s…

> Websites were strictly for marketing/leadgen.

So they weren't web sites but spam.

What I'm curious about though is if your former workplace still exists or is now AI generating the spam...

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#104

Post by pjerem »

sixtyj wrote: post #98
firecall wrote: post #4

> Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” In my experience, WordPress itself could be called a Cancer to the Web. The amount of new clients I've picked up who needed help rescuing broken and malware ridden WordPress sites is... well, it's more than I'd like as I really do not enjoy WordPress LOL

And so nice it looked at the beginning… Instead of WordPress, what solutions do you use? Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Webnode and other wysiwyg ones are even worse imho. Are there any non-Nodejs or non-React open source CMS that don’t vendor lock you? Because I feel that WP somehow sucks in details and maintenance, but I can’t find anything comparable without being sucked into development hell. :) Thanks for suggestion…

Are the good old PHP CMS dead ? Things like Joomla, Dotclear, Drupal …

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#105

Post by keane »

Just as an observation this reminds me of the dynamic that other open-source software distributors are tasked with defending.

Let's say you were distributing a browser, let's call it Firefox. You might have a corporation and a nonprofit and call them the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation.

Maybe in this scenario you would allow certain commercial uses of your registered trademarks so that the software could be distributed by others. Parameters in this policy might only allow the commercial use of the trademarks in certain ways, enabling others to advertise their product like "Grammarly for Firefox" or even their service "Download Firefox from CNET" without infringement. But these parameters would go on to disallow one from using the terms in a way that implied a direct connection to the Mozilla Foundation or caused confusion with regards to the root product such as advertising your site, CNET, as "The Firefox Store".

Then let's say someone renamed their CNET site FFXSource. And then advertised themselves as "The Most Trusted Firefox Tech Company" and that their download was "The most trusted Firefox build". They might be told this violated the terms that don't allow implying official connection to the wider project. (And then let's say the download they were offering had the browser History pane feature stripped out.)

In this scenario, it seems it would be the duty of the trademark owner, the Foundation, to seek that FFXSource either come into compliance or, to continue use that exceeded the blanket guidelines, to acquire a dedicated, more-expansive commercial license. (Of course none of my thoughts on this are legal advice.)

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#107

Post by ipaddr »

keane wrote: post #105

Just as an observation this reminds me of the dynamic that other open-source software distributors are tasked with defending. Let's say you were distributing a browser, let's call it Firefox. You might have a corporation and a nonprofit and call them the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation. Maybe in this scenario you would allow certain commercial uses of your registered trademarks so that the software cou…

I don't think any of those issues you raised passes the bar. ffxsource.. no. The most trusted build. no many people build their own and it could be trusted more because someone is testing the official build and making changes and ensuring it works. The most trust Firefox Tech company is accurate. It implies many firefox tech companies exist and they are the best one.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#108

Post by manuelmoreale »

aimazon wrote: post #44
tptacek wrote: post #39

I'm not a lawyer, as you will soon realize. This is just water cooler talk, which is what HN is for. I sort of directionally think that if WPE had a strong case here, their opening bid wouldn't be a C&D (I've noticed C&Ds frequently include a "preserve documents" section, presumably as punctuation, but for what it's worth that's an implicit threat they might sue). The meat of this C&D seems to be a section towards th…

Matt is predictable. WPE wrote this letter for the community. They knew Matt would throw a fit and they would be able to take the high ground while also releasing an assassination of Matt’s character. The Wordpress community doesn’t care about Wordpress.com, Matt just blew what little credibility he had left. Worthless as a legal letter, brilliant as a response for the Wordpress community. Matt will inevitably step d…

I don’t follow the WP ecosystem very close since I left it years ago when I found better tools but I very much look forward to see if your confident prediction holds true.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#109

Post by manuelmoreale »

busterarm wrote: post #79
firecall wrote: post #4

> Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” In my experience, WordPress itself could be called a Cancer to the Web. The amount of new clients I've picked up who needed help rescuing broken and malware ridden WordPress sites is... well, it's more than I'd like as I really do not enjoy WordPress LOL

That's on the customers. I used to work at a shop that used WP and it was a huge force multiplier. We were WP Engine customers and at some point we moved to Pantheon.io and then we moved to a static site with an internal-only WP frontend for content editors. We had 2 developers, a PM, 20-30 content writers and $5B ARR. Websites were strictly for marketing/leadgen. Even when we switched to building a static site, we s…

> That's on the customers

No that’s on the various design agencies that sell “custom websites” and instead they just slap together a 59$ theme and a dozen plug-ins. Most customers don’t know shit about the web and they just trust the agency to do a professional job. And in my 10+ years of experience as a freelancer I’ve seen plenty of agencies taking advantage of clients.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#110

Post by manuelmoreale »

nottorp wrote: post #103
busterarm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's on the customers. I used to work at a shop that used WP and it was a huge force multiplier. We were WP Engine customers and at some point we moved to Pantheon.io and then we moved to a static site with an internal-only WP frontend for content editors. We had 2 developers, a PM, 20-30 content writers and $5B ARR. Websites were strictly for marketing/leadgen. Even when we switched to building a static site, we s…

> Websites were strictly for marketing/leadgen. So they weren't web sites but spam. What I'm curious about though is if your former workplace still exists or is now AI generating the spam...

That’s pretty unfair. Most of the work I do can be considered “marketing” since it’s corporate sites and portfolios. Businesses need to have an online presence of some sort and someone has to create one for them. Not everything is SEO spam.
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