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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

#111

Post by manuelmoreale »

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…

After a few years building on WP I switched to https://getkirby.com/ and never looked back.

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

#112

Post by echoangle »

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…

First, I'm not sure your example comes close to infringing the trademark, but even if it does: Wouldn't the correct step be to inform the infringing party that you see it as infringement and give them a date by shich they have to rebrand, and give it to your lawyer after that? Why would you make threats about destroying their reputation by doing a keynote about them if you are legally in the right? That's just childish.

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

#113

Post by manuelmoreale »

smt88 wrote: post #94
joe_g_young wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your response can be said of any application made before now.

There are degrees of bad. All code bases are bad. But I've been writing web software for 30 years and WordPress is among the worst mainstream applications. It's worse than its PHP competitors at the time, and it's worse than Ghost and many of the competitors that came after it. You can't just dismiss all criticism of the past because it was the past. Some people wrote worse software than others in the past, just as t…

Personally I’m think a big issue is the insistence of wanting to keep everything as backwards compatible for as long as possible. It becomes a burden. At some point you have to accept to make substantial changes in order to improve the situation but it’s not going to happen in the WP ecosystem because that’s one of their selling points.

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

#114

Post by ipaddr »

smt88 wrote: post #94
joe_g_young wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your response can be said of any application made before now.

There are degrees of bad. All code bases are bad. But I've been writing web software for 30 years and WordPress is among the worst mainstream applications. It's worse than its PHP competitors at the time, and it's worse than Ghost and many of the competitors that came after it. You can't just dismiss all criticism of the past because it was the past. Some people wrote worse software than others in the past, just as t…

It shows the code base rarely matters compared to user adoption.

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

#115

Post by rurban »

joe_g_young wrote: post #83
smt88 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder to what extent that can be attributed to its ubiquity versus its quality Its quality is astonishingly bad. It was clearly developed by someone who didn't even have a basic understanding of relational databases. Unless something has changed, plugins and themes can run arbitrary PHP on the server. Anything ubiquitous is going to be hated. I agree. But WordPress is bad from a fundamentals perspective.

I think your response can be said of any application made before now.

Excuse me. phpwiki did exist before mediawiki and wordpress, and allowed no custom php in plugins and themes. It was all safe. Already 20 years ago.

And as worse is better predicted, all new ones went insecure, with less features, but nicer looking themes.

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

#116

Post by echoangle »

mrwyz wrote: post #58

I'm hopeful Automattic will win this one; WP Engine repackages WordPress and delivers it as a service. Fine. Software license allows for that. That does not give them the right to describe their service as "[the] Most Trusted WordPress Hosting and Beyond". They clearly say so in their policy: https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

You can't prevent someone from using your Trademark as a description with your trademark policy. Everyone can use your Trademark to identify the thing, they don't need your permission. I could call myself the best Linux admin ever and the Linux Mark Institute can do nothing.

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

#117

Post by echoangle »

mrwyz wrote: post #69
jmull wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The policy says, ...a business related to WordPress themes can describe itself as “XYZ Themes, the world’s best WordPress themes,” but cannot call itself “The WordPress Theme Portal.” It sounds like "[the] Most Trusted WordPress Hosting and Beyond" would be allowed.

To me, it seems they have been using the mark to describe a product and the policy says clearly: > but they cannot use them as part of a product I mean, just go to wpengine.com and look at the first menu item: Products --> WordPress Hosting.

It doesn't matter what the policy says if there is no legal basis for it. WordPress can't prevent Nominative Use, everyone can call the thing they are doing "WordPress hosting" if it is WordPress hosting. If the policy doesn't allow that, the policy can be ignored.

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

#118

Post by malthaus »

some of the comments here are exceptionally biased towards the party that does the "open source washing".

just look at the childish way automattic acted. that's not a way to lead an organization or deal with your competition. you compete by building a better product, take legal action in an adult way if you think they are warranted and in general take the high road - not display your immaturity.

the conflict of interest around the governance of wordpress is icky on top. so he just puts on his "open source" hat to gain favour for his for-profit company?

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

#120

Post by throwup238 »

Terr_ wrote: post #102
sfmike wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

US antitrust laws grant private rights of action for monetary damages and injuctive relief. They’re unlikely to apply to Automattic/Wordpress though.

(Most other governments don’t grant these rights though)

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