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WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

courtlistener.com

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Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#111

Post by anon7000 »

valunord wrote: post #87

It feels as if Automattic doesn't do a complete paradigm shift and become truly open with their software everyone is going to give up on them entirely - at least everyone with significant talent and investment.

I agree with you that Automattic needs a paradigm shift (massive leadership change, probably), but I don’t think the openness of their software is the problem.

Just because they have a huge number of OSS projects. Most of it is open source, even things that really don’t see 3rd party contributions (like https://github.com/Automattic/vip-go-mu-plugins, https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso, https://github.com/Automattic/redvelvet-lib, https://github.com/Automattic/newspack-plugin, https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-ios)

Automattic has other issues (leadership, especially!!) but software development happens largely in the open. Just look at the GH issues and PRs in the WP-calypso and Gutenberg repositories, and you’ll see even a lot of technical discussion and planning happening completely public. You can even chime in if you want :)

Automattic has lots of issues. But they simply have much more open software development practices than nearly any other tech company (most of which are completely private and closed source). I just don’t think this is the core problem.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#112

Post by perihelions »

jcranmer wrote: post #7

> Here, Mullenweg’s “statement that he had the right to disable WPEngine’s account access and to make changes to the ACF plugin for the sake of public safety[,]” see Opp. at 27-28, is belied by the declarations of WPEngine’s executives stating that the claimed vulnerability was minor [...] @photomatt literally screwed himself over by talking about his actions here, when everyone was screaming at him to shut the fuck…

Here's the HN thread that's an exhibit in this court filing (screenshot on page 24),

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821336#41821399 ("Secure Custom Fields by WordPress.org (wordpress.org)")

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#113

Post by digitalPhonix »

bravetraveler wrote: post #8

Tried to get bond for an amount covering bills for two years; lol. This gives me more hope than most things I've read lately

I sort of wish the court did a hand wavy estimate of the marginal cost of providing service to WPEngine (Automattic was claiming the bond was to cover the cost of service) and ordered a bond of something like $0.01

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#114

Post by jcranmer »

digitalPhonix wrote: post #113
bravetraveler wrote: post #8

Tried to get bond for an amount covering bills for two years; lol. This gives me more hope than most things I've read lately

I sort of wish the court did a hand wavy estimate of the marginal cost of providing service to WPEngine (Automattic was claiming the bond was to cover the cost of service) and ordered a bond of something like $0.01

This is the preliminary injunction, which needs to be issued relatively quickly to preserve the status quo for the litigation, so the court isn't going to ask for anything it doesn't already have. Automattic only asked for covering the total cost of website hosting, which was clearly too high, so the court didn't have sufficient information to be able to make any reasonable estimate.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#115

Post by davidt84 »

echoangle wrote: post #108
anonymousab wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt's attorney - or someone claiming to be him - was saying that Matt is in the right and everything he's posted since the start was cleared by him. On here and on Twitter. That jives with Matt's claims that his lawyers were on board with all of his nonsense (and now, probably legally incriminating!) posts. But it could also have just been someone LARPing.

Since Matt was personally commenting in the threads, I think he would have made a comment saying that the person claiming to be his lawyer isn't actually his lawyer.

Unless the person claiming to be his lawyer was actually Matt.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#116

Post by ceejayoz »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #106

Anyone taking bets if he will obey the injunction? My feeling is that his ego will not let him do so.

That's a good way to find that judges also have fairly hefty egos, and the ability to jail you for impacting it.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#117

Post by spankalee »

Can anyone here summarize the legal principle involved here?

Why does Matt legally have to provide services to people he doesn't want to, even if he's morally wrong or generally being an asshole?

To my non-lawyer and only-watching-from-the-sidelines self, the ACF situation seems more clearly actionable, but the other things are very interesting.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#118

Post by pclmulqdq »

vetrom wrote: post #94
daemin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which company whose name started with Black was the PMC in that case?

That was Blackwater ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company) ), no relation.

Someone should found "BlackFire" and "BlackAir" to complete the ancient elements.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#119

Post by crowcroft »

spankalee wrote: post #117

Can anyone here summarize the legal principle involved here? Why does Matt legally have to provide services to people he doesn't want to, even if he's morally wrong or generally being an asshole? To my non-lawyer and only-watching-from-the-sidelines self, the ACF situation seems more clearly actionable, but the other things are very interesting.

I get the impression this injunction is really just saying that WPEngine's legal case has some veracity, and Automattic's actions seem to be retaliatory and/or not legal (depending on the eventual outcome of the actual case), and so is saying everything needs to be set back to where it was, while the courts work through an actual legal decision.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#120

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

spankalee wrote: post #117

Can anyone here summarize the legal principle involved here? Why does Matt legally have to provide services to people he doesn't want to, even if he's morally wrong or generally being an asshole? To my non-lawyer and only-watching-from-the-sidelines self, the ACF situation seems more clearly actionable, but the other things are very interesting.

It's not a long document, but to take one of the example torts mentioned: torturous interference with a business contract is illegal, even if you own the means of interfering.

Could matt/automattic/wordpress.org/wordpress.com (they all act as the same entity: matt) have withdrawn services in a way that didn't tortiously interfere with a business contract? Of course. But he didn't, because tortiously interfering with WPEngine's customer contracts was his primary goal. His complaints about cost were secondary at best, and seem to have been entirely a pretext.

To add more perspective: withdrawing services from everybody usually requires one to simply stop working and/or paying bills. To withdraw services from WPEngine, matt had to consciously expend time/effort/money, just to interfere with WPEngine's customer contracts. Doing nothing would have been less work and cost matt less.

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