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WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
151–160 of 287 posts
Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
#152Just 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…
> Then let's say someone renamed their CNET site FFXSource.
This is addressed on page 5, where they quote the trademark policy[0], which until a few days ago said: "The abbreviation 'WP' is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit".
The current policy[1] has since been modified to specifically mention WP Engine and make seemingly irrelevant accusations towards them, but it still retains the part about "WP" not being covered by their trademarks.
> And then advertised themselves as "The Most Trusted Firefox Tech Company" and that their download was "The most trusted Firefox build".
Using that sort of phrasing would clearly be misleading and looks like it would have been disallowed by the trademark policy, but is that what WP Engine actually did?
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20240912061820/https://wordpress...
Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry could you expand on this, how can they "put a banner in [...] WordPress instances hosted by WPE"? I was under the assumption that WordPress is OSS, and WPEngine is running this software on their platform, so there was an update to this software, contributed by Automattic developers which included a banner denouncing WPE, and the WPE people decided to just deploy that update to their platform? I don't think that…
There's a widget on the default WordPress dashboard that displays a RSS feed of WordPress.org, where Matt posted his rant, making it show up everywhere.
Ah I see, thanks for clarifying!
I have seen the mentioned blog post now [1] the whole thing is starting to make more sense to me.
Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
#154I'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…
There is simply no need to preserve documents given how public this was. If pressed the grievance can be corroborated externally. The letter in entirety is a warning of potential legal action. That is the next action if the other party neither ceases or desists. Maybe this is normal, but we're glorified animals trying to find justice out of a made up process. It's arbitrary, hence arbitration. Not a lawyer either. Yo…
It seems pretty likely that there’s communications internal to Automattic or the Wordpress Foundation where they talked about their objectives and plans, assuming the details in the claim are accurate.
That’s what they’re talking about preserving.
Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
#155I'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…
People in this thread seem to be focused on the defamation angle, but is the more important allegation not the alleged demand for large amounts of money to not destroy WP Engine's business? Matt sounds like a wannabe mob boss in the screencapped texts, sending photos of the crowd before his keynote and talking about how he could still "very easily" make it just a Q&A session if WP Engine agrees to pay up.
Agreed. I'm confused by a lot of the discourse in this thread. The extortion seems like the important thing. I would think (paraphrasing) "I'm going to destroy your business if you don't pay me" is extortion regardless of the merits of the claims used in carrying out the threat.
Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
#156Earlier 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 $5B ARR. Websites were strictly for marketing/leadgen. Even when we switched to building a static site, we s…
> That's on the customers No that’s on the various design agencies that sell “custom websites” and instead they just slap together a 59$ 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.
WordPress has the same problem as PHP: it's too easy to do what you want the wrong way. The right way is great, but the wrong way is easier, cheaper, more common, more documented, etc.
Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is simply no need to preserve documents given how public this was. If pressed the grievance can be corroborated externally. The letter in entirety is a warning of potential legal action. That is the next action if the other party neither ceases or desists. Maybe this is normal, but we're glorified animals trying to find justice out of a made up process. It's arbitrary, hence arbitration. Not a lawyer either. Yo…
It seems pretty likely that there’s communications internal to Automattic or the Wordpress Foundation where they talked about their objectives and plans, assuming the details in the claim are accurate. That’s what they’re talking about preserving.
I can see that, I'm saying it's superfluous
Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
WordPress has the same problem as PHP: it's too easy to do what you want the wrong way. The right way is great, but the wrong way is easier, cheaper, more common, more documented, etc.
Totally agree.
Wordpress used as a CMS where you build everything from scratch using built in functions and the absolute minumum number of plugins (in my experience it was exactly 1, ACF) can generate sites that are solid.
I have projects I built a decade ago that are still online, are still running and haven't been hacked.
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of WP sites aren't built like that. Because "there's a plugin for that". And you end up with these monster sites with dozen of plugins, each importing their own scripts and styles, all injecting their own crap, all bringing in their own issues. And you use those on kitchen-sink style themes that are designed to do everything and end up doing nothing well.
But that's the inevitable result when you lower the barrier to the point where one can just click buttons and install whatever.
Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
#159I'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…
> Matt just blew what little credibility he had left
Just "lol", it's really funny line when taking into consideration all the years how he manages WP, cares about direction it moves, fosters and cares about OSS, directs funds and all of other countless things AND putting on the other chalk some WP hosting which happened to grow for one reason or another and is contributing peanuts compared to what it gains from the WP. No, he still has a lot of credibility.
Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic
#160Earlier 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...
Not spam at all. I just don't want to be so obvious about what the business was, even though I've mentioned it in the past.
Think top 10 keywords space and spanning about 4-5 of them.
It's the largest business in its space and a major national advertiser both digitally and traditionally. You have seen their ads on the street, on TV, on websites and on Youtube.
Even internationally, you have seen their ads on TV. Big hint.