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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

#191

Post by supermatt »

WP Engine calls itself the worlds #1 wordpress hosting (with over 1.5m clients), but they aren't even in the top 10 material contributors to wordpress. Although they have pledged to support wordpress development, is is only to the tune of 40 hours a week. Their pledge is miniscule given their usage of wordpress and isn't even in the top 25 pledges made. It seems they were called out on this, and told to resolve it or it would get highlighted, and highlighted it was.

Sure, the license allows them to do whatever they want, but there's nothing wrong with publicizing that they don't give much in return. With over $400M ARR, thats something they could easily resolve.

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

#192

Post by [deleted] »

FireBeyond wrote: post #180
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…

> Maybe there's tortious interference stuff here that gives these claims more teeth than a typical defamation suit (I've come to roll my eyes at tortious interference, too; unless you're alleging really specific fact patterns I've come to assume these interference claims are also a sort of C&D "punctuation"). This is the big one to me, actually. If Matt used the announcement feature in the WP.org codebase to place an…

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by andruby »

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…

> 2 developers, a PM, 20-30 content writers and $5B ARR

Please tell me that these 30 people weren't the full company generating $5B in annually recurring revenue?

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

#194

Post by chuckadams »

echoangle wrote: post #117
mrwyz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if WordPress could suppress nominative use, do they really want a world where everyone selling wordpress-based services and products avoids saying "WordPress" like it was the name of The Dark Lord Himself? Maybe it's time for some malicious compliance by way of a hard fork that strips the word "WordPress" everywhere except where legally required.

Even if Mullenweg somehow had 100% of the facts and law on his side, he's still an embarrassment to both the company and the foundation.

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

#195

Post by Matticus_Rex »

slouch wrote: post #177
Matticus_Rex wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe my view into the Wordpress community (mostly via Twitter) isn't representative, but it does not seem like WPE represents the community's views from what I'm seeing.

Take a look at the votes on Matt's reddit comments https://www.reddit.com/user/photomatt/

In a sub that size with a subset of people who are quite pissed, those scores don't look that bad to me. The OP only has +17. We'll see, I guess.

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

torginus wrote: post #143

I'm just confused about the whole thing. Aren't WP hosts a dime a dozen? And if you don't like how they conduct their business, just set up one yourself. I set up one for a friend on AWS, and while it requires some tech savvy, it's not exactly hard for someone with basic tech literacy and ability to follow instructions.

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by authorfly »

x0x0 wrote: post #176
philistine wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you enlighten me as to what WP Engine does differently from Automattic that you can't buy from them? Looking at the WP Engine, it's the exact same thing, with the numbers filed off, as Automattic offers.

They offered many features that wordpress.com copied (staging sites with one-button cloning; easy backup and restores; automated updates of php and wp code; tweaks to prevent security issues; automatic cdn) and others like serious engineers answering support tickets to help you sort out whatever fragile, insecure wordpress crap your marketing team, or their wordpress contractors, installed on your site. We shouldn't…

Jason Cohen has done a number of talks on the origin of WP engine as being reliable/fast/secure in terms of preferences at the time of launch;

But I think you are right, the features you listed naturally contributed and strengthened those needs.

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

#198

Post by ncr100 »

markx2 wrote: post #185

WP Tavern Articles That Recently Went Missing Following WCUS Keynote https://old.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fofdpy/wp_taver...

Wow

https://wptavern.com/matt-mullenweg-identifies-godaddy-as-a-...

.. interesting how the phrasing is repeating ("cancer" today) -- calling a competitor a "parasitic company" in 2022.

There has to be a more intelligent descriptor for competitors to WordPress.com ?

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

#199

Post by manuelmoreale »

busterarm wrote: post #163
manuelmoreale wrote: post #109

Earlier 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.

Supply and demand. These businesses exist and operate the way they do because of customer desires. The customers could hire better agencies but for a number of reasons don't.

Sorry but saying that it’s “customer desire” is nonsense. Most customers don’t have the skills to judge the work they receive. They know they need something done. They trust someone. How are they supposed to know if what they got was subpar? It’s like that in every profession. You have to trust that the person on the other side is professional and more often than not they’re not.

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

#200

Post by manuelmoreale »

nottorp wrote: post #174
manuelmoreale wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it’s corporate sites and portfolios Oh wait. You used "corporate sites and portofolios". The OP used the generic "content" though. There's a difference.

OP said “Websites were strictly for marketing/leadgen” which is just marketing sites. But pretty much all business sites are marketing. If you don’t have an e-commerce and you’re not a saas of some sort, you have a marketing site. It’s there for visibility and to provide information.
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