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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

#211

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

anonzzzies wrote: post #50
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

> as I really do not enjoy WordPress LOL me neither but it pays; when we get called, bad things already happened, so it's always an emergency which means we can ask for 400-500$/hr to fix it. And there are so many bad wp sites that we can retire on that alone. But let me tell you about OpenCart, Drupal, etc which also are all lovely targets and more niche so higher hourlies! As someone with a formal verification and…

> As someone with a formal verification and static typing background, it is the most terrible crap there is, but it is very good business.

May I ask how you find this kind of work? The kinds of orgs with hacked/broken/incompetently-run WP installs don’t tend to be the type of orgs you’d find via professional networking, but by going through the dregs of Craigslist’s gigs pages, no?

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

#213

Post by mthoms »

mrwyz wrote: post #205
echoangle wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not how U.S. trademark law works.

Yes it is. Go ahead and Google "nominative fair use".

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

#214

Post by bastawhiz »

camgunz wrote: post #132
bastawhiz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most damning claim, I think, is that Automattic put a banner in every WordPress dashboard on the subject, including WordPress instances hosted by WPE. Automattic is a direct competitor to WPE (by way of WordPress.com). I'm no lawyer but I expect there's at least some argument to be made that there's some abuse of Automattic's position in doing so (though I don't know enough about the law to know whether they have…

Isn't this completely fine? If you and I both make aspirin, but we both put a little something extra in it (me vanilla, you salt) and I put banners on my web page saying "bastawhiz's salty aspirin puts the ass in aspirin", doesn't this just seem like typical rivalry? My point here is that defamation is defamation no matter the scale. I think scale is relevant re: damages, but not as to whether or not rivalry escalate…

No, it would be like if Google started using Google Tag Manager to put banners on websites that use Plausible Analytics saying "this website uses analytics that might not be accurate!" Or if Cloudflare started putting banners on websites that use S3 saying "downloads might be slow because this website doesn't use Cloudflare R2"

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

#215

Post by echoangle »

mrwyz wrote: post #205
echoangle wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not how U.S. trademark law works.

Do you want to explain how it does work? And what exactly that I said is wrong?

Here’s the Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use

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

#216

Post by FlamingMoe »

supermatt wrote: post #191

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…

100%. WP is GPL and they can use it how they like. And others are also allowed to call them out if they want to.

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

#217

Post by keane »

ptx wrote: post #152
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…

> 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, bu…

That is what they did, their actual current advertising includes: "The most trusted WordPress platform", "The Most Trusted WordPress Tech Company", "[WordPress's] #1 managed provider", "WP Engine is the #1 platform for WordPress". They also have service plans on offer explicitly branded by them Core WordPress, Essential WordPress and Enterprise WordPress.

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

#218

Post by mthoms »

cldellow wrote: post #64
_hmry wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's possible context (unknown veracity) from this comment 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41614406

I don't use WP Engine or WordPress, so I don't have a side in this fight. As an outsider, that context seems a bit dubious to me. @photomatt has tweeted [5135]: "[...] Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. [...]" If this was true, I would think t…

Meanwhile, right now over on Reddit there are WordPress Core developers posting about this anonymously for fear of retaliation from Matt.

He has... a bit of reputation.

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

#219

Post by mrkramer »

trvr wrote: post #167
markx2 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that he wants money for Automattic suggests that Automattic are now hurting financially in some way.

Where does it say that the money he is asking them to contribute would go to Automattic?

He is throwing things around like: "it's tragedy of the commons", "they are evil capitalists" etc. etc. In another words he wants to "hijack" their market share as they supposedly "hijacked" WordPress' brand, logo or whatever.

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

#220

Post by mthoms »

keane wrote: post #28
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress’s own trademark policy states: > For example, a consulting company can describe its business as “123 Web Services, offering WordPress consulting for small businesses,” but cannot call its business “The WordPress Consulting Company.” Similarly, 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.” If…

The paragraph prior: >All other WordPress-related businesses or projects can use the WordPress name and logo to refer to and explain their services, but they cannot use them as part of a product , project, service , domain name, or company name and they cannot use them in any way that suggests an affiliation with or endorsement by the WordPress Foundation or the WordPress open source project. At https://wpengine.com/…

Thats covered by Nominative Fair Use. It's the same body of law that allows a repair shop to advertise that they are a "Volkswagen Repair Shop" (as long as there is no implication that they are officially endorsed by the car company).
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