WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

Post by brvry » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 1:30 AM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #45

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…

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…

Post by philosopher1234 » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 1:46 AM UTC

imiric wrote: post #226

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…

Nice try, Matt. In all seriousness, if this whole thing is about some false marketing claim from WPE, then call them out specifically on that in a tweet or something. Why does it deserve the "scorched earth nuclear approach", which equates to blackmailing them into giving you millions to prevent you from disparaging them in all media outlets? The claims Matt made go far beyond WPE not contributing to WP development a…

Post by chiefalchemist » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 2:43 AM UTC

sceptic123 wrote: post #130

Aloha wrote: post #13

Disclaimer WP Engine Customer - I read the comments from Matt M yesterday, and it felt like a hit piece. I run a website for a couple scifi like conventions, we need cheap reliable hosting without me having to deal with the vagaries of running wordpress myself. I would have bought a product like WP Engine directly from Automattic, but AFAIK they dont offer one, this feels like lashing out at a competitor because they…

> cheap reliable hosting I can't speak to the reliability, but it's definitely not cheap

Post by singleshot_ » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 2:50 AM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #187

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…

The defamation angle is not interesting. They are pretty clear they will go after them for torturous interference, unfair competition, etc. California's UCL is much broader than you may think here - it is consistently interpreted very broadly by california courts, and has fairly low requirements (IE fraudulent business practices under the UCL do not have meet the same requirements as fraud)

Post by keane » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 3:18 AM UTC

Kye wrote: post #240

keane wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt gave away the software he invented and founded a commercial venture to monetize his efforts despite this. Automattic originally registered the trademarks. Years later they donated them to the foundation, to make the marks available for noncommercial use and limited commercial use. In the process Automattic retained the exclusive commercial license to the marks.

Where is the invention? He forked b2/cafelog and continued work on it when the original project faded out. He had no choice but to give it away unless he wanted the only WordPress install in the world. Another fork like b2evolution or any of the billion blogging tools at the time would have taken the spot WordPress did instead.