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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

#251

Post by ChoHag »

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…

Is supporting wordpress development part of the license offered by wordpress that WP Engine agreed to?

No?

If you don't want people to use your stuff, don't give it away for free.

> there's nothing wrong with publicizing that they don't give much in return

That would be the case IF giving back was part of the deal which they are therefore reneging on. It was not. You are in the wrong.

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

#252

Post by imiric »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #243
imiric wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Publishing a blog on Wordpress.com is scorched earth nuclear and a tweet is fine? Why shouldn’t this get some actual publicity? What’s defamatory about it? Your response seems to be a better example of mudslinging than OP. At least OP pointed out some data to back their argument.

It wasn't just the blog post. Did you miss the keynote, numerous posts on Reddit and other outlets, as well as the threatening calls and text messages? I'm using his own definition of "scorched earth nuclear". This goes far beyond a single tweet.

> What's defamatory about it?

Oh, I don't know. Calling your competitors "cancer", their product a "cheap knock-off", and urging people to stop using them?

If my competitors are selling an inferior product, I would let that speak for itself, which should make my alternative shine in comparison. Going on a mudslinging crusade just reeks of desperation and immaturity, and the defamation and blackmailing could be illegal. If he really had a case against them, it would be resolved in court.

I'm not the target audience of either, but if I had to choose which one to use today, I would go with WP Engine based on this alone.

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

#253

Post by __m »

FlamingMoe wrote: post #216
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.

Yeah but people don't like to be manipulated. He didn't want to call them out, he wanted them to pay his company millions for licensing and used the community as leverage.

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

#254

Post by bravetraveler »

crashbunny wrote: post #137
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…

I'm also not a lawyer, pleased to meet you. > I sort of directionally think that if WPE had a strong case here, their opening bid wouldn't be a C&D I believe, as a non lawyer, in some places to be able to sue for defamation you must first contact the defamer and demand they take it down. I have no idea and no opinion if there is a case. If there is a case a C&D might be a necessary step.

Thank you for saying this. Trying to get this out there too. When people say "building a case", this is part of what they mean.

Creating a track record/evidence. Or the opportunity. My only practical experience is trying to get a restraining order. It's harder than you might think. Legal system demands work to work.

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

#255

Post by yard2010 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #9
CPLX wrote: post #7

Without additional context the letter does read as persuasive. Is there significant additional context? Having looked at Matt's comments in the speech I'm not seeing any actual substance of what's wrong with WP Engine.

It’s kind of perverse of Matt considering: A. He accuses “WP Engine” for being confusing branding. He literally owns WordPress.com; which confuses tens of thousands of people on a daily basis. (“Are you on the WordPress login page?” “I swear that I am!”) B. He complains about the post revisions not being limitless. But until recently, WordPress.com had a limit of 25. C. If post revisions matter, surely plugins matter…

The one who threatened to start a nuclear war when he didn't get what he wanted? He seems chill

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

#256

Post by yard2010 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #245
sceptic123 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you had your own iron, had to co-locate it somewhere, keep the OS updated, etc. all that time (and hardware) adds up. Factor in opportunity cost and hosts like WPE are relatively cheap.

Wait what about the middle ground? Give me access to a VPS and I can make your dreams come true, as cheap as possible, using modern CI tools and a lot of.. automation.

Sure, maintaining it has a cost, but to me the alternative feels like trying to build a business by reselling expensive chocolates you bought from the hotel mini bar.

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

#257

Post by chiefalchemist »

yard2010 wrote: post #256
chiefalchemist wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had your own iron, had to co-locate it somewhere, keep the OS updated, etc. all that time (and hardware) adds up. Factor in opportunity cost and hosts like WPE are relatively cheap.

Wait what about the middle ground? Give me access to a VPS and I can make your dreams come true, as cheap as possible, using modern CI tools and a lot of.. automation. Sure, maintaining it has a cost, but to me the alternative feels like trying to build a business by reselling expensive chocolates you bought from the hotel mini bar.

Perhaps. But it still takes time. And a level a of expertise. And what happens when you want to go on vacation? Get hit by a bus, etc.?

Once you do the math it becomes a break even at best. Once you factor in opportunity cost, managed hosting for most WP projects is a better fit.

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

#258

Post by mthoms »

keane wrote: post #224
mthoms wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Attempt to sell a product titled “Essential Disney®” or a service titled “Enterprise Outlook®” and it’s not going to go well for you.

Non sequitur. I have no legal rights to sell those products to begin with.

I do have a right to sell WordPress hosting.

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

#259

Post by mthoms »

keane wrote: post #221
mthoms wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing. Guess who is the head of the WordPress Foundation? Matt Mullenweg. CEO of Automattic. Now guess who The WordPress Foundation granted sole rights to sub-license their trademarks? You guessed it. Automattic. Yeah, it gets worse the more you look at it.

Automattic originally registered the trademark WordPress. They donated it to the WordPress Foundation while retaining a commercial license to the marks. https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/the-wordpress-foundation/

Some important nuance is lost here. Matt Mullenweg transferred the trademark to the WordPress Foundation (which he is head of) and the foundation (again... Matt himself) in turn granted Automattic the exclusive ability to sub-license the name commercially. This is the important bit.

What this means is that any "licensing fee" would be paid to Matt's private, for-profit, VC-backed company (and direct competitor to WPEngine) and there would be zero accountability for how it would be spent.

In practice, the foundation doesn't enjoy any benefit to owning the marks. It's all smoke and mirrors.

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

#260

Post by mthoms »

arp242 wrote: post #233
mthoms wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably, Matt demanded that would need to be paid to Automattic instead of the WordPress Foundation. (that's according to WPEngine). Automattic is Matt's private, for-profit company and a direct competitor to WPE.

Matt's message reads: > They had the option to license the WordPress trademark for 8% of their revenue, which could be delivered either as payments, people (Five for the Future .org commitments), or any combination of the above. So they could have "paid" by just hiring a few WordPress devs to work on it. That is: not necessarily by transferring dollars to Automattic. IMHO this is an important bit of nuance missing in…

Right. But who gatekeeps the project focus, direction and spending? Automattic does.

This would be a different conversation if there was an independent and accountable foundation driving things.

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