Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 287 posts

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

#51

Post by philistine »

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…

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.

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

johng wrote: post #42
bongodongobob wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha, I've been in this exact situation. Marketing set up an entire WordPress website unbeknownst to IT. Over a year's worth of effort and they never even mentioned to us they work working on it. I'm in a monthly directors meeting of all depts and marketing unveils their wonderful website to much applause and oohs and ahhs. They then say, looking at me, "Yes we should be ready to launch in a couple weeks after IT s…

This really doesn't sound believable, on your part. You can't run pngquant on the images directory to shrink down the images? Should take 2 seconds of shell script. Honestly a lot of things you mention seem like pretty trivial to do... Wordpress is so well understood and there are so many utilities and integrations for it, it's one of the simplest things to integrate with something else. This comment sounds like you…

[deleted]

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

#54

Post by Aloha »

philistine wrote: post #51
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…

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.

Which particular service of Automattic?

Like Wordpress.com in hindsight seems to offer it, but its not clear to me that I'm their customer target.

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

#55

Post by anonzzzies »

theyknowitsxmas wrote: post #33
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

Yeah I run wp2static on clients, cancel the hosting then push the files to vercel/cloudflare pages/github pages. A PHP version is vulnerable. If you upgrade it, some plugin breaks. If you manually upgrade the offending plugin, the pesky developer now wants a subscription. Just a nono. I build on Hugo.

Many (some very large) companies would not allow that route; their marketing team is trained on wp and they specifically implemented it (in the EU this is per country generally) to sidestep the head office enterprise cms that is unusable and takes days of workflow steps to get anything published; they want more dynamic, not less and they want less techy not more.

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

#56

Post by x3sphere »

Aloha wrote: post #54
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.

Which particular service of Automattic? Like Wordpress.com in hindsight seems to offer it, but its not clear to me that I'm their customer target.

Wordpress.com would be the equivalent. That said, they don't exactly offer an unmodified WP experience either at least not without upgrading to the higher tier plans. The base plan has plugins disabled for example. Not even sure how it's different from what Matt is accusing WP Engine of.

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

#57

Post by deepfriedchokes »

philistine wrote: post #51
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…

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.

WP Engine offers headless WP CMS to static, for one, and it’s pretty slick. I don’t believe Automattic offers that, yet. But I bet Automattic builds it in, in the near future, and that’s probably what this WP Engine beef is really all about: money.

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

#58

Post by mrwyz »

I'm hopeful Automattic will win this one; WP Engine repackages WordPress and delivers it as a service. Fine. Software license allows for that. That does not give them the right to describe their service as "[the] Most Trusted WordPress Hosting and Beyond". They clearly say so in their policy: https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

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

#59

Post by [deleted] »

philistine wrote: post #51
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by partiallypro »

I know it's not considered "contribution" in the sense that Matt was talking about, but WPEngine owns and maintains some of the most popular and powerful Wordpress plugins on the planet. I'm not sure why he chose to pick a fight with them. My best guess is that he wants Wordpress.com (hosting) to be what WPEngine became.
Post reply on HN