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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

#61

Post by partiallypro »

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.

Wordpress.com is very limited and locked down relative to the .org variant hosts like WPE.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

mrwyz wrote: post #58

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/

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by cldellow »

_hmry wrote: post #17
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.

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 that @photomatt's twitter feed would be loudly boosting this disgruntled employee's story of WP Engine-imposed limits and subsequent retaliation. Yet @photomatt's twitter feeds seems silent to me. This makes me skeptical of this context.

[5135]: https://x.com/photomatt/status/1836862087320195174

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

#65

Post by smt88 »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #8
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

I wonder to what extent that can be attributed to its ubiquity versus its quality. I've never worked with WordPress. For example, I notice that most of the automated "attacks" on my server are WordPress related. Is its defect rate significantly higher than other systems', or is it just that if you're going fishing you should bait for the most common fish? PHP and Apache come up a lot too.

> I wonder to what extent that can be attributed to its ubiquity versus its quality

Its quality is astonishingly bad. It was clearly developed by someone who didn't even have a basic understanding of relational databases. Unless something has changed, plugins and themes can run arbitrary PHP on the server.

Anything ubiquitous is going to be hated. I agree. But WordPress is bad from a fundamentals perspective.

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

#66

Post by anomaly_ »

mrwyz wrote: post #58

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/

Eh, sounds like mere puffery to me.

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

#67

Post by jmull »

mrwyz wrote: post #58

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/

The policy says,

...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.”

It sounds like "[the] Most Trusted WordPress Hosting and Beyond" would be allowed.

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

#69

Post by mrwyz »

jmull wrote: post #67
mrwyz wrote: post #58

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/

The policy says, ...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.” It sounds like "[the] Most Trusted WordPress Hosting and Beyond" would be allowed.

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.

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

#70

Post by firecall »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #8
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

I wonder to what extent that can be attributed to its ubiquity versus its quality. I've never worked with WordPress. For example, I notice that most of the automated "attacks" on my server are WordPress related. Is its defect rate significantly higher than other systems', or is it just that if you're going fishing you should bait for the most common fish? PHP and Apache come up a lot too.

Way back in 2013, Matt Cutts from Google said in a talk:

“WordPress takes care of 80-90% of the mechanics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”

Agencies really latched onto that!

SEO was the new hotness.

An industry was then built around WordPress.

Clients would hear that it was the best at SEO, and they wanted a CMS they could update themselves.

Agencies could churn out variations of the same WordPress site and plugin stack, and then charge clients for ongoing hosting and maintenance fees to keep it updated.

Then there are all the plugins that get added depending on the whims of the 'developer' at the time.

The WordPress website then languishes when the agency or dev vanishes, WordPress gets hacked, and the client gets charged again.

The WP GUI builder plugins are a whole separate hellscape all to themselves!

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