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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

#91

Post by eastbound »

tptacek wrote: post #71
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…

"Abuse of position" is not generally an actionable claim.

Yes, but being the editor of the software used by your competitor is certainly funny.

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

#92

Post by trog »

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…

I have never thought of WPE as a competitor to WordPress.com but perhaps weirdly I think of WordPress.com as a competitor to WordPress.org.

For example, if I have a WordPress site I've built from scratch out of WordPress.org, I am just going to assume trying to put it on WordPress.com will be annoying (and possibly even impossible?), because of issues with themes or plugins or whatever due to the fact that WordPress.com is a separate, hosted SaaS-style CMS, and not a hosting environment for WordPress sites.

WPE, by contrast, is Just Another Webhost to me, with some special bells and whistles for WordPress.

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

#93

Post by etchalon »

It sounds like Automattic was desperate for money and played a desperate hand badly.

The receipts in the C&D don't leave one with a positive impression of Matt.

I'll wait for Matt's response, but I can't imagine it's anything more than "well, we deserve the money I was demanding!"

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

#94

Post by smt88 »

joe_g_young wrote: post #83
smt88 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think your response can be said of any application made before now.

There are degrees of bad. All code bases are bad.

But I've been writing web software for 30 years and WordPress is among the worst mainstream applications. It's worse than its PHP competitors at the time, and it's worse than Ghost and many of the competitors that came after it.

You can't just dismiss all criticism of the past because it was the past. Some people wrote worse software than others in the past, just as they do today.

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

#95

Post by etchalon »

keane wrote: post #40
johng wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention his text messages. It's clear that if they were willing to pay, he was willing to not even mention them in his keynote. It looks quite clear that he wanted money and was willing to let everything slide if they got it.

(1) The WPE C&D is, in my opinion, sloppily written, full of equivocation/fallacious reasoning. The situation is not "clear". (2) We haven't heard Matt's explanation of the text messages. (3) The WordPress name was registered in 2006 by Matt's company Automattic. In 2010 it was generously (no good deed is unpunished) transferred to a 501(c)3 and Automattic was given a license to the mark (at least in WordPress.com).…

You don't end a trademark dispute with a blog post claiming a host utilizing a feature any sane host would utilize is a violation of some core tenant of WordPress.

You end it with lawyers talking to lawyers quietly.

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

#96

Post by fhd2 »

trog wrote: post #92
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…

I have never thought of WPE as a competitor to WordPress.com but perhaps weirdly I think of WordPress.com as a competitor to WordPress.org. For example, if I have a WordPress site I've built from scratch out of WordPress.org, I am just going to assume trying to put it on WordPress.com will be annoying (and possibly even impossible?), because of issues with themes or plugins or whatever due to the fact that WordPress.…

It's quite possible to host a "normal" WP installation with custom themes and plugins on WordPress.com (on the more expensive plan), I've done it a few times. But as much as I want to like it, I can't wholeheartedly recommend it. Some stuff that should be easy is just ridiculously difficult, like pulling logs programmatically. I think the main audience it caters to is people hosting a basic site with off the shelf themes.

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

#97

Post by sfmike »

tptacek wrote: post #71
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…

"Abuse of position" is not generally an actionable claim.

just for monopolies right? And for hosting online and software that does it(two verticals of wordpress) there are hoardes of options.

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

#98

Post by sixtyj »

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

And so nice it looked at the beginning…

Instead of WordPress, what solutions do you use?

Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Webnode and other wysiwyg ones are even worse imho.

Are there any non-Nodejs or non-React open source CMS that don’t vendor lock you?

Because I feel that WP somehow sucks in details and maintenance, but I can’t find anything comparable without being sucked into development hell. :)

Thanks for suggestions.

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

#99

Post by sfmike »

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.

exactly the link was cited and that citation directly refutes the claim

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

#100

Post by sfmike »

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/

could someone articulate that wordpress.com is more trusted then wpengine?
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