After ClassicPress fork here comes: DramaPress
lol more like CheckMattePress!
Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
91–100 of 135 posts
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because it's not corpospeak, it's Mattospeak.
Automattic apparently has 1800 employees (LOL). Surprised they don't have a board, HR, comms, and other teams? Also I realized "Matt" is front and center in Automattic so that says a lot
You "realized"? He built WordPress from the first day. That's why he runs both its non-profit and Automattic, which is named after him.
It sounds like you haven't been aware at all about WordPress and suddenly looked up some numbers and imposed traditional company expectations on an open source project with a commercial arm.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#93WP Engine should consider challenging the Wordpress Foundation's 501(c)(3) status by filing a complaint with the IRS. IANAL but I have run nonprofits, and they must be very careful about how it interacts with a for profit entity, especially when they share staff.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/How%20to%20Lose%20Your%20Ta...
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#94> "Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case." I don't think I have ever before seen, in an official public statement, a "The lawyer we just hired always beats the lawyer they just hired!" boast, and it seems ridiculous - it's almost even hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer rather than that their case should win on merit.
The audience for this statement is WP Engine's significant customers. WordPress is in a position to do much more damage to WP Engine in the near term, which will reflect poorly on the IT manager for selecting them as a vendor. WordPress is not so subtly encouraging those customers to reconsider their decision and migrate off WP Engine. If WP Engine decides to fork, it devalues the "just like WordPress but better" val…
Or... hear me out... Matt has the legal acumen of a pissed-off pre-teen and he thought this was clever.
Occam's Razor and all that.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Automattic apparently has 1800 employees (LOL). Surprised they don't have a board, HR, comms, and other teams? Also I realized "Matt" is front and center in Automattic so that says a lot
You "realized"? He built WordPress from the first day. That's why he runs both its non-profit and Automattic, which is named after him. It sounds like you haven't been aware at all about WordPress and suddenly looked up some numbers and imposed traditional company expectations on an open source project with a commercial arm.
> He built WordPress from the first day.
WordPress is a fork of b2/cafelog [1], and arguably wouldn't be where it is today without the initial open source community behind it.
[1] https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/the-blogging-software-dil...
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#96When this story first emerged, I was somewhat sympathetic to Matt/Automattic. But geeze, he is just looking worse and worse. Between this tantrum and threatening a former employee over a very innocuous statement [1], his credibility is pretty low in my opinion. [1] https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/nice-guy-matt-mullenweg-c...
In that thread, Matt instantly jumping to a "you are against me/you must be the enemy" is suuuuch a red flag that he has Main Character Syndrome.
I think naming his company AutoMATTic really says it all.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#97> "Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case." I don't think I have ever before seen, in an official public statement, a "The lawyer we just hired always beats the lawyer they just hired!" boast, and it seems ridiculous - it's almost even hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer rather than that their case should win on merit.
The audience for this statement is WP Engine's significant customers. WordPress is in a position to do much more damage to WP Engine in the near term, which will reflect poorly on the IT manager for selecting them as a vendor. WordPress is not so subtly encouraging those customers to reconsider their decision and migrate off WP Engine. If WP Engine decides to fork, it devalues the "just like WordPress but better" val…
There’s no world where forcing significant customers off WP Engine works out well for Automattic.
Those customers are not going to migrate their sites to the company that just gave them an operational and security headache (Automattic).
And most big customers do not give a shit about Wordpress per se. They just use it because it’s a free and convenient accelerant for the sites they want to build. If it starts becoming a hassle they will just move to a different CMS. There are plenty of options.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
The audience for this statement is WP Engine's significant customers. WordPress is in a position to do much more damage to WP Engine in the near term, which will reflect poorly on the IT manager for selecting them as a vendor. WordPress is not so subtly encouraging those customers to reconsider their decision and migrate off WP Engine. If WP Engine decides to fork, it devalues the "just like WordPress but better" val…
There’s no world where forcing significant customers off WP Engine works out well for Automattic. Those customers are not going to migrate their sites to the company that just gave them an operational and security headache (Automattic). And most big customers do not give a shit about Wordpress per se. They just use it because it’s a free and convenient accelerant for the sites they want to build. If it starts becomin…
If 5-10% leave and WP Engine decides it's better to pay a royalty rather than fork that probably works out well enough. For context see https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/02/automattic_wp_engine_...
"In an email, Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the open source movement who drafted the original Open Source Definition, told The Register, "Let's be clear about WP Engine: It's built on WordPress. There would be no business without WordPress. And it's a large business with big revenue, operated as if it's funded by private equity."
"Private equity always demands big returns, regardless of the harm they do to the business. One of my customers has been completely destroyed by them – they are still operating but on such thin resources that they can't dedicate the time of one engineer to work with me on an open source compliance review, even if I do it for free.
"So, WP Engine is in that situation, and has to increase returns to the investors. What do they do? Cut any voluntary expense, which includes returning any value to the creators of WordPress. I'm told that WordPress asked for eight percent of revenue, which sounds fair to me considering that it's the basis of WP Engine's business.
"But because it's an open source project, WordPress can ask but can't demand that money, so they have to turn to hostile enforcement of their trademark and denying access to their updates."
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
The audience for this statement is WP Engine's significant customers. WordPress is in a position to do much more damage to WP Engine in the near term, which will reflect poorly on the IT manager for selecting them as a vendor. WordPress is not so subtly encouraging those customers to reconsider their decision and migrate off WP Engine. If WP Engine decides to fork, it devalues the "just like WordPress but better" val…
Or... hear me out... Matt has the legal acumen of a pissed-off pre-teen and he thought this was clever. Occam's Razor and all that.
The lawyer they've hired is a very serious guy who is concerned about his long term reputation. It's unlikely he would hostage his fortune to someone who was a "pissed off-preteen." Reasonable people may differ but I don't believe you have correctly assessed the players and the sum of forces at work in this situation.
Re: Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit
#100I get it that there are probably a lot of people here to depend on Wordpress for their work or personal blog or whatever but ... do we really need daily updates and discussion on this spat between two companies?
I've probably answered my own question already because evidently a lot of people here find this kind of schoolyard scrap intriguing ... I just wonder ... why. I guess the answer is to just upvote everything else on the front page.