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

WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

courtlistener.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 212 posts

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#91

Post by demetris »

adolph wrote: post #61
legitster wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ma.tt/2024/10/first-amendment/ The lawyer thing was hilarious. Someone actually claiming to be his lawyer was on the HN threads and anytime he was asked a question the response was a version of "Oh, I hadn't heard about this. I can't answer that."

what they’re trying to do is ask a judge to curtail my First Amendment rights. I've heard about corporations being persons too but a person claiming to be a corporation is a new one. Has that regal "L'État, c'est moi" ring to it.

I don't think he claims to be a corporation here.

What he says is that, because wordpress[dot]org is his personal site, telling him what to do with it would violate his First Amendment rights.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#92

Post by InsomniacL »

pessimizer wrote: post #57

I think this is fair. I think wordpress had every right to cut WPEngine off, but 1) the fact that subbing in his fork of their plugin killed already purchased "pro" user features without warning was an illegitimate attack on the "pro" customers themselves (who probably have a case against him personally), 2) the pretense that he was doing it for "security reasons" because there was an exploit (every single part of ev…

> I think wordpress had every right to cut WPEngine off

Even though wordpress.org is built/maintained by volunteers such as WPEngine who were all told it's a "community asset", "nobody owns it but wordpress", "it's maintained by the foundation".

Volunteers who now find out from court documents that wordpress.org is the personal website of Matt who can do whatever he wants with it?

Volunteers who are now banned from the thing they helped build for simply voicing disagreement with actions which are accepted by most as extreme/unwarranted?

Even volunteers who work on WordPress (not w.org), who built in to the Core reliance on w.org infrastructure after being lied to that it's owned by the Foundation.

I think in this specific case, they have absolutely no right and the injunction supports that.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#94

Post by vetrom »

daemin wrote: post #90
pclmulqdq wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often confuse BlackRock, an asset manager, with Blackstone, which is a private equity firm. However, I doubt Blackstone counts low enough to have bought part of Automattic. Blackstone also owns a considerable portion of BlackRock.

Which company whose name started with Black was the PMC in that case?

That was Blackwater ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company) ), no relation.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#96

Post by linotype »

snowwrestler wrote: post #60

I hope Matt considers placing all the community resources of Wordpress into the foundation, including Wordpress.org, constituting an actual board, contributing funds, and setting up a governance and contribution system that matches the open ethos of the license and community. I think this is an area that Drupal gets right, and Dries wrote an interesting post about it in October: https://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker…

[flagged]

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#97

Post by onli »

pessimizer wrote: post #57

I think this is fair. I think wordpress had every right to cut WPEngine off, but 1) the fact that subbing in his fork of their plugin killed already purchased "pro" user features without warning was an illegitimate attack on the "pro" customers themselves (who probably have a case against him personally), 2) the pretense that he was doing it for "security reasons" because there was an exploit (every single part of ev…

The explanations in the injunction with regards to clients' contracts of wpengine does not read like he ever had any right to cut wpengine off. And his argument about how trademarks somehow gave him a right to ask for money from a wp hoster was never valid. I don't think he ever had a right to cut off wpengine, neither legally nor ethically. The case will be a complete loss for WordPress, and matts statements probably didn't even change that all that much, they just make the decision easier and add additional charges to lose, like the blatant extortion.

(It's thinkable to ask for money from entities accessing the plugin registry, making it a paid api. But not a fee from a company just for using a Foss software. The license doesn't allow that.)

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#98

Post by linotype »

jrflowers wrote: post #54
legitster wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his own investors at Black Rock Blackrock does not at all operate the same as a private equity and it's a huge pet peeve of mine when people lump them in together. Usually they are confusing Blackrock with Blackstone. All Blackrock does is manage wealth and investments on behalf of individual clients. One of the ways they do this is by sticking private assets into funds for their clients. It's more akin to Vanguard…

I like how confident this post is. Blackrock absolutely has private equity operations which they do not hide even a little bit > Private equity is a core pillar of BlackRock’s alternatives platform. BlackRock’s Private Equity teams manage USD$41.9 billion in capital commitments across direct, primary, secondary and co-investments. https://www.blackrock.com/institutions/en-us/strategies/alte... They also do more tradi…

$42 billion at Blackrock is nothing. They manage over ten trillion dollars.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#99

Post by jcranmer »

recursivegirth wrote: post #62
snowwrestler wrote: post #60

I hope Matt considers placing all the community resources of Wordpress into the foundation, including Wordpress.org, constituting an actual board, contributing funds, and setting up a governance and contribution system that matches the open ethos of the license and community. I think this is an area that Drupal gets right, and Dries wrote an interesting post about it in October: https://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker…

This is pretty on the nose considering Matt's latest blog post[1]. I feel for Matt in some regard, and I do think the lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS developers are required to provide software with warranty. However, I say that with not fully understanding the seperation of actions between Automattic the company and Matt in his own personal capacity. [1] https://ma.tt/2024/12/drupalcon-singapore/

> I do think the lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS developers are required to provide software with warranty.

Not really. The court order is to restore things to the status quo of 3 months ago, to require that Matt undo all of the things he specifically had to single out to do to fuck over WPEngine. If Matt hadn't specifically singled out WPEngine, and instead decided to stop providing the website to everybody, there wouldn't have been much of a case anyone could bring.

> However, I say that with not fully understanding the seperation of actions between Automattic the company and Matt in his own personal capacity.

As I understand it, everything Wordpress is Matt in three trenchcoats. Certainly, that's how he's pushing it in his defense filings in this lawsuit.

Re: WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction

#100

Post by tofof »

ivraatiems wrote: post #63

As much as the US justice system is deeply, deeply flawed, it is one of the few places where very wealthy people ever hit the "find out" stage after fucking around. Some recent examples, apart from this case, certainly include SBF going to prison, Elon Musk being forced to buy Twitter, Alex Jones' enormous civil judgment, and so on. I'm not saying I have faith in the system, exactly, especially when it tends to only…

Alex Jones' loss of infowars has been rejected by the judge, who seems intent on handing it to the assets Jones transferred to his parents to shield them instead. You might want to reevaluate.
Post reply on HN