This is a pretty one-sided summary of the situation and, despite citing the Theo Browne interview, leaves out from it that WPE and WordPress and Automattic have apparently been in protracted negotiations about this for over a year. Users are understandably shocked by this outcome, but it seems implausible to claim that WPE was.
I think it's also useful to note that Mullenweg wasn't demanding 8% of WPE's revenue, but rather an allocation of WPE revenue to WordPress ecosystem development (by staff members on WPE's own team), with the revenue to Automattic (or whoever, I forget) as an in-kind payment option.† That is a much more reasonable-sounding ask than simply forking over cash to Mullenweg's own business.
I'm not following this closely enough to vouch for the way Mullenweg is handling any of this (though: at this point I assume/hope he has counsel reviewing what he's saying!) but it would be weird to me at this point to see WPE cast as the "good guys" here. This seems like another one of those "it's just a bunch of guys" scenarios.
† This is according to Mullenweg, of course, but he had Theo Browne reading emails to WPE off his laptop during the interview to back the claim up.
> I think it's also useful to note that Mullenweg wasn't demanding 8% of WPE's revenue, but rather an allocation of WPE revenue to WordPress ecosystem development (by staff members on WPE's own team), with the revenue to Automattic (or whoever, I forget) as an in-kind payment option.† That is a much more reasonable-sounding ask than simply forking over cash to Mullenweg's own business.
I think the question is, in exchange for what?
I think the reason that all this is controversial, is it feels a bit like a shake-down. Give us some resources, otherwise, while, that is a nice wordpress business you have there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.
1. The shared resources are baked into Wordpress code, and used by wordpress users no matter which host they are with. Does Matt wish webhosts to fork the repository?
2. Nominative use allows companies to refer to things by their name. It isn't obvious that "Wordpress Hosting" or "Wordpress plugin" is a violation or causes consumer confusion. Does Matt wish for all companies in the ecosystem to stop referring to their products as Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Plugins and Wordpress hosts?
It's worth noting that for years Wordpress.org has routinely referred to companies as "Wordpress hosts"
They don't seem to find it confusing and I suspect it would be difficult for Wordpress to launch a legal claim given tolerance of and direct use of those terms.
>Nominative use allows companies to refer to things by their name. It isn't obvious that "Wordpress Hosting" or "Wordpress plugin" is a violation or causes consumer confusion. Does Matt wish for all companies in the ecosystem to stop referring to their products as Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Plugins and Wordpress hosts?
I think Matt's position is that WP Engine is not Wordpress, so it's not appropriate to call their offerings Wordpress-anything.
So? The GPL doesn't say anything about "baking resources into the code"; the point of the GPL is that you can change the code, and WPE, a gigantic company, should do so.
What I meant was does Matt wish for all hosts to fork the repository so it is not a central place for plugins? To appearances Wordpress was architected to work the way it does, suggesting that he wished it to work the way it does.
If the central repository is a problem, then each site draws on it in proportion to their usage and it isn't obvious why one site is an issue and others aren't.
Hence my question, does he wish hosts to move away from a central repository? He certainly can advocate for that but it's a larger issue than WPEngine.
I don't think anybody, including Mullenweg, is seriously claiming WPE is threatening the integrity of the WP.org servers with all their load. It seems pretty clear that WP.org is a stick the Foundation is going to use to get commercial WP users to kick in resources, along with the WP trademarks.
The norms of open source software don't really have much to say about this. Mullenweg is right: the typical thing companies that run GPL projects do when they end up competing with firms that don't pay their freight is to relicense. Being a little ruthless with trademarks seems strictly superior to switching to a "source available" license.
As announced by @wpengine on that ex-bird-site, they are mirroring the wordpress.org repos now, as well as serving their own compatible plugin management API (one caveat they mentioned is that search isn't exactly the same).
I do hope they open source the API. I might take a stab at implementing it using wpackagist (though possibly that's what they're using to mirror already)
The use of which were already allowed under the existing open source licenses...
In other words, a shakedown by another name.
Also, suggesting that WPE's contributions to the non-profit could be satisfied by paying Matt's for-profit company is almost the textbook definition of private inurement. I don't think he had lawyers familiar with non-profit law clear that offer before he made it. If I worked for the IRS right now WP and Matt would be pretty high on the list of organizations to take a closer look at.
Can you be more specific about where the WordPress licensing grants the trademark usage WPE is using? WordPress is GPL2, which doesn't have a lot to say about trademarks.
Isn't it just the law? Not obvious that terms such as "Wordpress Host" violate nominative fair use. They're commonly used throughout the industry as well.
I would like to understand what "[t]he use of which were already allowed under the existing open source licenses..." from the preceding comment meant.
I'm not a lawyer. Nominative fair use is complicated, as is WPE's use of the WP marks. All I can hope for here is to understand what claims people are making.
I realize you may just have been abbreviating, but until the middle of this current dispute, the WordPress Foundation explicitly allowed the use of "WP". Matt just edited it after framing it as a trademark issue.
Ah, fair point. Yeah I agree, the open source licenses have no bearing on the matter. Only permissions would come from either trademark law or a negotiated agreement.
> the problem ... with people like this is that it never stops.
By contrast, this doesn't make WPE look good:
WP Engine had been siphoning “tens of millions” of dollars away from Woo’s revenue share partnership with Stripe into its own coffers. It’s understood WP Engine has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce.
That's the sort of thing that, if a proven problem, could seem less like a shakedown and more like active wire fraud.
EDIT: As replies note, GPL. OK, but I realize I grew up thinking if someone gives me software it isn't to rip out their revenue model and replace it with mine, it is for me to do my own value added thing with it. Meaning, the stealth edit might not be wrong, but still seems uncool.
This is explicitly the sort of thing that WP Engine would be allowed to do, and if Automattic isn't happy about this then perhaps they should have chosen non-free licenses.
Basically: "wire fraud" is an extremely overblown claim. Nothing criminal is happening here, because they're complying with the license. Is it ethical? Debatable.
WPE does not touch WooCommerce in any way. WooCommerce is a plugin that is itself extended through more plugins, including ones for working with payment providers such as Stripe. WPE makes a Stripe payment plugin that works with multiple eCommerce setups, including WooCommerce. WPE's plugin naturally uses WPE's affiliate code.
WooCommerce is an open source, GPL project which allows people to modify the code in any way, including changing Stripe details, provided that they comply with the terms of the license.
Licenses are a fundamental part of open source precisely so that in situations like this everyone knows the rules of the game.
I think at this point three things are true. The first is that Mullenweg sincerely believes that WPE should be contributing more than it is to the development of WordPress. The second is that they have no legal obligation to do so, which gives Mullenweg very little leverage to force them to do anything. The final thing is that the setup of WordPress and Automattic and Mullenweg's role in both makes any attempts to apply social pressure to achieve his aims at best a case of bad optics and at worst a saunter through a legal minefield with some hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane strapped to his back.
Sure, and style points for the Derek Lowe allusion. I see why you think this, and probably agree more than disagree.
Three things that have influenced how I look at this:
* The revelation that Mullenweg was asking for headcount allocated to the WordPress project, not simply a cash payment. If you get a giant company rolling that is driven entirely off an open source project, it seems very reasonable to me for the open source project to use whatever leverage it has to get you contributing back.
* Mullenweg's argument that the norm for projects in "his" predicament to simply relicense to non-open-source terms; this seems incontrovertibly true, and also like it does a lot more damage to an open source community than what Mullenweg is attempting to do, which is to demand that a non-contributing company take his project's name out of their (marketing) mouths, and to stop using public services provided at the project's expense. WPE is in a position to mitigate anything Mullenweg can do here, so it's hard for me to sympathize too much.
* I was radicalized on this by working in security products during a time where it felt like dozens of funded startups were just picking up Snort and running with it as their core engine without contributing anything back, including proprietary stuff they built on top of it (and shipped in appliances, avoiding the licensing issues). I keep saying this is a "JABOG" situation, and I do believe that, but I have to remind myself of that to avoid casting one of these parties as the obvious bad guy.
He demanded either 8% of their gross revenue, the equivalent in development time for employees who would be directed by WordPress.org, or some combination thereof.
He also demanded auditing of WP Engine by their direct competitor, Automattic.
"Negotiation" invokes visions of term sheets and boardrooms but what Matt actually meant by "negotiation" (as revealed in the interview) was emails in which he expressed displeasure at the lack of contribution from WP Engine, and only in the days before WordCamp did any sort of terms arrive at the table (the 8% demand). Matt has acknowledged he escalated things in the space of days, not years. The emails read out are birthday party invites, not term sheets.
I agree that WP Engine cannot be characterised as "good guys" given it's a bottom-line driven machine that will chew up and spit out all in its path, and Matt has earned credibility through decades of community-minded WordPress stewardship, but let's not pretend this is some business deal that went sour, it's Matt using every inch of leverage he has to cause WP Engine pain because of his moral objections to the private-equity machine taking money away from his community-minded company.
Obviously WP Engine were never going to pay Automattic tens of millions of dollars per year, Matt knows that, we know that, it's a side show. He was just saying things to ruin their day. Just like the millions of dollars per year in costs incurred running WordPress.org that Matt has wheeled out to justify causing WP Engine pain by cutting them off from plugin updates (Cloudflare have offered to host WordPress.org for free; Matt has not accepted the offer).
At 14:50 in the video they read a term sheet together. Prior to that, they read aloud an email complaint (not a birthday party invite) from this summer. He claims that they've been meeting in person about this; I don't disbelieve him.
For what it's worth: I agree with you about what seems subtextually to be behind this whole thing. But then: if they've been on notice for many months about Mullenweg being upset about their use of the trademarks and lack of participation in the community (confirmed on camera, unless he forged emails), it feels to me like WPE --- a company with an 8-9 figure run rate --- should have been in a position to know what was coming with WordPress.org and how to mitigate that.
I'm not casting Mullenweg as a hero; just making a case for it being a JABOG† situation, as I said above. And, of course, that the summary in the story we're reading is pretty one-sided.
> But then: if they've been on notice for many months about Mullenweg being > upset about their use of the trademarks and lack of participation in the community (confirmed on camera, unless he forged emails), it feels to me like WPE --- a company with an 8-9 figure run rate --- should have been in a position to know what was coming with WordPress.org and how to mitigate that.
Matt's company owns and uses wordpress.com, so Matt's sudden concern about WP Engine using Wordpress' trademark does not seem very believable (or at the least massively hypocritical). The trademark issue just seems like a handy weapon to get what he wants. However, there are no good guys in this feud as you said -- only mud.
Again you're claiming it was "sudden", but it does not appear to have been sudden.
Meanwhile: nobody seems to deny that WPE could simply use WordPress's OSS software assets to stand up their own services, including Mullenweg. But that's all open source gets you. It doesn't entitle you to trademarks or online services!
> Again you're claiming it was "sudden", but it does not appear to have been sudden.
It was definitely sudden, just last week the term "WP" was explicitly allowed in Wordpress' Trademark Policy. This issue isn't really trademarks, it is just a club.
"The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit."
> But that's all open source gets you. It doesn't entitle you to trademarks
Unless you're Mullenweg, who has abused the Wordpress trademark for years via wordpress.com. I greatly respect his years of work and dedication. However, the ends do not justify the means.
No, he hasn't. Automattic's contributions back to the WordPress foundation dwarf those of WPE's. He gave a whole interview spelling out what other companies do to get access to commercial use of those trademarks. He wasn't even demanding parity with Automattic.
I'd like to point out that the WordPress Foundation is merely the entity that owns the trademark, then gave ("for good and valuable consideration" [1]) an exclusive, perpetual, and irrevocable licence for commercial use of it to Automattic.
The WordPress project is not the foundation. The WordPress dot org website isn't under the foundation either (it's owned and run by Matt [2]), and should be considered separate from the project.
I think most contributors outside Automattic want to contribute to the project and its surrounding community, not WordPress dot org.
The trademarks argument seemed overblown, "JABOG" style.
The new to me allegation in this is this alleged WPE swap out of WooCommerce Stripe affiliate account:
WP Engine had been siphoning “tens of millions” of dollars away from Woo’s revenue share partnership with Stripe into its own coffers. It’s understood WP Engine has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce.
Ripping out an OSS' revenue model would seem not great. There's a term for use of electronic communication systems to redirect money to oneself. But, not cut and dried, if the source code containing that model is fair game...
To your point, this must be a one-sided take as well, since one would have expected an accusation of 8 figure wire fraud to escalate more clearly if it were that simple.
> You're missing the point that WP Engine forked WooCommerce.
That point is impossible to reconcile with this phrase:
"...has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce."
The verb tense "has been swapping" implies continuous repetition of the swap, not a one time fork, then "when a user installs WooCommerce" doubles down, implying it's the original code, with user install action being the time of the stealth edit.
The article's sentence is constructed incompatibly with the point you're making. Note I'm not saying your point is incorrect.
But it's extremely common to fork a project and keep it up to date with the latest commits from the original repository. Pretty much the standard in fact since most people just want to make a few small changes.
Isn't the "small change" here "redirecting affiliate revenue"? (This is a plugin, which apparently WPE replaced altogether, but if the only reason to do that replacement is to capture the affiliate revenue I can see the Foundation being pissed.)
I think everybody is aware of how the GPL works with respect to forking and altering software, but people seem to be confused about how the GPL works with respect to registered trademarks and online services operated by the copyright holder.
Matt (intentionally?) mumbles it so that might be how you missed it but at 14:50 he shows the term sheet email and says “September 20th” which is the day of the initial blog post that kicked off the storm. There was no term sheet until the situation was public.
I wonder what would happen if WP Engine suddenly decided "Hey, we're going to rename the business, stop using the trademarks, fork WordPress, and start a new thing with our existing customers."
Would it take off? Would it tank? I believe WordPress is GPL, so I don't see why they couldn't (as long as they could legally fork or counter things like WooCommerce, that is).
It's a bit different from the situation with OpenTofu and similar since WP Engine would only need to keep their existing, highly invested customers to get a good start. The rest is a matter of marketing.
T'will be interesting to see how this ends.
(Note: I'm not saying that there is or is not merit to Mullenweg's or WP Engine's position. I haven't studied the situation enough to have an informed opinion there.)
WP Engine could legally do this, but if they had the development resources to do so, Matt Mullenweg probably wouldn't be doing legally questionable and morally reprehensible things to try and coerce WP Engine into funding WordPress itself. Maintaining a fork of WordPress with its own independent development priorities would involve a lot of work.
What WP Engine will most likely do is run their own plugin repository mirror, strip off whatever trademarks they don't feel legally empowered in using, and move on. WordPress cannot legally exclude WP Engine from using WordPress code.
> Maintaining a fork of WordPress with its own independent development priorities would involve a lot of work.
What if they had no interest in developing new features, and just concentrated on security and bug fixes for the current version?
I'd expect that most of the people who use a site like WP Engine to host their WP sites want to put out their content in a nice format and once they are happy with the way it looks and the tools they have for editing and administering it they would be would be fine with it staying on the same WP feature set for many years.
I think the bigger problem would be, would they be willing to invest the engineering resources to do all that.
If the crux of the argument is that WP Engine doesn’t give back, I wonder how likely it would be that they’d be willing to do that.
Of course, if they were willing, they’d be allowed to do that and might even find success. I’ve often wondered why a host hasn’t tried to do a more focused WP-fork and the main conclusion I’ve come to is that they just aren’t willing to invest the significant resources that that would require.
It wasn’t a host, but CraftCMS was born out of ExpressionEngine (not the code; the Craft code all unique) and the makers of the most popular EE plugins being frustrated with the core EE direction.
Craft has a thriving business and EE has been sold several times and is much smaller than it was, so it ultimately worked.
But that was in some ways the opposite of this scenario; you had some of the largest ecosystem members who were unable to contribute meaningfully to core (because of the license/structure of EE at that time), opting to do their own thing.
I don’t anticipate any of the major hosts willing to invest what it would take to build/maintain their own WP fork.
They would need to, as Matt is in full on WAR mode shooting rockets a civilians too (he disabled WPEngines sites access to the plugin repository). Basically starving out anyone who needs to do anything. This is dangerous as plugins all need to be updated constantly less you get hacked as soon as an exploit is found. It's like they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Matt pretty much has an iron grip on Wordpress which had humble beginnings but turned into the google/facebook of websites.
Honestly, I'd be all for a fork. Wordpress is dying a slow death. The only way forward I see is to break with the history that's holding it back and make radical changes to its architecture. Matt will never do that. Perhaps WP Engine can.
It would be an utter failure. WP Engine is just a hosting provider. Their entire business model is based on the name recognition of Wordpress. And Wordpress itself is built on ancient technology. So you are saying leave the brand and take the ancient technology then try to make it successful under a completely new brand? It’s a nonsense.
I have used WordPress in the past for various projects, and have upgraded it for customers far more than I would like to recount, but all of this is making me not want to use WordPress for anything moving forward.
This does not feel like a stable foundation/platform to build a future on.
These were my thoughts exactly, regardless of the outcome. If I had something deployed and could move it, I would be migrating off of WordPress right now.
I have some domains with wordpress.com as their registrar (they had a good deal when Google Domains was getting sold off), and I'm definitely side-eyeing that relationship now...
I’m currently building a site on Wordpress and beginning. Wonder of if I should be using it. Are there good alternatives that allow page editing and have good ecosystem?
I can say that zero sites were broken by the disabling of a news widget. On the other hand, disabling updates sure was a breaking change I had to respond to immediately!
There's been no dispute around if WP Engine removed the news widget or not from their managed installs. Matt claims that removing that widget fundamentally breaks Wordpress and thus broke all of WP Engine's sites.
> the story of how WP Engine broke thousands of customer sites yesterday in their haphazard attempt to block our attempts to inform the wider WordPress community regarding their disabling and locking down a WordPress core feature in order to extract profit.
he just meant that they disabled the news widget? I assumed that tweet I couldn't see replies to was a thread about them accidentally breaking customer's external-facing sites by mistake when they took out the news widget, not that he's defining "removed this widget" as "breaking customer sites".
I suppose that, if you define "any feature that ships with WordPress" (as opposed to a plugin) as a "WordPress core feature", then yes, disabling the WordPress news feed in wp-admin is technically "disabling a WordPress core feature".
If they broke thousands of sites, customer would be pretty pissed and moved to another host. Why does Matt care when these are not his customers and he only gains from WP Engine's loss.
> When asked what his legal counsel has advised regarding his speaking out publicly, Mullenweg told The Repository, “When you’re right, you can talk. When you’re wrong, [the lawyers] tell you to shut up. My lawyers are fine, they’re like, ‘go for it!’”
Every time he posts or speaks, he does more damage to his reputation and that of WordPress. His lawyers have probably told him to shut up, but he seems like he’d make a miserable know-it-all client.
He's going to need at least a couple billion dollars. I cant imagine Silver Lake would accept any Automattic stock in the deal. It'd have to be all cash.
I think he’s threatening to sue or extort them for 51% of the company, or something like that? If I were him I would spend less time talking to his terrible lawyer and more time talking to a mental health professional.
The saddest aspect of this situation is that I believe Mullenweg truly wants more people to participate in and benefit from open source software.
But by dragging thousands of developers into a pissing match and unilaterally breaking the update process for 1.5M sites without warning, he’s making the case that WordPress is unstable.
Leadership matters. I hope WordPress gets the chance to find new leaders before it dies a slow death. The web needs WordPress to be great and right now it isn’t.
I mean, yeah, he's been pretty clear that about that and the trademark complaint was awfully light on evidence of actual trademark issues. He doesn't like their business model, doesn't think they contribute enough upstream, etc.
But that's just not something you get to control when you license your software as GPLv2. Some people are gonna use it in ways you don't like.
He should have just done an marketing campaign about why you should host with Wordpress.com instead of WP Engine. Instead he's torched an insane amount of goodwill for seemingly no return.
WordPress.com isn't a good comparison to WP Engine. For starters, you can't install plugins, because you're renting out a single site on a multisite network and any custom plugin code would trivially violate the paper-thin isolation between tenants. WP Engine provides separately containerized servers and databases so you can do whatever.
It's like the difference between getting an account on a Mastodon instance versus a specialized Mastodon instance hoster.
It's an okay comparison really, so long as you compare the right bits. WordPress.com has cheaper and lower-feature plans than WP Engine's lowest one ($20/month), but once you hit that same price tier ("Business" @ $25/month) you can install plugins.
WP Engine is a pure commercial WordPress hosting service, while WordPress.com also has a personal blogging service stapled on.
WordPress.com allows plugins on the business and e-commerce plans. Sites with plugins are hosted in isolated environments. This has been the case for years and years.
> Mullenweg told The Repository, “When you’re right, you can talk. When you’re wrong, [the lawyers] tell you to shut up. My lawyers are fine, they’re like, ‘go for it!’”
Lol.
That sounds like something no lawyer has ever said.
The Trademark is for WordPress, not WP. The name "WP Engine" isn't the alleged problem, it's their usage in their hosting packages like "WordPress Core".
Ok so if they changed their plans to "Core" and said "Includes vanilla WordPress" is Ma.tt going to have an issue with it?
This really doesn't seem to be much about Trademarks, but more like what every other open source project complains about, that someone ELSE made a ton of money from the open source project, not them (even though that someone else is following the original license).
Couldn't they have just changed the license to WP? It wouldn't have affected most customers.
They probably can't change the license for WordPress. It's under the GPL and it looks like WordPress doesn't require a contributor agreement assigning copyright to someone else. They'd need to get every contributor to agree to relicense it.
There's also the question of who would relicense it. Automattic doesn't own the WordPress trademarks and if there were a contributor agreement, it would likely be assigning the code to the WordPress Foundation, not Automattic.
The WordPress Foundation non-profit doesn't have a good incentive to put a restrictive license on it. Part of the problem is that the WordPress Foundation doesn't seem to be truly independent of the for-profit Automattic. The point of creating a non-profit to hold the IP of an open source project is to prevent stuff like this from happening.
> They probably can't change the license for WordPress. It's under the GPL and it looks like WordPress doesn't require a contributor agreement assigning copyright to someone else. They'd need to get every contributor to agree to relicense it.
Not just every WordPress contributor, but every b2/cafelog contributor pre-fork too, since WordPress is a fork of b2/cafelog in the first place:
Actually, they own an exclusive license to the commercial exploitation of the WordPress trademark, including sublicensing rights. Given to them for free by the WordPress Foundation. The licensing rights could mean millions for the foundation, but it's all funneled straight to Automattic.
I don't know what he would or would not have an issue with, I'm just saying what his claim is.
Personally, I don't care either way, I don't like either party.
Automattic isn't a good steward of WP and has a lot of conflict of interest that they don't want to acknowledge and WP decisions are "what benefits wp.com" first.
WP Engine is an aggressive sales company that also has hosting attached. They're extremely overpriced, the GoDaddy of WP Hosting. Whenever I hear somebody uses them it's a strong indicator that they're making enough money but have no technical knowledge on the team.
The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.
Someone should have stopped him from making the rambling statements he's made.
If it's a trademark dispute, limit the the public statements to the trademark issue. Don't muddy the waters with demands for revenue share or upstream code contributions.
Oh look, it's not the first time they accused people of violating terms that did not exist, and then updated the terms after the fact. And in this case the sites were doing nothing wrong even by the updated terms anyway.
2018 is a long time ago, and an honest mistake false positive once in a while is no crime, but I still don't see any excuse for the lack of integrity to do something like modify terms after the fact and yet still try to apply them retroactively.
That's not an accident or a mistake. It is dishonest, deliberate, and part of a consistent pattern with today.
Again, it wasn't about "WP", it was about "WordPress" (and "WooCommerce"). Don't focus on "WP" just because the company name is "WP Engine". It's not relevant to this matter, their claim of trademark infringement is about "WordPress" and "WooCommerce", not about "WP".
Regardless what they want, they have very limited rights to anything over that. Nike can say that you can't name you new sneakers Nike. Can probably say that you can't name your business "The Nike Store" even if all you stock is Nikes, but can not cannot say that you cannot refer to Nike by their actual name to state that you sell Nike sneakers.
WordPress is the name of the software that they provide services about. There is no way to control who can simply state that fact.
This is a pretty one-sided summary of the situation and, despite citing the Theo Browne interview, leaves out from it that WPE and WordPress and Automattic have apparently been in protracted negotiations about this for over a year. Users are understandably shocked by this outcome, but it seems implausible to claim that WPE was.
I think it's also useful to note that Mullenweg wasn't demanding 8% of WPE's revenue, but rather an allocation of WPE revenue to WordPress ecosystem development (by staff members on WPE's own team), with the revenue to Automattic (or whoever, I forget) as an in-kind payment option.† That is a much more reasonable-sounding ask than simply forking over cash to Mullenweg's own business.
I'm not following this closely enough to vouch for the way Mullenweg is handling any of this (though: at this point I assume/hope he has counsel reviewing what he's saying!) but it would be weird to me at this point to see WPE cast as the "good guys" here. This seems like another one of those "it's just a bunch of guys" scenarios.
† This is according to Mullenweg, of course, but he had Theo Browne reading emails to WPE off his laptop during the interview to back the claim up.
> I think it's also useful to note that Mullenweg wasn't demanding 8% of WPE's revenue, but rather an allocation of WPE revenue to WordPress ecosystem development (by staff members on WPE's own team), with the revenue to Automattic (or whoever, I forget) as an in-kind payment option.† That is a much more reasonable-sounding ask than simply forking over cash to Mullenweg's own business.
I think the question is, in exchange for what?
I think the reason that all this is controversial, is it feels a bit like a shake-down. Give us some resources, otherwise, while, that is a nice wordpress business you have there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.
The use of WordPress.org shared resources and the WordPress trademarks? I think this isn't all that complicated.
1. The shared resources are baked into Wordpress code, and used by wordpress users no matter which host they are with. Does Matt wish webhosts to fork the repository?
2. Nominative use allows companies to refer to things by their name. It isn't obvious that "Wordpress Hosting" or "Wordpress plugin" is a violation or causes consumer confusion. Does Matt wish for all companies in the ecosystem to stop referring to their products as Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Plugins and Wordpress hosts?
It's worth noting that for years Wordpress.org has routinely referred to companies as "Wordpress hosts"
For example: https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/migrating-your-wordpres...
They don't seem to find it confusing and I suspect it would be difficult for Wordpress to launch a legal claim given tolerance of and direct use of those terms.
>Nominative use allows companies to refer to things by their name. It isn't obvious that "Wordpress Hosting" or "Wordpress plugin" is a violation or causes consumer confusion. Does Matt wish for all companies in the ecosystem to stop referring to their products as Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Plugins and Wordpress hosts?
I think Matt's position is that WP Engine is not Wordpress, so it's not appropriate to call their offerings Wordpress-anything.
That would be a truth in advertising issue if anything, not a trademark issue.
So? The GPL doesn't say anything about "baking resources into the code"; the point of the GPL is that you can change the code, and WPE, a gigantic company, should do so.
What I meant was does Matt wish for all hosts to fork the repository so it is not a central place for plugins? To appearances Wordpress was architected to work the way it does, suggesting that he wished it to work the way it does.
If the central repository is a problem, then each site draws on it in proportion to their usage and it isn't obvious why one site is an issue and others aren't.
Hence my question, does he wish hosts to move away from a central repository? He certainly can advocate for that but it's a larger issue than WPEngine.
Also sort of adjacent but Matthew Prince of Cloudfare has just offered to donate resources to fund the whole central repository: https://x.com/eastdakota/status/1841154152006627663
I don't think anybody, including Mullenweg, is seriously claiming WPE is threatening the integrity of the WP.org servers with all their load. It seems pretty clear that WP.org is a stick the Foundation is going to use to get commercial WP users to kick in resources, along with the WP trademarks.
The norms of open source software don't really have much to say about this. Mullenweg is right: the typical thing companies that run GPL projects do when they end up competing with firms that don't pay their freight is to relicense. Being a little ruthless with trademarks seems strictly superior to switching to a "source available" license.
As announced by @wpengine on that ex-bird-site, they are mirroring the wordpress.org repos now, as well as serving their own compatible plugin management API (one caveat they mentioned is that search isn't exactly the same).
I do hope they open source the API. I might take a stab at implementing it using wpackagist (though possibly that's what they're using to mirror already)
The use of which were already allowed under the existing open source licenses...
In other words, a shakedown by another name.
Also, suggesting that WPE's contributions to the non-profit could be satisfied by paying Matt's for-profit company is almost the textbook definition of private inurement. I don't think he had lawyers familiar with non-profit law clear that offer before he made it. If I worked for the IRS right now WP and Matt would be pretty high on the list of organizations to take a closer look at.
Can you be more specific about where the WordPress licensing grants the trademark usage WPE is using? WordPress is GPL2, which doesn't have a lot to say about trademarks.
Isn't it just the law? Not obvious that terms such as "Wordpress Host" violate nominative fair use. They're commonly used throughout the industry as well.
I would like to understand what "[t]he use of which were already allowed under the existing open source licenses..." from the preceding comment meant.
I'm not a lawyer. Nominative fair use is complicated, as is WPE's use of the WP marks. All I can hope for here is to understand what claims people are making.
> use of the WP marks
I realize you may just have been abbreviating, but until the middle of this current dispute, the WordPress Foundation explicitly allowed the use of "WP". Matt just edited it after framing it as a trademark issue.
Ah, fair point. Yeah I agree, the open source licenses have no bearing on the matter. Only permissions would come from either trademark law or a negotiated agreement.
> it feels a bit like a shake-down
It is a shake down. And the problem with negotiating with people like this is that it never stops.
There will never be enough contributions and money.
> the problem ... with people like this is that it never stops.
By contrast, this doesn't make WPE look good:
WP Engine had been siphoning “tens of millions” of dollars away from Woo’s revenue share partnership with Stripe into its own coffers. It’s understood WP Engine has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce.
That's the sort of thing that, if a proven problem, could seem less like a shakedown and more like active wire fraud.
EDIT: As replies note, GPL. OK, but I realize I grew up thinking if someone gives me software it isn't to rip out their revenue model and replace it with mine, it is for me to do my own value added thing with it. Meaning, the stealth edit might not be wrong, but still seems uncool.
It might be sketchy, but WooCommerce is a GPL project: https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/blob/trunk/plugin...
This is explicitly the sort of thing that WP Engine would be allowed to do, and if Automattic isn't happy about this then perhaps they should have chosen non-free licenses.
Basically: "wire fraud" is an extremely overblown claim. Nothing criminal is happening here, because they're complying with the license. Is it ethical? Debatable.
WPE does not touch WooCommerce in any way. WooCommerce is a plugin that is itself extended through more plugins, including ones for working with payment providers such as Stripe. WPE makes a Stripe payment plugin that works with multiple eCommerce setups, including WooCommerce. WPE's plugin naturally uses WPE's affiliate code.
Matt cannot stand competition, that's all.
Thanks — this makes more sense than the article's phrasing.
Or at least misleading the consumer - which is also not cool.
That is completely legal and ethical.
WooCommerce is an open source, GPL project which allows people to modify the code in any way, including changing Stripe details, provided that they comply with the terms of the license.
Licenses are a fundamental part of open source precisely so that in situations like this everyone knows the rules of the game.
I think at this point three things are true. The first is that Mullenweg sincerely believes that WPE should be contributing more than it is to the development of WordPress. The second is that they have no legal obligation to do so, which gives Mullenweg very little leverage to force them to do anything. The final thing is that the setup of WordPress and Automattic and Mullenweg's role in both makes any attempts to apply social pressure to achieve his aims at best a case of bad optics and at worst a saunter through a legal minefield with some hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane strapped to his back.
Sure, and style points for the Derek Lowe allusion. I see why you think this, and probably agree more than disagree.
Three things that have influenced how I look at this:
* The revelation that Mullenweg was asking for headcount allocated to the WordPress project, not simply a cash payment. If you get a giant company rolling that is driven entirely off an open source project, it seems very reasonable to me for the open source project to use whatever leverage it has to get you contributing back.
* Mullenweg's argument that the norm for projects in "his" predicament to simply relicense to non-open-source terms; this seems incontrovertibly true, and also like it does a lot more damage to an open source community than what Mullenweg is attempting to do, which is to demand that a non-contributing company take his project's name out of their (marketing) mouths, and to stop using public services provided at the project's expense. WPE is in a position to mitigate anything Mullenweg can do here, so it's hard for me to sympathize too much.
* I was radicalized on this by working in security products during a time where it felt like dozens of funded startups were just picking up Snort and running with it as their core engine without contributing anything back, including proprietary stuff they built on top of it (and shipped in appliances, avoiding the licensing issues). I keep saying this is a "JABOG" situation, and I do believe that, but I have to remind myself of that to avoid casting one of these parties as the obvious bad guy.
> Mullenweg's argument that the norm for projects in "his" predicament to simply relicense to non-open-source terms
Isn't WordPress using GPL code owned by other people? He doesn't get brownie points for not doing something that's illegal.
He demanded either 8% of their gross revenue, the equivalent in development time for employees who would be directed by WordPress.org, or some combination thereof.
He also demanded auditing of WP Engine by their direct competitor, Automattic.
0. https://automattic.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/term-sheet...
"Negotiation" invokes visions of term sheets and boardrooms but what Matt actually meant by "negotiation" (as revealed in the interview) was emails in which he expressed displeasure at the lack of contribution from WP Engine, and only in the days before WordCamp did any sort of terms arrive at the table (the 8% demand). Matt has acknowledged he escalated things in the space of days, not years. The emails read out are birthday party invites, not term sheets.
I agree that WP Engine cannot be characterised as "good guys" given it's a bottom-line driven machine that will chew up and spit out all in its path, and Matt has earned credibility through decades of community-minded WordPress stewardship, but let's not pretend this is some business deal that went sour, it's Matt using every inch of leverage he has to cause WP Engine pain because of his moral objections to the private-equity machine taking money away from his community-minded company.
Obviously WP Engine were never going to pay Automattic tens of millions of dollars per year, Matt knows that, we know that, it's a side show. He was just saying things to ruin their day. Just like the millions of dollars per year in costs incurred running WordPress.org that Matt has wheeled out to justify causing WP Engine pain by cutting them off from plugin updates (Cloudflare have offered to host WordPress.org for free; Matt has not accepted the offer).
At 14:50 in the video they read a term sheet together. Prior to that, they read aloud an email complaint (not a birthday party invite) from this summer. He claims that they've been meeting in person about this; I don't disbelieve him.
For what it's worth: I agree with you about what seems subtextually to be behind this whole thing. But then: if they've been on notice for many months about Mullenweg being upset about their use of the trademarks and lack of participation in the community (confirmed on camera, unless he forged emails), it feels to me like WPE --- a company with an 8-9 figure run rate --- should have been in a position to know what was coming with WordPress.org and how to mitigate that.
I'm not casting Mullenweg as a hero; just making a case for it being a JABOG† situation, as I said above. And, of course, that the summary in the story we're reading is pretty one-sided.
† gonna make this a thing
> But then: if they've been on notice for many months about Mullenweg being > upset about their use of the trademarks and lack of participation in the community (confirmed on camera, unless he forged emails), it feels to me like WPE --- a company with an 8-9 figure run rate --- should have been in a position to know what was coming with WordPress.org and how to mitigate that.
Matt's company owns and uses wordpress.com, so Matt's sudden concern about WP Engine using Wordpress' trademark does not seem very believable (or at the least massively hypocritical). The trademark issue just seems like a handy weapon to get what he wants. However, there are no good guys in this feud as you said -- only mud.
Again you're claiming it was "sudden", but it does not appear to have been sudden. Meanwhile: nobody seems to deny that WPE could simply use WordPress's OSS software assets to stand up their own services, including Mullenweg. But that's all open source gets you. It doesn't entitle you to trademarks or online services!
> Again you're claiming it was "sudden", but it does not appear to have been sudden.
It was definitely sudden, just last week the term "WP" was explicitly allowed in Wordpress' Trademark Policy. This issue isn't really trademarks, it is just a club.
"The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit."
https://web.archive.org/web/20240924024555/https://wordpress...
> But that's all open source gets you. It doesn't entitle you to trademarks
Unless you're Mullenweg, who has abused the Wordpress trademark for years via wordpress.com. I greatly respect his years of work and dedication. However, the ends do not justify the means.
No, he hasn't. Automattic's contributions back to the WordPress foundation dwarf those of WPE's. He gave a whole interview spelling out what other companies do to get access to commercial use of those trademarks. He wasn't even demanding parity with Automattic.
I'd like to point out that the WordPress Foundation is merely the entity that owns the trademark, then gave ("for good and valuable consideration" [1]) an exclusive, perpetual, and irrevocable licence for commercial use of it to Automattic.
The WordPress project is not the foundation. The WordPress dot org website isn't under the foundation either (it's owned and run by Matt [2]), and should be considered separate from the project.
I think most contributors outside Automattic want to contribute to the project and its surrounding community, not WordPress dot org.
[1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/caseviewer/assignments?caseId=7882673...
[2] https://x.com/photomatt/status/1840980359673995362
The trademarks argument seemed overblown, "JABOG" style.
The new to me allegation in this is this alleged WPE swap out of WooCommerce Stripe affiliate account:
WP Engine had been siphoning “tens of millions” of dollars away from Woo’s revenue share partnership with Stripe into its own coffers. It’s understood WP Engine has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce.
Ripping out an OSS' revenue model would seem not great. There's a term for use of electronic communication systems to redirect money to oneself. But, not cut and dried, if the source code containing that model is fair game...
To your point, this must be a one-sided take as well, since one would have expected an accusation of 8 figure wire fraud to escalate more clearly if it were that simple.
You're missing the point that WP Engine forked WooCommerce.
It is their version of the project and they are permitted by the terms of the license that WooCommerce agreed to make whatever changes they like.
Open source is a double edged sword. You can't leverage the benefits of the community and then deny the community the ability to benefit themselves.
> You're missing the point that WP Engine forked WooCommerce.
That point is impossible to reconcile with this phrase:
"...has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce."
The verb tense "has been swapping" implies continuous repetition of the swap, not a one time fork, then "when a user installs WooCommerce" doubles down, implying it's the original code, with user install action being the time of the stealth edit.
The article's sentence is constructed incompatibly with the point you're making. Note I'm not saying your point is incorrect.
Not sure if you're a developer or not.
But it's extremely common to fork a project and keep it up to date with the latest commits from the original repository. Pretty much the standard in fact since most people just want to make a few small changes.
Isn't the "small change" here "redirecting affiliate revenue"? (This is a plugin, which apparently WPE replaced altogether, but if the only reason to do that replacement is to capture the affiliate revenue I can see the Foundation being pissed.)
It is irrelevant what the change is.
WP Engine has the legal right to make whatever change they like in their fork.
Including redirecting affiliate revenue.
I think everybody is aware of how the GPL works with respect to forking and altering software, but people seem to be confused about how the GPL works with respect to registered trademarks and online services operated by the copyright holder.
Matt (intentionally?) mumbles it so that might be how you missed it but at 14:50 he shows the term sheet email and says “September 20th” which is the day of the initial blog post that kicked off the storm. There was no term sheet until the situation was public.
I wonder what would happen if WP Engine suddenly decided "Hey, we're going to rename the business, stop using the trademarks, fork WordPress, and start a new thing with our existing customers."
Would it take off? Would it tank? I believe WordPress is GPL, so I don't see why they couldn't (as long as they could legally fork or counter things like WooCommerce, that is).
It's a bit different from the situation with OpenTofu and similar since WP Engine would only need to keep their existing, highly invested customers to get a good start. The rest is a matter of marketing.
T'will be interesting to see how this ends.
(Note: I'm not saying that there is or is not merit to Mullenweg's or WP Engine's position. I haven't studied the situation enough to have an informed opinion there.)
WP Engine could legally do this, but if they had the development resources to do so, Matt Mullenweg probably wouldn't be doing legally questionable and morally reprehensible things to try and coerce WP Engine into funding WordPress itself. Maintaining a fork of WordPress with its own independent development priorities would involve a lot of work.
What WP Engine will most likely do is run their own plugin repository mirror, strip off whatever trademarks they don't feel legally empowered in using, and move on. WordPress cannot legally exclude WP Engine from using WordPress code.
> Maintaining a fork of WordPress with its own independent development priorities would involve a lot of work.
What if they had no interest in developing new features, and just concentrated on security and bug fixes for the current version?
I'd expect that most of the people who use a site like WP Engine to host their WP sites want to put out their content in a nice format and once they are happy with the way it looks and the tools they have for editing and administering it they would be would be fine with it staying on the same WP feature set for many years.
I think the bigger problem would be, would they be willing to invest the engineering resources to do all that.
If the crux of the argument is that WP Engine doesn’t give back, I wonder how likely it would be that they’d be willing to do that.
Of course, if they were willing, they’d be allowed to do that and might even find success. I’ve often wondered why a host hasn’t tried to do a more focused WP-fork and the main conclusion I’ve come to is that they just aren’t willing to invest the significant resources that that would require.
It wasn’t a host, but CraftCMS was born out of ExpressionEngine (not the code; the Craft code all unique) and the makers of the most popular EE plugins being frustrated with the core EE direction.
Craft has a thriving business and EE has been sold several times and is much smaller than it was, so it ultimately worked.
But that was in some ways the opposite of this scenario; you had some of the largest ecosystem members who were unable to contribute meaningfully to core (because of the license/structure of EE at that time), opting to do their own thing.
I don’t anticipate any of the major hosts willing to invest what it would take to build/maintain their own WP fork.
They would need to, as Matt is in full on WAR mode shooting rockets a civilians too (he disabled WPEngines sites access to the plugin repository). Basically starving out anyone who needs to do anything. This is dangerous as plugins all need to be updated constantly less you get hacked as soon as an exploit is found. It's like they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Matt pretty much has an iron grip on Wordpress which had humble beginnings but turned into the google/facebook of websites.
Honestly, I'd be all for a fork. Wordpress is dying a slow death. The only way forward I see is to break with the history that's holding it back and make radical changes to its architecture. Matt will never do that. Perhaps WP Engine can.
ClassicPress already exists, for those who strongly disagree with the Gutenberg block editor:
https://www.classicpress.net
It would be an utter failure. WP Engine is just a hosting provider. Their entire business model is based on the name recognition of Wordpress. And Wordpress itself is built on ancient technology. So you are saying leave the brand and take the ancient technology then try to make it successful under a completely new brand? It’s a nonsense.
WP Engine can't afford to get even a single developer to work on Wordpress. How do you imagine them handling a fork?
WP Engine contributes 40 hours per week according to Matt himself. They should probably contribute more, but 40 hours is a single developer.
"can't afford" seems to be at the heart of the issue here, vs. not prioritizing and choosing not to.
I have used WordPress in the past for various projects, and have upgraded it for customers far more than I would like to recount, but all of this is making me not want to use WordPress for anything moving forward.
This does not feel like a stable foundation/platform to build a future on.
These were my thoughts exactly, regardless of the outcome. If I had something deployed and could move it, I would be migrating off of WordPress right now.
I have some domains with wordpress.com as their registrar (they had a good deal when Google Domains was getting sold off), and I'm definitely side-eyeing that relationship now...
I’m currently building a site on Wordpress and beginning. Wonder of if I should be using it. Are there good alternatives that allow page editing and have good ecosystem?
> “I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly decide to do this,” he said. “I was taken advantage of for so many years"
Mullenweg has a current net worth of approximately $400 million (source https://andsimple.co/cases/matt-mullenweg-net-worth/)
> WP Engine removed the news widget from its users’ dashboards on September 24, reportedly breaking thousands of sites in the process
Is the "breaking thousands of sites" claim supported by any actual evidence, or is this just something Matt said?
I can say that zero sites were broken by the disabling of a news widget. On the other hand, disabling updates sure was a breaking change I had to respond to immediately!
There's been no dispute around if WP Engine removed the news widget or not from their managed installs. Matt claims that removing that widget fundamentally breaks Wordpress and thus broke all of WP Engine's sites.
Wait, wait - you mean when he wrote
> the story of how WP Engine broke thousands of customer sites yesterday in their haphazard attempt to block our attempts to inform the wider WordPress community regarding their disabling and locking down a WordPress core feature in order to extract profit.
( https://web.archive.org/web/20241001091653/https://wordpress... )
he just meant that they disabled the news widget? I assumed that tweet I couldn't see replies to was a thread about them accidentally breaking customer's external-facing sites by mistake when they took out the news widget, not that he's defining "removed this widget" as "breaking customer sites".
Yes, that's exactly it. They only removed the widget. Nothing broke other than people wouldn't see Matt's posts forced into their dashboard.
I suppose that, if you define "any feature that ships with WordPress" (as opposed to a plugin) as a "WordPress core feature", then yes, disabling the WordPress news feed in wp-admin is technically "disabling a WordPress core feature".
On the other hand, oh, come on!
If they broke thousands of sites, customer would be pretty pissed and moved to another host. Why does Matt care when these are not his customers and he only gains from WP Engine's loss.
If they broke thousands of sites, Mullenweg should be more concerned about going to prison for computer crimes than anything WP Engine has done.
WP “broke” the sites, not Mullenweg. Besides, nothing broke, just lips service.
> When asked what his legal counsel has advised regarding his speaking out publicly, Mullenweg told The Repository, “When you’re right, you can talk. When you’re wrong, [the lawyers] tell you to shut up. My lawyers are fine, they’re like, ‘go for it!’”
Every time he posts or speaks, he does more damage to his reputation and that of WordPress. His lawyers have probably told him to shut up, but he seems like he’d make a miserable know-it-all client.
He's going to need at least a couple billion dollars. I cant imagine Silver Lake would accept any Automattic stock in the deal. It'd have to be all cash.
I think he’s threatening to sue or extort them for 51% of the company, or something like that? If I were him I would spend less time talking to his terrible lawyer and more time talking to a mental health professional.
It's like if someone rewrote Eⅼоn Мuѕk in PHP.
The saddest aspect of this situation is that I believe Mullenweg truly wants more people to participate in and benefit from open source software.
But by dragging thousands of developers into a pissing match and unilaterally breaking the update process for 1.5M sites without warning, he’s making the case that WordPress is unstable.
Leadership matters. I hope WordPress gets the chance to find new leaders before it dies a slow death. The web needs WordPress to be great and right now it isn’t.
It never was about trademarks ....
I mean, yeah, he's been pretty clear that about that and the trademark complaint was awfully light on evidence of actual trademark issues. He doesn't like their business model, doesn't think they contribute enough upstream, etc.
But that's just not something you get to control when you license your software as GPLv2. Some people are gonna use it in ways you don't like.
He should have just done an marketing campaign about why you should host with Wordpress.com instead of WP Engine. Instead he's torched an insane amount of goodwill for seemingly no return.
WordPress.com isn't a good comparison to WP Engine. For starters, you can't install plugins, because you're renting out a single site on a multisite network and any custom plugin code would trivially violate the paper-thin isolation between tenants. WP Engine provides separately containerized servers and databases so you can do whatever.
It's like the difference between getting an account on a Mastodon instance versus a specialized Mastodon instance hoster.
It's an okay comparison really, so long as you compare the right bits. WordPress.com has cheaper and lower-feature plans than WP Engine's lowest one ($20/month), but once you hit that same price tier ("Business" @ $25/month) you can install plugins.
WP Engine is a pure commercial WordPress hosting service, while WordPress.com also has a personal blogging service stapled on.
WordPress.com allows plugins on the business and e-commerce plans. Sites with plugins are hosted in isolated environments. This has been the case for years and years.
Don Mullenweg is going to make them an offer they can't refuse.
I wish he'd just do whatever he's going to do already. Dudes just coming off as having a bit of a manic one at this point.
Two things that are true:
- Big businesses built off the back of an open source software should absolutely chuck a bit back to said software
- Matt is messing with peoples' bread and butter to win his little slap fight which is a complete dickhead move.
And they do chuck a bit back. Matt just thinks it is not enough.
This is what happens when you raise billions in VC money.
> Mullenweg told The Repository, “When you’re right, you can talk. When you’re wrong, [the lawyers] tell you to shut up. My lawyers are fine, they’re like, ‘go for it!’”
Lol.
That sounds like something no lawyer has ever said.
Lawyers don’t advise you on what is right or what is wrong. That’s what priests do.
Lawyers advise you on what is legal and what isn’t, and what opens you up to liability.
He seems quite confused.
Sounds like he's a bit delusional
yeah, one has to wonder if he and elon musk are shopping at the same dealer...
Searched the USPTO trademark site, no trademark for "WP" registered by the WordPress Foundation.
WP is GPLv2. Is WP Engine distributing their modifications without releasing their changes?
No trademark issue, license seems fine. From what I can tell this is nothing.
“WP” is not at dispute here.
The Trademark is for WordPress, not WP. The name "WP Engine" isn't the alleged problem, it's their usage in their hosting packages like "WordPress Core".
Ok so if they changed their plans to "Core" and said "Includes vanilla WordPress" is Ma.tt going to have an issue with it?
This really doesn't seem to be much about Trademarks, but more like what every other open source project complains about, that someone ELSE made a ton of money from the open source project, not them (even though that someone else is following the original license).
Couldn't they have just changed the license to WP? It wouldn't have affected most customers.
They probably can't change the license for WordPress. It's under the GPL and it looks like WordPress doesn't require a contributor agreement assigning copyright to someone else. They'd need to get every contributor to agree to relicense it.
There's also the question of who would relicense it. Automattic doesn't own the WordPress trademarks and if there were a contributor agreement, it would likely be assigning the code to the WordPress Foundation, not Automattic.
The WordPress Foundation non-profit doesn't have a good incentive to put a restrictive license on it. Part of the problem is that the WordPress Foundation doesn't seem to be truly independent of the for-profit Automattic. The point of creating a non-profit to hold the IP of an open source project is to prevent stuff like this from happening.
> They probably can't change the license for WordPress. It's under the GPL and it looks like WordPress doesn't require a contributor agreement assigning copyright to someone else. They'd need to get every contributor to agree to relicense it.
Not just every WordPress contributor, but every b2/cafelog contributor pre-fork too, since WordPress is a fork of b2/cafelog in the first place:
https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/the-blogging-software-dil...
> Automattic doesn't own the WordPress trademarks
Actually, they own an exclusive license to the commercial exploitation of the WordPress trademark, including sublicensing rights. Given to them for free by the WordPress Foundation. The licensing rights could mean millions for the foundation, but it's all funneled straight to Automattic.
Yep, truly independent foundation.
I don't know what he would or would not have an issue with, I'm just saying what his claim is.
Personally, I don't care either way, I don't like either party.
Automattic isn't a good steward of WP and has a lot of conflict of interest that they don't want to acknowledge and WP decisions are "what benefits wp.com" first.
WP Engine is an aggressive sales company that also has hosting attached. They're extremely overpriced, the GoDaddy of WP Hosting. Whenever I hear somebody uses them it's a strong indicator that they're making enough money but have no technical knowledge on the team.
are we now conflating Automattic with the WordPress Foundation?
Matt certainly is.
Who has the exclusive commercial license to the WordPress trademark?
Following the money brings clarity. It's pretty obvious that .com controls .org.
From the WordPress Trademark Policy (https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/)
The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.
Someone should have stopped him from making the rambling statements he's made.
If it's a trademark dispute, limit the the public statements to the trademark issue. Don't muddy the waters with demands for revenue share or upstream code contributions.
"For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine”"
Remember he only just now updated that policy to say that, and tried to make it retroactive.
https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt Scroll down or search to "But Matt wasn’t done."
Oh look, it's not the first time they accused people of violating terms that did not exist, and then updated the terms after the fact. And in this case the sites were doing nothing wrong even by the updated terms anyway.
https://adland.tv/wordpress-shuts-down-several-feminist-blog...
2018 is a long time ago, and an honest mistake false positive once in a while is no crime, but I still don't see any excuse for the lack of integrity to do something like modify terms after the fact and yet still try to apply them retroactively.
That's not an accident or a mistake. It is dishonest, deliberate, and part of a consistent pattern with today.
Again, it wasn't about "WP", it was about "WordPress" (and "WooCommerce"). Don't focus on "WP" just because the company name is "WP Engine". It's not relevant to this matter, their claim of trademark infringement is about "WordPress" and "WooCommerce", not about "WP".
Unfortunately many of their public statements have focused on the "WP" in "WP Engine". See my above comment.
Their messaging around this has been messy and rambling. The drowning out any point they're trying to make with their own messaging.
Who can say the offer "WordPress" hosting? How much do they have to pay? That question was dodged several times in the interviews I've listened to.
If it's a trademark issue, make the claims and let the courts figure it out.
Stay focused or stop talking.
Regardless what they want, they have very limited rights to anything over that. Nike can say that you can't name you new sneakers Nike. Can probably say that you can't name your business "The Nike Store" even if all you stock is Nikes, but can not cannot say that you cannot refer to Nike by their actual name to state that you sell Nike sneakers.
WordPress is the name of the software that they provide services about. There is no way to control who can simply state that fact.
Am I stupid or could WPE "simply" had a clone/copy/mirror of the necessary WP.org things? eg: how Linode has for Debian mirrors?
Even better: just proxy the requests up to WP.org through GCP/AWS.
If I understand correctly, Automattic and WP Engine generate approximately the same revenue?
The creator of WordPress would undoubtedly be extremely disappointed… they should have achieved much greater success.