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What's sad here is that this dispute isn't likely to make Wordpress any better, but rather send money to lawyers and reduce enthusiasm for the OSS project.
by sys13 2y ago
What's sad here is that this dispute isn't likely to make Wordpress any better, but rather send money to lawyers and reduce enthusiasm for the OSS project.
- caust1c 2y agoWait that's not making it better? /s Seriously though, it's a freaking legacy. Sad to see it go this way.
- jameslk 2y agoI’m an arm length removed from all this drama having not used Wordpress in a while, but to be honest this opinion feels overblown. To an outsider, it just looks like some legal issue between two entities irrelevant to my concerns on whether I’d use or contribute to Wordpress in the future. Something that happens between corporations all the time My guess is there will be some settlement, one party will walk away with a better position than before, and that will be that
- threeseed 2y ago> irrelevant to my concerns This is very relevant to anyone that cares about open source. Companies being able to host any OSS without the threat of a trademark dispute is vital to the software industry.
- jameslk 2y agoKind of a similar situation as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian%E2%80%93Mozilla_trademark_dispute?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian%E2%80%93Mozilla_tradema... This didn’t kill Mozilla in the end or really affect the OSS community for Firefox or Debian
- ensignavenger 2y agoMozilla didn't cut Debian users off from the plugin ecosystem or any other Mozilla services.
- duskwuff 2y agoI don't think there was ever any expectation that the Firefox/Iceweasel trademark dispute would "kill" either organization. About the most serious it got, IIRC, was some heated discussions on the Debian bug tracker; there were never any legal threats involved, and the situation was ultimately resolved to everyone's satisfaction by the name change.
- lolinder 2y agoOne of the two entities completely controls the plugin ecosystem and wielded that control against the other entity (the largest WordPress host except, possibly, Automattic itself) to block them and all of their customers out of the ecosystem over this dispute. That's why this matters to average developers. WordPress is the plugin ecosystem, and messing around with it does as much damage to the WordPress ecosystem as left pad did to npm—it's not unrecoverable, but it's a major setback that could quickly become unrecoverable.
- pclmulqdq 2y agoI believe WPEngine is actually larger than Automattic. This is an attempt to get the bigger (and likely better) company to pay the bills of a company that took a bit too much VC money and now needs the revenue to support it.
- jameslk 2y agoThe more you press the nuclear button, the more you damage your reputation. I’m of the opinion that the circumstances here are exceptional and rationality will prevail
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lolinder 2y agoThe damage to your reputation comes because pressing the nuclear button even once is an unhinged thing to do. The reputational damage is because once you've pressed it once we consider it more likely that you'll press it again because you've shown yourself to be the kind of person who presses that button.
- snowwrestler 2y agoMatt seems to have jumped on WP Engine essentially because they were making a lot of money. So now, any other company that is making a lot of money (or hoping to make a lot money) with Wordpress may wonder whether Matt will target them too. What's the criteria? Is there some exact revenue or profit number a company needs to stay under to avoid this sort of attack? Does Matt only get mad at hosting companies, or do other companies making a lot of money with WP (e.g. big creative agencies) need to be concerned? Without clarity, it's hard to quantify the risk. And companies might decide to shift their CMS work elsewhere rather than deal with it. The drama undercuts one of the big advantages of WP: it was free and permissively licensed. I agree it might not have much effect on random people using or contributing to WP. But open source projects actually need a lot of investment to grow and survive. And anything that depresses that investment can depress the overall project trajectory.
- fastball 2y agoMaking a lot of money and contributing effectively nothing back to Wordpress (the open source project). In WP Engine's own complaint they say that they've "invested hundreds of millions of dollars and 14 years of hard work building a successful business to serve that community", and nothing about contributing to the project itself. Which to me indicates that they indeed have contributed very little to the project they've made a huge amount of money from. You can argue WPE doesn't need to and that this is a feature (not a bug) of open source. But Matt Mullenweg seems to disagree and wants to use the fact that they are also capitalizing on a trademark they have no license to in order to press the issue. From my perspective, however, it seems unlikely Automattic will win this. Automattic seems to only be enforcing their trademark as a response to WPE not contributing back to Wordpress, which is not something WPE is legally obligated to do. Trademarks need to be defended universally and without reservation.
- iambateman 2y agoHopefully you’re right. I expect long-term effects for both entrepreneurs and enterprise. Companies that would’ve started in the ecosystem just got a clear signal that success comes with a tax. And the risk-management department of every enterprise will use this* as their logical basis for choosing something with a better license. * Matt unilaterally turning off WP updates for millions of WordPress sites is a major risk signal.
- rodgerd 2y agoI mean sure if you want to rely on a tool where this guy will disable chunks of it because he's had a hissy fit, I guess it "won't affect you".
- fhfhfhjfnfnfmf 2y agoYou’re welcome to your opinion, but my company is in the market for a large enterprise CMS management contract, and this situation has taken every WordPress option off the table due to uncertainty about the business and technical stability of the ecosystem. I highly doubt we’re the only ones feeling that way.
- jameslk 2y agoWhat alternatives is your company considering now, if you don’t mind sharing? Genuine question
- geerlingguy 2y agoProbably Drupal, maybe Joomla, or maybe something more custom if in PHP-land. Otherwise one of the other CMS / DXP platforms (some require eye-watering enterprise budgets): https://cmscritic.com/key-takeaways-from-gartners-2021-magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms https://cmscritic.com/key-takeaways-from-gartners-2021-magic...
- eaton 2y agoDXP: When you have nine products, one logo, and a hundred salesbros.
- geerlingguy 2y agoHeh didn't know you were on HN too, this court case is like a bat signal for anyone involved in PHP historically.
- pbowyer 2y agoIsn't it just! Karma comes around.
- luckylion 2y agoIf you were considering Wordpress for a "large enterprise CMS", you shouldn't be making those kinds of decisions.
- navigate8310 2y agoMatt is usually the lead developer at WP.org you can find his references in almost all changelogs. I still think, attention and resources will be diverted.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- FireBeyond 2y agoAnd what is more sad is that it really appears that the WordPress figurehead is to blame. Matt has made so many unforced errors in the last month, in addition to revealing, one way or another, that he basically considers WordPress, the .org, the .com, the Foundation, and Automattic, all to be synonymous, which is news to a significant portion of the community, let alone to the incorporation and other founding filings.
- marpstar 2y agoHe's completely unhinged. The threats that he made that are outlined in this document... how is this NOT extortion? Any lawyers around?
- lolinder 2y agoHe claimed in an interview there's context to the texts that makes it look better, but he hasn't actually released that context, just said that it exists and he wishes WP Engine would [0]. I'm having a hard time imagining context that would make this not extortion, and if there really is context that makes it better I'm unsure why he's not releasing it himself. He's certainly not gone into no-comment-on-legal-matters mode, so his silence there speaks volumes to me. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUJgahHjAKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUJgahHjAKU
- photomatt 2y agoWhat would you like me to answer? I haven't doxxed any private texts from other parties like they have. I've only been releasing things I've said or sent.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- aimazon 2y agohttps://automattic.com/2024/10/01/wpe-terms/ https://automattic.com/2024/10/01/wpe-terms/ "May 2024 May 30: Automattic shares first term sheet with WP Engine via email." Share the term sheet that you sent to WPEngine in May. The lawsuit suggests that this term sheet is to do with a (now cancelled) partnership between WPEngine and Automattic in regards to WooCommerce. Your blog post suggests that it's a term sheet regarding WPEngine paying the 8% trademark fee for WordPress. You can significantly undermine WPEngine's argument by proving that you presented a WordPress trademark licensing term sheet to them months ago.
- righthand 2y agoHonestly there is no "better" for Wordpress anyways, it is mature software that is locked into it's tech debt.