by program on 9/27/24, 9:23 PM with 79 comments
by cyral on 9/27/24, 10:13 PM
Edit: Oh I forgot about the part where all of these posts are being published on the .org, so they appear in the dashboard of every wordpress install (including WP Engine, until they disabled the news). I'd love to hear from a lawyers perspective on how this sabotage gets into unfair competition and tortious interference. I think that is going to make the trademark thing more difficult to take to court, knowing that WP Engine probably has good grounds to countersue for actual damages at this point.
by ericb on 9/27/24, 9:56 PM
Reading this, the last thing I'd want to do is ever be in business with this person.
The WP Engine side seems much more reasonable to me. There are approaches where he could present the "low contributions" grievance, and even take some action on it, without seeming awful, but this isn't it. Even this "gesture," which could have been almost magnanimous, comes off as still awful because of the childish screed.
by brycelarkin on 9/27/24, 10:45 PM
WP Engine also seems to do some other “not in good faith” things such as change the woocommmerce Stripe attribution from wordpress.org to their own Stripe account.
While the legal dispute is on trademark, I think it’s really on WP Engine profiting on wordpress.org without giving back. It’s not illegal, but blacklisting WP Engine isn’t illegal either.
Automattic is essentially subsidizing a private equity backed company. I’d be upset and frustrated too if I was in Matt’s position.
If you support WP Engine, you’re supporting Silver Lake Private Equity.
by ninjastar99 on 9/27/24, 9:58 PM
by seriocomic on 9/27/24, 9:37 PM
by walkingmiller on 9/27/24, 10:46 PM
While you can disagree with Matt's approach, it actually feels like this dispute is more between WP Engine and the WordPress project than it is between WP Engine and Automattic. WP Engine not contributing to the project hurts Automattic a little, but the largest, most profitable companies in the WordPress ecosystem not contributing to the project are an existential threat to the sustainability of the Open Source project.
Companies will always optimize for profits, and contributing to an Open-Source project is only profitable when you are in it for the long run. And we all know that PE firms (which play an important role in our economy) are not in the game for long-term gains. Silver Lake is doing what they are meant to do — maximize profits in the short-term so that they can turn around and sell WP Engine for as much as possible.
Matt is using the leverage he has to ensure Silver Lake is forced to do something that is good for the WordPress project but will never happen because it cuts into WP Engine's P&L.
by angoragoats on 9/27/24, 10:47 PM
by InsomniacL on 9/28/24, 8:37 AM
> It saddens me that they’ve been negatively impacted by Silver Lake‘s commercial decisions.
He blocked IPs with no warning, that's why they're impacted.
> WP Engine was well aware that we could remove access
He doesn't say ~"we warned them we could could remove access" and speaks that volumes.
> Heather Brunner, Lee Wittlinger, and their Board chose to take this risk.
I very much doubt they choose to take this risk.
> We have lifted the blocks of their servers from accessing ours, until October 1, UTC 00:00.
The timing of this is designed to have maximum impact on WordPress users hosting on WP Engine. They now have to work the weekend to update their site and this tyrant can say he restored access just long enough to negate any security impact.
by mvellandi on 9/27/24, 10:24 PM
In this current case, it looks like Matt is thankfully trying to ensure end customers don’t get unreasonably affected. But nonetheless, it certainly appears WP.org should at least be relationally more of an independent entity with a separate leadership, or at least appear to be so.
by gamblor956 on 9/27/24, 10:53 PM
Not surprised to see more of the same from him, and this farce that WordPress is granting WP Engine a "reprieve" when it's really the case that WordPress is doing this to avoid a lawsuit that would result in the loss of its nonprofit status.
WordPress is run primarily for the benefit of Matt. The IRS regards that as "private inurement" and it has bad consequences for both the organizations at the individual(s) receiving those benefits.
by ronsor on 9/27/24, 9:33 PM
by crabique on 9/27/24, 9:41 PM
Furthermore, does WordPress even support custom resource registries?
by papichulo2023 on 9/27/24, 10:00 PM
by appendix-rock on 9/27/24, 11:05 PM
by mtlynch on 9/27/24, 11:04 PM
It would be one thing if WPEngine had an API key so that customers on its servers could access wordpress.org. Even then, it would be a slimy move to cut off access by surprise as part of this dispute rather than offering 30 days to migrate away.
But Matt is offering this free service to the world to encourage growth of WordPress, and now that he's in this dispute with WPE, he's acting as if WPE is a client who's not paying.
Meanwhile, Matt designed WordPress so that it takes a hard dependency on wordpress.org and doesn't make plugin servers configurable. If it's such a burden on Matt to serve traffic to WPE customers, why is there zero support for mirroring the repository or pointing WordPress instances at third-party mirrors?
by _q6hy on 9/27/24, 10:47 PM
1. https://wordpress.org/support/topic/non-commercial-license-a...
by deadfece on 9/27/24, 10:04 PM
by photomatt on 9/27/24, 11:06 PM
by elashri on 9/27/24, 10:20 PM
by foosantos on 9/27/24, 10:33 PM
by weirdindiankid on 9/28/24, 5:04 PM
As an aside, I’m curious if Wordpress.org are bound to allow WP Engine access to their plugin SVN under some sort of estoppel theory in U.S. law? 72 hours seems like it’d be too short notice for WP Engine to mirror everything, no?
by ChocolateGod on 9/27/24, 11:04 PM
by pluc on 9/27/24, 10:45 PM
by zoodologist on 9/28/24, 11:23 AM
by hiccuphippo on 9/27/24, 10:32 PM