from Hacker News

Automattic–WP Engine Term Sheet

by mobilio on 10/2/24, 8:41 AM with 102 comments

• by proxysna on 10/2/24, 9:40 AM

  >One of the many lies in Silver Lake and WP Engine’s C&D was their claim that Automattic demanded money from them moments before our CEO Matt Mullenweg gave his keynote at WordCamp US.

  >That is not true. Automattic asked for a verbal agreement that WP Engine would give some percentage of their revenue back into WordPress, either in the form of a trademark agreement or employee hours spent on core WordPress.

  Tomato-Tomato. Comedy gold.

• by markx2 on 10/2/24, 9:33 AM

  How can the 'Fee' possibly be justified?

  "2. Fee. In exchange for the License Grant, WP Engine shall do one of the following:

  (a) Pay Automattic a royalty fee equal to 8% of its Gross Revenue on a monthly basis, within fifteen days of the end of each month. "Gross Revenue" means all revenue generated by WP Engine from the sale of its services, calculated without deductions for taxes, refunds, or other costs. WP Engine will also provide Automattic a detailed monthly report of its Gross Revenue within fifteen days of the close of each calendar month, including a product line breakdown of all revenues generated. Automattic will have full audit rights.

  (b) Commit 8% of its revenue in the form of salaries of WP Engine employees working on WordPress core features and functionality to be directed by WordPress.org. WP Engine will provide Automattic a detailed monthly report demonstrating its fulfillment of this commitment. WordPress.org and Automattic will have full audit rights, including access to employee records and time-tracking.

  (c) Some combination of the above two options'

• by misnome on 10/2/24, 9:33 AM

  > One of the many lies in Silver Lake and WP Engine’s C&D was their claim that Automattic demanded money from them.... That is not true. Automattic asked for a verbal agreement that WP Engine would give some percentage of their revenue back into WordPress

  So, it is true.

• by mjburgess on 10/2/24, 9:38 AM

  So, to be clear: if I want to start a company using wordpress as core technology, I should expect to be extorted for around 8% if I get successful enough.

  I cannot imagine "Automattic" has thought this through. There is no ransom agreement in open source, and the very basis of wordpress' success is the absence of such a thing.

  What company now, looking at this technology, would touch it with a 100ft pole?

• by GavinAnderegg on 10/2/24, 10:06 AM

  The thing that bothers me most about this ordeal is there’s now a “hidden license” for WordPress. If Mullenweg thinks you’re not giving back enough, then free software is no longer free. Rather than a specific term sheet and a list of meetings, I would like to better understand when this new license comes into effect. At the moment it seems like it’s only required when Mullenweg is upset with you. I wrote a bit more to this effect here: https://anderegg.ca/2024/09/28/the-hidden-wordpress-license

• by bbx on 10/2/24, 1:32 PM

  I've used Wordpress since 2006, when, in need of a dynamic website, and not knowing any programming language, I managed to build my own custom WP theme within a couple of weeks. WP's ease of use has always been its main asset. I've built dozens of professional custom themes for paying clients for the best part of a decade.

  However, two aspects of WP that were always pain points were: local development and hosting. That's where WP Engine provided solutions.

  While being more expensive than other platforms, hosting a WP website with them is a great experience, whether in terms of installing, managing, or reliability.

  And recently, I had to update an old WP instance for a client. Having no local install available, I looked into new tools to setup one. Turns out WP Engine's tool called "Local" is what Automattic should have provided 10 years ago. It's a fantastic piece of software that "just works"!

  It seems like Automattic feels jealous that another company managed to build upon their own open source product to provide a better experience in every aspect (development, managing, hosting) and are making bank. Good for WP Engine.

• by misnome on 10/2/24, 9:36 AM

  It sure is wild to watch Wordpress burn it's entire reputation to the ground over this

• by maxloh on 10/2/24, 9:38 AM

  A non-profit organization partners with a for-profit company to demand payment from the for-profit's competitor, straight into the for-profit's pocket (assuming the WP Foundation has total control over wordpress.org).

  That's a really bad look, WordPress Foundation.

• by thanksgiving on 10/2/24, 10:01 AM

  I don’t understand why Automattic is involved at all. I imagined this was between Wordpress dot org and WP engine or whatever. Nobody should ever have to pay automattic a dime. I came into this conversation fully in support of Wordpress dot org but the more I read into this the more it feels like I didn’t understand the situation between automattic and Wordpress dot org at all.

  I’m leaving the conversation thinking the relation between automattic and Wordpress dot org is one of tax avoidance. What am I missing?

• by gortok on 10/2/24, 9:32 AM

  The terms seem oppressive in nature and not designed to actually be agreed to.

  If I wanted to say “I made them an offer” but wanted to be sure they wouldn’t take me up on the offer, this is the sort of term sheet I’d use.

• by benjaminwootton on 10/2/24, 9:52 AM

  Some of these posts and the logic used look like a mental health issue than a negotiation.

• by pknerd on 10/2/24, 9:56 AM

  From C&D document , Matt sounds like a bully to me

• by markx2 on 10/2/24, 10:55 AM

  This thread went from #1 to buried.

• by asmor on 10/2/24, 9:37 AM

  Do they think this makes them look good?

• by InsomniacL on 10/2/24, 10:00 AM

  Right or wrong, they just keep digging that hole.

• by jefozabuss on 10/2/24, 9:42 AM

  Automattic is cooking from that Unity cookbook

• by gman83 on 10/2/24, 6:44 PM

  What is a good alternative to WordPress? I don't want a headless CMS, I want a CMS I can log into and edit pages & CPTs. Ideally using a pagebuilder like Bricks. I don't want to ever have to open a code editor. Is there a good alternative?

• by bradfa on 10/2/24, 10:10 AM

  All this drama is just convincing me to never want to use WordPress.

• by e40 on 10/2/24, 9:31 AM

  Deciding after the fact you want 8% of another company’s revenue seems extortionate.

• by martin_a on 10/2/24, 10:01 AM

  I can only repeat what I said the other day. This is all a huge pile of bullshit.

  Automattic does not like the competition, so they pick one actor in the WP ecosystem _randomly_ and try to force this on to them.

  For anybody who is running a service that uses WP this is a threat. You can't be sure that if you build on that ecosystem that one day Matt Mullenweg does not like you and will try to extort money from you, too.

• by akaike on 10/2/24, 10:08 AM

  Matt is a “little” of his rocker