Comment by jart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jart | Hacker News Reader

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Reading WPEngine's legal complaint https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Complaint-WP... they sound like cuckoos. My best guess is WPE's WordPress hosting business grew larger than Automattic and they're lashing out to survive. For example, WPE has 1000 employees and Automattic has 1700, but Automattic has their attention divided on 20 other products too, which left them blindsided when WPE forked their product, made it their core focus, outcompeted them on rizz alone, and cut them out of the profits without contributing to the costs. At that point Automattic is de facto unpaid employees of WPE and they're probably not happy about that. Their WordPress division is either going to be destroyed or have to use its guns. They chose the latter and many of their employees were angry because they signed up to be benevolent open source people. Unfortunately that's only really practical for a business when it possesses great advantage i.e. not being laid low by private equity. We should worry about Automattic's because if WordPress crumbles, Tumblr and a lot of other stuff may too.

Whether the factual claims of WPEngine are true is the matter of the lawsuit but it's incredibly well put together. What have you found illogical in there? Your tone doesn't fit at all a serious discussion. "rizz" "cuckoo" , I detest your garbage is posted as an answer to my rather detailed post.

Did WPE fork WordPress though? They clearly claim in their legal filing that the WordPress installs they use come directly from the official sources. I don't use WordPress or WPE, but I would (perhaps naively) assume that if they are making a clear statement of fact in a court filing that they are not lying about that fact.

They forked their business, which is WordPress hosting. In the complaint they brag about how they haven't changed a single line of code in WordPress itself. That's way more adversarial than forking the codebase, since the GPL ensures people still give back when they go their own way.

> They forked their business, which is WordPress hosting.

You are constantly talking nonsense. This is simply not a thing. Much as "rizz" and "cuckoo" is not in this context.

> forked their business

... is that even a thing? How is WPE the bad guy even if it is when there are NUMEROUS other wordpress hosting companies?

> GPL

The GPL specifically allows you to even SELL the GPL'd code to people, so I don't see how they are even violating the _spirit_ of the license.

More to the point, it's not like WPE is a black hole. They _are_ engaging and spending money on the community from what their court filing claims. Is it all self serving? Of course it is! A for-profit corporate entity rarely (never?) does things not in it's self interest.

I will freely admin I'm not a part of the WP community and have zero investment on either side of this fight. I will also say that just from reading what has been posted by all parties, I feel really strongly that Matt needs to stop talking/acting and let the lawyers sort things out at this point.

As an aside, as I was thinking about it this morning, Matt claims that WPE is causing him personally due to excessive usage of wordpress.org, right? But, if WPE goes away today, all those sites they were hosting are suddenly going to other hosting companies and the SAME amount of traffic will still hit the wordpress.org site. Trying to claim that WPE is causing undue traffic is just saying the WP as a whole causes too much traffic. So, are ANY hosting companies beyond Matt/Automattic funding the wordpress.org website? It's clear from the WPF financial filings that they don't contribute to funding that critical resource. And it's clear from Matt's posts that he prefer that every WP install uses those resources as he's expressly questioned why he would make it easy to point to another resource.

Every dollar WPE makes is a dollar Automattic doesn't. If you're David, and Goliath wants to use your platform and trademark to make you poorer, would you let him? All the stuff you're talking about is a distraction, because this is an unnatural relationship, and they're going to come up with whatever excuses they can to rectify that.

If you are saying this is just Automattic being mad that WPE is making money and they want some of it, that's a major concern for any professional services company in the WP space. Once they are done with WPE, who's next on the list? This is not hyperbole. Any company that is a similar line of business would be foolish not to asses this as a high risk.

Being mad that someone is using the open source software EXACTLY as the license allows them to is indicative of very poor planning. If you didn't want anyone else to make money off the software, then why open source it in the first place?

They can claim all day long that WPE was misusing the WordPress marks and the courts will resolve that complaint. Their use of WP was expressly allowed as WordPress expressly disclaimed WP as a trademark.

They can cry about WPE's usage of the wordpress.org services and say they are abusing them. Until they change the code and make the update URL configurable, they are being highly disingenuous. Considering that Cloudflare has offered to provide free CDN services to WPF for this, it seems like the best solution for the community would be for Matt to give wordpress.org to the foundation and let them use the freely offered services.

As I don't know you personally Justine and just go on what I've seen you contribute to the world, I must say I'm actually surprised at your apparent hard line on this. As I have said a few times, I have zero involvement in this debacle and I think both parties are likely bad actors. But what I've seen Matt post during this would make me 100% never get involved with him in any kind of business. He's displayed a shocking lack of self-restraint and level of malice towards those he feels have wronged him or are in his way.

The world needs Matt and Automattic. It doesn't need WPE. The WordPress community should be more worried about what'll happen to them when no one is developing WordPress anymore, than what'll happen if Matt goes to war with everyone else too. He's so self-sacrificing that he didn't fight back against WPE until WPE alone was threating his survival. Apple would have never let someone in their App Store in the first place who directly competes with them, and Matt looked the other way for ten years. Matt is obviously guileless considering how he behaves. That would make me not very afraid of him if I were a business in this space. The fact is though that Matt is one of the people who gives to the community more than he's taking, and WPE is the opposite. You won't have a community anymore if the takers demoralize and alienate all the helpers. What's happening now is completely WPE's fault. As the most profitable entity in the WordPress space, they have a duty to help lead the community and fund its development. Asking for 8% isn't unreasonable.

> The world needs Matt

Is the Wordpress community so weak that after all these years they couldn't weather Matt retiring?

And if Automattic is such a business which can only exist as a monopoly then it shouldn't exist. Because that's what you are implying.

Once again: if WP Engine misuses trademarks which Matt holds then by all means send a C&D to them and if they resist then sue them. That's a completely normal business behavior. What's happening here is lunacy.

> Every dollar WPE makes is a dollar Automattic doesn't.

This is the same fallacy as "immigrants are taking our jobs".

No, this is not true. The market can expand, competition spurs innovation, they put in marketing and so forth. The income of Automattic in a world where WPE doesn't exist is less , likely much less than the income of real Automattic plus WPE.

You have been posting nonsense ever since you started, just stop.

Oh, finally a summary of the whole thing I understand.

Someone posts literal garbage filled with nonsense words and that's what you understand? What's going on here?

Wow I don't think I've ever made someone on Hacker News this upset before. If it makes you feel better, I chose to reply to your comment because you put the most effort into your analysis, and your comment contributed actual information, unlike a lot of the other low effort stuff.

Well you didn't reply to mine. You replied to meaningless word salad.

Word salad. Detailed post. Which is it boykie?

boykie? cookoo, rizz so you are answering to yourself as a sock puppet. People don't talk like this especially not here.

And once again which one it is: you didn't answer me. If you think you did that's because you forgot to switch accounts. https://i.imgur.com/LeF241n.png

Lol, are you on drugs? That's probably what is going on here. I'd chill a bit before continuing to comment.

I finally have an analogy for the "Open Source company":

A company creates a free buffet and sells seats at a table. They hope a competitor doesn't come and take the free food, slather it in hot sauce, and sell it at their own restaurant, because that would be rude.

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