What about the part where Matt runs WordPress.COM, a competing hosting service, which confuses people who are looking for the WordPress.ORG free software (which sounds like it is ran by the foundation, but now turns out to be just Matt). WordPress's own guidelines also said companies were free to use "WP" in their name, but then Matt changed the guidelines right when all this drama started.

Before: "The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit."

After: "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."

I think the naming issue is only a small part of the problem anyways, essentially stealing WP Engine's ACF plugin until the judge told Matt to stop might be the worst part.

Wordpress allowed those in the community to use WP. It's an incredibly common naming feature in the ecosystem.

They also said Wordpress Hosting and Managed Wordpress. Automattic filed for trademarks for those but lost, so those also weren't violations.

It seems pretty hard to mix up open source software and a managed hosting platform.

Just because you assumed things you didn't know about without even opening one of the website to know how they're related, it doesn't mean you should have an opinion about it.

The guy here had a meltdown and tried to sink a third party business. This alone is ground for direct litigation.

If that's the extent of your knowledge, you probably haven't understood enough of the issue, and why so many people are freaking about it.

The deeper issue is that people thought it was (Matt Mullenweg is to WordPress) as (Linus is to Linux). But Matt is going around screaming that it's actually (Matt Mullenweg is to WordPress) as (Oracle is to Java). That is to say, he considers everything remotely related to WordPress to be his personal property and he has full authority to prevent anybody from doing anything related to WordPress that he doesn't like. Despite WordPress being open-source software.

What you are missing is that this whole drama is costing peoples whose business model is to help companies adopt and maintain wordpress. I have friends who lost their leads and existing clients over this drama. So no, its not as easy as this.

Can I ask based on what?

Just previous knowledge or by reading the claims here?

Hi Matt!