[bastawhiz]

The most damning claim, I think, is that Automattic put a banner in every WordPress dashboard on the subject, including WordPress instances hosted by WPE. Automattic is a direct competitor to WPE (by way of WordPress.com). I'm no lawyer but I expect there's at least some argument to be made that there's some abuse of Automattic's position in doing so (though I don't know enough about the law to know whether they have a chance of winning such an argument). If Automattic was purely producing open source software with no vested interest in profit, that would be a different story perhaps.

[trog]

I have never thought of WPE as a competitor to WordPress.com but perhaps weirdly I think of WordPress.com as a competitor to WordPress.org.

For example, if I have a WordPress site I've built from scratch out of WordPress.org, I am just going to assume trying to put it on WordPress.com will be annoying (and possibly even impossible?), because of issues with themes or plugins or whatever due to the fact that WordPress.com is a separate, hosted SaaS-style CMS, and not a hosting environment for WordPress sites.

WPE, by contrast, is Just Another Webhost to me, with some special bells and whistles for WordPress.

[fhd2]

It's quite possible to host a "normal" WP installation with custom themes and plugins on WordPress.com (on the more expensive plan), I've done it a few times. But as much as I want to like it, I can't wholeheartedly recommend it. Some stuff that should be easy is just ridiculously difficult, like pulling logs programmatically. I think the main audience it caters to is people hosting a basic site with off the shelf themes.

[__jonas]

Sorry could you expand on this, how can they "put a banner in [...] WordPress instances hosted by WPE"?

I was under the assumption that WordPress is OSS, and WPEngine is running this software on their platform, so there was an update to this software, contributed by Automattic developers which included a banner denouncing WPE, and the WPE people decided to just deploy that update to their platform?

I don't think that means they "put the banner on their instance" does it? If they are unhappy with the management of the open source software they are using on their platform they presumably could fork it, or decide to not deploy the version that includes this banner, no?

[pluc]

There's a widget on the default WordPress dashboard that displays a RSS feed of WordPress.org, where Matt posted his rant, making it show up everywhere.

[__jonas]

Ah I see, thanks for clarifying!

I have seen the mentioned blog post now [1] the whole thing is starting to make more sense to me.

[1] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/

[brvry]

I think we’re conflating a link in an RSS feed (that can be disabled by the user or WPE) and a banner - typically a large(r) notification in a prominent spot in the UI. This point feels like a distraction.

[tptacek]

"Abuse of position" is not generally an actionable claim.

[DannyBee]

Unfair competition is, particularly in California, which interprets it's UCL very broadly.

Let's set aside all other claims (there are others), and take a look at "Unlawful, Unfair, and Fraudulent Business Acts" under that.

We'll also throw out unlawful business acts (I don't see anything unlawful so far).

Unfair: "An “unfair” business act or practice, as defined by the UCL, is typically committed by either a company or a business competitor. ... In the context of a business competitor, it is considered an unfair business act when the company does something that broadly undermines competition in the marketplace."

Additionally, they consider " immoral, unethical, oppressive, and unscrupulous" business acts to be unfair.

Banners on wp engine sites probably not a good thing under this. Threatening your competitors with bad keynotes unless they pay you, also probably not a great practice.

(I do think you'd be fine to say they suck. I just don't think you can get away with basically extorting them)

Fraudulent: "The UCL also prohibits “fraudulent” business acts or practices, which means any conduct that misleads or deceives consumers."

Note that it does not have to be defamation, or malice, or illegal. Just misleading or deceptive. More exactly, it does not have the elements of common law fraud - Intent is not a requirement, and negligence can be a violation.

So pure opinions without intent or with negligent intent that actually deceive consumers, while not defamation or common law fraud, are quite possibly a fraudulent business practice.

Overall, I think they have a stronger case than you might. Not on defamation, but on other things.

Regardless of the outcome, the approach i see taken by the Automattic CEO here seems remarkably stupid.

Don't mix your roles unless you want a court to mix your roles.

When he threatens to ban them from wordcamp[1] in what capacity is he doing it in?

1. Which, btw, the central website totally avoids mentioning who is in charge or paying overall anywhere i can find. I hope it's not the foundation (or him or automattic) and he's not mixing roles further while threatening his competitors.

[dpifke]

Piling on re: mixing roles: I read "abuse of position" in the GP comment as "conflict of interest," which is potentially problematic for a board member of a non-profit.

I can't speak to the veracity of the facts presented in WP Engine's C&D letter, but my reading of it is they're accusing the head of the WordPress Foundation, in his official capacity, of putting the interests of his for-profit company ahead of the non-profit's stated mission to "ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the software projects."[0] That's the sort of thing that could threaten the foundation's 501(c)3 status, or in extreme cases lead to criminal charges.

[0]: https://wordpressfoundation.org/

[tptacek]

I'm just happy to have successfully baited you into commenting. You're obviously more authoritative than I am on this.

[eastbound]

Yes, but being the editor of the software used by your competitor is certainly funny.

[sfmike]

just for monopolies right? And for hosting online and software that does it(two verticals of wordpress) there are hoardes of options.

[Terr_]

> just for monopolies right?

I suspect that's still not actionable in the way the parent poster means, since AFAICT there no private right of action: You can't sue, only petition some government agency to bring their own lawsuit.

[throwup238]

US antitrust laws grant private rights of action for monetary damages and injuctive relief. They’re unlikely to apply to Automattic/Wordpress though.

(Most other governments don’t grant these rights though)

[uudecoded]

Generally, but also especially when the position is "WordPress".

[camgunz]

Isn't this completely fine? If you and I both make aspirin, but we both put a little something extra in it (me vanilla, you salt) and I put banners on my web page saying "bastawhiz's salty aspirin puts the ass in aspirin", doesn't this just seem like typical rivalry? My point here is that defamation is defamation no matter the scale. I think scale is relevant re: damages, but not as to whether or not rivalry escalated to defamation in the first place.

[chrisandchris]

> Automattic put a banner in every WordPress dashboard on the subject, including WordPress instances hosted by WPE

> I put banners on my web

There's a large difference between putting up a banner on _your_ site and abusing your position to put a banner on _every_ site you can.

[camgunz]

One person's "abuse" is another person's "I have this platform and can use it however I like." For another example, whenever cable companies (dish, etc.) have licensing disagreements with content creators, they put up a bunch of ads that are like, "ESPN's unfair negotiations mean you may lose access to this channel, call this number to complain". That's never been found to be defamatory--it occurs to this day.

[malermeister]

If you sell my aspirin in your shop, you will have to accept what I put on the packaging or stop carrying my product.

[chrisandchris]

That's true, but does not apply to this situation.

Automattic is not the owner of WordPress, the WordPress Foundation is. Even though many employees of Automattic work (maybe full-time) on WordPress [1].

So I sell your aspirin in my shop, and a friend of yours helped you package your aspirins and while doing that put some stickers onto your aspirin.

[1] https://www.df.eu/blog/wer-steckt-hinter-wordpress-ueber-die... (German)

[Matticus_Rex]

Does WPF take issue with this operational decision by Automattic? If so, they have the avenues to deal with it, and they're the party who can claim to be aggrieved, if it violates some duty Automattic has to WPF. I seems more like this, from my understanding:

You sell a brand of aspirin in your shop. The brand has outsourced most of the production and decision-making to another company. That company puts messages on the bottle. If those messages bother me, I can bring it up with the brand and see if they'll address it, or stop carrying the brand, but the question of whether they've overstepped is for the brand owners rather than me.

[FireBeyond]

> and they're the party who can claim to be aggrieved, if it violates some duty Automattic has to WPF

Tortious interference - where one party (Automattic) interferes with a contractual relationship between two parties (WPengine, their customers), in this case by means of disparagement pushed to the dashboard of WPengine instances.

[mthoms]

Here's the thing. Guess who is the head of the WordPress Foundation?

Matt Mullenweg. CEO of Automattic.

Now guess who The WordPress Foundation granted sole rights to sub-license their trademarks? You guessed it. Automattic.

Yeah, it gets worse the more you look at it.

[justinclift]

Nah. Putting disparaging claims directly on the dashboard of my customers seems pretty abusive, and if it happened to me I'd be looking at legal options too.

[tasuki]

Automatic are publishing a blog post and syndicating it to RSS, and some other software (WP.org) is displaying that feed.

If you choose to use the WP.org software as is, it's kind of your fault, isn't it?

[camgunz]

What about regular, non-disparaging claims? Isn't it a fact that WP Engine turns off the backup stuff? Truth's a defense to libel.

This seems to me plainly like regular old competition. Can you point to something that's clearly defamatory?

[bastawhiz]

No, it would be like if Google started using Google Tag Manager to put banners on websites that use Plausible Analytics saying "this website uses analytics that might not be accurate!" Or if Cloudflare started putting banners on websites that use S3 saying "downloads might be slow because this website doesn't use Cloudflare R2"

[chiefalchemist]

Automattic's WP VIP hosting would be a competitor of WPE. VIP is enterprise level. But perhaps Automattic is considering a less high end offering and this is the first move to capturing some quick market share?