[robjwells]

I believe in this instance he’s referring to WP Engine installations of WordPress pulling from the WP.org plugin & theme registries.

There is a longer story in which Mullenweg has claimed that WP Engine does not contribute sufficiently to the WordPress open-source project, and that the use of “WP” in their name supposedly created confusion and infringes the trademarks of the WordPress open-source project. WP Engine disputes this.

Of course the elephant in the room is that Mullenweg is the CEO of a rival for-profit WordPress host (Automattic), but has made his claims against WP Engine from his position in the open-source WordPress project.

Perhaps a board of non-Automattic WordPress project people would come to the same conclusions about WP Engine, but the current situation reeks of conflict of interest.

Ultimately the ones paying the price here are the users of WP Engine-hosted WordPress installations, who have been cut off from plug-in and theme updates with no warning.

[miki123211]

WP Engine is also claiming that Mullenweg tried to "extort" them. He allegedly asked WP Engine to pay astronomical amounts of money to WordPress, or he'd go on a smear campaign against them. THe demands were allegedly refused, and it seems that he has indeed started such a campaign.

The claims were made in an official letter to Automattic that included proof in the form of screenshots, and that was written by a legal professional[1]. I personally think it's unlikely that an actual lawyer would risk their reputation and fabricate something like that.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41631912

[ceejayoz]

> I personally think it's unlikely that an actual lawyer would risk their reputation and fabricate something like that.

The various disbarred folks from Trump’s 2020 legal team serve as a pretty effective counter example.

[chuckadams]

Trump is notorious for not paying his lawyers, so as representation goes, he’s left with a bag of mixed nuts to say the least.

[fortyseven]

"How much can I poison the well of public opinion about my high paying client and get away with it."

[Terretta]

> He allegedly asked WP Engine to pay astronomical amounts of money to WordPress...

If we use the word “astronomical” to represent a percentage of profits, what word do we use to describe the profits?

[ceejayoz]

WP Engine asserts they demanded "a significant percentage of its gross revenues", not profits. I'm not sure we know what their margin is.

[JimDabell]

Matt Mullenweg confirmed:

> They had the option to license the WordPress trademark for 8% of their revenue, which could be delivered either as payments, people (Five for the Future .org commitments), or any combination of the above.

— https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/cease_de...

[_cenw]

Automattic also has a very direct competitor in Pressable - who are currently running a WP Engine contract buyout promotion in their header.

Horrid look.

[martin_a]

I see. What a BS. It's obvious that this is a business move by Automattic.

Akismet was (is?!) bundled with every fresh WP installation. That is a product by Automattic, so why is it bundled with the Open Source "product"? It's an unfair competitive advantage over every other company/person that provides a plugin for that. Nobody cared or was just feared to pick up that fight.

Drawing the line at WPEngine seems random, too. There are so many bigger or smaller competitors in that space, it's just somewhat random to pick them out and complain that they don't give back.

Lousy move.

[whizzter]

Conflict of interest, perhaps. Reading about the issues though, gimping the product for pennies and then modifying customers sites to censor things.

At some point, every bad behaviour in a software ecosystem affects other parties and even if his personal role does cause a conflict of interest all the things mentioned seems to point to a party that doesn't respect the ecosystem.

Reminds me of the whole Elastic search vs Amazon stuff that seems to have mellowed down now. https://www.elastic.co/blog/elasticsearch-is-open-source-aga...