[Communitivity]

My empathy is with Automatic on this one, but I still think it's the wrong move.

"Now one could say that the license allows that and it's legal. Sure, but so is cutting their free access off. If WPEngine is just leeching and spending nothing on improving the product, there's no way anyone can compete with them on price. Open Source is expensive, people need to be paid."-jeswin

If companies can't use Open Source without the risk that the project could ban them from using it, even if the company adheres to the letter of the license (if not the spirit), then most companies won't use Open Source. Most companies I've dealt with would rather pay for commercial software and offload the risk onto the software company that use an Open Source project they view as risky in any way. Companies can already view Open Source projects as risky in a number of ways: lots of drama/turnover in a project, a single BFDL controls everything, viral license. For many projects the rewards from using it outweigh these risks.

However, all the above risks can be evaluated before a company decides to build using an Open Source project. If projects are seen as able to block availability unilaterally without a license violation, that's a risk that can't be evaluated before investing perhaps millions using it. Of course, this would all be evaluated and we'd live in a better world if companies heavily using an Open Source project decided to allocate 1% of the software engineering budget as a donation to that project.

[troyvit]

> If companies can't use Open Source without the risk that the project could ban them from using it, even if the company adheres to the letter of the license (if not the spirit), then most companies won't use Open Source.

But access to wordpress.org's servers has nothing to do with Open Source. WP Engine is free to use and modify the WordPress code to their heart's content. They just don't get to use the wordpress.org servers for free anymore.

[015a]

Sure, but I think at minimum there's a reasonable realty where Automattic/the foundation:

1. Creates an official policy that states the level of usage of the public WordPress services/resources which constitutes requiring a business relationship with the Foundation (e.g. N terabytes transferred per month)

2. Attach a dollar amount.

3. Inform WP-Engine that they're in violation of this new policy and they have N days to comply or their access will be terminated (where N is at least 90 but ideally 180/360).

Matt's recent interview with the Primeagen suggests that while "discussions" with WP-Engine go back years, he couldn't give a straight answer for whether other services may be vulnerable to the same retribution WP-Engine faced, specifically and quantifiably why WP-Engine received retribution while other entities don't, and if specific prior notice of the actions Automattic took was given to WP-Engine. Instead, it was vibey: A bunch of "well, they use a lot, server resources, our trademark, yeah other entities use a lot too, but those other entities give back, stuff, to the community, WP-Engine gives back some stuff, but not enough." Prime tried to get more out of him multiple times but it just ended with him saying "I'm sorry, I'm sick and really tired".

[kmeisthax]

Here's what I predict WP Engine will do next week in response:

1. They will scrape the entire WordPress.org plugin registry (people are already circulating scrapers around Mastodon)

2. They will open their own separate plugin registry, with blackjack and hookers

3. They will update their mu-plugin to hook the WordPress autoupdater and point it to their own infrastructure on every site they host

They can do this because WordPress is GPL and so are all the plugins. GPL can't be revoked unless you fuck up a source release, which is genuinely hard to do in PHP. And WordPress is GPLv2+, meaning GPLv3 with its way more lenient revocation terms are available.

I assume at some point Automattic will insist that scraping WordPress.org is now illegal or something, and then every plugin author will have to go through an annoying process of claiming their WP Engine Plugin Registry entries and updating everything in two places, fracturing the community because of the FOSS world's most petty trademark fight.

[dbg31415]

Sounds exactly like what will happen.

With a lot of people not coming back to update all add-ons in multiple places so just a mess.

Fast forward this mess makes for a worse customer experience and people ditch WordPress for better CMSs.

[slouch]

The software running on those servers was built by volunteers, some of which are now scrambling to help their clients who are blocked from using that software.

[hedgehog]

Is the .org infrastructure built or operated by volunteers? It doesn't seem like that part is even open source.

[troyvit]

Sure. The software is free. Why should the server be free?

[Terretta]

> Most companies I've dealt with would rather pay for commercial software and offload the risk onto the software company that use an Open Source project they view as risky in any way.

This seems less applicable when the company is using the software to offer it as that commercial cut-out.

[timeon]

I'm do not want to talk about whole thing, I do not know what to think about that but:

> If companies can't use Open Source without the risk that the project could ban them from using it...

Isn't this more about infrastructure (wordpress.org)? All plugins are still downloadable and able to install via SFTP.

[Kwpolska]

> If companies can't use Open Source without the risk that the project could ban them from using it, even if the company adheres to the letter of the license (if not the spirit), then most companies won't use Open Source.

Companies can't use proprietary software without the risk of being banned or refused a licence renewal either.