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by cyral
630 days ago
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This is not going to end well for Matt. Remember the dispute is between WP Engine and Automattic, not the WordPress foundation (the .org). Blurring the lines between the foundation and his for-profit competitor to WP Engine (confusingly called WordPress.com) is not at all in the spirit of open source. Maybe he will be successful in his trademark claim, despite the foundation saying that using "WP" was okay for a decade, and then deciding to update the trademark terms to say it is confusing (again, ironic). His other claims about WP Engine not being "real wordpress" is one of the silliest arguments I've ever heard, considering his own competitor also disables features unless you pay. The feature he is upset about (post revisions being disabled), is literally a one line change in the config. Isn't the whole point of wordpress to be super customizable and moddable? It's one of the greatest strengths of the software, and it's open source, changing the defaults should be expected. Edit: Oh I forgot about the part where all of these posts are being published on the .org, so they appear in the dashboard of every wordpress install (including WP Engine, until they disabled the news). I'd love to hear from a lawyers perspective on how this sabotage gets into unfair competition and tortious interference. I think that is going to make the trademark thing more difficult to take to court, knowing that WP Engine probably has good grounds to countersue for actual damages at this point. |
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Hmm. Matt (and at least one employee of Automattic) says "wp.org has nothing to do with the foundation, it's run benevolently by Matt"...
wp.org does live on the Foundation's IP space, though...
Also, why does he feel that WP Engine should pay licensing fees to Automattic?
Matt seems like he's far too comfortable with just picking and choosing whether he's acting on behalf of the Foundation, the .org site, Automattic (and the .com) completely interchangably depending on what his needs or messaging is to be (not to mention the fuzzy accounting that could easily be seen to be happening).