[akaike]

The whole interview feels so fake. Matt consistently avoided answering direct questions, such as whether he had to defend the WordPress trademark in the past 20 years and if so, how. Additionally, he frequently changed the subject, particularly when questioned about why WP Engine was chosen as a sponsor despite his negative characterization of them - calling them “cancer”.

It’s difficult to take the interview seriously. Very disappointing and a waste of time in my opinion.

[tptacek]

Doesn't he have a whole story about having to enforce the WordPress trademark against a company reselling rebranded GPL WordPress plugins as "pro" versions, jus a few weeks ago? Where did you stop watching? This comes up just after the first appearance of the cat.

[mthoms]

There's a lot of back-story here but the tl;dr is that someone did some really shady stuff with GPL themes and was a jerk to Matt and the community. Full stop. He admits as much.

The other side is that... years later, Matt spent $100,000 just to spite the developer by buying the domain he wanted. Imagine spending six figures just to spite someone. That's a lot of meals for hungry school kids.

This is really scary behaviour for anyone. Let alone the leader of a community.

https://pearsonified.com/truth-about-thesis-com/

[tptacek]

I don't know about that or what the circumstances were, I was just responding to the claim that the trademark hadn't been enforced in the past; the video seems explicit on that point.

[akaike]

At 32:10, he asks him how, and all he answers is: the other thing people don’t know about […]. He didn’t answer the direct question but changed the subject to how it wouldn’t hurt him/them if WPE paid a fee to use the trademark; it wouldn’t be a big deal. Then he goes on about how many times WordPress is actually mentioned on the WPE sites. He continues by giving examples that WPGraphQL is not confusing for consumers, but WP Engine is. The reason? His opinion.

You're right, he answered later though with the example of reselling GPL licensed plugins. I guess I missed that at first.

I just stopped watching after an hour, after the arguments about who should actually pay the fee and who should not. No other companies seem to have to pay the 8% fee, but then he decides that WPE should do it and maybe because they hurt his feelings, they probably need to pay even more - his own words.

[d0mine]

There are polls mentioned in the video that demonstrate that many people do confuse WP Engine and Wordpress

[tptacek]

I also took that to be just a recent example.

[mthoms]

Sure. I wasn't disagreeing or correcting you, I was just providing background information. That background information provides some important nuance.

It also provides another example of Matt exploding with a personal vendetta (IMO). Which is highly relevant to what's happening now. It's a pattern.

[caslon]

As it says in that link, the author of said link applied for a software patent after the initial GPL violations (that even in your article, he doesn't apologize for; he simply points out that he was a jerk about it while not meaningfully accepting guilt). If you look at the actual events of that situation, Pearson acted far worse than what you would imagine from just reading his own words, years later:

https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/thesis/

Pearson never made amends; he continued his bad actions long after being called out (and possibly still does).

The correct solution to bad actors is to raze them to the ground; Matt isn't wrong in this. He has the means and is doing something principled with them: Destroying a bad actor.

This should be encouraged; it is how capitalism is supposed to work.

[mthoms]

Look... Pearson could be the Black River Killer, and that still wouldn't make Matt's actions morally justified.

(For clarity, I'm specifically talking about buying the thesis.com domain name, which he couldn't use because Pearson had the trademark).

It's vindictive and wasteful. Period. That's $100,000 ($132,000 in today's dollars) that could have gone to making the WordPress community better, some other charitable cause, or even a nice vacation for Matt and his family.

I'm sorry, but that is not normal or "principled" behaviour and it's not something that should be "encouraged".

[caslon]

Lots of things are wasteful. Punishing a bad actor who is actively infringing upon your legally-enshrined rights is better than buying a sportscar with that money.

[mthoms]

Not actively. This was literally three years later.

[benatkin]

The tone is very calm, Mullenweg is vocally very soft spoken and I think it made sense for Theo to follow this. However he does confront him on some things. Especially here: https://youtu.be/OUJgahHjAKU?si=VnIqx8LPHcEXnTl-&t=2366

[sharphall]

I found this moment and the few minutes after it to be pretty fiery:

https://youtu.be/OUJgahHjAKU?t=2771