[skmurphy]

The audience for this statement is WP Engine's significant customers. WordPress is in a position to do much more damage to WP Engine in the near term, which will reflect poorly on the IT manager for selecting them as a vendor. WordPress is not so subtly encouraging those customers to reconsider their decision and migrate off WP Engine.

If WP Engine decides to fork, it devalues the "just like WordPress but better" value proposition and increases operating expenses as they can no longer inherit improvements from WordPress. A fork may mean they don't hit the growth targets they promised Silver Lake. Selecting this attorney is putting down a marker that WordPress wants a verdict, not a settlement.

The other wild card potentially more damaging to WP Engine and Silver Lake is the discovery process inherent in any lawsuit.

I am not a lawyer, but I don't think most commenters are correctly decoding the relative bargaining power of the two sides.

[snowwrestler]

There’s no world where forcing significant customers off WP Engine works out well for Automattic.

Those customers are not going to migrate their sites to the company that just gave them an operational and security headache (Automattic).

And most big customers do not give a shit about Wordpress per se. They just use it because it’s a free and convenient accelerant for the sites they want to build. If it starts becoming a hassle they will just move to a different CMS. There are plenty of options.

[skmurphy]

If 5-10% leave and WP Engine decides it's better to pay a royalty rather than fork that probably works out well enough. For context see https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/02/automattic_wp_engine_...

"In an email, Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the open source movement who drafted the original Open Source Definition, told The Register, "Let's be clear about WP Engine: It's built on WordPress. There would be no business without WordPress. And it's a large business with big revenue, operated as if it's funded by private equity."

"Private equity always demands big returns, regardless of the harm they do to the business. One of my customers has been completely destroyed by them – they are still operating but on such thin resources that they can't dedicate the time of one engineer to work with me on an open source compliance review, even if I do it for free.

"So, WP Engine is in that situation, and has to increase returns to the investors. What do they do? Cut any voluntary expense, which includes returning any value to the creators of WordPress. I'm told that WordPress asked for eight percent of revenue, which sounds fair to me considering that it's the basis of WP Engine's business.

"But because it's an open source project, WordPress can ask but can't demand that money, so they have to turn to hostile enforcement of their trademark and denying access to their updates."

[cplat]

By that logic, the 30% Apple tax must be "extremely fair" because all iOS apps are built on both the software and hardware built by Apple, which are arguably far more complex than a piece of PHP software. (/sarcasm)

Being "built" on something does not in itself imply value. What has to be taken into account is also "value that is added." If the underlying platform had high intrinsic value in itself, then no value would have had to be built on it to profit from it, which would mean WP Engine would not be the only entity profiting from it.

And to add to the reductio ad absurdum, are PHP engineers required to "donate part of their salaries" to the project just because "they're profiting off of that language?" (/sarcasm)

[skmurphy]

I did not say that what WordPress was doing was "fair" I was trying to explain how their actions can make sense from their side of the table.

As to 30% being "fair" it's a fee structure that is known in advance, you can plan accordingly. I try to deal with the world as it is, not how I would like it to be.

[satvikpendem]

Why would they need to fork? WordPress itself is from B2, hence its licensing being GPL. WordPress cannot adopt the dual licensing of other A/GPL software companies like Cal.com because it's not even their copyright in the first place. Therefore, all WordPress changes must continue to be GPL. The only parts that might need to be replicated are things that are not necessarily part of the core codebase, such as the plugin repository, but it seems people are already starting to move towards a decentralized model for these.

[mthoms]

Or... hear me out... Matt has the legal acumen of a pissed-off pre-teen and he thought this was clever.

Occam's Razor and all that.

[skmurphy]

The lawyer they've hired is a very serious guy who is concerned about his long term reputation. It's unlikely he would hostage his fortune to someone who was a "pissed off-preteen." Reasonable people may differ but I don't believe you have correctly assessed the players and the sum of forces at work in this situation.

[mthoms]

I have sites on WPE and I've worked for a major WP plugin developer. I've been in and out of the community since 2010. I know the players pretty well.

Matt has sabotaged any chance of a good result for him and Automattic no matter how good this lawyer is. And even if he wins in court he's already lost in the court of public opinion. Its over.

[skmurphy]

We have been using and building WordPress sites since 2006. I have no experience with WP Engine but I bear them no ill will. I think the "court of public opinion" is very difficult to assess and dominant players can take a very very long time to die.

Matt may need to step down if your assessment is correct but that's distinct from what happens to Word Press as a platform.

My sense is that the Word Press negotiating position is stronger and WP Engine will either have to fork or make a much larger contribution. But I may be wrong. If that does not happen then I believe that the private equity players will do a lot more damage to open source communities because a "harvesting paradigm" will continue.

[mthoms]

I generally agree except for "the court of public opinion" part. It seems abundantly clear to me that Matt has damaged his name beyond repair.

As I see it, the only way for WordPress to survive is if Matt steps down from the board, and the foundation & dot org mess is reorganized in a manner that makes it accountable to the community. Even then, a lot of damage has been done to the reputation of WordPress.

I won't be surprised if we eventually start seeing mainstream reporting on this case from the WSJ and NYT. Luckily, it's an election cycle so that might not happen for a while.

[skmurphy]

Reasonable people may differ. We have very different perspectives on the likely evolution of the current situation. I believe Matt will remain CEO and a year from now, the voluntary departure buyouts from WordPress will be viewed in the same way that 37 Signals weathered the buyout departures of some of their staff. See contemporaneous report at https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/30/basecamp-employees-quit-ce...

Firms that dominate markets enjoy tremendous inertia in customer choice and can take a long time to die--if, in fact, WordPress is dying. The longer-term perspective on what Silver Lake has been doing to profit from open source efforts by Word Press may reach a very different conclusion about Matt's actions than your assessment.

[mikeyinternews]

I work for an agency that is part of a (very) large holding company. The IT dept for the holding company mandated that all agencies within to host their WordPress sites in WP Engine. I manage the sites for my company and two sister agencies, and just between the three companies there are 18 sites, not including the Dev/Staging variants! There are over 1500 agencies...granted not all have WP sites, but I am certain that many do. So if this reflects on the IT manager who made this call, it would be hugely magnified!