[lolinder]

> Automattic is the unambiguous bad guy.

I wouldn't say that's what people are saying. I've been a vocal critic of Matt's actions in these threads, and my perspective is basically this:

WP Engine may be exactly as bad as Matt says it is. They may be contributing too little and taking too much. I've seen enough of corporations to believe that that can happen.

None of that matters any more after Matt's actions in September. WP Engine has put forward convincing evidence that Matt attempted to extort them into paying tens of millions per year to Matt's for profit under threat of launching a smear campaign. Matt then demonstrated that the boundaries between Automattic (the for profit) and the open source project don't exist by locking millions of WordPress users out of the plugin ecosystem over this dispute with the for profit.

That plugin ecosystem is the WordPress project. By messing about with that ecosystem Matt showed that he is both able and willing to singlehandedly screw over anyone who uses WordPress because he has a dispute with their hosting provider.

That's the issue now. I don't see WP Engine as white knights fighting a villain, but Matt turned what could have been a united effort to improve the WordPress ecosystem into a battle between greedy corporations and it's Matt who showed that he doesn't care who gets caught in the crossfire. The issue isn't that Automattic is the unambiguous bad guy in this suit, it's that Matt has demonstrated he has more power than he can be trusted with.

[Aeolun]

> WP Engine has put forward convincing evidence that Matt attempted to extort them into paying tens of millions per year

I think it was Automattic that put forth that evidence? The literally posted the extortion letter on their blog, aiming to prove it wasn’t extortion at all.

[lolinder]

Yeah, that also happened...

I'm referring to the cease and desist [0] and the subsequent complaint. They have texts from Matt all the way up until he's about to step on stage that appear to show him threatening to launch an enormous smear campaign against them starting with his speech if they don't agree. Just two examples:

> I have 14 slides so far, working title for the talk: "How Private Equity can Hollow out and Destroy Open Source Communities, a Story in 4 Parts."

> I've got quotes from current and former employees, some may even stand up and speak as well.

And then, with a photo of the audience taken from on stage:

> I'm literally waiting for them to finish the raffle so my talk can start, I can make it just a Q&A about WordPress very easily

Matt's gone very public (some have suggested too public) with this lawsuit, but he hasn't provided any context that would make these texts look any better.

[0] https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Cease-and-De...

[emn13]

One man's extortion is another's negotiation. I think this framing, however natural given Matt's phrasing, isn't really helpful. We all routinely extort better deals - we just call it negotiation, and we usually try to be less plainspoken about it.

Even the kind of leverage/threats he was making aren't abnormal. What's threating to defame or emphasize looked at from one side is offering to sign a non-disclosure or non-disparagement from the other.

The content of these threats may be less tolerable than other negotiating tactics, but they are entirely normal in negotiations we don't label extortion. He's not donating horse heads.

As to pulling access to plugins - if at its heart this is about freeloading, then that action seems proportionate in principle as it's one of the few possible leverage points - it did not block existing installations, merely new ones - but the effect was likely poorly thought out as it relates to updates. Then again, WP engine had a workaround in pretty much no time, so even the update issue is not a big one; i.e. that power you state that Matt has does not appear to actually exist.

The whole saga seems very much in the eye of the beholder. Whether the end result will end up achieving Matt's apparent aims is of course another.

I doubt current wordpress sites will suffer much long-term harm in the crossfire, but they will perhaps have a short-term mess. But the power balance shift may well harm the overall ecosystem severely. The loss of trust alone is problematic; and if this takes down the de-factor maintainers of the wordpress core, which seems possible right now, that would be bad. Or worse, if it convinces them to go semi-closed source, and they then drag out their decline in a way that makes a finding momentum for a replacement hard.

[lolinder]

> One man's extortion is another's negotiation.

No, this isn't a matter of perspective, it's a matter of law, and it's specifically part of the complaint brought against him [0]:

> WPE has been injured in numerous ways as a result of Defendants’ ongoing extortion, including, but not limited to, measures taken to respond to the extortionate threats, loss and continuing loss of customers, and injury to its goodwill and reputation. WPE is entitled to monetary damages as allowed and injunctive relief to prohibit Defendants from continuing their unlawful actions.

The court will decide if it's attempted extortion, and if it is then Matt and Automattic will owe damages.

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...

[emn13]

Let's let the judge or jury figure out the legally pertinent facts and standards; that does not always correlate well with either morality or plain language. I wouldn't be surprised to learn some example of clear extortion in plain English isn't once judicially decided; the converse is just as likely. Famously extreme examples of that disconnect include the Californian bees that are actually fish (legally speaking), but less extreme examples happen all the time.

People sound like they are angry because they feel it's extortion - and I don't think it should matter what the judicial technicalities of some law say about some legislative definition of "extortion".

And in any case; ideally the law follows common sense not vice versa, so in the event that the law disagrees with common sense as a person with no stake in this game the legal ruling just doesn't interest me except as to the degree of damage done due to the judgement.

Finally, there's a very good chance all of this will be settled and we either won't hear about the terms in detail; or we'll hear some agreed upon compromise that won't reflect either of the party's actual beliefs, nor common sense, nor a judicial ruling - merely some negotiated settlement.

[Kye]

There's no practical way to make WordPress closed source. 23 years of contributors would have to sign their code over. It might have been possible to get enough people to do it and rewrite the rest before the community was put in such a polarized state, but now there will be significant contributions made by people who won't do it on principle.

[emn13]

That's good to hear; some projects require copyright assignment before merging contributions, or some extended license that might permit re-licensing, and I wasn't aware of the status of the Wordpress code base in that respect.

[caseysoftware]

^ Well said.

> WP Engine may be exactly as bad as Matt says it is.

> None of that matters any more after Matt's actions in September.

I'm ambivalent towards WP Engine. IF Matt's claims are true, there are better ways to do it than extortion, breaking the core freedoms of the GPL, ignoring open source principles, and generally being a destructive, toxic force.

[paulryanrogers]

Did WPEngine maintain their own cache to lessen the load on WordPress.org's plugin repo? If not then that could be a significant cost, which a large hosting provider should cache to minimize their upstream footprint and improve the UX of their own customers.

That said, it seems a modest trademark dispute has gotten way out of hand.

[lolinder]

Yeah, I'm really no longer interested in what WP Engine could or should have been doing. Matt's been trying really hard to distract everyone from the simple fact that he personally has a kill switch that can stop the flow of security updates to millions of WordPress sites and that he will use it.

We host mirrors of NPM for many reasons, but fear that Microsoft will one day bar AWS customers from using the main registry isn't one of them.

Matt doesn't get to use that button and stay a trusted component of anyone's supply chain.

[swyx]

thank you for phrasing it better than I can. the violation of the spirit of open source is at stake here.