[swores]

Even if they had literally disabled 80% of the functionality of wordpress, would that still be the concern of anyone other than WP Engine and their customers?

Why would anyone using open source software be required to use 100% of the functionality that the software is capable of providing?

[throwawaymaths]

Trademark is exactly supposed to protect the reputation of WordPress. If people confuse WPEngine for WordPress, and assume if WPEngine doesn't have it, WordPress doesn't then that's damaging to WordPress. Except that WordPress doesn't (and legally can't) claim "WP". I'd be frustrated.

This is like asking what is it a concern of McDonald's if you open up your own restaurant call McDonald in your town and make it a dump

[ceejayoz]

If McDonalds for years had a page on their website that said “you can use McD any way you want, it isn’t trademarked”, that would be a good analogy.

[throwawaymaths]

I don't know about three letters but two letters cannot be trademarked. The exact point is that WordPress cannot do anything legally, and that's understandably frustrating.

[ceejayoz]

But until the last few weeks the Wordpress site enthusiastically endorsed its use by third parties.

It wasn’t “we really wish you wouldn’t”.

[lolinder]

Yep. This is what it said on September 19, the day before Matt launched his nuclear war:

> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.

It was changed to its current spiteful text on September 25.

http://web.archive.org/web/20240919043912/https://wordpressf...

[throwawaymaths]

Doesn't this serve as evidence that my speculation that Matt is frustrated with the behavior of WP engine? Please and spiteful language is not legally binding.