[dhotson]

I'm just catching up.. can someone please explain why this part is unreasonable?

- WordPress code is open-source.

- WP Engine is entitled to use the source code.

I don't see how that entitles a for-profit entity such as WP Engine, to use the non-profit wordpress.org theme/plugin repository resources and infrastructure for free?

If you were WP Engine, wouldn't you want to have your own copy that you control anyway? Am I missing something?

[FlamingMoe]

The WordPress community of developers/contributors has been under the impression that the dot org site was under the control of the nonprofit WP foundation. However Matt recently declared that dot org has been his personal website this whole time, and that entitles him to solely decide when someone else can no longer use it. However documents of the founding seem to indicate that dot org is indeed under the foundation: https://x.com/sneakytits85/status/1881119968215142462?s=46

[ensignavenger]

Because the Wordpress organization is a nonprofit, the organizations assets can't be used to the exclusive benefit of a for profit- Automatic. And therein lies the issue- Mullenweg attempted to weaponize the nonprofits assets against WP Engine in favor of his own for profit. Whether or not those actions were legal is being decided in court, but it doesn't look good for Mullenweg. And it certainly wasn't in the best interests of the wider Wordpress ecosystem, which is what Wordpress.org the nonprofit was setup to serve.

[dylan604]

Because that's how open source works. If you don't want for profit companies using code for free, then offer it under a license that states that.

[nejsjsjsbsb]

Parent is asking about infra not copyright.

This is interesting in terms of Github. They could pull the same thing and say only the porceline git client and MS approved clients can pull. After all it is their servers. The open source licenses are orthogonal to this and are between authors and users.

[ceejayoz]

Github isn't leveraging a (theoretically) separate 501(c)(3) non-profit to attack a specific competitor.

[likeabatterycar]

Open source doesn't give you carte blanche to leech off someone's infrastructure. Remember when Netgear hard coded someone's NTP server into their routers and all hell broke loose?

Back in the day if you caught someone hot-linking images from your web server it wasn't uncommon for admins to redirect abusive referrers to goatse etc. That usually got them to knock it off real quick.

[cmeacham98]

Using WordPress.org services isn't some rogue hotlink, it's hardcoded into the WordPress source code. And Matt explicitly refuses to add a config option to switch servers[1] - you have to manually patch WP to do so.

Legally, he may be in the right (I'm not a lawyer and I'm not going to pretend like I can accurately predict the outcome of the ongoing lawsuit), but morally I think I can reasonably say that Matt is pretty squarely in the wrong when he's trying to abuse WP.org services to blackmail WP Engine out of 8% of their revenue.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41676885

[ceejayoz]

It’s unreasonable because the real reason was WordPress.com looking to kneecap a competitor.

Doubly so when they tried stealing the plugin.

[refulgentis]

Curious what you'd make of these holdings, I'm not up on all the nonsense that's happened:

- It was reasonable, in that it is fair and sensible, in that it was not trying to attain an unjust advantage. It might not be generous. But that's life in the big leagues.

- Going about it boorishly (ex. the login checkbox), then reacting poorly in an attempt to own the haters, definitely crossed a line (I'm sure stealing their plugin did as well, assuming they overrode someone else's code with their own in people's installs)

[slenk]

How was it not attaining an unjust advantage when WP.org banned WPEngine?

[refulgentis]

Nothing entitles a for-profit entity such as WP Engine, to use the non-profit wordpress.org theme/plugin repository resources and infrastructure for free

[ceejayoz]

A court order currently entitles them to exactly that.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/10/court-orders-mullenweg-and...

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25451524-wp-engine-v...

"the Court finds that WPEngine is likely to succeed on the merits of its intentional interference with contractual relations claim"

"Within 72 hours, Defendants are ORDERED to... restore WPEngine’s and Related Entities’ access to wordpress.org as it existed as ofSeptember 20, 2024"

It seems you can't use your theoretically independent non-profit to extort your for-profit arm's competitor.

[refulgentis]

I wanna be really ultra-clear here, because I might say this and be perceived as defending wordpress or thinking it's a good thing: this is bad!!!

I, unfortunately for myself, have some legal background and that's a...choppy...reading of it.

Let me explain:

The court found WPEngine is likely to succeed on its claim that WordPress.org/Automattic/Mullenweg intentionally interfered with WPEngine's existing customer contracts through specific harmful actions taken after September 20, 2024, including:

- Suddenly blocking access that had been freely available.

- Taking over and modifying the ACF plugin without authorization.

- Forcing WPEngine's customers to declare they weren't affiliated with WPEngine.

- Making it difficult for WPEngine to service its existing customers.

- Actively trying to get WPEngine's customers to break their contracts.

The court viewed these as potentially illegal interference tactics, especially since they appeared to be retaliatory after WPEngine refused to pay the demanded 8% revenue share.

However, this is different from a finding about WordPress.org's general right to implement a fair charging system in the future. The issue isn't that WordPress.org wanted to charge money - it's that they allegedly used improper interference tactics to try to force payment and harm WPEngine's business relationships.

Noting again for the record, I deplore the behavior here. However, you are allowed to charge people: just not start doing only with one singular entity, as a gish gallop of nonsense that affects the one singular entity's customers.

(the shortest smoking gun on this is footnote 11, but it might be too legal-ese to parse the plain meaning, which is "hey this makes sense if you're complaining about a one-off surprise of fucking with only your customers, but I can't justify it in the long term, and you know that, you're not trying to either")

Footnote 11: "In its briefs, WPEngine refers to its “interference claims” but only addresses the elements of theclaim for intentional interference with contractual relations. See Mot. at 26-28. For this reason,the Court does not separately analyze whether WPEngine is likely to succeed on its claim forintentional interference with prospective economic relations.")

[kemayo]

In the abstract, yeah, that'd probably be fine. Maybe not 100% legally -- the injunction that WP Engine got seems to imply that blocking one specific competitor from using the infrastructure might not be cool -- but if it was a restriction that was in place from the beginning, it'd probably have been acceptable.

It's mostly that WordPress maintained that infrastructure for a very long time without having any sort of restrictions on who could use it -- whether you're a self-hosted WordPress site, or you're using some sort of managed hosting (like WP Engine or WordPress.com). Plus it's literally hardcoded into WordPress to use it; you can't change that without maintaining your own patched version. So everyone involved in the WordPress community viewed it as a general public good for all users of WordPress... and it suddenly getting weaponized didn't play well. For one thing, it put up a lot of people who were just users of WordPress as collateral damage.

(And the cost of the infrastructure doesn't seem to have been one of Matt's complaints, in general. If it was, and he'd been up-front about that, I suspect reactions might have been different.)