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by caseysoftware 3977 days ago
The law != the GPL. This is a matter of (potentially) breaking licensing terms, not the law.

Worse, this is a personal vendetta at this point. There is no legitimate reason why Matt/Automattic should own thesis.com or would try to invalidate the trademarks.

The worse part is that project leaders set the tone and establish acceptable behavior for the project. Instead of saying:

"Chris is a $%^#$& and breaking the license, let's follow the legal path."

Matt has said (publicly by his actions and supposedly privately):

"Chris is a $%^#$& and breaking the license, let's harass him personally and destroy his business."

Bad, bad precedent.
2 comments
caseysoftware 3977 days ago
I just thought of another set of implications:

WordPress Foundation is the non-profit that owns the WordPress trademarks and source code. Automattic is a commercial entity working to "defend" the trademark and attack a license infringer. And Matt Mullenweg runs both organizations.

If they're using funds from the commercial to support the non-profit and Matt Mullenweg runs both organizations, who's behalf are they acting on? Are they really separate organizations? Legally they are, but in practice, is that the case?

Does this begin to create legal liability because a) WPF isn't really being a non-profit; or b) Automattic has been attaching requirements to their contributions and support?

I honestly don't know. I'm wondering.

Ref: http://torquemag.io/wpf-automattic/

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chc 3977 days ago
Copyright law is the law. Breaking the GPL and continuing to use and distribute the GPL-licensed software means violating copyright law. So I'm not sure why you'd say it's "not the law."
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ubernostrum 3977 days ago
As noted in the article, there's a long-running problem with confusing the FSF's preferred interpretation of the interaction between copyright law and the GPL's wording with the reality of how copyright law would interact with the GPL's wording, especially on the matter of what does or does not constitute a derivative work of a piece of software.

And as noted in the article, there are potentially significant negative consequences -- including for the FSF's goals -- if the FSF's interpretation were to be endorsed by courts and applied uniformly.

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