When this story first emerged, I was somewhat sympathetic to Matt/Automattic. But geeze, he is just looking worse and worse. Between this tantrum and threatening a former employee over a very innocuous statement [1], his credibility is pretty low in my opinion.
Kellie's article is a well-written and reasonable response to mean-spirited bullying. It makes me wonder why a lot of people think it's good to have Silicon Valley companies run by trolls. Is that really the way to build successful businesses?
> "Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case."
I don't think I have ever before seen, in an official public statement, a "The lawyer we just hired always beats the lawyer they just hired!" boast, and it seems ridiculous - it's almost even hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer rather than that their case should win on merit.
Selecting a lawyer with a proven record, and expressing confidence in them are not "hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer". They're smart strategies, whether you decide to take the case to court, or seek a settlement (on either side).
I agree that it is of course smart to choose a lawyer you think can win, it's the public statement about the lawyer's track record that seems crazy to me, not the hiring decision.
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.
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.
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.
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!
From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.
Yes, that's why WordPress silently and secretly licensed back the WordPress trademarks to Matt's for-profit company without telling anybody. For the good of the customers.
That's why they forced the new boondoggle editing UI that everyone hates. For the good of the customers.
That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers.
Matt also seems very proud of his new, shady lawyer, who failed to disclose that he had cases before the Supreme Court when he endorsed Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for open spots. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have since reciprocated by ruling for this guy's clients every time, in several cases with decisions that confounded even conservative legal experts. So, it would seem Matt found a dirty lawyer to represent his dirty case. (EDIT: Katyal is the lawyer who suggested corporations should be immune from anti-trafficking laws because it would be bad for business and got his endorsee pals to bless corporate wage theft. He's the kind of lawyer companies turn to when they want to get away with something truly evil.)
We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality
Based on Matt's gross misrepresentations of reality on yesterday's thread, the only party to this case making gross mischaracterizations of reality is Matt.
If WordPress were truly an independent, community-led organization like Matt claims, he would have been forced out by now for the harm he's inflicted upon it.
> Yes, that's why WordPress silently and secretly licensed back the WordPress trademarks to Matt's for-profit company without telling anybody. For the good of the customers.
On the very same day Matt released a press release patting himself on the back for doing so, and how deeply devoted to the community he was. Indeed the press release specifically talked about how this ensured WordPress would never be unduly influenced by for-profit companies!
> That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers.
Thats actually true. Backward compatibility was and still is the #1 thing in WP, and its why it won over the web: No small business or individual customer cares about 'better code' in the backend if those 'improvements' break their websites. This was what a lot of wordpress competitors did in the past and they suffered for it.
No, the spaghetti code has always been bad for customers. Security exploits, hacked-together functionality that can't be improved until Matt decides to make the breaking change that forcibly breaks hundreds of plugins, etc., random bugs that nobody understands, poor performance requiring expensive and extensive modifications to achieve basic levels of responsiveness that makes even Java look like a speedster.
Backwards compatibility is just the excuse Matt has been using from the beginning to justify how abysmally bad the code is.
In what world was anyone in the Senate unaware that Neal Katyal, the _former acting U.S. Solicitor General_, was suing the Trump administration over its travel ban on behalf of _the entire state of Hawaii_?
Furthermore, while I just don’t care about this WordPress case and I hate Gorsuch with the fires of a thousand burning suns, but I cannot stand people arguing in bad faith, no less than *The Washington Post* let the whole world know before Katyal introduced Gorsuch that this was the case. [0]
The legal victory is almost moot, even if Automattic is found to have acted in their rights. How does any Wordpress developer know they are not going to be next? Or all of the third party plugin providers? Or theme makers? All of them heavily use Wordpress branding in their services, few contribute to the open source.
The precedent being set here is wild, and every Wordpress organization becoming a Mullenweg personal mouthpiece account defending him personally is just so, so, bad.
This is one of the the most needless self-destructive acts I have ever seen in the world of business.
> How does any Wordpress developer know they are not going to be next? Or all of the third party plugin providers? Or theme makers? All of them heavily use Wordpress branding in their services, few contribute to the open source.
WP Engine should consider challenging the Wordpress Foundation's 501(c)(3) status by filing a complaint with the IRS. IANAL but I have run nonprofits, and they must be very careful about how it interacts with a for profit entity, especially when they share staff.
That seems like it would be terrible for the open source project and anyone that relies on it. I hope both sides of this dispute deescalate things before something like that happens.
Maybe not. A stern letter from the IRS might be just the nudge for the Foundation to clarify things, and maybe push Matt to choose one or the other. Few things will scare a nonprofit more than the IRS knocking on the door.
This is getting embarrassing. I was a big fan of Matt's before this whole charade started but he's basically flushing 20 years of goodwill down the drain for not a whole lot in return. As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine (and a hand-forcing by Automattic to implement a retroactive licensing agreement)?
As I understand it the claimed trademark infringement is WPE saying they ‘provide WordPress hosting’. If they are successful can anyone built an opens source hosting business?
If WordPress won on the trademark infringement issue, it would be a fundamental rewriting of trademark law as it exists in the U.S. today.
Companies even competitors are allowed to use trademarks when they are making factual statements, like "we provide Wordpress hosting" as long as they make it clear that they are not the trademark holder (i.e., confusing customers). Even before they revamped their website, WP Engine was very clear about being a third party provider for hosting WordPress blogs. They weren't claiming to be the original WordPress, or the original WordPress hosting provider, or anything similar.
I am not sure which way this will go, but WPE's website was using the word "WordPress" in every possible way before they 'cleaned it up' a few days ago. I am not sure whether it was trademark infringement, but they did seem to be leaning heavily on the trademarked term. I compared WPE's website to Dreamhost's (as I am familiar with the latter as a provider of hosting for WordPress-based websites), and the latter used the term far more sparingly.
> As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine (and a hand-forcing by Automattic to implement a retroactive licensing agreement)?
Not just a retroactive agreement, a retroactive rewriting of trademark usage. Up until a few days into this dispute, the appropriate text on WordPress's site explicitly permitted people to use "WP" as they saw fit (as much as they can, as I don't believe they have a trademark on WP, just WordPress). Matt hastily edited things to imply WPEngine was in violation.
>As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine
I'm only slightly following the dispute between Automattic and WPEngine but it might have more to do with WPEngine rewriting the payment identifier on Automattic's open source Woo Commerce ecommerce plugin.
WPEngine's payment identifier rewrite results in WPEngine getting a cut of ecommerce payments processed through their hosted sites and not Automattic.
I don't know the details though and probably didn't even explain it right. Matt talked about it recently in a Youtube interview.
Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality—and reserve all of our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engine. Automattic has retained Neal Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, and his firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, to represent us. Mr. Katyal stated, “I stayed up last night reading WP Engine’s Complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court’s consideration of their lawsuit.”
Our focus is and has always been protecting the integrity of WordPress and our mission to democratize publishing. From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.
> Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case.
My perception: the personal grievance comes through loud and clear. Hopefully cases are decided more on their merits and less on the identities of the attorneys prosecuting them.
Readit News
[1] https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/nice-guy-matt-mullenweg-c...
Edit: added missing word "companies"
https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/991906/d7340f3b866d855b/
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I don't think I have ever before seen, in an official public statement, a "The lawyer we just hired always beats the lawyer they just hired!" boast, and it seems ridiculous - it's almost even hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer rather than that their case should win on merit.
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.
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.
Occam's Razor and all that.
https://venturebeat.com/business/apple-nokia-win-2m-after-sa...
Lol
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Yes, that's why WordPress silently and secretly licensed back the WordPress trademarks to Matt's for-profit company without telling anybody. For the good of the customers.
That's why they forced the new boondoggle editing UI that everyone hates. For the good of the customers.
That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers.
Matt also seems very proud of his new, shady lawyer, who failed to disclose that he had cases before the Supreme Court when he endorsed Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for open spots. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have since reciprocated by ruling for this guy's clients every time, in several cases with decisions that confounded even conservative legal experts. So, it would seem Matt found a dirty lawyer to represent his dirty case. (EDIT: Katyal is the lawyer who suggested corporations should be immune from anti-trafficking laws because it would be bad for business and got his endorsee pals to bless corporate wage theft. He's the kind of lawyer companies turn to when they want to get away with something truly evil.)
We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality
Based on Matt's gross misrepresentations of reality on yesterday's thread, the only party to this case making gross mischaracterizations of reality is Matt.
If WordPress were truly an independent, community-led organization like Matt claims, he would have been forced out by now for the harm he's inflicted upon it.
On the very same day Matt released a press release patting himself on the back for doing so, and how deeply devoted to the community he was. Indeed the press release specifically talked about how this ensured WordPress would never be unduly influenced by for-profit companies!
Thats actually true. Backward compatibility was and still is the #1 thing in WP, and its why it won over the web: No small business or individual customer cares about 'better code' in the backend if those 'improvements' break their websites. This was what a lot of wordpress competitors did in the past and they suffered for it.
Backwards compatibility is just the excuse Matt has been using from the beginning to justify how abysmally bad the code is.
In what world was anyone in the Senate unaware that Neal Katyal, the _former acting U.S. Solicitor General_, was suing the Trump administration over its travel ban on behalf of _the entire state of Hawaii_?
Furthermore, while I just don’t care about this WordPress case and I hate Gorsuch with the fires of a thousand burning suns, but I cannot stand people arguing in bad faith, no less than *The Washington Post* let the whole world know before Katyal introduced Gorsuch that this was the case. [0]
[0] https://wapo.st/3XZhy2u
The precedent being set here is wild, and every Wordpress organization becoming a Mullenweg personal mouthpiece account defending him personally is just so, so, bad.
This is one of the the most needless self-destructive acts I have ever seen in the world of business.
Easy, just don't be too successful.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/How%20to%20Lose%20Your%20Ta...
So much of Automattic's corpospeak drips with spite. Makes me understand why other companies are so "bland" — to protect themselves
Does he actually believe this? WP Engine makes some very popular and well-liked products.
Also I realized "Matt" is front and center in Automattic so that says a lot
Companies even competitors are allowed to use trademarks when they are making factual statements, like "we provide Wordpress hosting" as long as they make it clear that they are not the trademark holder (i.e., confusing customers). Even before they revamped their website, WP Engine was very clear about being a third party provider for hosting WordPress blogs. They weren't claiming to be the original WordPress, or the original WordPress hosting provider, or anything similar.
Mozilla has one of the stricter trademark policies but it's for a good reason and the community mostly trusts them. WordPress not so much.
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Not just a retroactive agreement, a retroactive rewriting of trademark usage. Up until a few days into this dispute, the appropriate text on WordPress's site explicitly permitted people to use "WP" as they saw fit (as much as they can, as I don't believe they have a trademark on WP, just WordPress). Matt hastily edited things to imply WPEngine was in violation.
I'm only slightly following the dispute between Automattic and WPEngine but it might have more to do with WPEngine rewriting the payment identifier on Automattic's open source Woo Commerce ecommerce plugin.
WPEngine's payment identifier rewrite results in WPEngine getting a cut of ecommerce payments processed through their hosted sites and not Automattic.
I don't know the details though and probably didn't even explain it right. Matt talked about it recently in a Youtube interview.
Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality—and reserve all of our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engine. Automattic has retained Neal Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, and his firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, to represent us. Mr. Katyal stated, “I stayed up last night reading WP Engine’s Complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court’s consideration of their lawsuit.”
Our focus is and has always been protecting the integrity of WordPress and our mission to democratize publishing. From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.
> Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case.
My perception: the personal grievance comes through loud and clear. Hopefully cases are decided more on their merits and less on the identities of the attorneys prosecuting them.