It's puzzling that in Automattic's reply to the cease and desist, they argued the listing of WPFusion was fair use. However, they copied it to their commercial Wordpress site and offered it as part of their "business plan" and also their paid premium plan.
Their letter makes it sound like they are "identifying" it, like a bird watcher pointing to a bird or something. But they copied, re-hosted it and are, or were, offering it as part of the value proposition for which people should pay. I'll admit I'm fuzzy on fair use as anything more than a general concept but it's hard for me to square that one.
It's actually very straightforward. The reply was by the General Counsel of Automattic and was intended to reduce Autmattic's liability. To that end, the first thing that was stated is that they had done nothing illegal.
That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
I for one and very much starting to feel like I'm in an abusive relationship with WordPress...
> However, they copied it to their commercial Wordpress site and offered it as part of their "business plan" and also their paid premium plan.
That part is absolutely fine and is covered in the original article under "Wait, aren’t WordPress plugins open source and free to modify": ( https://wpfusion.com/business/regarding-our-cease-and-desist... ) You can copy, fork, and even "sell" free software if you like, as long as you comply with its license terms.
This is a trademark dispute, not a copyright dispute.
The trademark dispute here is the use of the phrase "Advanced Custom Fields" in Automatic's marketing and on their website, as illustrated in the picture just above that section of the article. Automatic's core response is probably correct in a technical detail: e.g. in marketing for "Open Office Sheets", you are allowed to say "Open Office Sheets is better than Microsoft Office Excel because..." Even though "Microsoft Office Excel" is trademarked by Microsoft, you're using the name to draw clear distinctions, not to imply endorsement, nor to confuse people into thinking you're selling their product.
It would be an interesting legal case because even though Automatic may have been using the phrase in an allowable way, the result did create confusion in customers. Customers aren't reading the full sentences of the article, they're using Google to find something, clicking "buy", and then later contacting WP Engine for support for something they bought from Automatic. That's proof of the confusion that Automatic created.
>The trademark dispute here is the use of the phrase "Advanced Custom Fields" in Automatic's marketing and on their website, as illustrated in the picture just above that section of the article.
Yes, I read that section. But two things. I feel like that's restating the same point I was already making as though it were an elaboration, which is frustrating. Yes, they are using the disputed terms, not just "Advanced Custom Fields" but also "WP Engine".
And secondly, it may be true in some notional sense that doing such a thing as using the term just in a comparative reference to something else (e.g. OpenOffice vs Microsoft Office) is fair use. But that's not what Automattic is doing, which is precisely why it's puzzling that invoking that sense of "fair use" is their response to a charge that is about their use in a much more specifically commercial context.
> The trademark dispute here is the use of the phrase "Advanced Custom Fields" in Automatic's marketing and on their website, as illustrated in the picture just above that section of the article.
No, it's not about ACF and has nothing to do with the company WP Engine. This is a trademark dispute about WP Fusion Lite from the company named Very Good Plugins.
Beyond the point that custom fields are pretty much always advanced, there has to be a point at which a term is so fundamentally non-specific that it cannot be subject to trademark.
I mean. The situation is actually very simple. WordPress.com has a “business/pro” plan that lets you install plugins. Lower level plans do not allow that. (WordPress.com was initially just a big multisite with everyone’s blogs running off the same WP instance. That would only work securely if you disable custom code.)
So this paid business plan is just normal WordPress hosting where you get plugins and advanced features like SSH access.
WordPress.com also has a re-skinned admin experience that is more modern looking than wp-admin.
Within the past couple years, WordPress.com extended that modern skin to the plugins page. It’s (as far as I know) data from the core plugin repo, just with a more modern look/experience. In fact, the WordPress.com code for this is totally open source.
I’m not 100% sure how that’s not fair use — any WP host could do that to the plugin page of WP that they install. Other hosts just tend to be more hands off.
I'm interpreting this as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek response to what Matt is doing. Matt has been trying to walk back all of his claims about open source and private equity and pretend it's all a trademark dispute. Well, he doesn't have a leg to stand on for that argument either.
And the whole trademark thing is... frankly just incredibly lame in the first place. "Going nuclear" and trying to launch a public crusade is one thing if there was an actual moral high ground at play. But even if you are in the right... average people do not care about your trademark claims. Do it with lawyers behind closed doors.
Attacking your userbase and buying out employees over... a trademark? Shutting your mouth was free, as is admitting you were wrong.
I could understand a trademark issue if he had done this the second WP Engine opened business, but it is WAY too late to claim they are now defending their trademark. His legal council must be externally contracted yes men getting paid by the hour because there is no way a lawyer with equity would have said this was a good idea. I also suspect he did all this without talking to legal first :slapforhead:
Tl;dr Wordpress.com has a sketchily-authorized copy of the Wordpress.org plugin directory that’s used as a funnel into signing up for a Wordpress.com hosting account. This was causing the author problems because it has better google rankings than the .org, and they were getting support requests from people who thought buying a plan on Wordpress.com meant they got the premium version of their plugin. So they C&D’d Automattic to remove them from the copied directory.
This is only related to the recent WP Engine drama insofar as the author says it made them lose trust in Matt.
> This is only related to the recent WP Engine drama insofar as the author says it made them lose trust in Matt.
I think that's understating the situation a bit, because the WP Engine drama was the provocation for the current action. Very Good Plugins learned of the WP Fusion copy in September 2023 but did nothing about it until October 2024.
"I didn’t want to start a legal dispute with Automattic and possibly damage our reputation. And, generally, I trusted Matt. I assumed he had a competent legal team that had already reviewed the legality of copying our plugins, and that he was acting in the best interest of the community."
I’m amazed that Matt got away with claiming the Wordpress.org/.com duality for so long. Recent events have revealed that the dividing line between the two is virtually non-existent and Mullenweg used whichever organization was most convenient for pushing his agenda at the moment. M
Mullenweg’s recent attempt to dunk on DHH for not capturing enough value from the Rails community is the most succinct mask-off moment of the recent events, in my opinion. He thought he was making a great point by criticizing DHH for not being extractive enough from the rails community. Instead, he only revealed his true thought process about how being at the center of an open source community should be a license to extract from said community. Really puts recent events into perspective.
At least for me, the ".com .org duality" looked OK, because the existence of The WordPress Foundation as a non profit which owned trademarks, and the as it turns out incorrect assumption that they owned and ran the .org platform.
The revelation that Matt considers he personally owns wordpress.org outright and can do whatever he chooses there even if it's diametrically opposed to the Foundations stated goals, dramatically changes the risk evaluation in relying on anything to do with Wordpress.
not that it should matter in "principle", but the stupid thing to me is that he's not some small time developer trying to make ends meet. he's extracted quite a bit from from it... in the hundreds of millions, but it's still not enough.
i could even understand if he suddenly went full value extraction mode. there are ways to do it ruthlessly and coldly, but his actions have this angle of being petty as well.
his blatant disregard for WP users while trying to gaslight them into thinking he's their champion, general "assholery" (for lack of a better word) to those who have been in the ecosystem for a long time who dissent.
>Mullenweg’s recent attempt to dunk on DHH for not capturing enough value from the Rails community is the most succinct mask-off moment of the recent events, in my opinion. He thought he was making a great point by criticizing DHH for not being extractive enough from the rails community.
Is it possible to do a short version or medium version summary of that, and/or a link where I can find out more?
Is Wordpress dying? This kind of infighting is usually a sign of a shrinking market and stagnating product.
In haven’t used Wordpress in probably fifteen years. Back then its main quality was ease of setup on prevailing hosting environments of the day. Everything else was a horrible mess that was patched over with plugins that did far too much with too little support from the system. It felt like the MS-DOS of web publishing.
Did they ever graduate to a “Windows NT” stage, or is today’s Wordpress still the same PHP hairball?
> is today’s Wordpress still the same PHP hairball?
PHP has moved on, but WordPress hasn't.
Lots of long-EOLed PHP 5 shared hosting installs sitting out there, and they take great strides to keep things compatible as a result. No composer, global classes all over, etc.
Yes; WordPress is trademarked. WP is not. WordPress's trademark policy, until late last month, stated "The abbreviation 'WP' is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit."
Readit News
Their letter makes it sound like they are "identifying" it, like a bird watcher pointing to a bird or something. But they copied, re-hosted it and are, or were, offering it as part of the value proposition for which people should pay. I'll admit I'm fuzzy on fair use as anything more than a general concept but it's hard for me to square that one.
That part is absolutely fine and is covered in the original article under "Wait, aren’t WordPress plugins open source and free to modify": ( https://wpfusion.com/business/regarding-our-cease-and-desist... ) You can copy, fork, and even "sell" free software if you like, as long as you comply with its license terms.
This is a trademark dispute, not a copyright dispute.
The trademark dispute here is the use of the phrase "Advanced Custom Fields" in Automatic's marketing and on their website, as illustrated in the picture just above that section of the article. Automatic's core response is probably correct in a technical detail: e.g. in marketing for "Open Office Sheets", you are allowed to say "Open Office Sheets is better than Microsoft Office Excel because..." Even though "Microsoft Office Excel" is trademarked by Microsoft, you're using the name to draw clear distinctions, not to imply endorsement, nor to confuse people into thinking you're selling their product.
It would be an interesting legal case because even though Automatic may have been using the phrase in an allowable way, the result did create confusion in customers. Customers aren't reading the full sentences of the article, they're using Google to find something, clicking "buy", and then later contacting WP Engine for support for something they bought from Automatic. That's proof of the confusion that Automatic created.
Yes, I read that section. But two things. I feel like that's restating the same point I was already making as though it were an elaboration, which is frustrating. Yes, they are using the disputed terms, not just "Advanced Custom Fields" but also "WP Engine".
And secondly, it may be true in some notional sense that doing such a thing as using the term just in a comparative reference to something else (e.g. OpenOffice vs Microsoft Office) is fair use. But that's not what Automattic is doing, which is precisely why it's puzzling that invoking that sense of "fair use" is their response to a charge that is about their use in a much more specifically commercial context.
The legal term for this is nominative use [1] - sometimes "nominative fair use", although it's unrelated to the doctrine of fair use in copyright law.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use
No, it's not about ACF and has nothing to do with the company WP Engine. This is a trademark dispute about WP Fusion Lite from the company named Very Good Plugins.
Beyond the point that custom fields are pretty much always advanced, there has to be a point at which a term is so fundamentally non-specific that it cannot be subject to trademark.
I just think it's bloody madness sometimes.
So this paid business plan is just normal WordPress hosting where you get plugins and advanced features like SSH access.
WordPress.com also has a re-skinned admin experience that is more modern looking than wp-admin.
Within the past couple years, WordPress.com extended that modern skin to the plugins page. It’s (as far as I know) data from the core plugin repo, just with a more modern look/experience. In fact, the WordPress.com code for this is totally open source.
I’m not 100% sure how that’s not fair use — any WP host could do that to the plugin page of WP that they install. Other hosts just tend to be more hands off.
Also, you cannot install most plugins on wordpress.com unless you're on the business plan.
And the whole trademark thing is... frankly just incredibly lame in the first place. "Going nuclear" and trying to launch a public crusade is one thing if there was an actual moral high ground at play. But even if you are in the right... average people do not care about your trademark claims. Do it with lawyers behind closed doors.
Attacking your userbase and buying out employees over... a trademark? Shutting your mouth was free, as is admitting you were wrong.
I could understand a trademark issue if he had done this the second WP Engine opened business, but it is WAY too late to claim they are now defending their trademark. His legal council must be externally contracted yes men getting paid by the hour because there is no way a lawyer with equity would have said this was a good idea. I also suspect he did all this without talking to legal first :slapforhead:
This is only related to the recent WP Engine drama insofar as the author says it made them lose trust in Matt.
I think that's understating the situation a bit, because the WP Engine drama was the provocation for the current action. Very Good Plugins learned of the WP Fusion copy in September 2023 but did nothing about it until October 2024.
"I didn’t want to start a legal dispute with Automattic and possibly damage our reputation. And, generally, I trusted Matt. I assumed he had a competent legal team that had already reviewed the legality of copying our plugins, and that he was acting in the best interest of the community."
Mullenweg’s recent attempt to dunk on DHH for not capturing enough value from the Rails community is the most succinct mask-off moment of the recent events, in my opinion. He thought he was making a great point by criticizing DHH for not being extractive enough from the rails community. Instead, he only revealed his true thought process about how being at the center of an open source community should be a license to extract from said community. Really puts recent events into perspective.
The revelation that Matt considers he personally owns wordpress.org outright and can do whatever he chooses there even if it's diametrically opposed to the Foundations stated goals, dramatically changes the risk evaluation in relying on anything to do with Wordpress.
i could even understand if he suddenly went full value extraction mode. there are ways to do it ruthlessly and coldly, but his actions have this angle of being petty as well.
his blatant disregard for WP users while trying to gaslight them into thinking he's their champion, general "assholery" (for lack of a better word) to those who have been in the ecosystem for a long time who dissent.
i guess the mask is truly off.
Is it possible to do a short version or medium version summary of that, and/or a link where I can find out more?
In haven’t used Wordpress in probably fifteen years. Back then its main quality was ease of setup on prevailing hosting environments of the day. Everything else was a horrible mess that was patched over with plugins that did far too much with too little support from the system. It felt like the MS-DOS of web publishing.
Did they ever graduate to a “Windows NT” stage, or is today’s Wordpress still the same PHP hairball?
PHP has moved on, but WordPress hasn't.
Lots of long-EOLed PHP 5 shared hosting installs sitting out there, and they take great strides to keep things compatible as a result. No composer, global classes all over, etc.
What if I licensed WordPress?
"WP Fusion" is also, apparently, a trademark.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment