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If like Matt says, they contribute little back to Wordpress then I am with Automattic on this. If you're a tiny org, you don't need to contribute back. But if y

by jeswin 2y ago

If like Matt says, they contribute little back to Wordpress then I am with Automattic on this. If you're a tiny org, you don't need to contribute back. But if you're making half a billion in revenue every year on top of someone else's tech, you need to stay involved and contribute back in a very significant way. Now one could say that the license allows that and it's legal. Sure, but so is cutting their free access off. If WPEngine is just leeching and spending nothing on improving the product, there's no way anyone can compete with them on price. Open Source is expensive, people need to be paid. Bottom line: Size matters. Meta's company-size based licensing (as seen in Llama) is a step in the right direction. FOSS projects should adopt it more widely where it matters.

_cenw 2y ago
This is a horrible way to go about it though. WP Engine users are still WordPress users, and cutting them off without notice is very shitty. I wouldn't trust WordPress for anything after this, if all that it takes to cut you off from updates - potentially security updates - is Matt Mullenweg not liking you (or your ISP).
- cies 2y ago
  They could move their sites over to the WordPress.com, can't they? Since they offer competing services in the first place.
  - RealStickman_ 2y ago
    Is that supposed to make this blatantly anti-competitive behaviour okay?
    - cies 2y ago
      Sorry? Their service is... their service! They can extend of refuse service to whom they want. Automattic is releasing source code, which, in my book, is being super friendly to competitors. It seems to me you are holding the good guys (that release under FLOSS licenses) to a higher standard than any other company that keeps the source to them selves.
      - n3storm 2y ago
        WordPress.org is not "apparently" Automattic
        cies 2y ago
        That happens everywhere. https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*OVEEYB4HsCIHQLcUuDf3Hw.png https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*OVEEYB4H...
      - ValentineC 2y ago
        > Automattic is releasing source code, which, in my book, is being super friendly to competitors. WordPress is a GPL project.
        cies 2y ago
        the code is GPL. services (like the plugin registry, but there are many more) cannot be GPL. they are served by someone and that someone pays for hosting/bandwidth/etc and that someone is free to stop providing that service (to one party or all together).
    - consteval 2y ago
      How is it anti-competitive to stop people smashing your APIs? That shit costs money man. It's not free to provide web resources to hundreds of thousands of people. WPE is essentially DDOSing WP for free. Obviously that shit doesn't fly. Either pay up or get your own server and host your own shit.
      - cies 2y ago
        I dont know why you are down voted. I feel exactly the same about it.
        consteval 2y ago
        Most likely my tone, but I'm frustrated because I don't even understand how this is a conversation. If any one of us was hosting a FREE service and some corporation came around and hit us with hundreds of thousands of requests, we too would demand money or ban them. Any one of us. So I really, truly, don't understand why we're all sitting here having this conversation.
  - _cenw 2y ago
    WPCOM is a very limited WordPress - much more limited than Mullenweg is accusing WP Engine of being. The real competitor in Automattics portfolio is Pressable. Who are currently running a poaching campaign on their frontpage.
    - batuhanicoz 2y ago
      WordPress.com started out as a WordPressµ (WordPress Multi User) provider. Just a place for people to quickly start their own blogs, mainly hosted on a WordPress.com subdomain. To learn more about WordPress MU: https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_MU https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_MU "WordPress hosting" is a relatively new option on WordPress.com. Pressable is a more advanced WordPress hosting provider, built by Automattic. Disclaimer: I work at Automattic.
      - prox 2y ago
        Obviously you don’t have to answer, but it feels like with Pressable as a product, WPE suddenly became a big competitor to the bottom line. It is here where the optics suddenly become shady. Like WPE has been running like they do for years, and now suddenly it is a big problem? Like why now? Personally I also don’t like that the .org suddenly becomes weaponized. If this can be done to WPE, it can be done to anyone else really.
    - benatkin 2y ago
      Their title is fitting at least: "Truly Incredible WordPress Hosting by Pressable". Yes, it's hard to believe their antics.
  - dncornholio 2y ago
    WordPress.com is actually doing the exact shady things that WP Engine does. Confusing WordPress.org users that they need a paid account to run WordPress.
    - cies 2y ago
      You need to pay for hosting right? Nothing new. Sure WP also has some freemium model, but I do not consider that shady. Have you seen the Automattic CEO talk (link to YT in other comment in this thread). I dont think he's in shady business: he's releasing loads of source code under the GPL!
      - thekid314 2y ago
        He’s also using the foundations copyright to target the primary competitor to his for-profit business, demanding that they invest in the profits of the for-profit company, at the expense of the WordPress open-source community. None of this looks altruistic or for the good of wordpress.org.
  - mikeyinternews 2y ago
    WPE isn't cheap and subscriptions are typically yearly contracts, so it's not that simple for those operating on a specific budget
  - lolinder 2y ago
    And herein lies the conflict of interest. WordPress.org is acting in the interests of Automattic at the expense of the community.
  - dazc 2y ago
    If wordpress.com offered a good product then the likes of wpengine, kinsta, etc would never have gotten off the ground.
- bachmeier 2y ago
  If you're running a large business and you don't have a plan in case a free resource provided by someone else goes away, you shouldn't be in business. It really is that simple.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    “The market is merciless” is something a business should always keep in mind, at least when their existence isn’t guaranteed for some reason.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    OP isn't talking about large businesses, they're talking about the hundreds of thousands of small businesses using WP Engine as a host.
    - bachmeier 2y ago
      Those small businesses are purchasing something from WP Engine. It's up to WP Engine to deliver, and it's ridiculous if a company that size fails to deliver because they were freeloading without having a backup plan in place. The fault is entirely on WP Engine (who sold the service) not Wordpress (who made no promises at all to WP Engine customers).
      - lolinder 2y ago
        So it's okay for WordPress.org to damage a bunch of WordPress users because they're not customers of Automattic and therefore WordPress.org has no obligations to them? It's this kind of blurring of lines between Automattic and the foundation that has people very very concerned here.
        Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
        Yes it's OK. Free Software means that users have freedoms, not that the developer is obliged to provide them free services forever.
dncornholio 2y ago
Where does it state that if you profit x amount of profit you should contribute back? What is the maximum amount of profit you can make?
- cies 2y ago
  Do they have to state it? I think you simply get a phone call to pony up some cash when Automattic has you on their radar.
- jeswin 2y ago
  > Where does it state that if you profit x amount of profit you should contribute back? It doesn't. But it doesn't say anywhere that you should get resources (like storage and compute) for free either. > What is the maximum amount of profit you can make? I don't know. But I can argue that someone bringing in 500 million a year in revenue should be acting differently from someone bringing in 500k a year. If they contribute back little or nothing, no other player (such as Automattic) who contributes back will be able to compete with them.
- prox 2y ago
  Apparently that’s Matts problem, he says Automattic is giving a lot more back (4000 hours or so) and WPE is doing like 40 hours. So yeah, is WPE in the right to not give back? At the heart of this is the same song of making money and the idea of fairness. I honestly don’t know the groundrules here.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    ethically or legally? because they both matter, but they are decided in the court of public opinion and of law, respectively, but only one carries actual fiscal weight.
    - prox 2y ago
      Personally, and I need to read more, is that ethically the problem lies with sharing. Is Matt/automattic ethically obliged due compensation? I think not. WP Engine is its own company like automattic. Would it grace WPE if they do compensate with money or resources? Obviously, but then you might also want to put them in the foundation oversee committee if they do half of the work. The law, I have no idea in what direction this is going to go!
yreg 2y ago
If you have such expectations then clearly state the rules. - individuals and companies under $a yearly revenue can use the product for free - companies under $b have to pay $x - companies under $c have to pay $y Pretending that something is free to use and then getting disappointed when someone rich indeed uses that thing for free and fighting with them doesn't help anyone at all. (This is not specific to Wordpress.)
- lnxg33k1 2y ago
  I feel like there could be little need for rules if people had a little common sense, then if you have targets, other start doing the bare minimum, I'd rather have parasites like WPEngine put off
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    I agree, if I would making bookoo bucks off of someone else’s “open”platform, you could be 100% sure I would be feeding the golden goose some grain to build some rapport. If I’m playing with it in my homelab, maybe not so much but try occasionally to donate if it’s an OSS project that $10-50 makes a difference for.
    - eli 2y ago
      And if you didn't want to do that it would be appropriate for the OSS project to retaliate?
      - consteval 2y ago
        It's not retaliation to revoke free access to your web resources. If I scrape some website, I could be IP banned at any time. That's just how it goes. It's one thing to use web resources on a small scale, as a user. It's another to milk them dry and practically DDOS their servers. That can, and will, get you banned. Open source or not.
        nijave 2y ago
martin_a 2y ago
> If you're a tiny org, you don't need to contribute back. But if you're making [...] contribute back in a very significant way. I'd like to see the price list on this beforehand, so I can decide whether I want to be a tiny org or a big one. Where's that pricelist?
- consteval 2y ago
  You don't get one. It's a matter of discretion. Don't be an asshole and you won't have problems. You'll find that the real world is filled to the brim with exceptions, discretion, and the under-the-table deals. The ones who succeed know how to coax and build them. The ones who fail demand hard rules. Typically, those "hard rules" start at 0, and you get nothing.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > Don't be an asshole and you won't have problems. Unless you accidentally end up doing business with an asshole. Matt is definitely making himself look like a danger to do business with—maybe WP Engine just successfully baited him into acting against his community and killing trust and he's not actually as unhinged as he sounds here... but few people would be willing to bet money on that.
    - consteval 2y ago
      > end up doing business That's the point, they weren't doing business. They were issuing presumably hundreds of thousands of requests a day and not offering a penny. You will get banned for that on absolutely any service. Any of them, GPL or not.
      - lolinder 2y ago
        That's not the complaint that Matt made against them, though. His complaint in public is all about trademarks and revisions, but then when they sent him a cease and desist asking him to cut it out he decided to cut them off of the plugins store to hit their customers (who are WordPress users).
Sebb767 2y ago
> Meta's company-size based licensing (as seen in Llama) is a step in the right direction. We have been bitten by that hard in the past. As a small company (a few students, hardly 5 figure revenue) we've sold our product to a known household-brand to use as a gadget for an exhibition. In said product, we used a library that used revenue-based licensing. For some reason, the company behind that library heard of us having scored that customer and suddenly demanded insane amount of licensing fees. Luckily, the purchasing department of the customer offered to handle this and negotiate a deal; otherwise, this could have immediately sunk our company.
mrkramer 2y ago
>If you're a tiny org, you don't need to contribute back. But if you're making half a billion in revenue every year on top of someone else's tech, you need to stay involved and contribute back in a very significant way. For example Sony sold more than 100 million units of PS4 and made billions of dollars from it and how much they contributed to the open source projects they've used in PS4? Take a look at OSS projects used in PS4: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/oss/ps4/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/oss/ps4/ Did they contribute anything? Did they contribute 100% enough or just 20% or 30%? If the software is open sourced and if license allows you to do anything with it then you are indeed free to do anything with it including selling products which include OSS.
- hobofan 2y ago
  1. This is pure whataboutism. Just because Sony doesn't contribute (I don't know whether they do or don't), doesn't make it right. 2. There is obviously a difference between "selling products that include OSS" and "selling OSS 1:1". It's not like Sony's firmware/dashboard is maintained by "OpenGamingConsoleDashboard" and they are selling a 95% repackage of that to their end users (also ignoring the hardware). This pertains to the software maintenance logistics layer and not the licensing layer. Sure, both in the Sony and WPEngine cases they are in the clear on the licensing, but that doesn't make for sustainable development of the underlying software. I'd also wager that if the OSS projects used in the PS4 would drum up enough of a social media stink, they'd have decent chances of getting some compensation (e.g. the TLDraw maintainers did that quite a few times successfully).
  - KomoD 2y ago
    They're not "selling OSS 1:1", they're selling managed hosting.
- consteval 2y ago
  You're free to do it but nobody has to help you certainly. Ultimately it's a matter of common sense. Sure, if I leave out my "take one" bowl on Halloween and someone takes it all, there's no rules against that. But next year I might be more cautious and hand out the candy myself - now what? If you've built a business off taking all my candy and reselling it, you're fucked! If you had just been less greedy and taken, say, 10 instead of the whole bowl I might not have cared.
rpgbr 2y ago
Under GPLv2, WP Engine has no obligation of pay the ransom Matt is demanding no matter the revenue they make.
- sinkasapa 2y ago
  As far as I could tell, they weren't denied use of the code, just a bunch of other services that are not covered by the GPLv2.
- teruakohatu 2y ago
  But nor does the WordPress foundation need to allow WP Engine, or any user, access to the plugin library. Chromium is Open Source, but Google is not required to allow Add On store access (even if they tolerate it from chromium forks).
  - Touche 2y ago
    Requiring they pay the for-profit company to access non-profit resources seems problematic.
- tylermenezes 2y ago
  GPLv2 licenses the Wordpress code, not trademarks or the right to use Automattic's APIs.
  - ValentineC 2y ago
    Before this week, I didn't realise that the WordPress.org servers and plugin repositories fell under Automattic, and not WordPress Foundation. Some clarity would be nice.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
n3storm 2y ago
I wonder how much does Automattic contribute to the PHP, MySQL, MariaDB, jQuery, ... organizations?
- desas 2y ago
  * https://thephp.foundation/ one of three platinum level sponsors * MySQL doesn't take sponsorships afaict * https://mariadb.org/about/#stakeholders one of several silver sponsors of MariaDB * https://x.com/SlexAxton/status/1839091643338862828 "I was on the board of the jQuery foundation during some of the glory years and @photomatt was the ~largest donor"
georgehotelling 2y ago
What's the economic incentive for WP Engine to give back? They have a moral duty, sure, but as a business where is the profit? Anything they contribute to core will immediately be available to their competitors, so the naive read is that there's no competitive advantage in contributing back. However, if they can influence the direction of the project, they can align it with your business goals. That gives them a competitive advantage, that gives them an incentive. The challenge is that Matt is acting as a BDFL of the open source project. If Matt doesn't want your change added, your change isn't going to get added. There is no one to appeal to, Matt has absolute authority over the code that goes into the open source project that WP Engine's business is built on. Matt is also the CEO of WP Engine's competitor, Automattic. This conflict of interest has come to a head in the past week and shone a spotlight on the lack of community stewardship of the WordPress project. Keep in mind that Automattic requires its employees to get approval for any paid side gigs related to software because Matt believes that it creates conflicts of interest. You cannot work on WordPress for Automattic during the day and then freelance making paid WordPress plugins at night, due to the misaligned incentives. The fact that Matt isn't being paid a salary for his work on WordPress is irrelevant, given Automattic's equity is tied to the value of WordPress. I think private equity skews heavily towards value extraction over value creation. I think that people who build businesses off of open source have a moral obligation to give back to the projects. I think that giving Automattic money to spend on WP core work will make WordPress better. However, breaking the trust of the community does exponentially more damage to the future of WordPress than any freeloading company. The community trusts that the trademark licenses will not change to target them. The community trusts that their software will benefit from security updates and the plugin ecosystem. That trust is the foundation of WordPress and this week's actions have done damage. Matt talked about going nuclear, and I think that the metaphor is apt, because when the smoke clears we may be left with no winners. (I'm a former Automattic employee who roots for open source, WordPress, Automattic, and the vision of the open web Matt Mullenweg has shared.)
- digging 2y ago
  > What's the economic incentive for WP Engine to give back? They have a moral duty, sure, but as a business where is the profit? Avoiding this exact situation which kills their business
ankleturtle 2y ago
> But if you're making half a billion in revenue every year on top of someone else's tech, you need to stay involved and contribute back in a very significant way. Revenue is a red herring. It is not an appropriate measure to determine if and how much one should contribute to an open source project. Instead, we should measure the need to contribute by the burden one places on the project. Do you request features or bug fixes? Contribute appropriately. Do you request support? Contribute appropriately. Do you simply copy, install, and run the existing software? No need to contribute.
sunir 2y ago
If you go down this path of creating rules that say people should pay to use open source, you’ll discover there are already laws in place sufficient to manage this situation. If a project uses these laws, then you’ll complain the project isn’t open source. If you prefer the capricious nature of the politics of social shaming instead of the rules based system of laws and courts, I guess that is being consistent even if the actual process is very inconsistent and unpredictable. If not, then it’s not clear to me how you’re taking a philosophical stance about open source if you’re demanding payment. Those ideas don’t work together.
YPPH 2y ago
>But if you're making half a billion in revenue every year on top of someone else's tech, you need to stay involved and contribute back in a very significant way. Where does the GPL state this requirement? It doesn't. If WordPress doesn't like this, they should have licenced their software under the AGPL or some other licence with stronger copylefting. Plenty of large commercial entities use BSD licenced software and make a fortune off the software, with little given in return. Take FreeBSD and the significant commercial operations it drives. They never whinge. Because that's the choice they made, and they stick to their principles.
- tsurba 2y ago
  GPL doesn’t, but as others have already said, this discussion is not about that. If they want to keep using someone else’s free server capacity, maybe they should be giving something in return.
  - InsomniacL 2y ago
    If you're providing your servers for free and include them as the primary update mechanism to an open source project for millions of websites, maybe you shouldn't use that as an extortion mechanism holding millions of websites hostage. Taking away access to those servers is one thing, doing it without warning putting millions of sites at risk is another.
supermatt 2y ago
Totally agree with you. That is the issue at the heart of the situation. WP engine aren't keeping up with their moral obligations to fund WP development or associated services, so Matt is clearly trying to strong-arm them into doing so. First they were asked to contribute fairly - which they refused and then they were called out on, then they were told that they cant call their fork of wordpress "wordpress" (technically no different than selling an android phone and calling it an iphone) without paying for a license - so they decide to threaten legal action, and now they have been cut off from free access to wordpress services. They are nothing but money-grubbing hundred-billion-dollar private-equity parasites, who are trying (and seemingly succeeding on HN...) to distort the perspective on the whole situation. Its clear to me that matt isnt after their revenue, he just wants them to play fairly and support wordpress as others do.
thrownaway561 2y ago
As someone who wrote OS software in the past and had little no people contributing back except the core team, i total disagree. If you write OS and put it out there for the world to use, you should be doing it because you want to _give_ to the world. you should not expect _anything_ in return. the is the essences of giving, to not expect something back. if Matt wants WPEngine to require a contribution to WordPRess, then he should relicense it under a license that requires this or close the code and charge subscriptions. what he is doing is giving a bad name the OS community in general. this is not how you act.

by jeswin 2y ago

_cenw 2y ago

This is a horrible way to go about it though. WP Engine users are still WordPress users, and cutting them off without notice is very shitty. I wouldn't trust WordPress for anything after this, if all that it takes to cut you off from updates - potentially security updates - is Matt Mullenweg not liking you (or your ISP).

cies 2y ago
They could move their sites over to the WordPress.com, can't they? Since they offer competing services in the first place.
- RealStickman_ 2y ago
  Is that supposed to make this blatantly anti-competitive behaviour okay?
  - cies 2y ago
    Sorry? Their service is... their service! They can extend of refuse service to whom they want. Automattic is releasing source code, which, in my book, is being super friendly to competitors. It seems to me you are holding the good guys (that release under FLOSS licenses) to a higher standard than any other company that keeps the source to them selves.
    - n3storm 2y ago
      WordPress.org is not "apparently" Automattic
      - cies 2y ago
        That happens everywhere. https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*OVEEYB4HsCIHQLcUuDf3Hw.png https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*OVEEYB4H...
    - ValentineC 2y ago
      > Automattic is releasing source code, which, in my book, is being super friendly to competitors. WordPress is a GPL project.
      - cies 2y ago
        the code is GPL. services (like the plugin registry, but there are many more) cannot be GPL. they are served by someone and that someone pays for hosting/bandwidth/etc and that someone is free to stop providing that service (to one party or all together).
  - consteval 2y ago
    How is it anti-competitive to stop people smashing your APIs? That shit costs money man. It's not free to provide web resources to hundreds of thousands of people. WPE is essentially DDOSing WP for free. Obviously that shit doesn't fly. Either pay up or get your own server and host your own shit.
    - cies 2y ago
      I dont know why you are down voted. I feel exactly the same about it.
      - consteval 2y ago
        Most likely my tone, but I'm frustrated because I don't even understand how this is a conversation. If any one of us was hosting a FREE service and some corporation came around and hit us with hundreds of thousands of requests, we too would demand money or ban them. Any one of us. So I really, truly, don't understand why we're all sitting here having this conversation.
- _cenw 2y ago
  WPCOM is a very limited WordPress - much more limited than Mullenweg is accusing WP Engine of being. The real competitor in Automattics portfolio is Pressable. Who are currently running a poaching campaign on their frontpage.
  - batuhanicoz 2y ago
    WordPress.com started out as a WordPressµ (WordPress Multi User) provider. Just a place for people to quickly start their own blogs, mainly hosted on a WordPress.com subdomain. To learn more about WordPress MU: https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_MU https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_MU "WordPress hosting" is a relatively new option on WordPress.com. Pressable is a more advanced WordPress hosting provider, built by Automattic. Disclaimer: I work at Automattic.
    - prox 2y ago
      Obviously you don’t have to answer, but it feels like with Pressable as a product, WPE suddenly became a big competitor to the bottom line. It is here where the optics suddenly become shady. Like WPE has been running like they do for years, and now suddenly it is a big problem? Like why now? Personally I also don’t like that the .org suddenly becomes weaponized. If this can be done to WPE, it can be done to anyone else really.
  - benatkin 2y ago
    Their title is fitting at least: "Truly Incredible WordPress Hosting by Pressable". Yes, it's hard to believe their antics.
- dncornholio 2y ago
  WordPress.com is actually doing the exact shady things that WP Engine does. Confusing WordPress.org users that they need a paid account to run WordPress.
  - cies 2y ago
    You need to pay for hosting right? Nothing new. Sure WP also has some freemium model, but I do not consider that shady. Have you seen the Automattic CEO talk (link to YT in other comment in this thread). I dont think he's in shady business: he's releasing loads of source code under the GPL!
    - thekid314 2y ago
      He’s also using the foundations copyright to target the primary competitor to his for-profit business, demanding that they invest in the profits of the for-profit company, at the expense of the WordPress open-source community. None of this looks altruistic or for the good of wordpress.org.
- mikeyinternews 2y ago
  WPE isn't cheap and subscriptions are typically yearly contracts, so it's not that simple for those operating on a specific budget
- lolinder 2y ago
  And herein lies the conflict of interest. WordPress.org is acting in the interests of Automattic at the expense of the community.
- dazc 2y ago
  If wordpress.com offered a good product then the likes of wpengine, kinsta, etc would never have gotten off the ground.
bachmeier 2y ago
If you're running a large business and you don't have a plan in case a free resource provided by someone else goes away, you shouldn't be in business. It really is that simple.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  “The market is merciless” is something a business should always keep in mind, at least when their existence isn’t guaranteed for some reason.
- lolinder 2y ago
  OP isn't talking about large businesses, they're talking about the hundreds of thousands of small businesses using WP Engine as a host.
  - bachmeier 2y ago
    Those small businesses are purchasing something from WP Engine. It's up to WP Engine to deliver, and it's ridiculous if a company that size fails to deliver because they were freeloading without having a backup plan in place. The fault is entirely on WP Engine (who sold the service) not Wordpress (who made no promises at all to WP Engine customers).
    - lolinder 2y ago
      So it's okay for WordPress.org to damage a bunch of WordPress users because they're not customers of Automattic and therefore WordPress.org has no obligations to them? It's this kind of blurring of lines between Automattic and the foundation that has people very very concerned here.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
        Yes it's OK. Free Software means that users have freedoms, not that the developer is obliged to provide them free services forever.

dncornholio 2y ago

Where does it state that if you profit x amount of profit you should contribute back? What is the maximum amount of profit you can make?

cies 2y ago
Do they have to state it? I think you simply get a phone call to pony up some cash when Automattic has you on their radar.
jeswin 2y ago
> Where does it state that if you profit x amount of profit you should contribute back? It doesn't. But it doesn't say anywhere that you should get resources (like storage and compute) for free either. > What is the maximum amount of profit you can make? I don't know. But I can argue that someone bringing in 500 million a year in revenue should be acting differently from someone bringing in 500k a year. If they contribute back little or nothing, no other player (such as Automattic) who contributes back will be able to compete with them.
prox 2y ago
Apparently that’s Matts problem, he says Automattic is giving a lot more back (4000 hours or so) and WPE is doing like 40 hours. So yeah, is WPE in the right to not give back? At the heart of this is the same song of making money and the idea of fairness. I honestly don’t know the groundrules here.
- fragmede 2y ago
  ethically or legally? because they both matter, but they are decided in the court of public opinion and of law, respectively, but only one carries actual fiscal weight.
  - prox 2y ago
    Personally, and I need to read more, is that ethically the problem lies with sharing. Is Matt/automattic ethically obliged due compensation? I think not. WP Engine is its own company like automattic. Would it grace WPE if they do compensate with money or resources? Obviously, but then you might also want to put them in the foundation oversee committee if they do half of the work. The law, I have no idea in what direction this is going to go!

yreg 2y ago

If you have such expectations then clearly state the rules. - individuals and companies under $a yearly revenue can use the product for free - companies under $b have to pay $x - companies under $c have to pay $y Pretending that something is free to use and then getting disappointed when someone rich indeed uses that thing for free and fighting with them doesn't help anyone at all. (This is not specific to Wordpress.)

lnxg33k1 2y ago
I feel like there could be little need for rules if people had a little common sense, then if you have targets, other start doing the bare minimum, I'd rather have parasites like WPEngine put off
- EasyMark 2y ago
  I agree, if I would making bookoo bucks off of someone else’s “open”platform, you could be 100% sure I would be feeding the golden goose some grain to build some rapport. If I’m playing with it in my homelab, maybe not so much but try occasionally to donate if it’s an OSS project that $10-50 makes a difference for.
  - eli 2y ago
    And if you didn't want to do that it would be appropriate for the OSS project to retaliate?
    - consteval 2y ago
      It's not retaliation to revoke free access to your web resources. If I scrape some website, I could be IP banned at any time. That's just how it goes. It's one thing to use web resources on a small scale, as a user. It's another to milk them dry and practically DDOS their servers. That can, and will, get you banned. Open source or not.
      - nijave 2y ago

martin_a 2y ago

> If you're a tiny org, you don't need to contribute back. But if you're making [...] contribute back in a very significant way. I'd like to see the price list on this beforehand, so I can decide whether I want to be a tiny org or a big one. Where's that pricelist?

consteval 2y ago
You don't get one. It's a matter of discretion. Don't be an asshole and you won't have problems. You'll find that the real world is filled to the brim with exceptions, discretion, and the under-the-table deals. The ones who succeed know how to coax and build them. The ones who fail demand hard rules. Typically, those "hard rules" start at 0, and you get nothing.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > Don't be an asshole and you won't have problems. Unless you accidentally end up doing business with an asshole. Matt is definitely making himself look like a danger to do business with—maybe WP Engine just successfully baited him into acting against his community and killing trust and he's not actually as unhinged as he sounds here... but few people would be willing to bet money on that.
  - consteval 2y ago
    > end up doing business That's the point, they weren't doing business. They were issuing presumably hundreds of thousands of requests a day and not offering a penny. You will get banned for that on absolutely any service. Any of them, GPL or not.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      That's not the complaint that Matt made against them, though. His complaint in public is all about trademarks and revisions, but then when they sent him a cease and desist asking him to cut it out he decided to cut them off of the plugins store to hit their customers (who are WordPress users).

Sebb767 2y ago

> Meta's company-size based licensing (as seen in Llama) is a step in the right direction. We have been bitten by that hard in the past. As a small company (a few students, hardly 5 figure revenue) we've sold our product to a known household-brand to use as a gadget for an exhibition. In said product, we used a library that used revenue-based licensing. For some reason, the company behind that library heard of us having scored that customer and suddenly demanded insane amount of licensing fees. Luckily, the purchasing department of the customer offered to handle this and negotiate a deal; otherwise, this could have immediately sunk our company.

mrkramer 2y ago

>If you're a tiny org, you don't need to contribute back. But if you're making half a billion in revenue every year on top of someone else's tech, you need to stay involved and contribute back in a very significant way. For example Sony sold more than 100 million units of PS4 and made billions of dollars from it and how much they contributed to the open source projects they've used in PS4? Take a look at OSS projects used in PS4: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/oss/ps4/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/oss/ps4/ Did they contribute anything? Did they contribute 100% enough or just 20% or 30%? If the software is open sourced and if license allows you to do anything with it then you are indeed free to do anything with it including selling products which include OSS.

hobofan 2y ago
1. This is pure whataboutism. Just because Sony doesn't contribute (I don't know whether they do or don't), doesn't make it right. 2. There is obviously a difference between "selling products that include OSS" and "selling OSS 1:1". It's not like Sony's firmware/dashboard is maintained by "OpenGamingConsoleDashboard" and they are selling a 95% repackage of that to their end users (also ignoring the hardware). This pertains to the software maintenance logistics layer and not the licensing layer. Sure, both in the Sony and WPEngine cases they are in the clear on the licensing, but that doesn't make for sustainable development of the underlying software. I'd also wager that if the OSS projects used in the PS4 would drum up enough of a social media stink, they'd have decent chances of getting some compensation (e.g. the TLDraw maintainers did that quite a few times successfully).
- KomoD 2y ago
  They're not "selling OSS 1:1", they're selling managed hosting.
consteval 2y ago
You're free to do it but nobody has to help you certainly. Ultimately it's a matter of common sense. Sure, if I leave out my "take one" bowl on Halloween and someone takes it all, there's no rules against that. But next year I might be more cautious and hand out the candy myself - now what? If you've built a business off taking all my candy and reselling it, you're fucked! If you had just been less greedy and taken, say, 10 instead of the whole bowl I might not have cared.

rpgbr 2y ago

Under GPLv2, WP Engine has no obligation of pay the ransom Matt is demanding no matter the revenue they make.

sinkasapa 2y ago
As far as I could tell, they weren't denied use of the code, just a bunch of other services that are not covered by the GPLv2.
teruakohatu 2y ago
But nor does the WordPress foundation need to allow WP Engine, or any user, access to the plugin library. Chromium is Open Source, but Google is not required to allow Add On store access (even if they tolerate it from chromium forks).
- Touche 2y ago
  Requiring they pay the for-profit company to access non-profit resources seems problematic.
tylermenezes 2y ago
GPLv2 licenses the Wordpress code, not trademarks or the right to use Automattic's APIs.
- ValentineC 2y ago
  Before this week, I didn't realise that the WordPress.org servers and plugin repositories fell under Automattic, and not WordPress Foundation. Some clarity would be nice.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

n3storm 2y ago

I wonder how much does Automattic contribute to the PHP, MySQL, MariaDB, jQuery, ... organizations?

desas 2y ago
* https://thephp.foundation/ one of three platinum level sponsors * MySQL doesn't take sponsorships afaict * https://mariadb.org/about/#stakeholders one of several silver sponsors of MariaDB * https://x.com/SlexAxton/status/1839091643338862828 "I was on the board of the jQuery foundation during some of the glory years and @photomatt was the ~largest donor"

georgehotelling 2y ago

What's the economic incentive for WP Engine to give back? They have a moral duty, sure, but as a business where is the profit? Anything they contribute to core will immediately be available to their competitors, so the naive read is that there's no competitive advantage in contributing back. However, if they can influence the direction of the project, they can align it with your business goals. That gives them a competitive advantage, that gives them an incentive. The challenge is that Matt is acting as a BDFL of the open source project. If Matt doesn't want your change added, your change isn't going to get added. There is no one to appeal to, Matt has absolute authority over the code that goes into the open source project that WP Engine's business is built on. Matt is also the CEO of WP Engine's competitor, Automattic. This conflict of interest has come to a head in the past week and shone a spotlight on the lack of community stewardship of the WordPress project. Keep in mind that Automattic requires its employees to get approval for any paid side gigs related to software because Matt believes that it creates conflicts of interest. You cannot work on WordPress for Automattic during the day and then freelance making paid WordPress plugins at night, due to the misaligned incentives. The fact that Matt isn't being paid a salary for his work on WordPress is irrelevant, given Automattic's equity is tied to the value of WordPress. I think private equity skews heavily towards value extraction over value creation. I think that people who build businesses off of open source have a moral obligation to give back to the projects. I think that giving Automattic money to spend on WP core work will make WordPress better. However, breaking the trust of the community does exponentially more damage to the future of WordPress than any freeloading company. The community trusts that the trademark licenses will not change to target them. The community trusts that their software will benefit from security updates and the plugin ecosystem. That trust is the foundation of WordPress and this week's actions have done damage. Matt talked about going nuclear, and I think that the metaphor is apt, because when the smoke clears we may be left with no winners. (I'm a former Automattic employee who roots for open source, WordPress, Automattic, and the vision of the open web Matt Mullenweg has shared.)

digging 2y ago
> What's the economic incentive for WP Engine to give back? They have a moral duty, sure, but as a business where is the profit? Avoiding this exact situation which kills their business

ankleturtle 2y ago

> But if you're making half a billion in revenue every year on top of someone else's tech, you need to stay involved and contribute back in a very significant way. Revenue is a red herring. It is not an appropriate measure to determine if and how much one should contribute to an open source project. Instead, we should measure the need to contribute by the burden one places on the project. Do you request features or bug fixes? Contribute appropriately. Do you request support? Contribute appropriately. Do you simply copy, install, and run the existing software? No need to contribute.

sunir 2y ago

If you go down this path of creating rules that say people should pay to use open source, you’ll discover there are already laws in place sufficient to manage this situation. If a project uses these laws, then you’ll complain the project isn’t open source. If you prefer the capricious nature of the politics of social shaming instead of the rules based system of laws and courts, I guess that is being consistent even if the actual process is very inconsistent and unpredictable. If not, then it’s not clear to me how you’re taking a philosophical stance about open source if you’re demanding payment. Those ideas don’t work together.

YPPH 2y ago

>But if you're making half a billion in revenue every year on top of someone else's tech, you need to stay involved and contribute back in a very significant way. Where does the GPL state this requirement? It doesn't. If WordPress doesn't like this, they should have licenced their software under the AGPL or some other licence with stronger copylefting. Plenty of large commercial entities use BSD licenced software and make a fortune off the software, with little given in return. Take FreeBSD and the significant commercial operations it drives. They never whinge. Because that's the choice they made, and they stick to their principles.

tsurba 2y ago
GPL doesn’t, but as others have already said, this discussion is not about that. If they want to keep using someone else’s free server capacity, maybe they should be giving something in return.
- InsomniacL 2y ago
  If you're providing your servers for free and include them as the primary update mechanism to an open source project for millions of websites, maybe you shouldn't use that as an extortion mechanism holding millions of websites hostage. Taking away access to those servers is one thing, doing it without warning putting millions of sites at risk is another.

supermatt 2y ago

Totally agree with you. That is the issue at the heart of the situation. WP engine aren't keeping up with their moral obligations to fund WP development or associated services, so Matt is clearly trying to strong-arm them into doing so. First they were asked to contribute fairly - which they refused and then they were called out on, then they were told that they cant call their fork of wordpress "wordpress" (technically no different than selling an android phone and calling it an iphone) without paying for a license - so they decide to threaten legal action, and now they have been cut off from free access to wordpress services. They are nothing but money-grubbing hundred-billion-dollar private-equity parasites, who are trying (and seemingly succeeding on HN...) to distort the perspective on the whole situation. Its clear to me that matt isnt after their revenue, he just wants them to play fairly and support wordpress as others do.

thrownaway561 2y ago

As someone who wrote OS software in the past and had little no people contributing back except the core team, i total disagree. If you write OS and put it out there for the world to use, you should be doing it because you want to _give_ to the world. you should not expect _anything_ in return. the is the essences of giving, to not expect something back. if Matt wants WPEngine to require a contribution to WordPRess, then he should relicense it under a license that requires this or close the code and charge subscriptions. what he is doing is giving a bad name the OS community in general. this is not how you act.