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Searched the USPTO trademark site, no trademark for "WP" registered by the WordPress Foundation. WP is GPLv2. Is WP Engine distributing their modifications wit

Searched the USPTO trademark site, no trademark for "WP" registered by the WordPress Foundation. WP is GPLv2. Is WP Engine distributing their modifications without releasing their changes? No trademark issue, license seems fine. From what I can tell this is nothing.

luckylion 2y ago
The Trademark is for WordPress, not WP. The name "WP Engine" isn't the alleged problem, it's their usage in their hosting packages like "WordPress Core".
- atonse 2y ago
  Ok so if they changed their plans to "Core" and said "Includes vanilla WordPress" is Ma.tt going to have an issue with it? This really doesn't seem to be much about Trademarks, but more like what every other open source project complains about, that someone ELSE made a ton of money from the open source project, not them (even though that someone else is following the original license). Couldn't they have just changed the license to WP? It wouldn't have affected most customers.
  - luckylion 2y ago
    I don't know what he would or would not have an issue with, I'm just saying what his claim is. Personally, I don't care either way, I don't like either party. Automattic isn't a good steward of WP and has a lot of conflict of interest that they don't want to acknowledge and WP decisions are "what benefits wp.com" first. WP Engine is an aggressive sales company that also has hosting attached. They're extremely overpriced, the GoDaddy of WP Hosting. Whenever I hear somebody uses them it's a strong indicator that they're making enough money but have no technical knowledge on the team.
    - riffic 2y ago
      are we now conflating Automattic with the WordPress Foundation?
      - jeltz 2y ago
        Matt certainly is.
      - luckylion 2y ago
        Who has the exclusive commercial license to the WordPress trademark? Following the money brings clarity. It's pretty obvious that .com controls .org.
  - mdasen 2y ago
    They probably can't change the license for WordPress. It's under the GPL and it looks like WordPress doesn't require a contributor agreement assigning copyright to someone else. They'd need to get every contributor to agree to relicense it. There's also the question of who would relicense it. Automattic doesn't own the WordPress trademarks and if there were a contributor agreement, it would likely be assigning the code to the WordPress Foundation, not Automattic. The WordPress Foundation non-profit doesn't have a good incentive to put a restrictive license on it. Part of the problem is that the WordPress Foundation doesn't seem to be truly independent of the for-profit Automattic. The point of creating a non-profit to hold the IP of an open source project is to prevent stuff like this from happening.
    - chuckadams 2y ago
      > Automattic doesn't own the WordPress trademarks Actually, they own an exclusive license to the commercial exploitation of the WordPress trademark, including sublicensing rights. Given to them for free by the WordPress Foundation. The licensing rights could mean millions for the foundation, but it's all funneled straight to Automattic. Yep, truly independent foundation.
      - FireBeyond 2y ago
        The Foundation has three board members, a non-active retired coder, Matt Mullenweg and, perhaps surprising given all the venom that he has spat about the evils of Private Equity leeching from free software and open source, the Managing Partner of a Private Equity firm....
    - ValentineC 2y ago
      > They probably can't change the license for WordPress. It's under the GPL and it looks like WordPress doesn't require a contributor agreement assigning copyright to someone else. They'd need to get every contributor to agree to relicense it. Not just every WordPress contributor, but every b2/cafelog contributor pre-fork too, since WordPress is a fork of b2/cafelog in the first place: https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/the-blogging-software-dilemma/ https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/the-blogging-software-dil...
- miiiiiike 2y ago
  From the WordPress Trademark Policy (https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/ https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/) The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress. Someone should have stopped him from making the rambling statements he's made. If it's a trademark dispute, limit the the public statements to the trademark issue. Don't muddy the waters with demands for revenue share or upstream code contributions.
  - luckylion 2y ago
    Again, it wasn't about "WP", it was about "WordPress" (and "WooCommerce"). Don't focus on "WP" just because the company name is "WP Engine". It's not relevant to this matter, their claim of trademark infringement is about "WordPress" and "WooCommerce", not about "WP".
    - miiiiiike 2y ago
      Unfortunately many of their public statements have focused on the "WP" in "WP Engine". See my above comment. Their messaging around this has been messy and rambling. The drowning out any point they're trying to make with their own messaging. Who can say the offer "WordPress" hosting? How much do they have to pay? That question was dodged several times in the interviews I've listened to. If it's a trademark issue, make the claims and let the courts figure it out. Stay focused or stop talking.
      - Brian_K_White 2y ago
        Regardless what they want, they have very limited rights to anything over that. Nike can say that you can't name you new sneakers Nike. Can probably say that you can't name your business "The Nike Store" even if all you stock is Nikes, but can not cannot say that you cannot refer to Nike by their actual name to state that you sell Nike sneakers. WordPress is the name of the software that they provide services about. There is no way to control who can simply state that fact.
chomp 2y ago
“WP” is not at dispute here.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

luckylion 2y ago

The Trademark is for WordPress, not WP. The name "WP Engine" isn't the alleged problem, it's their usage in their hosting packages like "WordPress Core".

atonse 2y ago
Ok so if they changed their plans to "Core" and said "Includes vanilla WordPress" is Ma.tt going to have an issue with it? This really doesn't seem to be much about Trademarks, but more like what every other open source project complains about, that someone ELSE made a ton of money from the open source project, not them (even though that someone else is following the original license). Couldn't they have just changed the license to WP? It wouldn't have affected most customers.
- luckylion 2y ago
  I don't know what he would or would not have an issue with, I'm just saying what his claim is. Personally, I don't care either way, I don't like either party. Automattic isn't a good steward of WP and has a lot of conflict of interest that they don't want to acknowledge and WP decisions are "what benefits wp.com" first. WP Engine is an aggressive sales company that also has hosting attached. They're extremely overpriced, the GoDaddy of WP Hosting. Whenever I hear somebody uses them it's a strong indicator that they're making enough money but have no technical knowledge on the team.
  - riffic 2y ago
    are we now conflating Automattic with the WordPress Foundation?
    - jeltz 2y ago
      Matt certainly is.
    - luckylion 2y ago
      Who has the exclusive commercial license to the WordPress trademark? Following the money brings clarity. It's pretty obvious that .com controls .org.
- mdasen 2y ago
  They probably can't change the license for WordPress. It's under the GPL and it looks like WordPress doesn't require a contributor agreement assigning copyright to someone else. They'd need to get every contributor to agree to relicense it. There's also the question of who would relicense it. Automattic doesn't own the WordPress trademarks and if there were a contributor agreement, it would likely be assigning the code to the WordPress Foundation, not Automattic. The WordPress Foundation non-profit doesn't have a good incentive to put a restrictive license on it. Part of the problem is that the WordPress Foundation doesn't seem to be truly independent of the for-profit Automattic. The point of creating a non-profit to hold the IP of an open source project is to prevent stuff like this from happening.
  - chuckadams 2y ago
    > Automattic doesn't own the WordPress trademarks Actually, they own an exclusive license to the commercial exploitation of the WordPress trademark, including sublicensing rights. Given to them for free by the WordPress Foundation. The licensing rights could mean millions for the foundation, but it's all funneled straight to Automattic. Yep, truly independent foundation.
    - FireBeyond 2y ago
      The Foundation has three board members, a non-active retired coder, Matt Mullenweg and, perhaps surprising given all the venom that he has spat about the evils of Private Equity leeching from free software and open source, the Managing Partner of a Private Equity firm....
  - ValentineC 2y ago
    > They probably can't change the license for WordPress. It's under the GPL and it looks like WordPress doesn't require a contributor agreement assigning copyright to someone else. They'd need to get every contributor to agree to relicense it. Not just every WordPress contributor, but every b2/cafelog contributor pre-fork too, since WordPress is a fork of b2/cafelog in the first place: https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/the-blogging-software-dilemma/ https://wordpress.org/book/2015/11/the-blogging-software-dil...
miiiiiike 2y ago
From the WordPress Trademark Policy (https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/ https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/) The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress. Someone should have stopped him from making the rambling statements he's made. If it's a trademark dispute, limit the the public statements to the trademark issue. Don't muddy the waters with demands for revenue share or upstream code contributions.
- luckylion 2y ago
  Again, it wasn't about "WP", it was about "WordPress" (and "WooCommerce"). Don't focus on "WP" just because the company name is "WP Engine". It's not relevant to this matter, their claim of trademark infringement is about "WordPress" and "WooCommerce", not about "WP".
  - miiiiiike 2y ago
    Unfortunately many of their public statements have focused on the "WP" in "WP Engine". See my above comment. Their messaging around this has been messy and rambling. The drowning out any point they're trying to make with their own messaging. Who can say the offer "WordPress" hosting? How much do they have to pay? That question was dodged several times in the interviews I've listened to. If it's a trademark issue, make the claims and let the courts figure it out. Stay focused or stop talking.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      Regardless what they want, they have very limited rights to anything over that. Nike can say that you can't name you new sneakers Nike. Can probably say that you can't name your business "The Nike Store" even if all you stock is Nikes, but can not cannot say that you cannot refer to Nike by their actual name to state that you sell Nike sneakers. WordPress is the name of the software that they provide services about. There is no way to control who can simply state that fact.

chomp 2y ago

“WP” is not at dispute here.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]