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Howdy, Matthew Charles Mullenweg from the lawsuit here. One thing I'm surprised they disclosed is on page 35 that Heather Brunner at WP Engine was interviewing
by photomatt 2y ago
Howdy, Matthew Charles Mullenweg from the lawsuit here.
One thing I'm surprised they disclosed is on page 35 that Heather Brunner at WP Engine was interviewing for a job at Automattic. That's why we were spending so much time together 1:1 without her team there in the meetings I posted here: https://automattic.com/2024/10/01/wpe-terms/ https://automattic.com/2024/10/01/wpe-terms/
They lied that it was to run WordPress.com, though, she wanted to be the Executive Director of WordPress.org for Automattic, a position that was held by Josepha.
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- wging 2y agoThat's not what page 35 says at all. Check out page 36: > 92. Mullenweg’s premise was false, as WPE’s CEO had never interviewed with or negotiated a job offer with Automattic. To the contrary, back in 2022 Automattic had asked if she would be interested in running wordpress.com, but she politely declined. (edit: I have no idea who is right, but it's just not correct to read page 35 as saying that)
- photomatt 2y agoShe was interviewing November 2023 to January 2024. She declined the WordPress.org role on January 26, 2024. I even invited her to my 40th birthday on Jan 11, another text message she decided not to share.
- Mystery-Machine 2y agoWhy you don't share it? You said there's much more emails and messages, but you never shared any. Why not?
- photomatt 2y agoWhy doesn't she share messages that prove she declined a WordPress.com job in 2022? You're holding me to a different standard. I'm here, I'm talking to journalists. They're not.
- spellsaidwrong 2y agoThe question you need to ask yourself is whether you _should_ talk to journalists during a legal matter, instead of trying to fight the court of public opinion.
- photomatt 2y agoI'm very comfortable with the truth of everything being public, it's on our side. The legal case will drag out for years.
- spellsaidwrong 2y agoYou know legal case documents will eventually become public, right?
- chris_wot 2y agoLiterally everybody is telling you to STFU. The problem as I see it, is that you might feel incredibly confident in your case, but you are so close to things that you have convinced yourself of your own righteousness. That’s not necessarily reality, and you are not as righteous as you believe. Even if you are - your words could be misconstrued. I cannot understand why your legal team is not advising you to stop making public comments. Or perhaps they are, and you aren’t listening to them? Either way, you are being incredibly foolish.
- ErwinAI 2y agoYou're aware that the messages shown in that document (if authentic) can be interpreted as extortion, right?
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- DannyBee 2y agoMatt - i'm not your lawyer, but you should shut up. Employers generally have an obligation to keep personal data confidential, especially sensitive information like a job application. Whether that applies in this particular case or not, i'm not going to offer an opinion, but you really should shut up. I get that it's particularly frustrating and hard to feel like you are being unfairly treated or whatever, but shut up anyway.
- serial_dev 2y agoJust let the man speak, he probably didn’t listen to his own lawyers why you think he will listen to you? As the audience, with no horse in this race, I’m glad he keeps talking.
- kstrauser 2y agoI understand that. As an uninvolved outsider, this is a first-row seat I don’t usually have. It’s fascinating! But my better angel wants me to duck tape his mouth shut before he does himself dirty. Edit: Or if you’re a WPE fan, my better angel says to keep talking! Explain it all away! Share it all!
- edanm 2y ago> As the audience, with no horse in this race, I’m glad he keeps talking. You really shouldn't, IMO. For one thing, what parent poster is saying is that he might be violating someone's privacy. I get that that's fun from the sidelines, but I certainly don't think we should encourage employers to violate other people's privacy. For another, we have a court system with lots of rules around it for a reason. These threads help people form opinions, but the truth is that none of the protections in place in a courtroom apply here. He, or his opposite party, could literally be lying about everything they're saying here and there's no way for us to know or evaluate it. He could be bringing up totally irrelevant facts while not talking about the actual important things, with his counterparty correctly not talking about it, but leaving the impression that there is nothing there. Etc.
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- kstrauser 2y agoWere I her lawyer: “oh, so after you invited her to hang out in a private setting, she declined the job?” That does not help your position. IANAL, but stop talking.
- moonmagick 2y ago[flagged]
- awb 2y ago> you really, really suck as a human That’s really, really harsh. Regardless of your reasons for feeling this way, this is not the appropriate forum for a personal attack like that
- moonmagick 2y ago[flagged]
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- aimazon 2y ago"she wanted to be the Executive Director of WordPress.org for Automattic" But you own and run and finance WordPress.org personally, as you've revealed and talked about numerous times in the last few weeks. I don't follow, how can Heather apply for a job with Automattic to be the Executive Director of a website you personally own?
- photomatt 2y agoAutomattic employs ~100 people that work full-time on WordPress.org. I can appoint them into positions on WordPress.org, if I think that's appropriate.
- flutas 2y ago> Automattic employs ~100 people that work full-time on WordPress.org. I can appoint them into positions on WordPress.org, if I think that's appropriate. So are you now using company resources for personal projects (as they point out, you constantly have claimed that the .org domain is your personal domain) as well as for non profit org projects? Doesn't exactly sound... beneficial to investors interests.
- LordAtlas 2y agoMatt is leaving so much evidence against himself that he's practically doing opposing counsel's job for them.
- mthoms 2y agoWhy did you tell the community: "the most central piece of WordPress’s identity, its name, is now fully independent from any company"? That's objectively untrue. Period. That was 14 years ago Matt. You mislead the community for 14 years.
- photomatt 2y agoThe trademark originally belonged 100% to Automattic. It transferred it to the Foundation, and retained the commercial license and the ability to commercially sub-license. The Foundation gave me a license to run WordPress.org. This has all been public, though I agree it's complicated and not widely understood.
- threeseed 2y agoSo out of a 98 page document this is the part you chose to focus on. An aspect that literally no one could care less about. Bizarre.
- jonnypants83 2y agoto be fair I think it's the most damning part for him as a person
- Mystery-Machine 2y agoSince you're trying to get WP Engine to pay for "WordPress" trademark, by contributing back to open-source, because you feel they should, since it made them rich, I was wondering how many open-source projects did Automattic contribute to financially? Aside from WordPress, I'm sure you stand on the shoulders of giants such as Linux, nginx, MySQL, JavaScript libraries (or maybe you should call it ECMAScript, because you're not paying any trademark fees), etc.? Just curious.
- dangrossman 2y agoThey're listed as a sponsor on the PHP Foundation website.
- sieabahlpark 2y agoComical that contributing to the most used CMS on the planet isn't sufficient. They must contribute financially to all open source otherwise they don't have a claim against WPE
- fhdsgbbcaA 2y agoThat alone should be a crime. (/s, PHP the language isn’t so bad, it’s spaghetti code like WP that gives it a bad name)
- fhdsgbbcaA 2y agoTo be fair I bet a good chunk of them use, or have used, Wordpress.
- busterarm 2y agohttps://ma.tt/2024/09/charitable-contributions/ https://ma.tt/2024/09/charitable-contributions/
- naniwaduni 2y agoCoincidentally, WPF is a 501(c)3.
- pclmulqdq 2y agoYour response to this complaint is going to look very interesting. Also, a note for the audience: Quinn Emanuel is one of the premier (and most expensive) litigation firms in the US. Partners in their litigation department run $2000/hour or more. Associates cost almost $1000/hour. WPEngine apparently has deep pockets.
- photomatt 2y agoJust wait!
- mplewis 2y agoHi Matt. I wanted to ask, do you think that the actions you've taken will improve the WordPress community in the long term? What do you think are the likely outcomes for WordPress users and contributors, regardless of how this conflict ends?
- dataspun 2y agoI’m with you Matt! I like your strategy here.
- pjob 2y agoI was curious about your defense of Matt's behavior in this thread but your empathy makes sense given that you work on a similar project that you describe as: > A static site that is 100% free and open-source, competing with several businesses operating scammy subscription models. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30295629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30295629 Is this a competitor to Wordpress? Can you elaborate more about how the competition in this space uses scammy subscription models? It might help to illustrate the issues in the industry for outsiders like me. Off topic, but I'm a bit of an amateur musician myself. I try to check out other musicians that I encounter, but I wasn't able to find anything about you or your music online. Do you have a bandcamp or something similar? The contrabass trombone is a really interesting instrument.
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- zambiboy 2y ago[flagged]
- jasondigitized 2y agoHeather Brunner is an amazing person and leader. I know because I used to work with her. That's it. That's the comment.
- notamy 2y agoI am stunned that you're still posting publicly and aggressively about all of this. How have your lawyers okayed any of this?
- photomatt 2y agoYes.
- chris_wot 2y agoChrist. Get new lawyers!
- ebcode 2y agoI'll second that.
- tock 2y agoAre you your own lawyer Matt? :p
- patmcc 2y agoIf this is true, you need a better lawyer.
- gamblor956 2y agoIs this the Elon Musk yes, where they actually said no but you went ahead and did it anyway? Because if they actually did okay this you've got the least competent lawyers of any tech bro not named Elon Musk.
- angoragoats 2y ago“_How_ have your lawyers okayed any of this?” “Yes.” He’s not actually reading the questions you ask, folks.
- johnisgood 2y agoMaybe he was referring to the meme.
- Kye 2y agoDon't lawyers usually advise their clients to stop talking about it when they're sued? Or is that one of those cliches that isn't true
- elicksaur 2y agoDefinitely true and all of his communication - this thread, he’s given some interviews, etc. is very odd for a legal strategy.
- flutas 2y agoRight, this all feels like (and I'm not trying to be rude with this, I'm speaking from experience) a mental break. Or he's got some sort of vendetta that he feels burning everything down is worth it over. Some of his comments from the other day on reddit have already been used in this very lawsuit, you'd think he would know to shut the hell up at this point if it's #2.
- riffic 2y agocould even be a little from column A, a little from column B
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- spondylosaurus 2y agoI don't even know if it's a vendetta about WP specifically or just the result of his general disposition. About a year ago he had an embarrassing public meltdown after some random Tumblr users talked shit about him because they didn't like his moderation policies. Banning people, then publicly shaming them, then replying to their posts on other social media sites...
- extraduder_ire 2y ago> some random Tumblr users talked shit about him because they didn't like his moderation policies Was that the hammers thing, or something else?
- ddoolin 2y agoEven if the initial allegations outlined in the introduction are only half-true, I would be too ashamed to continue posting like this. Yikes.
- lsaferite 2y agoHave your lawyers not advised you to stop talking at this point?
- dangafee 2y ago[flagged]
- JimDabell 2y agoEven if that were true, what relevance does it have to the trademark dispute? It just seems like you want to hurt her personally.
- chris_wot 2y agoWhy on earth are you making public comments during a court case?
- iambateman 2y agoMatt, thanks for engaging here and for all you’ve done with WordPress. My college internship was working on “Standard Theme” in 2009. We haven’t met but I’m Stephen. I don’t expect you to take questions from an internet stranger, but since you asked… What rules does Automattic enforce for all companies who operate businesses built on WordPress? In other words…when does a business owe 8%? There are thousands of businesses wondering if they’re next on the list.
- pensatoio 2y agoCheck out his interview on The Primeagen. They couldn’t pry a direct answer to that exact question out of him.
- safety1st 2y agoHi Matt, great that you're participating here and I'm broadly supportive regarding your concerns with the trademark and WP Engine's conduct. However I do not understand why you chose to make 1.5 million enemies in the WordPress community in one weekend by shutting down their ability to update plugins with zero warning and consequently reducing the security of their websites. To be entirely blunt it's all damage control for us at this point when your name comes up, and it's because of that one singular mistake, if this was just WPE and Automattic duking it out in court no one would really care, but now the reliability of the WPOrg infrastructure is being questioned by a big chunk of the people who depend on WordPress and they will probably be inclined to walk away from your infrastructure and deeper into the arms of someone like WPEngine when they get the chance. If you care about the broad perception of your efforts and your business practices I think you need to address this. Again I see that there are plenty of reasons to take issue with WPE's conduct but this singular decision you made has people calling for you to step aside and let someone else run WordPress. It's not going to go away on its own.
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- prox 2y agoWell said, I hope that there will be forum to discuss the ethos of these actions and see if there isn’t a better way to go about this, and how we can strengthen the community of open source. An interesting article was written by Dries (Drupal Founder) and others.
- astockwell 2y agoLink?
- chuckadams 2y agohttps://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker-problem https://dri.es/solving-the-maker-taker-problem Good thread on reddit too: https://old.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fup9gb/solving_the_makertaker_problem_dries_buytaert/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fup9gb/solving_...
- lancewiggs 2y agoThanks for participating here. While others are stating that you should not, the court of public opinion delivers results (including to Wordpress) a lot faster than the formal court system. So get ahead. In general it’s better better the hear authentic voices than none or lawyered-up PR consultants, and this site has hammered companies that do so in the past.
- mrcwinn 2y agoThis boils down to something quite simple. WPEngine wants money. Matt wants money too. It’s zero sum. Matt, free advice. If you really think your commercial product is better (maybe it retains more post history or whatever the case), spend more time selling it.
- fhfhfhjfnfnfmf 2y agoWe’re way into “negative sum” territory by now.
- FireBeyond 2y agoHe's too busy trying to shore up the money pit that is Tumblr, that Automattic bought.
- holywtfm 2y ago[dead]
- wise_young_man 2y agoMatt. You are rich. What is behind your motivations here? You seem to be very candid and passionate about this but I must be missing something. Why spend your time doing this? What’s your end goal?
- fastball 2y agoHe is passionate about Wordpress and wants corporations who derive significant value from it to contribute back to the open source project?
- h4ny 2y ago[Edit 2: could you kindly take some time to explains where you disagree as you downvote this so I can learn? Reading documents like this for the first time pointing out where things don't make sense to me.] > 89. Defendants’ extortion campaign included levying personal attacks against the CEO of WPE for not capitulating to his demands. For instance, on September 26, 2024, Mullenweg gave an interview on the X platform during which he gave the CEO’s personal cell phone number to the interviewer and encouraged him to contact her. She was in fact contacted by the interviewer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUJgahHjAKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUJgahHjAKU [Edit: Ignore this paragraph, see JimDabell and lolinder comments below] I watched the whole interview they linked to and don't recall that happening, ChatGPT also doesn't seem to think so based on its transcript. During the interview Matt did ask at one point if Theo would talk to Lee and Heather on stream, it was about giving everyone a fair chance to tell the story and I doubt that anyone can characterise it as extortional in nature. Even it was Matt who gave the number away during stream (if it was cut out of the YouTube version) or off stream, it's a huge stretch to claim that as "personal attacks" as part of an "extortion campaign"... > 90. Defendants’ attacks against WPE’s CEO have also continued in private. First, on September 28, 2024, Mullenweg attempted to poach her to come and work for Automattic, and falsely suggested that WPE’s investor was making her do something she did not want to do. They screen capped just Matt's message without any context about what was said prior to that message? By September 28, 2024 they have already met many times in-person, too. I think it's just insane for Matt to send a text like but that just seems very out of context in isolation. If absolutely nothing compelled Matt to send that message then I guess it's possible that he's either extremely naive or he is a psychopath. > 91. After WPE’s CEO did not immediately respond, Mullenweg threatened her the following day. Specifically, on September 29, 2024 Mullenweg gave her until midnight that day to “accept” his job “offer” with Automattic. If she did not accede to his demand, Mullenweg threatened to tell the press, and WPE’s investor, that she had interviewed with Automattic: > 93. WPE’s CEO did not respond to Mullenweg’s September 29 threat 91 has very interesting wording: "After WPE's CEO did not *immediately* respond". In contrast to 93, they also don't claim that Heather didn't respond to the messages on September 28. The screenshot of Matt's message on September 29 begins with this: > Heather, after our extensive discussions about you joining Automattic, the offer you negotiated with me is still on the table. So... there was definitely a conversation between the screenshots on September 28 and September 29 that lead Matt to think that they presumably didn't include? > 92. Mullenweg’s premise was false, as WPE’s CEO had never interviewed with or negotiated a job offer with Automattic. To the contrary, back in 2022 Automattic had asked if she would be interested in running wordpress.com, but she politely declined. 92 feels like an assertion that's deliberately placed between 90, 91 and 93 to potentially make their claim seem more valid? I suppose "had never interviewed" depends what kind of evidence Matt can produce at this point if he's not lying; if it's all in-person and there are no records at all, which he pointed out in the interview with Theo, then it's unfortunate. The "[had never] negotiated" part doesn't make sense at all if something was indeed discussed between September 28 and September 29. > If you decline, on Monday morning, I tell Greg Mondres: > - Lee's refusal to negotiate terms to resolve our conflict > - your interviewing with Automattic over the past year > - I will possibly tell the press all of the above I feel like the minority on HN that wants to give Matt the benefit of the doubt. Even so, that's a sure-fire way to get someone who may have been listening to you to turn on you. If you're not going to call your lawyers, at least call Theo since he offered.
- jalapenos 2y agoWhat are you hoping to achieve?
- pxeboot 2y agoHi Matt! I appreciate the transparency. Reading about this has been interesting to say the least. I am curious about your desired outcome. If you win, WP Engine pays 8% going forward? If you lose, will it be business as usual? Fewer open source offerings? Obviously this could take years to resolve, but developers do have very real concerns over what the landscape may look like in a few years.
- tommica 2y agoGood luck in the court! Hope you win!
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- teruakohatu 2y agoMatt, you have been criticised here for speaking openly but it is quite refreshing to hear you be so candid and not hide behind PR consultants issuing generic press releases.
- GolberThorce 2y ago[flagged]
- amanzi 2y agoHi Matt - long time WordPress user here, and I've been hosting and running a WordPress multisite for over 15 years now. In fact, I met you at a WordCamp here in NZ 15 or 16 years ago. Anyway, this whole episode has been the final nail in the coffin for me, and I no longer want to have anything to do with WordPress. I've long thought that the relationship between Automattic/WordPress.com and WordPress.org was not good for the community, and your behaviour here has put that beyond doubt. I honestly don't know what's going through your head, but you need to try to wind back the clock a couple of weeks and put things right. You continue to lie and manipulate words (even in this thread!) to make it sound like you are in the right, but it's not working. You need to stop.
- bwb 2y agoI left WordPress ~8 years ago for a similar reason. I watched Matt destroy friends' WordPress businesses by saying they violated the WP ethos while he and Automattic did the same thing in their businesses. I've seen them break legal agreements with theme creators and refuse to pay them despite contracts. They also use legal threats against small creators to force them to accept an agreement that pays far less. I would never do business with Matt or Automattic. They have behaved unethically in my experience. Matt has too much power and uses it to do whatever he wants. He should never have been allowed to be involved in WordPress.org once he was working at Automattic.
- evanelias 2y ago> He should never have been allowed to be involved in WordPress.org once he was working at Automattic. I'm not sure that last part makes sense. For starters, there's a chronological issue -- Matt co-created the open source WordPress project in mid 2003, founded Automattic in mid 2005, and founded the WordPress Foundation in 2010. But even setting that aside, who exactly would/should have prevented him from serving in roles in multiple organizations that he himself founded, and why? If he's abusing the non-profit foundation in some blatantly for-profit way, then yes that would clearly be problematic -- but it doesn't seem clear-cut whether that has happened. The foundation owns the trademark, and the owner of a trademark must defend it in order to keep it. And as for the wordpress.org infrastructure, that appears to be totally separate from the foundation. Alternatively, if the foundation had never been formed at all, would that have been a better outcome? I'm skeptical, since in the post-ZIRP world many VC-funded "single vendor open source" infrastructure software companies (whose projects lack separate non-profit foundations) are having their own relicensing dramas, and issues with insufficient contributions from large cloud vendors. This seems to be an industry-wide problem right now.
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- sureIy 2y agoI thought WordPress was just a tool, but that’s not the only tool in the house.
- kragen 2y agoglad to see you here. i hope you're able to resolve this crisis quickly
- Brian_K_White 2y agoIt's obvious what you intend to accomplish, but here is what you've actually accomplished: Before this week I knew what wordpress was (of course), did not know either names WP Engine nor Matt Mullenweg, and had never happened to build a site with wordpress. Now I know your name and will never build a site with wordpress. You can choose to make that about me instead of recognizing any responsibility for that outcome, but it's never the less a fact. Do with this simple data what you will, but data it is. Another comment by someone else in one of the severel conversations on this went something like: "I don't know either of these companies and so far WP Engine hasn't said anything yet. So far I have only heard Wordpress's side of the story, and that has made me assume that Wordpress are the side in the wrong." That is some galaxy brain stuff right there.
- 55555 2y agoHey Matt. This has no relevance to anything but is a fun story I wanted to share. 15-20 years ago I discovered a "UX bug" on default Wordpress installs, which was that all you needed to impersonate someone in a Wordpress comment section was know their email address. I used your guessable email address while writing a comment on the official Wordpress.org blog and it pulled your gravatar etc. Sorry. I was a child at the time. lol
- esskay 2y agoMatt, with the greatest of respect - shut up, and get off the internet until this is over. You just keep digging the hole and making things worse for yourself. In this instance, you are not the smartest guy in the room, and anything you say is just going to make the outcome of this whole saga that much more painful. If I were in your position I'd be very carefully trying to figure out what the next step is, especially given whats going to come out about the Wordpress foundation's commercial licensing agreement with Automattic. That alone should be an exctremely worrying position for you personally, assuming your legal team have pointed out the issues on an international scale that you're about to be hit with.
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