11 ms·

Response to WP Engine’s Lawsuit

73 points by kif 2y ago

jdubz79 2y ago
Who is actively using Wordpress in 2024? It’s been a shithole product for shitty websites since it’s been a thing……… Shitty performance, shitty themes, borderline malware plugins……
- claudiulodro 2y ago
  "Just" 43% of all websites on the internet.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    This figure is so useless, because easily 50% of all websites have less than 1 human visitor per day (I made the number up, you get the point). The interesting statistic would be unique visits served or something like that.
slenk 2y ago
Does this mean I should remove "Powered by Wordpress" everywhere? I don't want to accidentally infringe on copyright.
handfuloflight 2y ago
What percentage of WPEngine does Automattic own? Why do not they donate to Wordpress Foundation out of that?
- throwgfgfd25 2y ago
  Where is it documented Automattic (or Mr Mullenweg) owns any of WP Engine? (ETA: Not saying it's impossible he or they have an interest -- I've just never seen this suggested. WP Engine is in many ways a competitor to wordpress.com, so it would be unusual, I think. And he/they have long not been a fan of WP Engine.)
  - tredre3 2y ago
    Automattic invested in WP Engine ~13 years ago. I don't know if they still own the shares though. https://techcrunch.com/2011/11/15/silverton-automattic-put-1-2m-into-wordpress-hosting-and-security-service-wp-engine/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/11/15/silverton-automattic-put-1...
  - aimazon 2y ago
    Automattic were an early investor in WPEngine, but they exited the investment around 2018.
    - throwgfgfd25 2y ago
      Thanks. 2018 would tie in with about when I first got the impression he was not a fan of WP Engine. I'm sure there was fuss once before (about them not being on the "recommended hosting" page?)
      - mthoms 2y ago
        That's when they were bought by private equity. So there was a big fuss about that.
  - ValentineC 2y ago
    Automattic made an investment in WP Engine in 2011: https://wptavern.com/automattic-makes-second-investment-wpengine https://wptavern.com/automattic-makes-second-investment-wpen...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rodgerd 2y ago
Yesterday: "My lawyer says I can say what I want." Today: "We have hired a lawyer."
- Matticus_Rex 2y ago
  Eh, my day-to-day lawyer and the firm I'd hire if a big company sued me and my company are different. If I were in Matt's position I'd have probably taken everything to a single firm that could handle all conceivable work, but it's not uncommon to do otherwise. The first lawyer he refers to may be actually Automattic corporate counsel, too, and you'd definitely want an outside firm on this suit. Though any lawyer should have told him to shut up.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    > Though any lawyer should have told him to shut up. Yeah, it's not exactly a contentious legal opinion, "Don't go on a massive, selective, foot-in-mouth comment spree that just raises more questions and problems than it answers on social media after being served with a suit."
- throwgfgfd25 2y ago
  Neal Katyal though. Someone you hire if you expect to go the distance.
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
They already took it down?
nickthegreek 2y ago
[flagged]
- notatoad 2y ago
  works for me... > Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality—and reserve all of our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engine. Automattic has retained Neal Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, and his firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, to represent us. Mr. Katyal stated, “I stayed up last night reading WP Engine’s Complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court’s consideration of their lawsuit.” > Our focus is and has always been protecting >the integrity of WordPress and our mission to democratize publishing. From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - fhfhfhjfnfnfmf 2y ago
    They changed the URL and didn’t immediately set up a alias, so people were hitting an error page for a bit. I guess whatever mediocre blogging software they’re using didn’t handle it automatically, or maybe they just don’t know how to use it.
n3storm 2y ago
After ClassicPress fork here comes: DramaPress
- layer8 2y ago
  Dramattic
  - n3storm 2y ago
    genius
- stefanos82 2y ago
  lol more like CheckMattePress!
woah 2y ago
# A Statement from Automattic Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality—and reserve all of our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engine. Automattic has retained Neal Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, and his firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, to represent us. Mr. Katyal stated, “I stayed up last night reading WP Engine’s Complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court’s consideration of their lawsuit.” Our focus is and has always been protecting the integrity of WordPress and our mission to democratize publishing. From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.
- itsdrewmiller 2y ago
  In case anyone was wondering I also reserve all of my rights related to this and all other matters.
- x0x0 2y ago
  You forgot this bit, or perhaps it was edited in: > Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case. My perception: the personal grievance comes through loud and clear. Hopefully cases are decided more on their merits and less on the identities of the attorneys prosecuting them.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
yawnxyz 2y ago
> "WP Engine can hardly say the same" So much of Automattic's corpospeak drips with spite. Makes me understand why other companies are so "bland" — to protect themselves
- aimazon 2y ago
  That's because it's not corpospeak, it's Mattospeak.
  - yawnxyz 2y ago
    Automattic apparently has 1800 employees (LOL). Surprised they don't have a board, HR, comms, and other teams? Also I realized "Matt" is front and center in Automattic so that says a lot
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      They do have a board, it's just that the board is Matt and his 2 lawyers, lol.
    - everfrustrated 2y ago
      I just twigged the name is AutoMATTic
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
      You "realized"? He built WordPress from the first day. That's why he runs both its non-profit and Automattic, which is named after him. It sounds like you haven't been aware at all about WordPress and suddenly looked up some numbers and imposed traditional company expectations on an open source project with a commercial arm.
      - yawnxyz 2y ago
        I know absolutely nothing about Wordpress or Matt! I'm not much of an internet historian
rglover 2y ago
This is getting embarrassing. I was a big fan of Matt's before this whole charade started but he's basically flushing 20 years of goodwill down the drain for not a whole lot in return. As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine (and a hand-forcing by Automattic to implement a retroactive licensing agreement)?
- m348e912 2y ago
  >As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine I'm only slightly following the dispute between Automattic and WPEngine but it might have more to do with WPEngine rewriting the payment identifier on Automattic's open source Woo Commerce ecommerce plugin. WPEngine's payment identifier rewrite results in WPEngine getting a cut of ecommerce payments processed through their hosted sites and not Automattic. I don't know the details though and probably didn't even explain it right. Matt talked about it recently in a Youtube interview.
  - kevinlangleyjr 2y ago
    If you read through the lawsuit, that's not even the case.
    - m348e912 2y ago
      I understand what's in the lawsuit, I am just speculating on what might have been the last straw that led to the lawsuit.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- klelatti 2y ago
  As I understand it the claimed trademark infringement is WPE saying they ‘provide WordPress hosting’. If they are successful can anyone built an opens source hosting business?
FlamingMoe 2y ago
Hopefully his first advice was to tell Matt to cease the hotheaded tweets, livestream interviews, and hn comments.
next_xibalba 2y ago
When this story first emerged, I was somewhat sympathetic to Matt/Automattic. But geeze, he is just looking worse and worse. Between this tantrum and threatening a former employee over a very innocuous statement [1], his credibility is pretty low in my opinion. [1] https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/nice-guy-matt-mullenweg-ceo-of-wordpress-com-cries-foul-and-threatens-me-with-legal-action-f116ac57d862 https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/nice-guy-matt-mullenweg-c...
- jarule 2y ago
  [flagged]
- hodgesrm 2y ago
  Kellie's article is a well-written and reasonable response to mean-spirited bullying. It makes me wonder why a lot of people think it's good to have Silicon Valley companies run by trolls. Is that really the way to build successful businesses? Edit: added missing word "companies"
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  Far out, this whole thing is links to links to links, is there somewhere I can read a summary of this whole stupid drama?
  - ValentineC 2y ago
    Someone shared this LWN article somewhere among all the discussions, and it seems neutral enough: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/991906/d7340f3b866d855b/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/991906/d7340f3b866d855b/
- legitster 2y ago
  In that thread, Matt instantly jumping to a "you are against me/you must be the enemy" is suuuuch a red flag that he has Main Character Syndrome.
  - mthoms 2y ago
klelatti 2y ago
Like many here I suspect I care less about who wins the litigation than about the third parties - businesses, individuals and at least one major charity - who will have been affected by Matt’s and Automattic’s actions. Where is the blog post about the affect this has had on them?
trog 2y ago
Regardless of which side you're on, so far the one thing that seems clear here is that the lawyers are going to be the real winners here. When that is happening between two companies I generally don't care about it that much, but I hope open source doesn't turn out to be collateral damage here.
- stego-tech 2y ago
  Exactly my thinking as well. All this bickering managed to do is convince me to setup my blog on Ghost instead of anything WP-related. Both parties seemingly suck, and I wish them both the worst. In the meantime, this is a great excuse to promote WP-alternatives and improve upon them just in case this whole thing goes completely pear-shaped.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    > Both parties seemingly suck What exactly sucks about WPEngine, specifically?
    - spython 2y ago
      They extract value from an open source project, use the resources/bandwidth of plugin repositories, position(ed) themselves as WordPress affiliated (the branding can easily be understood as WPengine being core WordPress), and contribute nothing back. It is the “socialize the losses, privatize the profits” of open source.
      - FireBeyond 2y ago
        > use the resources/bandwidth of plugin repositories As does every single other host that offers WordPress, and every user. > position(ed) themselves as WordPress affiliated (the branding can easily be understood as WPengine being core WordPress) One: "WP" was explicitly allowed, by WordPress, for use of WordPress. Matt yoinked this after all of this started, in the last two weeks or so. He also tried to make it retroactive. Two: nominative usage says that if you factually offer WordPress hosting (or MySQL hosting, or whatever), you are allowed to say so. It doesn't mean you are maliciously "positioning yourself" as "affiliated", in any way, shape or form. > and contribute nothing back Not true at all, despite Matt's venom. They contribute and maintain several of the most popular plugins, they contribute to the codebase (just not to Matt's liking), and sponsor conferences and community events - this all started around the time that they sponsored a WordPress conference to the tune of $75,000 and then were banned from attending it, which is odd, because supposedly WordPress (the open source project) and the Foundation are independent (per all of their own filings with regulatory bodies and the IRS), but they were banned because they were in a dispute with Automattic (CEO - Matt), so WordPress Foundation (President - Matt) decided so. To add insult to injury, banned, but they decided to keep the sponsorship money.
elAhmo 2y ago
This feels like a classic "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". It appears the more Matt talks, the more he tarnishes the reputation Wordpress has.
swores 2y ago
> "Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case." I don't think I have ever before seen, in an official public statement, a "The lawyer we just hired always beats the lawyer they just hired!" boast, and it seems ridiculous - it's almost even hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer rather than that their case should win on merit.
- nickff 2y ago
  Selecting a lawyer with a proven record, and expressing confidence in them are not "hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer". They're smart strategies, whether you decide to take the case to court, or seek a settlement (on either side).
  - swores 2y ago
    I agree that it is of course smart to choose a lawyer you think can win, it's the public statement about the lawyer's track record that seems crazy to me, not the hiring decision.
    - nickff 2y ago
      Expressing confidence publicly just seems like a ‘stronger’ way of expressing it (as compared to doing so privately). Perhaps Automattic is trying to get WP Engine stakeholders to press for a settlement? What about this “seems crazy”?
      - swores 2y ago
        It makes no difference in their battle against WP Engine, who would very quickly discover which lawyers they're going up against with or without this blog post. That line in the blog post is aimed at public perception, not WP Engine's perception, and from a PR point of view there's not really any benefit to it only downside - I guess their thinking is that some members of public might think "the winning lawyer wouldn't join the losing team so Automattic must be in the right here", but it actually makes them look like their legal defence is weak enough that they need to resort to trying to win through legal skills rather than business facts. When I call it "crazy" I'm talking from the point of view of someone who has drafted a couple of announcements quite similar to this one, and many others that weren't related to defending legal cases but were still walking tricking lines in PR/comms, and I just can't imagine a line like that being suggested by anyone I've worked with and can't imagine letting it slip into a release I was involved in.
mrkramer 2y ago
[flagged]
- vcanales 2y ago
  Yeah, Jobs probably went "only I get to be rude... and to my employees, too"
- nickff 2y ago
  Steve Jobs was famously mean, and had a 'flexible' relationship with the truth. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/5l3hys/comment/dbsqvxu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/5l3hys/commen...
  - hodgesrm 2y ago
    But he was also famously reasonable at times when most people would have been just mean. [0] He had a complex and conflicting personality. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o
    - nickff 2y ago
      Definitely! And I’m typing in an iPhone right now! But he wasn’t a great example of “co-opetition”.
  - mrkramer 2y ago
    >For the longest time he didn't admit he had a child, or support her. He had to be legally forced to start paying child support even after he became wealthy. I never really understood why he did that?! I suppose it was personal vendetta against his gf at the time.
gamblor956 2y ago
From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same. Yes, that's why WordPress silently and secretly licensed back the WordPress trademarks to Matt's for-profit company without telling anybody. For the good of the customers. That's why they forced the new boondoggle editing UI that everyone hates. For the good of the customers. That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers. Matt also seems very proud of his new, shady lawyer, who failed to disclose that he had cases before the Supreme Court when he endorsed Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for open spots. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have since reciprocated by ruling for this guy's clients every time, in several cases with decisions that confounded even conservative legal experts. So, it would seem Matt found a dirty lawyer to represent his dirty case. (EDIT: Katyal is the lawyer who suggested corporations should be immune from anti-trafficking laws because it would be bad for business and got his endorsee pals to bless corporate wage theft. He's the kind of lawyer companies turn to when they want to get away with something truly evil.) We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality Based on Matt's gross misrepresentations of reality on yesterday's thread, the only party to this case making gross mischaracterizations of reality is Matt. If WordPress were truly an independent, community-led organization like Matt claims, he would have been forced out by now for the harm he's inflicted upon it.
- dumbledoren 2y ago
  > That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers. Thats actually true. Backward compatibility was and still is the #1 thing in WP, and its why it won over the web: No small business or individual customer cares about 'better code' in the backend if those 'improvements' break their websites. This was what a lot of wordpress competitors did in the past and they suffered for it.
  - gamblor956 2y ago
    No, the spaghetti code has always been bad for customers. Security exploits, hacked-together functionality that can't be improved until Matt decides to make the breaking change that forcibly breaks hundreds of plugins, etc., random bugs that nobody understands, poor performance requiring expensive and extensive modifications to achieve basic levels of responsiveness that makes even Java look like a speedster. Backwards compatibility is just the excuse Matt has been using from the beginning to justify how abysmally bad the code is.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
everfrustrated 2y ago
The popcorn value on this saga is awesome! As far as I can figure, from watching Matt's recent interviews and my own conjecture... Matt's seen his open source creation go, over the course of 20 years, from a hobbyist product to now one with a multitude of companies creating billions of revenue from it. But as it's grown certain companies are now huge and flush with VC cash. Which does change the equation. In the early days it might be reasonable to turn a blind eye to trademark infringement when it helps all boats rise, but now things are very imbalanced. IMHO WPEngine is rent-extracting in the same way that AWS does with many open-source solutions. Customers want products not source-code and are prepared to pay for packaged value-added products compatible with Wordpress. But none of this revenue is going back to the developers and fostering the development ecosystem in any meaningful way. If opensource projects like Redis & Elasticsearch could have had developers hired from 8% of revenues from those AWS sales imagine how much better off those projects could have been. As Wordpress itself is open-source Matt doesn't have any levers except the name Wordpress. As anybody in open-source should know - the code might well be open for forking but the name is very protected. Just because the trademark hasn't been entirely well enforced doesn't mean the protection is lost - the right always belongs to the trademark holder to use and enforce how they please as unilaterally as they wish. Trademarks can lose their protection if they start referring to generics but that's not the case here. Wordpress doesn't mean generic CMS - it's always referring to a Wordpress source code hosted by various companies. Matt's clearly acting emotionally and not terribly logically - that's clear for everyone to see. But I do think its with the long term intention of making a more sustainable community. Ultimately WPEngine can just rename their company and the only lever Matt has over them goes away. Or they can embrace the name and pay a fair licensing cost - a rate significantly lower than if they were licensing some other commercial CRM software.
- ValentineC 2y ago
  > IMHO WPEngine is rent-extracting in the same way that AWS does with many open-source solutions. Customers want products not source-code and are prepared to pay for packaged value-added products compatible with Wordpress. But none of this revenue is going back to the developers and fostering the development ecosystem in any meaningful way. If opensource projects like Redis & Elasticsearch could have had developers hired from 8% of revenues from those AWS sales imagine how much better off those projects could have been. WP Engine also acquired, and continues to maintain, projects like Advanced Custom Fields [1] and Local [2]. Local used to have pro features, which became free for everyone after the acquisition [3]. [1] https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/reflecting-on-two-years-at-wp-engine/ https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/reflecting-on-two-... [2] https://wpengine.com/blog/better-together-wp-engine-and-flywheel-make-local-and-genesis-products-available-to-all-customers/ https://wpengine.com/blog/better-together-wp-engine-and-flyw... [3] https://localwp.com/pro-for-everyone/ https://localwp.com/pro-for-everyone/
fhfhfhjfnfnfmf 2y ago
[flagged]
legitster 2y ago
The legal victory is almost moot, even if Automattic is found to have acted in their rights. How does any Wordpress developer know they are not going to be next? Or all of the third party plugin providers? Or theme makers? All of them heavily use Wordpress branding in their services, few contribute to the open source. The precedent being set here is wild, and every Wordpress organization becoming a Mullenweg personal mouthpiece account defending him personally is just so, so, bad. This is one of the the most needless self-destructive acts I have ever seen in the world of business.
- davesmylie 2y ago
  Not "business" I guess, but Andrew Lee and the whole freenode saga has has got to come close
- bdzr 2y ago
  > How does any Wordpress developer know they are not going to be next? Or all of the third party plugin providers? Or theme makers? All of them heavily use Wordpress branding in their services, few contribute to the open source. Easy, just don't be too successful.
annoyed_eng 2y ago
Medium term WordPress itself and the participants in its ecosystem are going to be the losers here. As a normal WordPress user who is a current client of Automattic AND WP Engine (for different sites), I’m simply far less likely to use WordPress at all for anything new. Why would I at this point? Why would anyone?
Molitor5901 2y ago
WP Engine should consider challenging the Wordpress Foundation's 501(c)(3) status by filing a complaint with the IRS. IANAL but I have run nonprofits, and they must be very careful about how it interacts with a for profit entity, especially when they share staff. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/How%20to%20Lose%20Your%20Tax%20Exempt%20Status.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/How%20to%20Lose%20Your%20Ta...
- ydlr 2y ago
  That seems like it would be terrible for the open source project and anyone that relies on it. I hope both sides of this dispute deescalate things before something like that happens.
  - Molitor5901 2y ago
    Maybe not. A stern letter from the IRS might be just the nudge for the Foundation to clarify things, and maybe push Matt to choose one or the other. Few things will scare a nonprofit more than the IRS knocking on the door.
nineteen999 2y ago
I get it that there are probably a lot of people here to depend on Wordpress for their work or personal blog or whatever but ... do we really need daily updates and discussion on this spat between two companies? I've probably answered my own question already because evidently a lot of people here find this kind of schoolyard scrap intriguing ... I just wonder ... why. I guess the answer is to just upvote everything else on the front page.
blackqueeriroh 2y ago
I’m always impressed at how many lawyers apparently exist in the comments of HN posts /s
dumbledoren 2y ago
Nobody seems to have noticed that Matt Mullenweg stopped responding to everyone everywhere (including HN) after they hired the external law firm. They likely told him to shut up.

73 points by kif 2y ago

Who is actively using Wordpress in 2024? It’s been a shithole product for shitty websites since it’s been a thing……… Shitty performance, shitty themes, borderline malware plugins……

claudiulodro 2y ago
"Just" 43% of all websites on the internet.
- echoangle 2y ago
  This figure is so useless, because easily 50% of all websites have less than 1 human visitor per day (I made the number up, you get the point). The interesting statistic would be unique visits served or something like that.

slenk 2y ago

Does this mean I should remove "Powered by Wordpress" everywhere? I don't want to accidentally infringe on copyright.

handfuloflight 2y ago

What percentage of WPEngine does Automattic own? Why do not they donate to Wordpress Foundation out of that?

throwgfgfd25 2y ago
Where is it documented Automattic (or Mr Mullenweg) owns any of WP Engine? (ETA: Not saying it's impossible he or they have an interest -- I've just never seen this suggested. WP Engine is in many ways a competitor to wordpress.com, so it would be unusual, I think. And he/they have long not been a fan of WP Engine.)
- tredre3 2y ago
  Automattic invested in WP Engine ~13 years ago. I don't know if they still own the shares though. https://techcrunch.com/2011/11/15/silverton-automattic-put-1-2m-into-wordpress-hosting-and-security-service-wp-engine/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/11/15/silverton-automattic-put-1...
- aimazon 2y ago
  Automattic were an early investor in WPEngine, but they exited the investment around 2018.
  - throwgfgfd25 2y ago
    Thanks. 2018 would tie in with about when I first got the impression he was not a fan of WP Engine. I'm sure there was fuss once before (about them not being on the "recommended hosting" page?)
    - mthoms 2y ago
      That's when they were bought by private equity. So there was a big fuss about that.
- ValentineC 2y ago
  Automattic made an investment in WP Engine in 2011: https://wptavern.com/automattic-makes-second-investment-wpengine https://wptavern.com/automattic-makes-second-investment-wpen...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

rodgerd 2y ago

Yesterday: "My lawyer says I can say what I want." Today: "We have hired a lawyer."

Matticus_Rex 2y ago
Eh, my day-to-day lawyer and the firm I'd hire if a big company sued me and my company are different. If I were in Matt's position I'd have probably taken everything to a single firm that could handle all conceivable work, but it's not uncommon to do otherwise. The first lawyer he refers to may be actually Automattic corporate counsel, too, and you'd definitely want an outside firm on this suit. Though any lawyer should have told him to shut up.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  > Though any lawyer should have told him to shut up. Yeah, it's not exactly a contentious legal opinion, "Don't go on a massive, selective, foot-in-mouth comment spree that just raises more questions and problems than it answers on social media after being served with a suit."
throwgfgfd25 2y ago
Neal Katyal though. Someone you hire if you expect to go the distance.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago

They already took it down?

nickthegreek 2y ago

[flagged]

notatoad 2y ago
works for me... > Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality—and reserve all of our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engine. Automattic has retained Neal Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, and his firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, to represent us. Mr. Katyal stated, “I stayed up last night reading WP Engine’s Complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court’s consideration of their lawsuit.” > Our focus is and has always been protecting >the integrity of WordPress and our mission to democratize publishing. From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fhfhfhjfnfnfmf 2y ago
  They changed the URL and didn’t immediately set up a alias, so people were hitting an error page for a bit. I guess whatever mediocre blogging software they’re using didn’t handle it automatically, or maybe they just don’t know how to use it.

n3storm 2y ago

After ClassicPress fork here comes: DramaPress

layer8 2y ago
Dramattic
- n3storm 2y ago
  genius
stefanos82 2y ago
lol more like CheckMattePress!

woah 2y ago

# A Statement from Automattic Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality—and reserve all of our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engine. Automattic has retained Neal Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, and his firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, to represent us. Mr. Katyal stated, “I stayed up last night reading WP Engine’s Complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court’s consideration of their lawsuit.” Our focus is and has always been protecting the integrity of WordPress and our mission to democratize publishing. From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.

itsdrewmiller 2y ago
In case anyone was wondering I also reserve all of my rights related to this and all other matters.
x0x0 2y ago
You forgot this bit, or perhaps it was edited in: > Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case. My perception: the personal grievance comes through loud and clear. Hopefully cases are decided more on their merits and less on the identities of the attorneys prosecuting them.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

yawnxyz 2y ago

> "WP Engine can hardly say the same" So much of Automattic's corpospeak drips with spite. Makes me understand why other companies are so "bland" — to protect themselves

aimazon 2y ago
That's because it's not corpospeak, it's Mattospeak.
- yawnxyz 2y ago
  Automattic apparently has 1800 employees (LOL). Surprised they don't have a board, HR, comms, and other teams? Also I realized "Matt" is front and center in Automattic so that says a lot
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    They do have a board, it's just that the board is Matt and his 2 lawyers, lol.
  - everfrustrated 2y ago
    I just twigged the name is AutoMATTic
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - AlchemistCamp 2y ago
    You "realized"? He built WordPress from the first day. That's why he runs both its non-profit and Automattic, which is named after him. It sounds like you haven't been aware at all about WordPress and suddenly looked up some numbers and imposed traditional company expectations on an open source project with a commercial arm.
    - yawnxyz 2y ago
      I know absolutely nothing about Wordpress or Matt! I'm not much of an internet historian

rglover 2y ago

This is getting embarrassing. I was a big fan of Matt's before this whole charade started but he's basically flushing 20 years of goodwill down the drain for not a whole lot in return. As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine (and a hand-forcing by Automattic to implement a retroactive licensing agreement)?

m348e912 2y ago
>As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP" in WPEngine I'm only slightly following the dispute between Automattic and WPEngine but it might have more to do with WPEngine rewriting the payment identifier on Automattic's open source Woo Commerce ecommerce plugin. WPEngine's payment identifier rewrite results in WPEngine getting a cut of ecommerce payments processed through their hosted sites and not Automattic. I don't know the details though and probably didn't even explain it right. Matt talked about it recently in a Youtube interview.
- kevinlangleyjr 2y ago
  If you read through the lawsuit, that's not even the case.
  - m348e912 2y ago
    I understand what's in the lawsuit, I am just speculating on what might have been the last straw that led to the lawsuit.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
klelatti 2y ago
As I understand it the claimed trademark infringement is WPE saying they ‘provide WordPress hosting’. If they are successful can anyone built an opens source hosting business?

FlamingMoe 2y ago

Hopefully his first advice was to tell Matt to cease the hotheaded tweets, livestream interviews, and hn comments.

next_xibalba 2y ago

When this story first emerged, I was somewhat sympathetic to Matt/Automattic. But geeze, he is just looking worse and worse. Between this tantrum and threatening a former employee over a very innocuous statement [1], his credibility is pretty low in my opinion. [1] https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/nice-guy-matt-mullenweg-ceo-of-wordpress-com-cries-foul-and-threatens-me-with-legal-action-f116ac57d862 https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/nice-guy-matt-mullenweg-c...

jarule 2y ago
[flagged]
hodgesrm 2y ago
Kellie's article is a well-written and reasonable response to mean-spirited bullying. It makes me wonder why a lot of people think it's good to have Silicon Valley companies run by trolls. Is that really the way to build successful businesses? Edit: added missing word "companies"
mvdtnz 2y ago
Far out, this whole thing is links to links to links, is there somewhere I can read a summary of this whole stupid drama?
- ValentineC 2y ago
  Someone shared this LWN article somewhere among all the discussions, and it seems neutral enough: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/991906/d7340f3b866d855b/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/991906/d7340f3b866d855b/
legitster 2y ago
In that thread, Matt instantly jumping to a "you are against me/you must be the enemy" is suuuuch a red flag that he has Main Character Syndrome.
- mthoms 2y ago

klelatti 2y ago

Like many here I suspect I care less about who wins the litigation than about the third parties - businesses, individuals and at least one major charity - who will have been affected by Matt’s and Automattic’s actions. Where is the blog post about the affect this has had on them?

trog 2y ago

Regardless of which side you're on, so far the one thing that seems clear here is that the lawyers are going to be the real winners here. When that is happening between two companies I generally don't care about it that much, but I hope open source doesn't turn out to be collateral damage here.

stego-tech 2y ago
Exactly my thinking as well. All this bickering managed to do is convince me to setup my blog on Ghost instead of anything WP-related. Both parties seemingly suck, and I wish them both the worst. In the meantime, this is a great excuse to promote WP-alternatives and improve upon them just in case this whole thing goes completely pear-shaped.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  > Both parties seemingly suck What exactly sucks about WPEngine, specifically?
  - spython 2y ago
    They extract value from an open source project, use the resources/bandwidth of plugin repositories, position(ed) themselves as WordPress affiliated (the branding can easily be understood as WPengine being core WordPress), and contribute nothing back. It is the “socialize the losses, privatize the profits” of open source.
    - FireBeyond 2y ago
      > use the resources/bandwidth of plugin repositories As does every single other host that offers WordPress, and every user. > position(ed) themselves as WordPress affiliated (the branding can easily be understood as WPengine being core WordPress) One: "WP" was explicitly allowed, by WordPress, for use of WordPress. Matt yoinked this after all of this started, in the last two weeks or so. He also tried to make it retroactive. Two: nominative usage says that if you factually offer WordPress hosting (or MySQL hosting, or whatever), you are allowed to say so. It doesn't mean you are maliciously "positioning yourself" as "affiliated", in any way, shape or form. > and contribute nothing back Not true at all, despite Matt's venom. They contribute and maintain several of the most popular plugins, they contribute to the codebase (just not to Matt's liking), and sponsor conferences and community events - this all started around the time that they sponsored a WordPress conference to the tune of $75,000 and then were banned from attending it, which is odd, because supposedly WordPress (the open source project) and the Foundation are independent (per all of their own filings with regulatory bodies and the IRS), but they were banned because they were in a dispute with Automattic (CEO - Matt), so WordPress Foundation (President - Matt) decided so. To add insult to injury, banned, but they decided to keep the sponsorship money.

elAhmo 2y ago

This feels like a classic "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". It appears the more Matt talks, the more he tarnishes the reputation Wordpress has.

swores 2y ago

> "Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case." I don't think I have ever before seen, in an official public statement, a "The lawyer we just hired always beats the lawyer they just hired!" boast, and it seems ridiculous - it's almost even hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer rather than that their case should win on merit.

nickff 2y ago
Selecting a lawyer with a proven record, and expressing confidence in them are not "hinting in the direction that they think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer". They're smart strategies, whether you decide to take the case to court, or seek a settlement (on either side).
- swores 2y ago
  I agree that it is of course smart to choose a lawyer you think can win, it's the public statement about the lawyer's track record that seems crazy to me, not the hiring decision.
  - nickff 2y ago
    Expressing confidence publicly just seems like a ‘stronger’ way of expressing it (as compared to doing so privately). Perhaps Automattic is trying to get WP Engine stakeholders to press for a settlement? What about this “seems crazy”?
    - swores 2y ago
      It makes no difference in their battle against WP Engine, who would very quickly discover which lawyers they're going up against with or without this blog post. That line in the blog post is aimed at public perception, not WP Engine's perception, and from a PR point of view there's not really any benefit to it only downside - I guess their thinking is that some members of public might think "the winning lawyer wouldn't join the losing team so Automattic must be in the right here", but it actually makes them look like their legal defence is weak enough that they need to resort to trying to win through legal skills rather than business facts. When I call it "crazy" I'm talking from the point of view of someone who has drafted a couple of announcements quite similar to this one, and many others that weren't related to defending legal cases but were still walking tricking lines in PR/comms, and I just can't imagine a line like that being suggested by anyone I've worked with and can't imagine letting it slip into a release I was involved in.

mrkramer 2y ago

[flagged]

vcanales 2y ago
Yeah, Jobs probably went "only I get to be rude... and to my employees, too"
nickff 2y ago
Steve Jobs was famously mean, and had a 'flexible' relationship with the truth. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/5l3hys/comment/dbsqvxu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/5l3hys/commen...
- hodgesrm 2y ago
  But he was also famously reasonable at times when most people would have been just mean. [0] He had a complex and conflicting personality. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o
  - nickff 2y ago
    Definitely! And I’m typing in an iPhone right now! But he wasn’t a great example of “co-opetition”.
- mrkramer 2y ago
  >For the longest time he didn't admit he had a child, or support her. He had to be legally forced to start paying child support even after he became wealthy. I never really understood why he did that?! I suppose it was personal vendetta against his gf at the time.

gamblor956 2y ago

From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same. Yes, that's why WordPress silently and secretly licensed back the WordPress trademarks to Matt's for-profit company without telling anybody. For the good of the customers. That's why they forced the new boondoggle editing UI that everyone hates. For the good of the customers. That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers. Matt also seems very proud of his new, shady lawyer, who failed to disclose that he had cases before the Supreme Court when he endorsed Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for open spots. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have since reciprocated by ruling for this guy's clients every time, in several cases with decisions that confounded even conservative legal experts. So, it would seem Matt found a dirty lawyer to represent his dirty case. (EDIT: Katyal is the lawyer who suggested corporations should be immune from anti-trafficking laws because it would be bad for business and got his endorsee pals to bless corporate wage theft. He's the kind of lawyer companies turn to when they want to get away with something truly evil.) We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality Based on Matt's gross misrepresentations of reality on yesterday's thread, the only party to this case making gross mischaracterizations of reality is Matt. If WordPress were truly an independent, community-led organization like Matt claims, he would have been forced out by now for the harm he's inflicted upon it.

dumbledoren 2y ago
> That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15 years after it was originally launched. For the good of the customers. Thats actually true. Backward compatibility was and still is the #1 thing in WP, and its why it won over the web: No small business or individual customer cares about 'better code' in the backend if those 'improvements' break their websites. This was what a lot of wordpress competitors did in the past and they suffered for it.
- gamblor956 2y ago
  No, the spaghetti code has always been bad for customers. Security exploits, hacked-together functionality that can't be improved until Matt decides to make the breaking change that forcibly breaks hundreds of plugins, etc., random bugs that nobody understands, poor performance requiring expensive and extensive modifications to achieve basic levels of responsiveness that makes even Java look like a speedster. Backwards compatibility is just the excuse Matt has been using from the beginning to justify how abysmally bad the code is.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

everfrustrated 2y ago

The popcorn value on this saga is awesome! As far as I can figure, from watching Matt's recent interviews and my own conjecture... Matt's seen his open source creation go, over the course of 20 years, from a hobbyist product to now one with a multitude of companies creating billions of revenue from it. But as it's grown certain companies are now huge and flush with VC cash. Which does change the equation. In the early days it might be reasonable to turn a blind eye to trademark infringement when it helps all boats rise, but now things are very imbalanced. IMHO WPEngine is rent-extracting in the same way that AWS does with many open-source solutions. Customers want products not source-code and are prepared to pay for packaged value-added products compatible with Wordpress. But none of this revenue is going back to the developers and fostering the development ecosystem in any meaningful way. If opensource projects like Redis & Elasticsearch could have had developers hired from 8% of revenues from those AWS sales imagine how much better off those projects could have been. As Wordpress itself is open-source Matt doesn't have any levers except the name Wordpress. As anybody in open-source should know - the code might well be open for forking but the name is very protected. Just because the trademark hasn't been entirely well enforced doesn't mean the protection is lost - the right always belongs to the trademark holder to use and enforce how they please as unilaterally as they wish. Trademarks can lose their protection if they start referring to generics but that's not the case here. Wordpress doesn't mean generic CMS - it's always referring to a Wordpress source code hosted by various companies. Matt's clearly acting emotionally and not terribly logically - that's clear for everyone to see. But I do think its with the long term intention of making a more sustainable community. Ultimately WPEngine can just rename their company and the only lever Matt has over them goes away. Or they can embrace the name and pay a fair licensing cost - a rate significantly lower than if they were licensing some other commercial CRM software.

ValentineC 2y ago
> IMHO WPEngine is rent-extracting in the same way that AWS does with many open-source solutions. Customers want products not source-code and are prepared to pay for packaged value-added products compatible with Wordpress. But none of this revenue is going back to the developers and fostering the development ecosystem in any meaningful way. If opensource projects like Redis & Elasticsearch could have had developers hired from 8% of revenues from those AWS sales imagine how much better off those projects could have been. WP Engine also acquired, and continues to maintain, projects like Advanced Custom Fields [1] and Local [2]. Local used to have pro features, which became free for everyone after the acquisition [3]. [1] https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/reflecting-on-two-years-at-wp-engine/ https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/reflecting-on-two-... [2] https://wpengine.com/blog/better-together-wp-engine-and-flywheel-make-local-and-genesis-products-available-to-all-customers/ https://wpengine.com/blog/better-together-wp-engine-and-flyw... [3] https://localwp.com/pro-for-everyone/ https://localwp.com/pro-for-everyone/

fhfhfhjfnfnfmf 2y ago

[flagged]

legitster 2y ago

The legal victory is almost moot, even if Automattic is found to have acted in their rights. How does any Wordpress developer know they are not going to be next? Or all of the third party plugin providers? Or theme makers? All of them heavily use Wordpress branding in their services, few contribute to the open source. The precedent being set here is wild, and every Wordpress organization becoming a Mullenweg personal mouthpiece account defending him personally is just so, so, bad. This is one of the the most needless self-destructive acts I have ever seen in the world of business.

davesmylie 2y ago
Not "business" I guess, but Andrew Lee and the whole freenode saga has has got to come close
bdzr 2y ago
> How does any Wordpress developer know they are not going to be next? Or all of the third party plugin providers? Or theme makers? All of them heavily use Wordpress branding in their services, few contribute to the open source. Easy, just don't be too successful.

annoyed_eng 2y ago

Medium term WordPress itself and the participants in its ecosystem are going to be the losers here. As a normal WordPress user who is a current client of Automattic AND WP Engine (for different sites), I’m simply far less likely to use WordPress at all for anything new. Why would I at this point? Why would anyone?

Molitor5901 2y ago

WP Engine should consider challenging the Wordpress Foundation's 501(c)(3) status by filing a complaint with the IRS. IANAL but I have run nonprofits, and they must be very careful about how it interacts with a for profit entity, especially when they share staff. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/How%20to%20Lose%20Your%20Tax%20Exempt%20Status.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/How%20to%20Lose%20Your%20Ta...

ydlr 2y ago
That seems like it would be terrible for the open source project and anyone that relies on it. I hope both sides of this dispute deescalate things before something like that happens.
- Molitor5901 2y ago
  Maybe not. A stern letter from the IRS might be just the nudge for the Foundation to clarify things, and maybe push Matt to choose one or the other. Few things will scare a nonprofit more than the IRS knocking on the door.

nineteen999 2y ago

I get it that there are probably a lot of people here to depend on Wordpress for their work or personal blog or whatever but ... do we really need daily updates and discussion on this spat between two companies? I've probably answered my own question already because evidently a lot of people here find this kind of schoolyard scrap intriguing ... I just wonder ... why. I guess the answer is to just upvote everything else on the front page.

blackqueeriroh 2y ago

I’m always impressed at how many lawyers apparently exist in the comments of HN posts /s

dumbledoren 2y ago

Nobody seems to have noticed that Matt Mullenweg stopped responding to everyone everywhere (including HN) after they hired the external law firm. They likely told him to shut up.