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I can see how clients that have sites hosted on WPEngine can be a bit concerned. Did you receive any queries by people who do not have anything hosted by WPEngi

by belorn 2y ago

I can see how clients that have sites hosted on WPEngine can be a bit concerned. Did you receive any queries by people who do not have anything hosted by WPEngine, but rather simply have a wordpress site on some other hosting company/self-hosted? I work at a hosting company and we have received zero questions, and we have a fair larger number of clients who sites are built on wordpress. In terms of going nuclear, anything regarding trademark will have zero impact on our clients.

bigiain 2y ago
Yeah. One of those clients is hosted on GCE. She is quite technical and plugged into general IT news, and they are in the middle of due diligence with potential investors though. > In terms of going nuclear, anything regarding trademark will have zero impact on our clients. Is that true if Matt/Automattic win against WPEngine, and he starts using that as precident and starts demanding 8% of revenue as his standard shakedown on anybody who's used the "WordPress" trademark to generate revenue?
- belorn 2y ago
  Yes, it is true. Websites built on wordpress do not generally use wordpress trademark to generate revenue. Its not recommended to have footers that says "built on wordpress", nor is recommended to keep the default website icon. If the client is, say a medical company that sells medical products, any reference to wordpress would be unprofessional to have on their company website. Is that client of yours a web developing company that focus on wordpress in their marketing?
  - bigiain 2y ago
    No. They're in a completely different agriculture related business. They have a custom web app to run the business part of their business, but rely heavily on their WordPress site for marketing, discovery, and customer acquisition. They have a quite technical marketing team (well, two people) who run the WP site, which they're quite aware of how often plugin and partner theme upgrades show up. The call was basically "So what's going to happen with WordPress and plugins? Are we going to be able to rely on updates and future security for the website?" She wasn't worried that they were gonna get caught up in a trademark problem, but that the trademark "war" would kill off WordPress core development, and/or the future development and bug/security fixes of the plugins they rely on. A reasonably valid fear, and one that I certainly don't dismiss out of hand.

by belorn 2y ago

bigiain 2y ago

Yeah. One of those clients is hosted on GCE. She is quite technical and plugged into general IT news, and they are in the middle of due diligence with potential investors though. > In terms of going nuclear, anything regarding trademark will have zero impact on our clients. Is that true if Matt/Automattic win against WPEngine, and he starts using that as precident and starts demanding 8% of revenue as his standard shakedown on anybody who's used the "WordPress" trademark to generate revenue?

belorn 2y ago
Yes, it is true. Websites built on wordpress do not generally use wordpress trademark to generate revenue. Its not recommended to have footers that says "built on wordpress", nor is recommended to keep the default website icon. If the client is, say a medical company that sells medical products, any reference to wordpress would be unprofessional to have on their company website. Is that client of yours a web developing company that focus on wordpress in their marketing?
- bigiain 2y ago
  No. They're in a completely different agriculture related business. They have a custom web app to run the business part of their business, but rely heavily on their WordPress site for marketing, discovery, and customer acquisition. They have a quite technical marketing team (well, two people) who run the WP site, which they're quite aware of how often plugin and partner theme upgrades show up. The call was basically "So what's going to happen with WordPress and plugins? Are we going to be able to rely on updates and future security for the website?" She wasn't worried that they were gonna get caught up in a trademark problem, but that the trademark "war" would kill off WordPress core development, and/or the future development and bug/security fixes of the plugins they rely on. A reasonably valid fear, and one that I certainly don't dismiss out of hand.