6 ms·

No amount of altruism or engineering work entitles you to lie/cheat/extort/defame/... When you publish something under an open source license, you entitle the

by gpm 1y ago

No amount of altruism or engineering work entitles you to lie/cheat/extort/defame/... When you publish something under an open source license, you entitle the rest of the world to use it to get rich. That's what the license says on the tin, what the licenses have always been advertised, etc. I have absolutely no problem with AWS or WPEngine using that entitlement, nor do I have any problem with any software engineer (or software engineering organization like AWS) choosing not to publish source code they didn't promise to. Even if I wasn't of this opinion though - I don't see how someone violating this supposed prohibition could possibly entitle Matt to lie/cheat/extort/defame/... Edit: I know it's off topic to talk about flagging, but can we consider not flagging the comment this is in reply to? I think it's generated valuable discussion for people learning about this case... even though I strongly disagree with the author.

pessimizer 1y ago
The extortion was to get them to contribute or pay somebody to contribute. And the threat was to withdraw his own resources.
- graeme 1y ago
  The threat was to "go nuclear". Among other things * Start a smear campaign * block people from wordpress.org unless they ticked a loyalty checkbox stating they weren't affiliated with wpengine * Take over and null Advanced Custom Fields, a WPengine plugin * Block wpengine from wordpress.org, which is baked into wordpress, refuse to name a price for access, refuse to allow development of any alternate plugin hosting system * Ban wordpress.org accounts of anyone who spoke up in favour of wpengine * Start specific campaigns to poach wpengine clients * start a website listing the staging urls of all wpengine customers and cite which ones left wpengine I'm sure I've forgotten some things. The deal with extortion is you may have a legal ability to request money you are not legally entitled to. You may have a legal ability to take certain actions. But what is often not legal is threatening to take certain otherwise legal actions UNLESS you are paid money you are not legally entitled to. The extortion claim was dismissed as the judge found there's no civil extortion tort under California law. California prosecutors haven't seen fit to file charges, so no formal proceeding. But you're being rather blithe in your description.
  - gpm 1y ago
    If we're listing them in detail personally I think one of the most offensive (though least commercially relevant) offenses was to attempt to use public resources, the trademark owned by a 501c3 charity, fraudulently transferred back to Matt, to extort them. Both since that's obviously fucking wrong, and they were already only making nominative use of the trademark (i.e. using it to refer to WordPress's product) which they have a free speech right to do.
    - echelon 1y ago
      This was all shitty behavior. But WP Engine was equally shitty (even if it's "legal" - OSI purism has no sense of justice) to steal his company's lunch, from their decades of hard work, and contribute absolutely nothing back. Again, it reeks of the same foul behavior we see from the hyperscalers.
      - gpm 1y ago
        I don't agree that WPE's behavior was shitty (as already discussed), let alone "equally" shitty. Even if I did though, so what? Two wrongs don't make a right. Shitty behavior doesn't justify someone else's lying/cheating/extorting/defaming/... Even criminals, real ones who have done far worse things than anything that happens in a business dispute, have the right to seek recourse via the legal system.
      - kstrauser 1y ago
        But them behaving badly (or not; I don’t know enough here to agree or disagree) isn’t the legal issue. Matt is in court for allegedly harming WPE’s business in violation of law and contracts, which has monetary damages WPE can seek to recover. If you call me names, you’re misbehaving and should be called out for it. If I retaliate by knocking over your fence and spraypainting your cat, you get to sue me even though you were the one who behaved poorly, but legally, to start with. TL;DR Matt claims WPE acted unethically, which is shameful. WPE claims Matt tried to ruin their business, in ways they say are illegal.
        1y ago
echelon 1y ago
This open source purism only benefits the leeches. This is the same defense I see repeated for Amazon and Google, and they're two of the biggest destroyers. Honestly OSI and their definition of "open" has been a scourge. Google and Amazon encourage this thinking because it benefits them. You can have non-commercial "fair source" for customers that prevents vultures from stealing your hard work. That's ethical, yet it gets dunked on by OSI purists. You can demand that profiteers be required to open source their entire stack. But these licenses are discouraged and underutilized. But when this keeps keeps happening again and again and continues to be met with victims blaming -- I'm disgusted by the open source community's failure to be pragmatic and sustainable. You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy. And so what did they take and take and never give themselves? Open source has a problem.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  > You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy. For source-availible software, you do. Someone "stealing" your code is table-stakes, if that turns your stomach then open source licenses aren't for you. You can sell your software and enjoy all the same protections of copyright that FOSS benefits from, instead. Microsoft built an empire doing that. It's no use crying over spilled milk if the software is freely licensed. There just isn't. If a paid competitor can do a better job, it will inevitably replace the free alternative - that's competition. When you try to use fatalist framing devices like "open source has a problem" you ignore all the developers happily coexisting with FOSS. The ones who don't complain, many of whom spend their whole lives never asking for anything but the right to contribute. If that's a problem and you dislike your neighbors, you're the one who needs to find a new neighborhood.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
- kstrauser 1y ago
  Open source, and Free Software especially, isn’t about pragmatism, or at least not only pragmatism. It’s about user freedom. And I only hear people complaining about shared source and other proprietary software licenses when the people using them claim they’re open source so that they can piggyback on that goodwill without actually participating. It’s perfectly fine if someone wants to release stuff under a closed license. They just don’t get to do that and then brag about their open source contributions.
photomatt 1y ago
I wrote a blog post about this: https://ma.tt/2025/09/externalities/ https://ma.tt/2025/09/externalities/
- thunderfork 1y ago
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- rizky05 1y ago
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by gpm 1y ago

pessimizer 1y ago

The extortion was to get them to contribute or pay somebody to contribute. And the threat was to withdraw his own resources.

graeme 1y ago
The threat was to "go nuclear". Among other things * Start a smear campaign * block people from wordpress.org unless they ticked a loyalty checkbox stating they weren't affiliated with wpengine * Take over and null Advanced Custom Fields, a WPengine plugin * Block wpengine from wordpress.org, which is baked into wordpress, refuse to name a price for access, refuse to allow development of any alternate plugin hosting system * Ban wordpress.org accounts of anyone who spoke up in favour of wpengine * Start specific campaigns to poach wpengine clients * start a website listing the staging urls of all wpengine customers and cite which ones left wpengine I'm sure I've forgotten some things. The deal with extortion is you may have a legal ability to request money you are not legally entitled to. You may have a legal ability to take certain actions. But what is often not legal is threatening to take certain otherwise legal actions UNLESS you are paid money you are not legally entitled to. The extortion claim was dismissed as the judge found there's no civil extortion tort under California law. California prosecutors haven't seen fit to file charges, so no formal proceeding. But you're being rather blithe in your description.
- gpm 1y ago
  If we're listing them in detail personally I think one of the most offensive (though least commercially relevant) offenses was to attempt to use public resources, the trademark owned by a 501c3 charity, fraudulently transferred back to Matt, to extort them. Both since that's obviously fucking wrong, and they were already only making nominative use of the trademark (i.e. using it to refer to WordPress's product) which they have a free speech right to do.
  - echelon 1y ago
    This was all shitty behavior. But WP Engine was equally shitty (even if it's "legal" - OSI purism has no sense of justice) to steal his company's lunch, from their decades of hard work, and contribute absolutely nothing back. Again, it reeks of the same foul behavior we see from the hyperscalers.
    - gpm 1y ago
      I don't agree that WPE's behavior was shitty (as already discussed), let alone "equally" shitty. Even if I did though, so what? Two wrongs don't make a right. Shitty behavior doesn't justify someone else's lying/cheating/extorting/defaming/... Even criminals, real ones who have done far worse things than anything that happens in a business dispute, have the right to seek recourse via the legal system.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      But them behaving badly (or not; I don’t know enough here to agree or disagree) isn’t the legal issue. Matt is in court for allegedly harming WPE’s business in violation of law and contracts, which has monetary damages WPE can seek to recover. If you call me names, you’re misbehaving and should be called out for it. If I retaliate by knocking over your fence and spraypainting your cat, you get to sue me even though you were the one who behaved poorly, but legally, to start with. TL;DR Matt claims WPE acted unethically, which is shameful. WPE claims Matt tried to ruin their business, in ways they say are illegal.
      - 1y ago

echelon 1y ago

This open source purism only benefits the leeches. This is the same defense I see repeated for Amazon and Google, and they're two of the biggest destroyers. Honestly OSI and their definition of "open" has been a scourge. Google and Amazon encourage this thinking because it benefits them. You can have non-commercial "fair source" for customers that prevents vultures from stealing your hard work. That's ethical, yet it gets dunked on by OSI purists. You can demand that profiteers be required to open source their entire stack. But these licenses are discouraged and underutilized. But when this keeps keeps happening again and again and continues to be met with victims blaming -- I'm disgusted by the open source community's failure to be pragmatic and sustainable. You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy. And so what did they take and take and never give themselves? Open source has a problem.

bigyabai 1y ago
> You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy. For source-availible software, you do. Someone "stealing" your code is table-stakes, if that turns your stomach then open source licenses aren't for you. You can sell your software and enjoy all the same protections of copyright that FOSS benefits from, instead. Microsoft built an empire doing that. It's no use crying over spilled milk if the software is freely licensed. There just isn't. If a paid competitor can do a better job, it will inevitably replace the free alternative - that's competition. When you try to use fatalist framing devices like "open source has a problem" you ignore all the developers happily coexisting with FOSS. The ones who don't complain, many of whom spend their whole lives never asking for anything but the right to contribute. If that's a problem and you dislike your neighbors, you're the one who needs to find a new neighborhood.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
kstrauser 1y ago
Open source, and Free Software especially, isn’t about pragmatism, or at least not only pragmatism. It’s about user freedom. And I only hear people complaining about shared source and other proprietary software licenses when the people using them claim they’re open source so that they can piggyback on that goodwill without actually participating. It’s perfectly fine if someone wants to release stuff under a closed license. They just don’t get to do that and then brag about their open source contributions.

photomatt 1y ago

I wrote a blog post about this: https://ma.tt/2025/09/externalities/ https://ma.tt/2025/09/externalities/

thunderfork 1y ago
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rizky05 1y ago
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