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Does WPEngine have any obligation to contribute back? How is WordPress licensed?

by wpm 22d ago

pathartl 22d ago
They do not. It's GPL
Arnt 22d ago
Only to the extent the company pledged to do so. It did pledge, and the follow-up on that pledge was minimal.
- ceejayoz 21d ago
  > Only to the extent the company pledged to do so. Is this not the standard expectation? Does one typically add a gratuity when contributing to OSS? > It did pledge, and the follow-up on that pledge was minimal. So they kept the promise?
  - Arnt 21d ago
    I don't know about standard behaviour, some people consider behaviour normal that I consider slimy. I heard at the time that a WP Engine employee had told someone that his/her pledged "full time assignment" had shrunk to a small number of hours per week after a while. That's hearsay, I heard it from someone who doesn't work at either of the two companies and it must be third-hand. But if that were the case, and if the pledge didn't say how long the full-time assignment would be kept up, some people would say that the promise was kept. Those people probably also would say that you shouldn't trust a handshake agreement, and please have a lawyer check the written agreement, and if you run an open source project, copy the policies Oracle has for JDK. What I say is that there's a conflict waiting to happen, if one of the parties expects the pledge to be kept up for a significant period of time and the other expects to tiptoe away shortly later.
ibejoeb 21d ago
Open to correction here, but I understand it to be like this: the kernel of the contention is about the use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks, not the software itself. Essentially, WP Engine is a commercial entity profiting from the use of the trademark. Regardless of how it has been handled, it does not seem to be a frivolous claim.
- qlte 21d ago
  They were using the trademark on the website to describe WordPress the software project under nomitative fair use in the same way many, many hosting providers have been doing for decades. He openly admitted in online comments to trying (and failing) to extort their CEO in private to give Automattic huge payments, and if they declined that he'd destroy their valuation by cutting off their access and buy them for pennies on the dollar. Among other threats leading up to the lawsuit, which taken together made it look like a blatantly selective punitive measure for cynical reasons. It doesn't help that the word "Wordpress" is used for all sorts of different, but overlapping things: wordpress.com for his private WordPress commercial host competing with WPEngine, wordpress.org for the WordPress Foundation he also controls, WordPress describing the open source GPL licensed project. Google makes things much simpler to avoid misusing their trademarks by splitting Chrome for their commercial product and Chromium for the open source project.
  - ibejoeb 21d ago
    And the part that is being litigated is whether that is, in fact, fair use, correct? I like the comparison to Chrome and Chromium. I don't know the timeline of the whole wordpress IP. At this most it has arguably undergone genericization. That's why I think it's complicated enough that there is merit to arguments on either side.
    - adrienne 21d ago
      That's a small part of what's being litigated. The rest of what's being litigated is unfair trade practices, monopolization, promissory estoppel, defamation, and computer fraud/abuse. (Seriously, there are 18 causes of action in the Third Amended Complaint, which is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.233.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... . There are also counterclaims, which are here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.195.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... )

Does WPEngine have any obligation to contribute back? How is WordPress licensed?

by wpm 22d ago

Does WPEngine have any obligation to contribute back? How is WordPress licensed?

pathartl 22d ago

They do not. It's GPL

Arnt 22d ago

Only to the extent the company pledged to do so. It did pledge, and the follow-up on that pledge was minimal.

ceejayoz 21d ago
> Only to the extent the company pledged to do so. Is this not the standard expectation? Does one typically add a gratuity when contributing to OSS? > It did pledge, and the follow-up on that pledge was minimal. So they kept the promise?
- Arnt 21d ago
  I don't know about standard behaviour, some people consider behaviour normal that I consider slimy. I heard at the time that a WP Engine employee had told someone that his/her pledged "full time assignment" had shrunk to a small number of hours per week after a while. That's hearsay, I heard it from someone who doesn't work at either of the two companies and it must be third-hand. But if that were the case, and if the pledge didn't say how long the full-time assignment would be kept up, some people would say that the promise was kept. Those people probably also would say that you shouldn't trust a handshake agreement, and please have a lawyer check the written agreement, and if you run an open source project, copy the policies Oracle has for JDK. What I say is that there's a conflict waiting to happen, if one of the parties expects the pledge to be kept up for a significant period of time and the other expects to tiptoe away shortly later.

ibejoeb 21d ago

Open to correction here, but I understand it to be like this: the kernel of the contention is about the use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks, not the software itself. Essentially, WP Engine is a commercial entity profiting from the use of the trademark. Regardless of how it has been handled, it does not seem to be a frivolous claim.

qlte 21d ago
They were using the trademark on the website to describe WordPress the software project under nomitative fair use in the same way many, many hosting providers have been doing for decades. He openly admitted in online comments to trying (and failing) to extort their CEO in private to give Automattic huge payments, and if they declined that he'd destroy their valuation by cutting off their access and buy them for pennies on the dollar. Among other threats leading up to the lawsuit, which taken together made it look like a blatantly selective punitive measure for cynical reasons. It doesn't help that the word "Wordpress" is used for all sorts of different, but overlapping things: wordpress.com for his private WordPress commercial host competing with WPEngine, wordpress.org for the WordPress Foundation he also controls, WordPress describing the open source GPL licensed project. Google makes things much simpler to avoid misusing their trademarks by splitting Chrome for their commercial product and Chromium for the open source project.
- ibejoeb 21d ago
  And the part that is being litigated is whether that is, in fact, fair use, correct? I like the comparison to Chrome and Chromium. I don't know the timeline of the whole wordpress IP. At this most it has arguably undergone genericization. That's why I think it's complicated enough that there is merit to arguments on either side.
  - adrienne 21d ago
    That's a small part of what's being litigated. The rest of what's being litigated is unfair trade practices, monopolization, promissory estoppel, defamation, and computer fraud/abuse. (Seriously, there are 18 causes of action in the Third Amended Complaint, which is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.233.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... . There are also counterclaims, which are here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.195.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... )