Automattic Is Doing Open Source Dirty

[@wrux]

The PHP foundation should go after 8% of WordPress' revenue for making money using their software

[@collinslagat3458]

Will violate licence. But even if it didn't, it might create a vicious cycle of retaliation that will change OSS permanently.

[@edgarneubauer]

According to The PHP Foundation website, Automattic are one of the ten founding members and Platinum Sponsors

[@jzajzz]

They are donors to the PHP foundation already... The guy might be wrong and crazy..but he doesn't strike me as someone who would refuse to contribute to an open source project that he uses

[@evanc8057]

@@jzajzz Automattic only gives 0.04% of its revenue to the PHP Foundation. Not even close to the 8% he is asking of WPEngine. Which is fine btw because open source means that you don't even need to contribute anything if you don't want.

[@ouss]

automattic made 500mill last year so they should DONATE 8% of that

[@sathvikng8660]

"There is only one loser in this war, that's the wordpress user" -Fireship

[@victorln]

I think we’ll see a drastic uptick of companies with in-house dev teams either moving away from WP entirely or maybe some type of wp fork / statamic. This has been going on too long for people to fully trust that something like this won’t happen again.

[@Kane0123]

For now yeah sure. But longer term there might be some way broader implications

[@sathvikng8660]

​​@@victorln Will it be drastic? I mean half the internet is covered by WP right?. The alternatives should be really good for the companies to fully pivot away from WP

[@JanusJanavas]

How does this affect you personally? Has anything changed for regular WordPress users?

[@nunya1337]

@@sathvikng8660 nope. Wordpress isn’t even that popular anymore, and that’s part of the reason for this attempted clawback

[@tylerwright2542]

I'm a technology lawyer with 8 years of industry experience based in Australia, if you ever want to talk more than bird law on your channel I'd be happy to give you my take on the WP saga and other open source licensing shenanigans 😂

[@jackdanielson1997]

I just want to say I appreciate the precision with which you described your experience. So many people flower their experience up

[@ErikTheHalibut]

If you really are, let's make it happen. This would be pretty interesting

[@TomNook.]

Or just post your views here....

[@cheweh842]

I really hope Prime takes you up on this. There's a lot of interesting legal nuance I felt like screaming at my screen about in this video.

[@friedpizza262]

You're really a lawyer. Another person would've at least shared some of their thoughts here..

[@RandomHandle120]

I have altered the terms of the deal. Pray I don't alter them any further.

[@Musikur]

This deal gets worse all the time

[@Paride5745]

> Pay or I will alter them further. FTFY!

[@BuffPuffer]

WordPress performed a hostile takeover of the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, secretly renaming it over the weekend. Situation just went nuclear.

[@Dylan_thebrand_slayer_Mulveiny]

The absolute irony of that is baffling. Bitching about IP theft, while stealing peoples IP.

[@KManAbout]

Forking a plugin lol

[@Dylan_thebrand_slayer_Mulveiny]

@@KManAbout What WP did is NOT forking.

[@KManAbout]

@@Dylan_thebrand_slayer_Mulveiny that's literally what they did.

[@Dylan_thebrand_slayer_Mulveiny]

@@KManAbout They locked the plugins author out of their own repo. Then they renamed the plugin and forced users to get updates from their "forked" version. Without the end users consent or knowledge How can you justify that?

[@leosin5767]

Room temperature IQ is even funner when you use Celsius

[@warrenarnoldmusic]

It is dumb😅😅 thats literally intelligence of an imbicile wdym

[@Wkaelx]

What?( i know what celsius is btw)

[@michalthemichal3550]

Room temperature in Celsius is around 20°, in Fahrenheit it's much higher

[@sakset112]

If your project has a MIT license, it's open source. Being open source doesn't mean having to accept contributions

[@HikaruAkitsuki]

Aside MIT, they have custom copyleft which turned out to be not copyleft anymore because of stupid modification.

[@nchomey]

It's not custom. It's just GPL

[@byte2848]

While it's definitely still open source, it doesn't quite fit the idealistic image of open source that a lot of people have. I definitely think there's value in using terms that provide this nuance, however ideally people would consider it a branch of open source rather than something separate.

[@gljames24]

​@@byte2848 It's Copyleft vs Permissive

[@felixjohnson3874]

​@@gljames24what? Thats an entirely separate thing. This is about accepting contributions, not whether or not it's libre.

[@xenoaurora]

I am pretty sure trademark/ copyright specifically prevents 2 letter abbreviations because of how common and overlapping they are.

[@roque-au-parcus]

Except that Wordpress explicitly created an exception to their trademark, and I doubt changing it after years to attack another company would be looked on kindly by a court.

[@christophertstone]

There is a specific rule for "marks made up of two letters will also be disallowed if they are descriptive abbreviations, acronyms, or the like", which would apply here. Outside of that, marks are usually context sensitive. You couldn't get a mark for two letter in any context, but possibly for "Software that performs X function".

[@somebody-anonymous]

I remember WP used to mean only one nasty thing before I started hanging with the tech bros

[@dj_jiffy_pop]

@@somebody-anonymous I think you mean DP.

[@xenoaurora]

@@christophertstone Perfect! This is exactly what i was thinking of. As someone else commented it doesnt really matter because they dont have that mark and didnt file for it, but I guess its important to know why they probably didnt and why they cant just adjust the TOS to say "please dont use it to confuse people"

[@UltimatePerfection]

Funny thing is that this trademark is invalid by default due to genericide.

[@kenamreemas3295]

Yeah, what if a person who uses it for his business called "WaterPark" ?

[@belst_]

@@kenamreemas3295 Trademarks are specific to certain industries, as long as there are no confusions possible

[@KManAbout]

@@UltimatePerfection no court has decided that its generic only you have

[@jonathandpg6115]

@@kenamreemas3295so in trademark law you can use trademarks if it doesn't confuse the customer...for example delta faucets and delta airlines. Although they are both delta the two industries are super different so there is no confusion between the two....no reasonable customer will get confused by going to delta faucet thinking it's owned by the major u.s. airline. However.... that's not the case for WP engine and wordpress. Where now they are both website CMS' and one relies on the other. You can easily say that it can be confusing for customers and they can think WP engine was owned by wordpress. P.S. that doesn't mean I think they will win that case because one of the pillars is you must defend your trademark and WP Engine was big and he obviously knew about them yet hasn't sued them before....

[@QuisUtDeus828]

This isn't a generic term like...apple or windows (which are both valid trademarks)

[@Altrue]

Open source should win. But I don't see why it should void the trademark claim. It's the trademark holder who decides how it's used. They are allowed to revoke previous priviledges and access. You see brands pulling support from an external thing all the time. Furthermore, open source has a crucial financing problem. Companies make billions on the back of unpaid volunteers. It's not sustainable. Does nobody remember jian tan ?

[@averagegeek3957]

WP is not a trademark.

[@Altrue]

@@averagegeek3957 Oh really? According to whom? Enlighten us about how it can NOT be a trademark even though it's used in commerce for a half a billion dollar company, and many others? You DO know that usage makes a trademark, right? And don't try to move the goalposts by saying that you meant a "registered trademark"

[@KManAbout]

@@averagegeek3957 it's not just wp they use the WordPress full name everywhere even for tiers of their product.

[@jonathandpg6115]

@@Altruea trademark needs to be registered to be protected. You also need to defend said trademark or you lose it

[@Altrue]

@jonathandpg6115 nope, and yes.

[@SanityAwry]

Trademark is an interesting situation where you are actually *required* to issue cease and desist mechanisms when you encounter perceived violations, otherwise you are liable to lose the protections of the mark.

[@retrotgames]

Dumb question. Isn't Wordpress just blocking access to its own private infrastructure? I didn't think this had anything to do with actual open source code. Wordpress didn't remove access to the sources of Wordpress, they only removed access to the private hosted infrastructure.

[@Jabberwockybird]

But WP engine is a hosting service 🤷‍♂️. An infrastructure diagram would be helpful

[@retrotgames]

​@@Jabberwockybird true! I think that this current issue isn't about "open source" in the traditional sense of code sharing. The way I understand the current blockage is (please correct me if this is wrong): WP takes the underlying Wordpress (open source) software and adds a layer of plugins/mods/other changes on top of it and then redistributes it under their product banner. The underlying Wordpress software pulls packages and updates from the core Wordpress infrastructure. Because WP is so big, this infrastructure is FAR from cheap. And because WP hasn't been a "good citizen" to Wordpress, Wordpress doesn't feel like they have to be a good citizen back. I think the core issue is massively misunderstood here. I think the issue is how unstable it can be to rely on someone else's free technology stack to run a multi-million dollar business. This whole issue doesn't feel like an OSS issue to me, that's just the catchy hook that's being used to drive clicks.

[@oleksiistri8429]

Exactly! 💯

[@neruneri]

There are two separate issues, the first one being the one you've described. That's not the one that we're talking about when we say that it has OSS-implications. The second issue, the one that *does* affect OSS, is the specific actions Matt has taken to deal with the first issue. Specifically, retroactively altering their license and then trying to enforce it against WP Engine. This inherently undermines the very concept of licenses in the sense that if this action is allowed to stand, any license is inherently free to be altered and reinforced retroactively in the future. This is, in itself, an existential threat to open source, because Open Source exists solely based on these licenses.

[@pppubl]

​​@@neruneribut they did not change their license AFAIK. They changed their copyright terms. Which is not nice, but _very_ different (and legal, a retroactive license change would not be).. Wpengine needs to effectively rename themselves, and host their own mirror for plugins, if they win.

[@moonoovie]

I distinctly remember in your interview with Matt that he said they had a product called “WordPress Source” or some such. It was the full word “WordPress” and “Source” in their product name that he believed causes confusion for consumers about the actual source of the product.

[@milesmatt]

Yeah - that seems like a pretty aggressive infringement on the core open source codebase's license and concept. To me that's pretty offensive and shouldn't be left out of the conversation just because WPE "backed off" so quickly when this dispute began. It seems pretty plausible this was a large factor in starting to play hardball and is also indicative of the intent, disrespect, and infringement intended by WPEngine.

[@jonathandpg6115]

@@milesmattexactly matt may have acted crazy over the whole thing but I understand his frustration.

[@jeffwells641]

"We didn't trademark it for 20 years, but we're trademarking it now" Bro, that's not how trademark works. All anybody has to do to dispute your trademark is point to the 20 years you didn't consider it your trademark, and you lose. Honestly, WP Engine probably has a better claim to the WP trademark than Automattic at this point. And to be clear, WP Engine does not have a strong claim to the WP trademark.

[@mundanesquirrel8687]

this is true.

[@jirimensik]

WP in "WP Engine" is abbreviation of WordPress, isn't it?

[@mundanesquirrel8687]

sure. so what? you're allowed to build a business to host Wordpress and to have have a name indicating that. just as long as ppl don't get confused and somehow are led to believe that WP Engine makes Wordpress.

[@jirimensik]

@@mundanesquirrel8687 It's like starting making cars called Tesla just because Musk gave away some patents and demand Tesla chargers being free for them too. Free software means free code, not free trademarks and free infrastructure for updates etc.

[@Luxalpa]

@@jirimensik You should watch the video. What you said has already been debunked.

[@neruneri]

The hidden silver lining is that Matt's actions have been so overtly malicious that there's just no way it doesn't constitute tortious interference.

[@evanc8057]

Hoping that he is sued into oblivion and forced to sell.

[@neruneri]

@@evanc8057 This is an entirely plausible outcome yeah. Not just from WP Engine, but I strongly suspect like there will be other entities that have a legal claim as well. For example the people who ran that plugin that got hijacked after the fabricated security report.

[@noxirixon]

i still think this is much more about trademark law .. nothing about copyright .. different types of law

[@itsmki]

There's that "ethics are optional" thing again. It really is absurd that people think that.

[@pieflies]

Is that like Tortious SVN?

[@p_s1dharth]

Matt is acting like a child now rather than being a mature adult

[@azubu101]

“Now”

[@lucidattf]

“Now” is unnecessary. He’s known for this

[@Mark-nh7zg]

"Now" This is consistent with his behavior

[@nunya1337]

Children know how to leverage the law to make money? Ya super childish 😂

[@ridass.7137]

like Putler

[@ScottAshmead]

Everyone knows the WP stands for Word Perfect ;-)

[@pazu8728]

Yes, Wordperfect should sue Wordpress 😛.

[@paolomoscatelli]

I see Im not the only one here who was alive in 1990

[@kercondark]

Also Wirtualna Polska was copyrighted in 2015 and trademarked from June 2017. :D

[@milesmatt]

I don't like you now. That one stung. The other Blue Screen of Death.

[@r0nni3b]

If I understood correctly from the interview video, the issue is with the trademark not the code. They are not doing all this fuzz because WP Engine is "using WordPress code" is for relying/leveraging their trademark for profit. I think we are mixing things... please correct me if I'm wrong (ps: I don't even use WP, just humble opinion)

[@SanyaZol]

Matt's behavior is not an excuse for wp engine to have a trademark in the name of the paid plan. As much as I hate what matt does, he is in the right about WP engine making every single SEO trick to appear legitimate and endorsed.

[@TurtleKwitty]

Yes and no, the name of the open source project is wordpress so yes Automattic owns the trademark for wordpress wordmarks and logos etc there just is no physically possibleway to host a thing without referring to it be name so it's a bit of a weird edge case where the project is diluting its own trademark for the specific use case of referring to running the project

[@ryandury]

you are absolutely right. Everyone is falling for a flawed line of reasoning where they think "open source code" is at risk when it has to do with branding.

[@kenneth_romero]

pretty much. what sucks is they can still use the GPL license and claim OS bc it's based off trademarks rather than the code.

[@milesmatt]

@@TurtleKwitty well said.

[@chees720]

Would be very interesting to hear Linus on this topic.

[@kenamreemas3295]

which one?

[@FourOf92000]

Torvalds or Sebastian?

[@chees720]

@@kenamreemas3295 torvalds

[@colinstu]

Yes

[@kallebysantos5167]

VVP Engine instead 😅

[@crxssed7]

Or UUP

[@Wkaelx]

WebEngine 2.0

[@BloodyxScy]

I seem to have missed the point where it went from "trademark misuse, pay up or stop using it" to "you can't use the open source project"

[@TJackson736]

Same

[@kickhuggy]

Yeah prime is misstating what Matt said and everyone seems to be onboard

[@FirstYokai]

It's both. Matt wants money from WP Engine and uses the alleged trade mark violation for legal stuff. He literary said that the whole thing would be over if WPE engine paid 8%, it's not about trade mark

[@leloubil]

@@kickhuggy I think it's because he said both. From what I remember about the interview he did with Prime, Matt said "it's a trademark issue, AND they're not giving back enough, so you can either pay for trademark or contribute enough" and the thing is, they *chose* to enforce the WP trademark BECAUSE "they're not giving back enough". That should not be a reason to enforce tradmark

[@FirstYokai]

@@kickhuggy Did we watch the same video?

[@ex0stasis72]

WP not being a trademark at the time when WP-Engine started is the detail that completely flips my opinion of this issue. I'm with WP-Engine on this now.

[@p_s1dharth]

Imagine Remix asking ChatGPT to give revenue as they use it for their front end 😂

[@denissandu2138]

Imagine the publications requesting revenue as they used it to train their LLMs; oh wait, they did...

[@p_s1dharth]

@@denissandu2138😂

[@flarebear5346]

Yeah that's because those publications are not licensing that stuff as an open thing that everything can use. Remix is licensed under a permissive license that does not require anything of the user

[@Kane0123]

W take from the OP. L take from Denis.

[@BloodyxScy]

But that wasn't even the topic when the interview with matt happened. The comparison would be "don't use our remix trademark or pay us for the usage", not "you can't use the open source project remix anymore" To clarify: The Trademark in question is "WordPress" not "WP", since WP was (and still is) free for everyone to use.

[@hoefkensj]

MS also is not trademarked by Microsoft btw , but i dont think you can release MSOffice as an officuite any time soon with microsoft being okay with it

[@Luxalpa]

But then again, Microsoft doesn't explicitly allow you to do so, unlike what Wordpress did.

[@hoefkensj]

@@Luxalpa well you can also read that as: microsoft does not own MS wordpress does not own WP , i dont own HJ , so i cant tell anyone what to do with it by default . however if i do own HoefkensJ and that becomes a big name , and another person decides to capitalize on my success with a different but verry similar product harming my Trademarked name because the public in general associates HJ with my trademarked name .... so i assume Wordpress did not care much about WP when the were smaller and not untill WPEngine customers came nokking on their door for problems with WPEngines product ... (theoretically speaking since i dont know the details of the why) i mean i dont think WordPress can go after WP Suspension , since different product and no and i assume no dirtbikers go knocking on wordpress's door because of a bad product they received

[@MartinWoad]

People who create open-source projects often live under the illusion that their project is so successful because it was so brilliant and that they are entitled to the fruits of the success of its derivatives. No, most of these projects are successful due to their open-source nature and the contributions of thousands of people around the globe, some being hobbyists and some being corporately backed. If not for the fact that they were open-sourced, many entities would not decide to adopt and improve them. Releasing your software as open-source is a bit like going public on the stock market. You can make the project develop much faster but at the same time you give up some level of control and profits from it. No, you can't decide to just suddenly take it back since part of what was created out of it is no longer yours.

[@liquidsnake6879]

That's the point Matt is making, WP Engine has never really contributed anything to Wordpress, you cannot make the argument of collaboration regarding those who do not and have never collaborated, and tbh the idea of collaboration is a delusion, most projects are maintained by one guy, the lucky ones by a core group of 5 to 8 developers, there's very little actual cooperation especially from corporations that just raid projects and give nothing back. All Matt did was put an IP block on WPEngine's server so they could not access his work, that was all it took to bring down WPEngine, let that sink in whilst they're making millions and giving absolutely NOTHING back to Matt or anyone actually involved in developing the stuff they're selling

[@Patashu]

Often times a project being successful is in part due to luck, too. Everyone knows about Wordpress because 20 years ago, everyone moved from Movable Type to Wordpress because Movable Type's dev was having its own similar kind of meltdown.

[@XxZeldaxXXxLinkxX]

Devils advocate : They're not taking it back. But they can stop releasing future updates as open source. People are free to fork from the last "open" commit Also in companies *can* go from public back to private if you can rebuy all the shares.

[@kulkalkul]

This is such a bad take. There is a reason people invest into those projects instead of building their own. It is easy to contribute to an already popular open source project and claim glory for it. It isn't that easy to take the risk, invest your hours into a thing you don't know the future of. You can't discredit the risk.

[@XxZeldaxXXxLinkxX]

@@kulkalkul Lmao yeah seriously. How many open source repos barely have any activity? Could you imagine a world where any repo you open magically pulled in a massive amounts of (good) contributors? I would like to live in a world that doesn't make people regret open-sourcing their project. It should always be rewarded. You know what I think is kinda sad? So many people are willing to tip streamers for just playing games and cracking jokes or whatever, that's fair, it's entertainment. Why don't we have the same culture with open-source?

[@Omnifarious0]

2:24 - That's not "the entire purpose of Open Source". But, I do agree that it's a fundamental violation of the principle to demand that people give back, most especially if you try to legally enforce that in any way. 5:55 - The GPL doesn't require that you release it. It just says that _if_ you release it, you must release it as Open Source.

[@RichardJActon]

Furthermore GPL only requires that you share the source code with people to whom you distribute binaries, you cannot place any further restriction on what they do with the source code though, so in general you might as well just make it public. This is what Redhat controversially changed with RHEL they only distribute sources to people who pay for RHEL - where their actions get a bit borderline are the terms of use for the portal where they distribute the RHEL source which flirt with the line of the GPLs prohibition on imposing additional restrictions on what you can do with the sources. AGPL is the same but instead of sharing the source with anyone who you distribute binaries to you also have to share it with anyone who access the software over a network. in other words It broadens the definition of 'distribution' that triggers the requirement to share the source to include providing access to a server running the software.

[@TurboBorsuk]

It's like Sapkowski was bitter with Witcher games generating millions for CDPR, because he didn't want royalties but went for flat upfront. Even though the games generated massive reprints of his books.

[@JohnSmith-sk7cg]

You have it completely backwards. Royalties are functionally equivalent to what Automatic is asking to receive now when before they were getting nothing. In your example, CDPR would have used the IP to make Witcher books without compensating the creator (financially or with labor) and using the Witcher trademark on their books as they sold a competing service.

[@Arcidi225]

Btw, there is a little bit more to the story with Sapkowski. Back in the 90 another studio was making the Witcher licensed game, and they agreed to take royalties, but game was never finished, so Sapkowski got nothing. So that's why he wanted money upfront with cpdr.

[@NoFkingUsername]

New attack vector: tire out the maintainer of a popular open source package, get a trademark on it, then charge companies that are using it...

[@adamnilsson9372]

Have I missed something, the issue is that WP Engine using the "wp" trademark, why are we talking about the opensource licence.

[@BuffPuffer]

You have missed something, "WP" is not trademarked. Check his older videos on this subject for more context.

[@adamnilsson9372]

​@@BuffPuffer Sorry if i where unclear. My point is that the problem is the "wp" trademark debate, saying "Automattic Is Doing Open Source Dirty" and talking about opensoftware is misleading as the problem have nothing to do with that.

[@Luxalpa]

matt's argument for his extortion was literally that WP Engine needs to give 8% of their revenue to Automattic or they'll be banned and sued. If you watched the video you would not be missing this. The "trademark issue" is just an excuse.

[@metznoah]

@@adamnilsson9372 From what I've seen either DHH doesn't understand the issue or is intentionally misrepresenting it and is writing misinformed blog posts that are being magnified by streamers like Primeagen.

[@Brunoscaramuzzi]

I think they can do this for new versions of WordPress from now on. From now on it is under a new license and they can charge for the use, but not retroactivily or prohibit the use of older versions or forks of the project.

[@KManAbout]

@@Brunoscaramuzzi Matt has never been charging for the use of of WordPress he's protecting the WordPress trademark its similar to the stuff the rust foundation does

[@ShootingUtah]

I feel like people are missing the entire point, WPE literally uses TRADEMARKED marketing materials ALL OVER their website and products. This is the problem. Automatic has the trademark so yes they absolutely CAN demand payment and they can demand any amount they freaking want. Open source has almost nothing to do with this scenario other than Matt asking for payment in open source contributions! He should have just demanded cash payment and then no one would be confused about anything!

[@Etcher]

Finally someone who actually understands the issue at hand. At least there's two of us.

[@KManAbout]

@@ShootingUtah exactly right

[@Rohinthas]

I have no idea if the trademark issue would have held up in court if Matt had just stfu but he did his darndest to undermine his own case there. The guy really went out and announced to the whole world that the trademark issue is just a front to extort WPE... Honestly, the thing I find almost as scary for the future of OS is the power a trademark gives a foundation. I'm okay with people not being allowed to use exactly the same name for a different or a derivative project, but beyond that it really quickly becomes ridiculous and mostly just a weapon to wield against undesirables.

[@jdubz8173]

I've been switching to PayloadCMS personally. The 3.0 release is going to be lit.

[@kevinbatdorf]

Matt’s argument wasnt that they weren’t giving back. It was that they were using the trademark in a confusing way AND not giving back. His point was to either give back, or stop with the confusion. They called his bluff and he retaliated hard.

[@nickm1049]

By Automattic's logic, unpaid WP contributors should now send invoices to Automattic for their past work on WP

[@Dekedence]

I had to do a bit of digging in my email archive, but I did email Matt Mullenweg direct in 2011 about using WordPress vs. WP in domains / twitter handles. He responded and said for domains they do go after anything with wordpress, but not with WP. For context, this was when I was helping set up a local wordpress meetup, so I was looking for domains that we could use.

[@edgarasf123]

Regarding last comment about NPM, that's literally what RedHat did with CentOS. They noticed too many companies using CentOS for their servers and so they decided to kill it off, forcing companies to switch to paid version for stable releases.

[@JarickWorks]

Or, you know, switching to a different free distro.

[@colinstu]

@@JarickWorks Which is exactly what happened. RedHat/IBM is so penny-wise and pound-foolish.

[@matthewrease2376]

​@@JarickWorks or, buy CentOS, because it was still under a GPL license correct?

[@oleksiistri8429]

It's not the same

[@mattmmilli8287]

This isn’t going to affect the average dev/agency that use WP. Just a fun boxing match to watch 😅 Companies should not expect to package up open source software and sell it as a service any more. What redis did and WP here is the right call.

[@bearwolffish]

_WordPress should be forked_, who gonna maintain these forks my g's. Say what you want but dude put in the work.

[@Etcher]

So stupid people saying "fork wordpress". There's about 30 core devs well paid by Automattic as it is. Who the hell is going to take on a fork of WordPress? Never gonna happen.

[@Jabberwockybird]

If a large conpany was using WP and needed it, they would handle it. But I guess all the big players don't use WP in the first place

[@ShootingUtah]

Matt isn't fighting anyone about WPE or anyone else using the open source code. WPE can use the open source code today and into the future! The problem is trademark violations that WPE absolutely has done and Matt not making this clear.

[@sn0n]

All I know today is that you looked dapper AF in that freestyle rap short that's goin around.

[@Moosa_Says]

I think Automatic's sole issue is TRADEMARK Violation and that's their official and legal case against WP Engine.

[@Etcher]

and they will win based on that.

[@evanc8057]

WP isn't trademarked though.

[@gavinh7845]

Or they could lose the trademark for knowingly failing to protect it for years.

[@TJackson736]

@evanc8057 WordPress and the WP logo are registered trademarks, and WP Engine violated those trademarks all over their website. That is what the lawsuit is about. This trademark violation is alleged to have many users think that WP Engine was officially affiliated with WordPress. This is the basis of the lawsuit and why the first blog Matt made was about WP Engine not being WordPress.

[@Moosa_Says]

@@evanc8057 trademark is wordpress. And WPF was using it like crazy..

[@ThrowFence]

I love Prime's takes usually, but this is just conflating the actual issue with open source. WP Engine built their business on three premises: hoping WordPress would give them free hosting forever, hoping WordPress would never revoke their free trademark, and free GPL code. Only two of those are being taken away, and only the third is related to open source.

[@KManAbout]

@@ThrowFence finally someone gets it

[@milesmatt]

well said.

[@michaelslattery3050]

I think they'd lose in court. They gave up "WP" in writing. Maybe they could lock it up going forward, but companies that took them on their word when they named their company should be liable.

[@cb73]

Matt is probably the hacker who brought down the Internet Archive so we can’t lookup the previous terms of service lol

[@pauljessy115]

something feels misrepresented here. wordpress has not changed it´s License and demanded money for software. its an organisational trademark dispute as far i understand

[@kevinbatdorf]

"WP" was never free for everyone to use. The terms always stated you couldn’t use it to confuse users into thinking it was affiliated. They added a new line to clarify that further, but that doesnt mean it was just a free for all before that.

[@kodirovsshik]

> WP was never free for everyone to use That was already demonstrated to be false

[@kevinbatdorf]

@@kodirovsshik demonstrated how and where?

[@kodirovsshik]

@@kevinbatdorf by the primeagen, in one of their videos on this whole thing, by using web archive

[@kodirovsshik]

@@kevinbatdorf at least in one of the videos by theprimeagen. They used wayback machine to look into WP's ToS

[@laoumh]

War tactics aside, my understanding of the claim is different. What I understood is that they are claiming that WP Engine forked and made modifications to WordPress (which is ok) but are calling this modified product "WordPress" (which is being disputed). So, I don't see the license being disputed, nor the danger to open source.

[@StealthySlacks]

One of the other points - WP Engine could fork Wordpress. Rename it to "Post Engine" or "Press Engine" and live on. I'm pretty confident quite a few WP engineers that sees this whole situation unfavorably to Automattic would move to WP Engine's product and dedicate their time and effort to making it better.

[@oleksiistri8429]

I think that's what Automattic is trying to do right now, basically pushing WP engine to create their own infrastructure, CDNs, and trademark, this will make Automattic to pay smaller bills for the infrastructure and network. Which is fair, in my opinion. I doubt that someone would want to make pull requests on a unpayed basis for the commercial company WPEngine :) People will stay with Wordpress.

[@KManAbout]

@@oleksiistri8429 absolutely

[@LusidDreaming]

I think a good comparison to point out why this is wrong is looking at what Redis is doing. A lot of people disagree with where Redis is going, but its not affecting current users. They're just saying moving forward this wont be free anymore. The WP fiasco is f'd up because they're trying to change existing licenses.

[@XxZeldaxXXxLinkxX]

Seems like there are two parties, one who only wants to focus on the pure terms of the license, and those that are incorporating morals into the situation. Here's an analogy as to how I see it: When you open the door for someone (e.g. letting them use your code), are they *obligated* to say thanks? No, but it'd be nice of them to. So if you keep opening the door for them, and they fail to show appreciation, is it reasonable for you to stop holding the door for them? I would say yes. Especially in this situation, which is basically like, if you held the door open, and the person used that to lead in a tour group that they making money off of. Is this in the true spirit of a GPL door license? Probably not, and some people might bite their tongue and keep opening the door for others, and that's obviously fine, but I think it's also reasonable if some people choose to not keep opening the door.

[@SkittlesWrap]

This is more like letting a bunch of people in and out. 50% say thanks, 50% don't say thanks. I don't decide to get mad at the 50% of people not saying thanks. I get mad at that single guy that has a lambo and doesn't say thanks.

[@XxZeldaxXXxLinkxX]

@@SkittlesWrap You're missing the part where the guy only has a lambo because he bought it with money the he made off of you holding the door open. If he's so successful, maybe he can afford his own door opener?

[@robertoguy100]

@@SkittlesWrap You missed the part where the lambo guy got rich by selling door tickets, and promised to give you some money since you did most of the actual work for them, but after years of false promises you tell them to fuck off.

[@MrKlarthums]

There's no guarantee in open source that the license will remain the same. You can be rugpulled and there's nothing that can be done besides fork and maintain it yourself. It's not that dissimilar for a retailer to go under because their supplier had to drastically increase prices because of supply chain issues. You wanted the benefit of cheap and fast but not the risk.

[@KManAbout]

@@MrKlarthums the licence is not being changed.

[@MrKlarthums]

@@KManAbout I know. I'm speaking about open source in general. Unpaid maintenance of libraries in service of companies who are commercially benefiting from your project is very much unfun. It tends to burn out devs or cause them to change to a dual license so they can monetize their work and force companies to share the value.

[@KManAbout]

@@MrKlarthums yes.

[@snom3ad]

@4:11 is so close yet so far to the actual solution. It's not WP Engine that should fork the stuff they want, but Automattic that needs to fork their open source project and create a premium gate-kept version that gets regular updates and all new and fancy features. Then ocassionally crossport new functionality if they *feel like it*. Thereby forcing the maintenance of the community version to the people who should be responsible for it in the first place i.e. the *community*.

[@LusidDreaming]

WordPress is the most patient ransomware attack ever

[@padzh]

Simmilar thing happened in Scala world. Akka framework changed it's license from Appache 2.0 to BSL and it just stayed that way

[@opensourcedev22]

I dropped WP 10+ years ago, when WP bug allowed anyone to reset the admin password. It was good for unserious developers and hopey changey entrepreneurs... This drama is basically VC, for profit and business first values VS open source. Many foundational open source projects are hard dependencies for billion dollar companies. The companies were extracting that money and very few gave meaningful money back. The model was broken as companies are parasitic by nature

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

Calling the hosting plans WordPress Basic is probably fine because that accurately describes what they're hosting.

[@JarickWorks]

Using "Basic Hosting for WordPress" or "Basic Hosting with WordPress" would probably have been better.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

@@JarickWorks that's what WordPress lawyers want you to think

[@TomNook.]

What does primeagen think of fireships portrait of him?

[@VitalijMik]

i understood that is not about the source code, its about the usage of WP Logo and Name. its like if i would create a VI course label it like "VI for beginners feat. Primagen" and use some parts of your videos code(since it is MIT, you should use WTFPL btw :D) . because of the label, ppl would buy it more. because it has the name in it. its like you created the efford for advertisment and i reuse your name as key selling point.

[@t1nytim]

I've often been on the opinion, that a company should be judged less about what it gets wrong, and more on how it responds in trying to make it right. Though the primary way I think about it is in the context of security. Like with breaches, vulnerabilities, etc. But it feels generally applicable here, where the response feels petty, and so I have less of an issue with how things initially kicked off.

[@mastermikeyboy]

Didn't Elastic change their licensing a while back in their dispute with AWS? It's fine if it's only going forward. i.e.: From version 8 onward, this is the new license. But up to 7 is on the old license.

[@andythedishwasher1117]

open source = no take backsies.

[@lcarsos]

This won't impact open source at all. One company is having a fit, and it'll probably ruin them. If you're shocked that a company one day just up and decides to take its ball and go home, vmware cancelled any contract that was "too small" for them. This happens. If you rely on anything you need to have a contingency plan.

[@schnappueber]

I think one important point that is often left out of this “not contributing enough” discussion is that Matt believes that Plugins etc do not constitute contribution. Even though WP Engines provides and maintains ACF and local WP. Which are both free and extremely popular.

[@hideyoshikinoshita1266]

This still feel very scummy to me... just looks like Matt got butt hurt cuz WP manage to get this big and his ego doesn't allows others to get as big as his own things. Even in the interview with Prime he seems to dodge the question a lot and repeat his old talking points about "not giving back to community".

[@isaacyonemoto]

I thought he got angry because WP engine made changes in the hosting service that kneecapped the user's features and you can't activate the full software stack. This makes WordPress look bad if people think feature X isn't a part of WordPress because WP engine is the biggest WordPress hoster

[@suede__]

The counter-suite on this one is going to be mega.

[@MichaelButlerC]

GPL software that is run as a SaaS really muddies the water. Did you know that if you fork or use GPL software on your own server, you are allowed to make modifications to that software without sharing those modifications? The stipulation with GPL software was designed for locally run software (think Microsoft Word for example) where if you DISTRIBUTE the BINARY application of those modifications to end users, you are required by law to share the source code also. But with SaaS software, you're not sharing the BINARY/compiled code with users -- you are merely exposing an HTTP API endpoint. There are no requirements to follow there, at least with the GPL. This is one reason why the FSF (who created and championed for the GPL) recommends that users not use SaaS at all, saying you should do computing on your own controlled devices. They actually call SaaS as SaaSS -- "Service as a Software Substitute".

[@k225]

That's why the AGPL (Affero General Public License) exists - to require that SaaS/hosted applications make modified source code available to users.

[@hohohomeboy]

I like the idea of a “community license” like visual studio and many others have. This could be also a good solution for OSS. But changing the license on an existing project is always at least drama or even a full on rug pull…

[@DrownedLamp9]

ULPT: When leaving a (hypothetical) horse head in someone's bed, don't leave a note signed with your name.

[@blocSonic]

This will result in Wordpress being sued, losing that lawsuit and ultimately losing business in the long run when a forked competitor eats their lunch. They’ve seriously tarnished their rep.

[@_KondoIsami_]

One thing I'm finding crazy is them asking for 8% of the revenue, a lot of companies don't even have that high of a profit margin. After some search it looks like WPE has 13% profit margin but I'm not sure how much of that is net profit, but basically 8% is a huge cut.

[@chadmwest]

Well, revenue and profit are two different things. Apparently Matt is asking for 8 percent of revenue.

[@_KondoIsami_]

@@chadmwest reading again I can see how confusing my wording was, but I know, and I did say they are asking for 8% of the revenue. The point I tried and failed to make was that they want 8% of the total revenue, when the company is only making 13% in profit.

[@itsthesteve]

I have no horse in this race, as far as wordpress, but this is... Something. Precedence etc. This dude needs some people around him. What a ride.

[@catg5105]

It would be great to interview a lawyer about this.

[@BreetaiZentradi]

Bravo! "You do not have the right to demand anything back". I want companies to give back to open source. With that said. You do "Open Source", you take the good and bad. Community helps with tech support, auditing code, and fixing bugs .... check. More customers because they can use the product free, and then pay you for support if they need more .... check. Let horrible people who will take your software, never give a thing back, complain it is garbage, and all you can do is smile and say "This is part of the open source culture" .... check.

[@playfulcyanide]

“Open-source war is users suffering and maintainers talking.” - FDR

[@karakaaa3371]

Unhinged take: if no businesses could safely use open source it would increase demand for engineers.

[@SystemAlchemist]

A good take, a good take.

[@ramnewton]

He is out of line, but he is right.

[@edinalewis4704]

Nope, quite the opposite. It would make pretty much all software projects significantly more expensive. Which means significantly fewer software projects. There is effectively infinite demand for new software. The limiting factor has always been cost vs reward.

[@kodirovsshik]

@@edinalewis4704 "It would make pretty much all software projects significantly more expensive" that's exactly why you would need more engineers duh. In the worst case if you cannot afford it, it would just take longer to deliver a product, but not create decrease demand for work power when there's more work to do

[@username7763]

This isn't specific to open source. Proprietary software has licenses too and sometimes they try to change the terms later. This usually happens by some unnecessary cloud dependency.

[@laughingvampire7555]

This is like Unity retroactively charging for number of installations.

[@mikescholz6429]

Ive given wordpress a try a handfull of tries throughout the years, and I’ve hated it every single time. Taking someone else’s spaghetti code, and then trying to configure and restyle it to fit a compromised version of what I want, is harder and more time consuming than to just build the exact thing that I want from scratch.

[@oleksiistri8429]

You should not do the coding in WordPress core, you write code only if you write some your plugin or theme, which you can do however you like from scratch

[@areimann]

I'm amazed how aggressive Matt has been. It makes it really hard to like WordPress.

[@knightofrohan]

The thing is, the "WordPress" term has been used extensively over the past couple of decades to describe services or products that involve WordPress and the trademark has not been enforced. If you can't use the term, for example, how do you describe a WordPress hosting service?

[@isaacyonemoto]

How do you describe a WordPress hosting service? You pay a license.

[@Luxalpa]

@@isaacyonemoto Which doesn't exist.

[@knightofrohan]

@@isaacyonemoto hasn't been done for 2 decades by most of the hosting services, but all of a sudden, now that's going to be enforceable? Pipe dream.

[@k225]

✔ "Hosting for WordPress" (denotes compatibility) ❌ "WordPress Hosting" (implies origin)

[@knightofrohan]

@@k225 Does "WordPress Hosting" really imply origin? I have never interpreted it as that, and I only got into WP like 2.5 years ago.

[@footnuke]

Hard agree. Btw I think it's crazy that people have only ever heard Mullenweg's side of things and he still comes out looking bad. That's a litmus test for a bad course of actions

[@Altrue]

24:05 yeah imagine if cloudflare did it! Oh wait........

[@chuanqisun]

What if open source license adds a clause that prevents unreasonable modification of terms and conditions.

[@Weirdcko]

I got the impression from the Matt interview that this whole thing is over using the WordPress trademark. Am I wrong on that?

[@roque-au-parcus]

Thank you for making this video. Matt’s behavior is infuriating, and it’s so hard to watch the framework that I started my career in 15 years ago turn sour.

[@chadmwest]

His behavior does come across as scummy, but he's dealing with the same "other companies are making a fortune from my open source software" that Redis, Mongo and Elastic dealt with.

[@roque-au-parcus]

@@chadmwest Exactly. Every single major OSS has these turning points. It’s how you handle it that matters.

[@asdqwe4427]

GPL doesn't mean that you get to take their revenue. But they can probably sue them if they don't contribute their sources back. I have always been told to stay away from GPL because it would mean that we would have to open source our own product

[@u007james]

for meta ai, they are upfront on their licence

[@quadcom]

Please answer this question; if someone makes a plugin for WP, the WP licensing model requires they make that plugin code opensource. So if that's the case, why is it I have to pay for ACFPro? Should that not be shared as opensource code that would let me download and install in my WP install? Would this not apply to any paid-for plugin source code?

[@JArielALamus]

That's a point of debate since it is being argued if the plugin constitues a derivate work of WordPress. The general consensus, as of now, seems to point to it not being that since a plugin can just implement a protocol to communicate to WordPress or any other CMS for that matter. I think this is similar to what Google vs Oracle was about with regards to the use of Java's API

[@quadcom]

@@JArielALamus So if I understand you right, I think ACFPro (and other paid for WP plugins), would still be tied in as ACFPro isn't/can't be used in any other platforms. It was written for exclusive use in the WP platform.

[@PepeNuclear]

It is free, most people dont know, look up GPL vault, you are legally entitled to use acfpro for free, what you are not entitled too is forcing them to share the actual file or any updates, a la RHEL

[@BozesanVlad]

They should ask 30% for any transaction like Apple, or even 50% because is "open source"...

[@SethGrantham-k1x]

This is stupid. It's like Apache running around blackmailing and extorting web hosting companies and shaking them down for protection.

[@matthewrease2376]

Do web hosting companies have Apache in their name? Do they confuse users on who owns Apache? No? Oh, so this scenario you've described is wholly unrelated to the WP situation, got it.

[@Etcher]

It's nothing like that, not even close. Apache would absolutely do what Matt is doing if hosting companies were out there using the Apache Foundation's infrastructure to host key libraries and provide updates to millions of user while also using the Apache name to imply that Apache are behind it all.

[@evanc8057]

@@matthewrease2376 None of this is happening though.

[@mintoo2cool]

Just WTF is going on with all the open-source and OSI/FSF adjacent projects ? Firefox drama, Gnome BS, Internet Archive Lawsuit, The Godot drama and now this ...

[@madebyjonny7637]

Watching this knowing there is 2 more sequels

[@saiphaneeshk.h.5482]

New to the saga here, How is this and Redis different?

[@BoominGame]

Wait right there, I need a coffee...

[@misium]

@ThePrimeTime you say you dont do open source and you say you use MIT. The MIT license is an open source license.

[@ChrisIsOutside]

I feel like Matt just doesn't know how to quit his job properly

[@JamKasan-p3n]

The most annoying thing about this drama is All of Ads from any social media i visit is now all Website Builders. :(

[@maxk6655]

Comparing npm to wp is kind of stupid. But block wp engine users from updates is kind of childish. Matt just a human and he can do what ever he think is right for his product. And all conflicts they should do in court. No need to wish to loose any side. We don't know all details

[@franciscogerardohernandezr4788]

Considering the amount of OS used in many projects, I think 1% would be reasonable for all.