The WordPress Foundation Trademark Policy Was Just Updated | Hacker News Reader

The WordPress Foundation Trademark Policy Was Just Updated

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37 pointsslyall10 comments

This is embarassing:

Before:

> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.

When in doubt about your use of the WordPress or WordCamp name or logo, please contact the Foundation for clarification.

After:

> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

> If you would like to use the WordPress trademark commercially, please contact Automattic, they have the exclusive license. Their only sub-licensee is Newfold.

> For non-commercial use, you can contact us here at the Foundation.

They literally made an example out of WP Engine in their trademark policy.

> > For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine”

I thought WP Engine is Word Perfect Engine. /s

Source tweet: https://x.com/technerdteitzel/status/1838633746217439355?t=8...

Many cloud providers allow 1-click deployment of VMs with lamp stack and wordpress already running.

Afaik, some examples are: DigitalOcean, Linode (or whatever it's called today) and also Amazon AWS (via the LightSail offering).

Is Automattic going after them as well?

To steel man the other side of it, WP Engine is intentionally creating confusion in order to obtain benefit. Which appears to be permitted, but does come of as a little skeevy with the added claim that WP Engine has provided no material support to the foundation.

Can these 2 people just kiss so we can move on? This is ridiculous.

And the moment lawyers are involved, forget it..

This feud is the type of thing that’s entertaining when the people involved are CEOs, upper management or tech personalities with all the high school drama and pet hates, when they start changing licenses, involving lawyers and suing each other it’s not fun anymore and quite pathetic. No one looks good in this.

I mostly agree, but it is fairly ridiculous that WP Engine has not provided any support or funding to the Wordpress Foundation. I do sometimes think open source orga should be a little more proactive in requesting funding from wealthy for profits who are receiving massive benefits from those nonprofits. Not saying there should be an obligation, but it might good to do some naming and shaming.

Neither C or D it is, then, eh? Your move WPEngine and all of the other uses of the acronym. Stealing lawyer words (not one, again), is this becoming class action?

I get it, WPEngine never contribution anything to Wordpress.org, their are the bad guys. But this move is quite hilarious. I expect Elon musk do things like this.

Not a fan of WPE, which destroyed Flywheel, one of the most brilliant companies and teams I’ve ever dealt with.

Also not much of a fan of Wordpress.org after using it for 15+ years (and recently ditching it), but that’s mainly because of having to field questions from non-technical friends who have bloated awful Wordpress sites riddled with malware or abandonware.

Even less of a fan of Wordpress.com

But in the bigger picture Wordpress - or the idea of Wordpress - is a good thing.

But who on earth is advising Mullenweg here? Or is he so powerful within the Wordpress ecosystem that he can just do crazy things like this and everyone bends to him as WP BDFL? (Though arguably now more D than B)

I thought his presentation where he kicked off this war was a little odd. He seemed either very nervous or very amped up, there were a lot of awkward vocal ticks/tremors/nervous laughter/heavy breathing in his run up to his “big reveal”. Or maybe he’s always like that. This was my first time watching him speak and I came away thinking less of him and less of WPE. But mainly less of him because I already had a pretty febrile opinion of WPE.

This latest salvo is just crazy. As someone else in this thread has said it’s Muskesque.

But maybe that’s the strategy. “Just be out and out crazy and burn everything to the ground to try and save it”.

I wonder how many “normal” wordpress users are aware of this stuff, or whether it’s confined to a little bubble of tech industry folk reaching for the popcorn?

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