Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyral | Hacker News Reader

The exaggerations in the post are crazy, that WP engine "broke" websites by disabling the news in the admin dashboard? If I recall that is like a one line code change. They disabled it because Matt published a disparaging post about WP Engine, knowing that it would show up in the admin dashboards of every wordpress install. That post was about them not being "real" wordpress because they disable post revisions (which apparently they have done for a decade). His own competing managed WordPress service (confusingly named Wordpress.com) disables features as well, unless you upgrade to a higher plan. What a mess. This should have continued to be handled by lawyers and not by using the foundation to disable updates for thousands of sites. What happens to vulnerabilities as a result of this move?

View on HN

> His own competing managed WordPress service (confusingly named Wordpress.com) disables features as well

They are allowed to do this because Automattic owns the trademark along with WordPress Foundation

Correct, but his argument that WP Engine is confusing customers is strange when he runs the most confusing part about WordPress (.com vs .org). This tells me it is not really about reducing confusion, but him wanting to get paid because WP Engine is not contributing. Keep in mind Automattic was an early investor in WP Engine and they, along with countless other hosting and plugin businesses, have been using the WordPress name. Failing to go after any of them for over a decade can make it difficult to enforce the trademark. However, this may be the most valid legal avenue he has.

Something I also find interesting is the WordPress foundation trademark terms were changed a couple days ago. Using "WP" was okay, to now calling out "WP Engine" specifically as being confusing: https://www.diffchecker.com/tJ29tGIn/

> Using "WP" was okay, to now calling out "WP Engine" specifically as being confusing

That’s the most childish thing out of this whole debacle. It is extremely clear that you cannot just change your terms 10 years after a company has been created in order to exclude it. Any judge would throw that case out of the window in 10 seconds.

You’re conflating two posts. He didn’t change any terms until they took legal action against them. If my neighbor came over to my house everyday and made a sand which, then sued me… then I’d lock the front door

Though I don’t know how much merit his original post had.

No this is more like city hall saying “you can’t build here” 10 years after watching you build. Too late, the house was built and you implicitly gave permission for it.

If WP engine has taken legal action against Matt, that is extremely disrespectful, and not gracious; he even tried so do it softly via the dashboard;

"WP Engine accused Automattic and Mullenweg of not keeping their promises to run WordPress open-source projects without any constraints and giving developers the freedom to build, run, modify and redistribute the software."

What promises? People make and release software using the GPL "copyleft" license because they enjoy doing so. Everybody is free to cease doing that if they no longer enjoy it. If it no longer brings them joy. And if it is costing measurable quants of money for the non-profit .org to provide back-end services to the $100 billion dollar corporation who is profiting from using the core plugins and themes etc.

Perhaps 8% of gross is a bit much, but I don't see them counter offering 1% and a way to work up over time. They were purchased for $250 million in 2018 so they have plenty o' cash. Bad faith wpengine for trying to strip-mine WordPress like that.

Has anyone actually been confused about the hosted service and the software?

I struggle with this argument because so much SaaS follows this model with self-hosted community editions. It's not like .com is trying to sell you a proprietary self-hosted version.

The .com and .org user forums get a steady stream of posts from people who mixed them up.

So many people get confused between .com and .org. It’s a sticky on the WordPress reddit and less technical people definitely think going to Wordpress.com to sign in is somehow their install’s login. Which makes his point about people being confused about WP Engine so silly when he runs the most confusing part of WordPress.

Yes, WordPress.org and WordPress.com are mixed up all the time, so much so that /r/WordPress on Reddit has had a sticky for years linking to a page on WordPress.org that explains the difference. According to WordPress.org itself:

> People are often confused about the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org because they sure sound similar. This workshop highlights the key differences between .Org and .Com.

— https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/what-is-the-difference-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com