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Comment by vouaobrasil | Hacker News Reader

I've used Wordpress self-hosted for a long time and this seems like a non-issue. WPEngine can use the Wordpress codebase but why should they be entitled to the services provided by Wordpress? I say this is a good thing.

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> why should they be entitled to the services provided by Wordpress?

They are not entitled to them, but Wordpress has previously decided to offer those services. Wordpress donors most probably expected that these services will continue to be provided to anyone.

The controversial part is that now they apparently establish a policy that Matt Mullenweg (the owner of for-profit Wordpress.com) can arbitrarily ban competitors in case he doesn't like them.

WordPress.org (the service that banned WP Engine) is not funded by donors. WordPress Foundation is the non profit entity that has donations.

Interesting, so then who pays to run wordpress.org?

I notice a donate link in the footer, which goes to the foundation, but to your point, the foundation seems to avoid saying outright that the funding goes to running .org (instead saying that Matt has been involved with them) https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/

WordPress.org is operated by Matt Mullenweg as a free service that hosts plugins, themes, docs and more. It does not take donations, or as far I am aware, make any profits.

Instead, people are encouraged to donate to the Foundation, which helps with the development of WordPress the software and organizes things like WordCamps.

This is stupid, something like WordPress.org should obviously be under the foundation, as it's an essential part of the entire wp ecosystem.

Wait, so if somebody goes to WordPress.org, clicks the donate button, arrives at a page to donate to the WordPress Foundation, and donates, that money does not go towards funding WordPress.org?

The blurb on the donation page reads:

> Money raised by the WordPress Foundation will be used to ensure free access to supported software projects, protect the WordPress trademark, and fund a variety of programs.

“Supported software projects” is a link that leads to a page that lists these software projects:

- WordPress

- WordPress Plugins

- WordPress Themes

- bbPress

- BuddyPress

It sure looks like the WordPress infra and plugins are supported by the donations from the WordPress.org footer link. If the money is going elsewhere, where is it going?

So why is it hosted on IP addresses associated with the foundation?

    %rwhois V-1.5:003eff:00 rwhois.singlehop.com (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-1.5.9.5)
    network:Class-Name:network
    network:ID:ORG-SINGL-8.198-143-164-0/24
    network:Auth-Area:198.143.128.0/18
    network:IP-Network:198.143.164.0/24

>>> network:Organization:The Wordpress Foundation

    network:Street-Address:660 4TH ST # 119
    network:City:SAN FRANCISCO
    network:State:CA
    network:Postal-Code:94107
    network:Country-Code:US
    network:Tech-Contact;I:NETWO1546-ARIN
    network:Admin-Contact;I:NETWO1546-ARIN
    network:Abuse-Contact;I:ABUSE2492-ARIN
    network:Created:20171214
    network:Updated:20171214

The funniest outcome to this little internecine WP fight would be an IRS investigation into the intermingling of Wordpress.org, Foundation, Automattic, Matt, etc.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I asked people who are helping with the infra of WordPress.org and they are not sure why Singlehop is showing "The Wordpress Foundation" for those IPs. They belong to the hosting provider W.ORG is using and this is just mislabelling on their part. Relevant people will get in touch and ask them to correct it.

And, quick side note, no one from Automattic or WordPress Foundation would ever misspell WordPress!

Isn't WordPress.org connected to WordPress foundation? They have a Donate link in the footer.

What about all of these: "user login system, update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, job board, meetups, conferences, bug tracker, forums, Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcase" – are all of those services provided by WordPress.org without funding from WordPress foundation?

> are all of those services provided by WordPress.org without funding from WordPress foundation?

As far as I am aware, this is correct.

I believe that you're mistaken and have flipped them the wrong way round: Wordpress.org is the official website of the open source project owned by the WordPress Foundation, while WordPress.com is the company owned by Automattic.

https://wordpress.org/about/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress#WordPress_Foundati...

https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automattic

I work at Automattic, owner of WordPress.com.

I asked how WordPress.org is funded and will get details on that but I can tell you WordPress.org is not part of the foundation.

Open source project and the WordPress trademark are owned the WordPress Foundation. WordPress.org has a license to use the name from the Foundation, as does Automattic.

The WordPress Foundation links to wordpress.org as the official site for their project called WordPress, and wordpress.org directs donors to donate at wordpressfoundation.org so it's hard to see how you could be right, but if you can come back explaining that then I'll happily admit to having been confused by it all.

Projects page of the Foundation (https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/) does not say those projects belong to the Foundation. It states:

> Matt Mullenweg, the director of the WordPress Foundation, has been directly involved in the creation of, or coordination of volunteers around, a number of WordPress projects that espouse the core philosophy

I'll admit this might sound confusing. Foundation came years after some of these projects were already established.

If https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ had a page titled "Projects" that listed "death camps" as the first item, you would assume they're up to something, right?

They do link to wordpress.org outside of that.

https://wordpressfoundation.org/contact/

says "a violation of our domain policy." and links to wordpress.org, why would their domain policy be on a site that isn't theirs?

And then wordpress.org says "For various reasons related to our WordPress trademark", how can wordpress.org say "our" if the foundation owns the WordPress trademark and .org is not run by the foundation?

> Projects page of the Foundation (https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/) does not say those projects belong to the Foundation. It states:

But their site does say that money raised will be "used to ensure free access to supported software projects, protect the WordPress trademark, and fund a variety of programs." and links to the projects page that contains wordpress.org... but you said it isn't funded by the donations from the foundation

Ironic how this whole thing started with an allegation that WP Engine makes things confusing. I wonder if Matt's mom can tell the difference between WordPress Foundation and WordPress.org.

So you have:

Wordpress.org which is directly controlled by Matt Mullenweg

Automattic (ie wordpress.com) whose CEO is Matt Mullenweg

and The WordPress Foundation which is run by (checks notes) Matt Mullenweg

Yet you seem to think we should treat all three of those entities (Matts?) as separate and independant

We should expect the non profit foundation to be independent from the for profit company, yes.

In short: wordpress.org is just a personal homepage of Matt Mullenweg, not legally or financially related to neither Foundation nor Automattic? There could be technical relations but who has not "forgotten" your personal homepage to your employee's machine, just a honest mistake.

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