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Comment by ericb | Hacker News Reader

At what point is snide, petulant, childish, vengeful or blackmail ever a good way to do business?

Reading this, the last thing I'd want to do is ever be in business with this person.

The WP Engine side seems much more reasonable to me. There are approaches where he could present the "low contributions" grievance, and even take some action on it, without seeming awful, but this isn't it. Even this "gesture," which could have been almost magnanimous, comes off as still awful because of the childish screed.

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> The WP Engine side seems much more reasonable to me.

That seems unwarranted. Both parties can be shitty. One for "snide, petulant" communication, and the other for being a private equity leech.

> for being a private equity leech

Matt says that WPEngine doesn't contribute as much as he thinks they should (also, curious where he comes up with 8% of gross revenue as a licensing fee), but describing WPEngine as a "leech" is a little ... off.

Just a few weeks ago WPEngine donated $75,000 to the Foundation for their conference. And then were booted from the conference. Didn't hear about the Foundation returning the donation though.

And why were they booted from the conference? Because they are in dispute with wp.org (which remember, Matt, Automattic, insist wp.org is nothing to do with the Foundation, but a benevolent gift)?

I don't know - Matt is the one who comes off shitty. I also like how you quoted snide and petulant as if disagreeing - you should perhaps read his text messages to WPEngine that amount effectively to extortion. There's precious few ways to read some of those and his other communications as NOT snide, petulant, or both.

> Just a few weeks ago WPEngine donated $75,000 to the Foundation for their conference.

Conferences are generally sponsored, and not merely donated to.

I'm not at all familiar with Wordpress, the foundation or the company. If I look at the Foundation's financial report of 2023 [1] they expended $4,275,813 for their conferences, and got 88% of it covered by sponsorship – so there were a lot more or bigger sponsors. It doesn't seem that the development of Wordpress is covered by conference sponsorship.

In fact, there doesn't seem to be any money going into the development of Wordpress at the foundation at all. So again, I don't know much about Wordpress, but a quick glance seems to imply that much of the 'official' development is going on at Automattic.

[1] https://wordpressfoundation.org/about/financials/2023-financ...

> I also like how you quoted snide and petulant as if disagreeing

Not at all. I consistently use double quotes for exact quotes, and single quotes for such emphasis.

I mostly agree to your original post about dumb communication and not wanting to do business like that. But I don't follow your conclusion at all that 'the other party' therefore seems more reasonable.

> extortion

> blackmail

Again, not sure about the details in this case or Wordpress, but businesses are generally allowed to withhold services or (threaten to) make (true) statements that put their competitors in bad light. Also in horrible "snide and petulant" communication style.

"Extortion" and "blackmail" are explicitly criminal acts, mostly against persons, that have a higher bar. It could be tortious interference. Another commenter raised that CA unfair business practices laws can be bad for Automaticc. In Europe perhaps as well (also around tort?), but no clue.

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