However, my question is this: has WPE given a factual rebuttal to Matt's claims? Especially, considering that their entire business is dependent on WordPress?
I am concerned that in the eagerness to judge Matt's conflict of interest, we should not throw out the baby with the bath water.
Matt’s position is (ostensibly) based on his hard line views about the moral obligation to contribute created through the use of open-source. The trademark sideshow is based on Matt’s understanding that a moral argument isn’t going to convince a private equity backed company to spend money they don’t need to spend. Matt believes WPEngine has a moral obligation to contribute and the trademark licensing fee is the easiest tool he has to force action.
Matt is making a moral argument. WPEngine don’t care because they’re driven by money not morals.
Given the lack of reliable information right now, I’m going to believe the individual that has a decades-long track record indicating that they care about open source over the private company that is legally obligated to pursue profit as its only objective.
If WP Engine had acted in good faith, Matt wouldn’t have had to come up with terms unilaterally.
Who gives a shit, it doesn't matter. Why would he think WP Engine would pay anything they're not contractually obligated to pay?
This has all played out similarly elsewhere, e.g. to the point that some companies have started to carve out a new types of licensing so that all of the "open source revenue" doesn't just get vacuumed up by the big clouds/hosting providers (e.g. see the "Fair Source" movement being promoted by Elastic and others).
Matt could have gone down that route. I could easily imagine a million ways he could have handled this better and gotten the community on his side. Instead he's acting like a collosal asshole.
Reminder: https://www.wired.com/2011/06/skype-silver-lake-evil/
Also, the whole point of open source is that you don't "own it" after it's open sourced. If you don't like those terms, license them under different ones, which exactly what the whole recent "Fair Source" movement is about and what other companies like Sentry have handled in a much more dignified fashion.
WP Engine was banking on the free stuff from Wordpress.org, and they got burned because they bit the hand that was feeding them.
Matt has shown he simply can't be trusted to keep his roles as head of WordPress Foundation and Automattic CEO independent.
The point of the article is that it's precisely these actions that have damaged the integrity of WordPress for everybody, because we can now no longer look at WordPress as having stable stewardship, but as something ready to whimsically descend into unpredictable retaliatory actions, without any rhyme or reason or structure.
Once you start talking that way, it seems to me you've completely lost sight of what it is to be the healthy steward of a norms driven foundation. The reason you work out things in charters, and in terms of service and so on is precisely to avoid situations like this, where there are spirals of escalation all hinging on subjective interpretations of everything.
... the Managing Partner of one of those evil PE firms.
If they want to play hardball about what’s required instead of acting generously, like Matt has done for decades, then they are getting their just deserts.
Matt isn’t obligated to be nice to dick heads. WordPress.org isn’t obligated to provide service for free.
WP Engine decided that they would only do what’s good for them. Fine. If they piss in the pool, they can’t be mad when everyone else gets out. It is irrational for WordPress to continue acting like there isn’t an extractive entity in their midst.
I can't help but notice that once it gets to the question of whether there's any actual authority to demand a licensing fee, the conversation stops being about what is or isn't legal, who is authorized to do what, considerations of proportionality or collateral damage or any of that, and just start slipping into this mode of speaking like mobsters from the 1920s. If that's the cadence you find yourself slipping into it might be an indicator of whether you're the good guy.
Well, in some sense, he is, at least as it relates to his leadership of WordPress Foundation. As a charity with a mission to support the WordPress community, his actions over the past week look like a singular attack on the community in order to benefit the for-profit Automattic.
This comment on a previous post puts it better than I could: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41661086
And, if Matt had not chosen to be an asshole, would this issue have gotten the prominence that it has got?
Also, WPE could easily have taken the wind out of Matt's sails by declaring their (direct or indirect) commercial support for WordPress.org while reducing to pay money to Automattic. As far as I know, they have chosen to not do so.
For all I know, Matt may lose the battle; but, open source would lose the war if companies and individuals continue to use the kind of arguments that WPE and it's defenders are making - that, they are legally not obligated to care two bits about the open source software on which their entire businesses are built, leave apart what is moral.
The idea that users of open source software "owe" something back to the original developers is revisionist history, and if you don't like how users are using your software, why did you open source it with a permissive license in the first place? There are plenty more restrictive licenses (e.g. GPL) that support a more "if you take you have to give" model. Saying "well, we wanted to open source it but not that kind of open source" is BS.
The issues here are precisely the actions by Matt, so it is reasonable to conclude that had Matt not caused those issues by acting as he has, the issues would not exist.
> open source would lose the war if companies and individuals continue to use the kind of arguments that WPE and it's defenders are making - that, they are legally not obligated to care two bits about the open source software on which their entire businesses are built
I don't believe this to be true, but if it is, the responsibilities lies with Matt for allowing it with permissive licensing and trademarks. Neither WPEngine, nor you or I, are obliged to care about what Matt wants us to care about, or to obey Matt's decrees, and the sole reason is Matt's actions.
The same guy running a for profit company?
If we agree that to be true, then WPE should also be considered evil, shouldn't it? Then, why so much defence for them and all vitriol for Matt?
And, if we accept that WPE are right to focus only on the legality of their action, then should we not apply the same logic to all corporations when they focus on maximizing their revenues and profits?
I mean... The article talks about this extensively. And the article is my first exposure to the issue but presumably it's not the first place where these points have been presented. The authority or obligation to give back isn't a legal one, the authority to demand 8% raises all kinds of conflict of interest issues and appears dubious if not outright illegal, the global message posted to admin dashboards was an abuse of power, and the banning from using plugins doesn't even pretend to have a legitimate pretense.
Apparently part of the backstory here is there's a dizzying context, and there might be some subjectivity involved in surfacing these as the pertinent issues, but I wasn't left with the impression that the ball is in WPE's court to explain any kind of smoking gun that hasn't been accounted for by the discussion in the article.
The article is trying to manufacture consent with vague authority: "Most reasonable and knowledgeable people seem to share this opinion." While it is someone who is not impartial. He claimed that he worked in WPE before and than 'extensively' writes why it shouldn't matter - without telling anything.
I'm not saying that what 'Matt' did is OK. Seems to me no party here is in right. But that is not my point. My point is that these kind of articles - especially lengthy vague ones - are just increasing the drama.
The author makes all kinds of specific arguments that don't have anything to do with consensus, and the structure of the arguments is grounded on the inherent rightness or wrongness of interpretation of various rules, the existence are non-existent of copyright, the disproportionate and escalatory choices Matt has made, a whole host of specific arguments that don't have anything to do with where the consensus falls.
They do mention that Matt has appeared to have turned many in the community against him, but the arguments are pretty freestanding even if you want to set that aside, and there's also another interpretation other than manufacturing consent which is simply that it's a legitimate observation about what's really happening.
I can't say for sure, but there's so much more going on here that's more specific to the issue of right and wrong within zooming out and saying "gosh this sure is a lot of drama". I think if that's the level at what you're engaging in the conversation it's just making everything fuzzier.