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> I think it's also useful to note that Mullenweg wasn't demanding 8% of WPE's revenue, but rather an allocation of WPE revenue to WordPress ecosystem development (by staff members on WPE's own team), with the revenue to Automattic (or whoever, I forget) as an in-kind payment option.† That is a much more reasonable-sounding ask than simply forking over cash to Mullenweg's own business.

I think the question is, in exchange for what?

I think the reason that all this is controversial, is it feels a bit like a shake-down. Give us some resources, otherwise, while, that is a nice wordpress business you have there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.

> it feels a bit like a shake-down

It is a shake down. And the problem with negotiating with people like this is that it never stops.

There will never be enough contributions and money.

> the problem ... with people like this is that it never stops.

By contrast, this doesn't make WPE look good:

WP Engine had been siphoning “tens of millions” of dollars away from Woo’s revenue share partnership with Stripe into its own coffers. It’s understood WP Engine has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce.

That's the sort of thing that, if a proven problem, could seem less like a shakedown and more like active wire fraud.

EDIT: As replies note, GPL. OK, but I realize I grew up thinking if someone gives me software it isn't to rip out their revenue model and replace it with mine, it is for me to do my own value added thing with it. Meaning, the stealth edit might not be wrong, but still seems uncool.

It might be sketchy, but WooCommerce is a GPL project: https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/blob/trunk/plugin...

This is explicitly the sort of thing that WP Engine would be allowed to do, and if Automattic isn't happy about this then perhaps they should have chosen non-free licenses.

Basically: "wire fraud" is an extremely overblown claim. Nothing criminal is happening here, because they're complying with the license. Is it ethical? Debatable.

WPE does not touch WooCommerce in any way. WooCommerce is a plugin that is itself extended through more plugins, including ones for working with payment providers such as Stripe. WPE makes a Stripe payment plugin that works with multiple eCommerce setups, including WooCommerce. WPE's plugin naturally uses WPE's affiliate code.

Matt cannot stand competition, that's all.

Thanks — this makes more sense than the article's phrasing.

Or at least misleading the consumer - which is also not cool.

That is completely legal and ethical.

WooCommerce is an open source, GPL project which allows people to modify the code in any way, including changing Stripe details, provided that they comply with the terms of the license.

Licenses are a fundamental part of open source precisely so that in situations like this everyone knows the rules of the game.

Isn't it just that WP Engine made their own Stripe plugin for Woo? Why is this being called out as wrong?

The use of WordPress.org shared resources and the WordPress trademarks? I think this isn't all that complicated.

1. The shared resources are baked into Wordpress code, and used by wordpress users no matter which host they are with. Does Matt wish webhosts to fork the repository?

2. Nominative use allows companies to refer to things by their name. It isn't obvious that "Wordpress Hosting" or "Wordpress plugin" is a violation or causes consumer confusion. Does Matt wish for all companies in the ecosystem to stop referring to their products as Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Plugins and Wordpress hosts?

It's worth noting that for years Wordpress.org has routinely referred to companies as "Wordpress hosts"

For example: https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/migrating-your-wordpres...

They don't seem to find it confusing and I suspect it would be difficult for Wordpress to launch a legal claim given tolerance of and direct use of those terms.

>Nominative use allows companies to refer to things by their name. It isn't obvious that "Wordpress Hosting" or "Wordpress plugin" is a violation or causes consumer confusion. Does Matt wish for all companies in the ecosystem to stop referring to their products as Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Plugins and Wordpress hosts?

I think Matt's position is that WP Engine is not Wordpress, so it's not appropriate to call their offerings Wordpress-anything.

That would be a truth in advertising issue if anything, not a trademark issue.

Why do you think it's not both?

>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.

Referential use doesn't allow someone to use marks to imply an association or endorsement, and I think it's clear what they're calling out in the trademark policy changes.

So? The GPL doesn't say anything about "baking resources into the code"; the point of the GPL is that you can change the code, and WPE, a gigantic company, should do so.

What I meant was does Matt wish for all hosts to fork the repository so it is not a central place for plugins? To appearances Wordpress was architected to work the way it does, suggesting that he wished it to work the way it does.

If the central repository is a problem, then each site draws on it in proportion to their usage and it isn't obvious why one site is an issue and others aren't.

Hence my question, does he wish hosts to move away from a central repository? He certainly can advocate for that but it's a larger issue than WPEngine.

Also sort of adjacent but Matthew Prince of Cloudfare has just offered to donate resources to fund the whole central repository: https://x.com/eastdakota/status/1841154152006627663

I don't think anybody, including Mullenweg, is seriously claiming WPE is threatening the integrity of the WP.org servers with all their load. It seems pretty clear that WP.org is a stick the Foundation is going to use to get commercial WP users to kick in resources, along with the WP trademarks.

The norms of open source software don't really have much to say about this. Mullenweg is right: the typical thing companies that run GPL projects do when they end up competing with firms that don't pay their freight is to relicense. Being a little ruthless with trademarks seems strictly superior to switching to a "source available" license.

As announced by @wpengine on that ex-bird-site, they are mirroring the wordpress.org repos now, as well as serving their own compatible plugin management API (one caveat they mentioned is that search isn't exactly the same).

I do hope they open source the API. I might take a stab at implementing it using wpackagist (though possibly that's what they're using to mirror already)

The use of which were already allowed under the existing open source licenses...

In other words, a shakedown by another name.

Also, suggesting that WPE's contributions to the non-profit could be satisfied by paying Matt's for-profit company is almost the textbook definition of private inurement. I don't think he had lawyers familiar with non-profit law clear that offer before he made it. If I worked for the IRS right now WP and Matt would be pretty high on the list of organizations to take a closer look at.

Can you be more specific about where the WordPress licensing grants the trademark usage WPE is using? WordPress is GPL2, which doesn't have a lot to say about trademarks.

Isn't it just the law? Not obvious that terms such as "Wordpress Host" violate nominative fair use. They're commonly used throughout the industry as well.

I would like to understand what "[t]he use of which were already allowed under the existing open source licenses..." from the preceding comment meant.

I'm not a lawyer. Nominative fair use is complicated, as is WPE's use of the WP marks. All I can hope for here is to understand what claims people are making.

> use of the WP marks

I realize you may just have been abbreviating, but until the middle of this current dispute, the WordPress Foundation explicitly allowed the use of "WP". Matt just edited it after framing it as a trademark issue.

Yes, I'm just abbreviating.

Ah, fair point. Yeah I agree, the open source licenses have no bearing on the matter. Only permissions would come from either trademark law or a negotiated agreement.

Yes, it's basic trademark law. Matt's supporters are deliberately trying to obfuscate several issues to make it look like Matt is in the right.

Matt's was alleging violations of the license and the trademark. And he's wrong on both accounts.

I think at this point three things are true. The first is that Mullenweg sincerely believes that WPE should be contributing more than it is to the development of WordPress. The second is that they have no legal obligation to do so, which gives Mullenweg very little leverage to force them to do anything. The final thing is that the setup of WordPress and Automattic and Mullenweg's role in both makes any attempts to apply social pressure to achieve his aims at best a case of bad optics and at worst a saunter through a legal minefield with some hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane strapped to his back.

Sure, and style points for the Derek Lowe allusion. I see why you think this, and probably agree more than disagree.

Three things that have influenced how I look at this:

* The revelation that Mullenweg was asking for headcount allocated to the WordPress project, not simply a cash payment. If you get a giant company rolling that is driven entirely off an open source project, it seems very reasonable to me for the open source project to use whatever leverage it has to get you contributing back.

* Mullenweg's argument that the norm for projects in "his" predicament to simply relicense to non-open-source terms; this seems incontrovertibly true, and also like it does a lot more damage to an open source community than what Mullenweg is attempting to do, which is to demand that a non-contributing company take his project's name out of their (marketing) mouths, and to stop using public services provided at the project's expense. WPE is in a position to mitigate anything Mullenweg can do here, so it's hard for me to sympathize too much.

* I was radicalized on this by working in security products during a time where it felt like dozens of funded startups were just picking up Snort and running with it as their core engine without contributing anything back, including proprietary stuff they built on top of it (and shipped in appliances, avoiding the licensing issues). I keep saying this is a "JABOG" situation, and I do believe that, but I have to remind myself of that to avoid casting one of these parties as the obvious bad guy.

> Mullenweg's argument that the norm for projects in "his" predicament to simply relicense to non-open-source terms

Isn't WordPress using GPL code owned by other people? He doesn't get brownie points for not doing something that's illegal.

> Mullenweg's argument that the norm for projects in "his" predicament to simply relicense to non-open-source terms

Except Mullenweg has zero authority or ability to do so, without the agreement of all the GPL contributors. Mullenweg might argue this, but he also has been around long enough to assuredly know that this is neither the case, nor possible for him to do so. Apropos of anything else, he built WordPress by forking b2.

"Negotiation" invokes visions of term sheets and boardrooms but what Matt actually meant by "negotiation" (as revealed in the interview) was emails in which he expressed displeasure at the lack of contribution from WP Engine, and only in the days before WordCamp did any sort of terms arrive at the table (the 8% demand). Matt has acknowledged he escalated things in the space of days, not years. The emails read out are birthday party invites, not term sheets.

I agree that WP Engine cannot be characterised as "good guys" given it's a bottom-line driven machine that will chew up and spit out all in its path, and Matt has earned credibility through decades of community-minded WordPress stewardship, but let's not pretend this is some business deal that went sour, it's Matt using every inch of leverage he has to cause WP Engine pain because of his moral objections to the private-equity machine taking money away from his community-minded company.

Obviously WP Engine were never going to pay Automattic tens of millions of dollars per year, Matt knows that, we know that, it's a side show. He was just saying things to ruin their day. Just like the millions of dollars per year in costs incurred running WordPress.org that Matt has wheeled out to justify causing WP Engine pain by cutting them off from plugin updates (Cloudflare have offered to host WordPress.org for free; Matt has not accepted the offer).

At 14:50 in the video they read a term sheet together. Prior to that, they read aloud an email complaint (not a birthday party invite) from this summer. He claims that they've been meeting in person about this; I don't disbelieve him.

For what it's worth: I agree with you about what seems subtextually to be behind this whole thing. But then: if they've been on notice for many months about Mullenweg being upset about their use of the trademarks and lack of participation in the community (confirmed on camera, unless he forged emails), it feels to me like WPE --- a company with an 8-9 figure run rate --- should have been in a position to know what was coming with WordPress.org and how to mitigate that.

I'm not casting Mullenweg as a hero; just making a case for it being a JABOG† situation, as I said above. And, of course, that the summary in the story we're reading is pretty one-sided.

† gonna make this a thing

> But then: if they've been on notice for many months about Mullenweg being > upset about their use of the trademarks and lack of participation in the community (confirmed on camera, unless he forged emails), it feels to me like WPE --- a company with an 8-9 figure run rate --- should have been in a position to know what was coming with WordPress.org and how to mitigate that.

Matt's company owns and uses wordpress.com, so Matt's sudden concern about WP Engine using Wordpress' trademark does not seem very believable (or at the least massively hypocritical). The trademark issue just seems like a handy weapon to get what he wants. However, there are no good guys in this feud as you said -- only mud.

Again you're claiming it was "sudden", but it does not appear to have been sudden. Meanwhile: nobody seems to deny that WPE could simply use WordPress's OSS software assets to stand up their own services, including Mullenweg. But that's all open source gets you. It doesn't entitle you to trademarks or online services!

> Again you're claiming it was "sudden", but it does not appear to have been sudden.

It was definitely sudden, just last week the term "WP" was explicitly allowed in Wordpress' Trademark Policy. This issue isn't really trademarks, it is just a club.

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

https://web.archive.org/web/20240924024555/https://wordpress...

> But that's all open source gets you. It doesn't entitle you to trademarks

Unless you're Mullenweg, who has abused the Wordpress trademark for years via wordpress.com. I greatly respect his years of work and dedication. However, the ends do not justify the means.

No, he hasn't. Automattic's contributions back to the WordPress foundation dwarf those of WPE's. He gave a whole interview spelling out what other companies do to get access to commercial use of those trademarks. He wasn't even demanding parity with Automattic.

I'd like to point out that the WordPress Foundation is merely the entity that owns the trademark, then gave ("for good and valuable consideration" [1]) an exclusive, perpetual, and irrevocable licence for commercial use of it to Automattic.

The WordPress project is not the foundation. The WordPress dot org website isn't under the foundation either (it's owned and run by Matt [2]), and should be considered separate from the project.

I think most contributors outside Automattic want to contribute to the project and its surrounding community, not WordPress dot org.

[1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/caseviewer/assignments?caseId=7882673...

[2] https://x.com/photomatt/status/1840980359673995362

Matt (intentionally?) mumbles it so that might be how you missed it but at 14:50 he shows the term sheet email and says “September 20th” which is the day of the initial blog post that kicked off the storm. There was no term sheet until the situation was public.

The trademarks argument seemed overblown, "JABOG" style.

The new to me allegation in this is this alleged WPE swap out of WooCommerce Stripe affiliate account:

WP Engine had been siphoning “tens of millions” of dollars away from Woo’s revenue share partnership with Stripe into its own coffers. It’s understood WP Engine has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce.

Ripping out an OSS' revenue model would seem not great. There's a term for use of electronic communication systems to redirect money to oneself. But, not cut and dried, if the source code containing that model is fair game...

To your point, this must be a one-sided take as well, since one would have expected an accusation of 8 figure wire fraud to escalate more clearly if it were that simple.

You're missing the point that WP Engine forked WooCommerce.

It is their version of the project and they are permitted by the terms of the license that WooCommerce agreed to make whatever changes they like.

Open source is a double edged sword. You can't leverage the benefits of the community and then deny the community the ability to benefit themselves.

> You're missing the point that WP Engine forked WooCommerce.

That point is impossible to reconcile with this phrase:

"...has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce."

The verb tense "has been swapping" implies continuous repetition of the swap, not a one time fork, then "when a user installs WooCommerce" doubles down, implying it's the original code, with user install action being the time of the stealth edit.

The article's sentence is constructed incompatibly with the point you're making. Note I'm not saying your point is incorrect.

Not sure if you're a developer or not.

But it's extremely common to fork a project and keep it up to date with the latest commits from the original repository. Pretty much the standard in fact since most people just want to make a few small changes.

Isn't the "small change" here "redirecting affiliate revenue"? (This is a plugin, which apparently WPE replaced altogether, but if the only reason to do that replacement is to capture the affiliate revenue I can see the Foundation being pissed.)

It is irrelevant what the change is.

WP Engine has the legal right to make whatever change they like in their fork.

Including redirecting affiliate revenue.

I think everybody is aware of how the GPL works with respect to forking and altering software, but people seem to be confused about how the GPL works with respect to registered trademarks and online services operated by the copyright holder.

If it's any help, WPE didn't alter WooCommerce at all. WooCommerce requires a separate plugin for Stripe payments, and WPE happens to offer their own payments plugin that competes with the official WooCommerce one (and works with systems other than WooCommerce at that).

MM continues to repeat the claim that WPE modified Woo itself, so WPE's lawyers are probably adding libel to the pile of claims. I think they're still waiting for a8c to file first for PR reasons.

He demanded either 8% of their gross revenue, the equivalent in development time for employees who would be directed by WordPress.org, or some combination thereof.

He also demanded auditing of WP Engine by their direct competitor, Automattic.

0. https://automattic.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/term-sheet...

> for employees who would be directed by WordPress.org

And as a reminder, WordPress.org is just Matt Mullenweg. It’s not even the WordPress Foundation, which is headed by him. WordPress.org is literally just him.

> > Do you really individually own http://WordPress.org?

> > Not Automattic? Not a different LLC or something? No employees? No board of directors?

> > Just you?

> Just me.

— https://x.com/grigs/status/1840958978043605361

So when Automattic offered WP Engine a term sheet that demanded that they put 8% of their gross monthly revenue towards employees “directed by WordPress.org”, what it’s actually demanding is that WP Engine pay the salaries of developers who would work for the CEO of their direct competitor.

Not to mention the fact that salaries are not the only cost incurred when employing somebody, so greater than 8% of their gross monthly revenue would be spent on Mullenweg’s flying monkeys.

I think Matt has gotten far too used to using wp.org, wp.com, Automattic, and the Foundation effectively interchangeably for years.

> the equivalent in development time for employees who would be directed by WordPress.org

Uhh, as Matt has stated, WordPress.org is him and him alone, a gift to the WordPress Foundation.

So Matt has demanded that WPE give this to WP.org, which belongs to him...