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Comment by _cenw | Hacker News Reader

They asked for either

- money directly to Automattic, not the WordPress Foundation.

- employees working on WordPress core, at the direction of Automattic - including looking at their time sheets and employee files.

Neither of this is "back into WordPress", it's "to Automattic". The company that often did prioritize their workers to work on features benefitting WordPress.com users. There actually used to be a constant for checking if running inside WPCOM in WP Core, but they seem to have removed it since. Let's not even talk about Jetpack and carving out shit from your core product, that gives me too many AOSP vs Play Services vibes.

Either way, WP Engine is a competitor of Automattic. This is laughable. I hope they fork WordPress, because I'd feel uncomfortable contributing software to the benefit of such a bully (I am a former contibutor).

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I thought the structure was set up in such a way that only Automattic has commercial rights to the Wordpress trademark. To balance this, Wordpress.org has discretionary power on deciding whether Automattic are good stewards of the trademark. Can Wordpress.org directly ask for the 8%? It seems like it has to be done through Automattic.

This whole situation was handled poorly, but can it really be considered bullying? It definitely speaks to the heart of the eternal problem of open source: the imbalance of givers and takers at the bazaar.

> but can it really be considered bullying

No it's much more like extortion.

And it goes against everything open source has been about.

Yes, I'd say Automattic puppeteering Wordpress.org, the org set up as a visible layer of separation, to make their competitor look back and then poach their customers (https://pressable.com/wpe-contract-buyout/) is bullying, or "market distortion".

Matt's just mad he didn't capture the enterprise Wordpress hosting market earlier, with WordPress.com always being aimed at more casual users and Pressable only aquired in 2016.

> Matt's just mad he didn't capture the enterprise Wordpress hosting market earlier, with WordPress.com always being aimed at more casual users and Pressable only aquired in 2016.

WordPress.com VIP is a thing though, and I think they've done a great job selling it to huge organisations.

True. I think it's the middle to high end (but not enterprise) part of the market that WPEngine are dominating at the expense of Automattic.

Honest question because I have no idea what the truth of the matter is: who even is WordPress.org?

According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41692300, Matt Mullenweg said at some point in that long interview from a couple of days ago that he was operating WordPress.org personally, rather than the WordPress Foundation as I think people would typically assume.

Here it is straight from the horse’s mouth:

> > 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

The CEO of Automattic is the sole active board member of wordpress.org There's no balance there.

There is no board of Wordpress.org, it is owned personally.

Matt Mullenweg has said that the WordPress Foundation, which is separate from WordPress.org (it gets confusing), could revoke the licenses that he (personally?) and Automattic have.

The public license agreement that Automattic has says the license is "perpetual, irrevocable:" https://www.pluginvulnerabilities.com/2024/10/02/matt-mullen...

The license that exists for WordPress.org, which seems to really be just him, doesn't appear to be public. It would be interesting to see who it really is with and what the terms really are.

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