Hacker News Reader

Comment by photomatt | Hacker News Reader

Automattic employs ~100 people that work full-time on WordPress.org. I can appoint them into positions on WordPress.org, if I think that's appropriate.

View on HN

> Automattic employs ~100 people that work full-time on WordPress.org. I can appoint them into positions on WordPress.org, if I think that's appropriate.

So are you now using company resources for personal projects (as they point out, you constantly have claimed that the .org domain is your personal domain) as well as for non profit org projects?

Doesn't exactly sound... beneficial to investors interests.

Matt is leaving so much evidence against himself that he's practically doing opposing counsel's job for them.

Automattic employs ~100 people that work full-time on WordPress.org. I can appoint them into positions on WordPress.org, if I think that's appropriate

So in other words you intermingle for-profit and nonprofit resources for your own private benefit?

Maybe the IRS should be taking a deeper look at WordPress.org's finances?

IIRC you can get a substantial 5-figure reward for reporting this to them!

Why did you tell the community: "the most central piece of WordPress’s identity, its name, is now fully independent from any company"? That's objectively untrue. Period.

That was 14 years ago Matt. You mislead the community for 14 years.

The trademark originally belonged 100% to Automattic. It transferred it to the Foundation, and retained the commercial license and the ability to commercially sub-license. The Foundation gave me a license to run WordPress.org. This has all been public, though I agree it's complicated and not widely understood.

I’m curious: what else is there to a trademark? Nominal ownership may lie with the Foundation, but if they’ve granted “irrevocable, exclusive, royalty-free rights in the WordPress trademarks right back to Automattic” (as claimed in this lawsuit), what else is there? Maybe there is something, I’m no lawyer or particularly deeply familiar with trademark law, but it sounds to me like, for all practical purposes, ownership belonging to the Foundation is a furphy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furphy>.

(This is an honest question.)

I guess one difference is that if the company ceases to exist it falls back to the foundation and there might be classes around acquisition etc.

I understand the workings of the trademark. The question I asked of you (that you avoided) is why did you claim that the trademark was "fully independent from any company" and that Automattic had "give[n] up control". [0]

That's demonstrably untrue. The assignment on file with the USPTO is clear:

>WordPress Foundation, a California nonprofit public benefit corporation, ... hereby grants to Automattic Inc., an exclusive, fully-paid, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sublicensable right and license to use and otherwise exploit the trademarks identified in Exhibit A attached hereto...

Why did you lie, Matt?

[0] https://ma.tt/2010/09/wordpress-trademark/

> The Foundation gave me a license to run WordPress.org.

The Foundation? You mean, you, a retired, inactive coder (as far as I could tell, or near enough) and oh yeah, one of those "freeloading leeches", as you described Private Equity... a Managing Partner, in fact?

Weird that you never mentioned that this license was granted on the same day it was transferred.

> though I agree it's complicated and not widely understood

He didn't say it was complicated or that he didn't understand it.

He said it was un-true and it is.

So wordpress.org is effectively for-profit

Why did your legal officer today post in a blog post that its a non-profit?

What blog was this?

Matt’s agents post in so many different places it’s hard to keep track.

Edit: found it. Wow. This guy has the worst lawyers. https://automattic.com/2024/10/02/wordpress-trademarks-a-leg...

You start to wonder if they work for WPE

I love how he explains that “consideration” was conjured from thin air.

I own a car. I want to drive my own car on weekdays. To accomplish this, I give my car to Jimmy, and he promises to let me use it on weekdays?

Using the same analogy as in that post, apparently this is a valid contract with “consideration” because I gave Jimmy my car and, “in return,” he gave me my car back Monday–Friday.

I’m no lawyer, but I can’t imagine that it is illegal to donate a noncommercial license to a nonprofit organization, without contracts and considerations coming into play. But if I’m wrong, and “consideration” is a required element of a transaction like this, I don’t think this wash-sale version of it would pass muster anyway.

I also do not get it, I don't know why consideration is even relevant for a donation.

I assume someone wanted to restructure things so that a fully owned trademark was owned by a non-profit instead, with them retaining commercial rights.

Why would either side want to minimize the donation size? It reduces taxes for the commercial company and the non-profit doesn't care about income tax.

I don't know if the site is accurate but it's odd to bring up considerations for sure. I don't see anything immoral or unethical about want to restructure so that a non-profit handles the non-profit stuff.

There are so many legal entities here that appear completely intertwined: The WordPress Foundation, Automattic, Audrey Capital, WordPress Community Support PBC, etc. Conflicts of interest are a problem even if they aren't acted upon. It's going to get ugly.

Right. To me Matt is so so used to using them all almost synonymously that he seems oblivious to the ramifications thereof.

the statements about the non-profit situation seem especially bad. He'll obviously have his own side of the story, but I'm guessing they didn't misread the tax filings.

You really should stop crashing out on HN - you are practically doing the opposing counsel's work for them!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com