Regarding our Cease and Desist letter to Automattic
wpfusion.com
wpfusion.com
Their letter makes it sound like they are "identifying" it, like a bird watcher pointing to a bird or something. But they copied, re-hosted it and are, or were, offering it as part of the value proposition for which people should pay. I'll admit I'm fuzzy on fair use as anything more than a general concept but it's hard for me to square that one.
So this paid business plan is just normal WordPress hosting where you get plugins and advanced features like SSH access.
WordPress.com also has a re-skinned admin experience that is more modern looking than wp-admin.
Within the past couple years, WordPress.com extended that modern skin to the plugins page. It’s (as far as I know) data from the core plugin repo, just with a more modern look/experience. In fact, the WordPress.com code for this is totally open source.
I’m not 100% sure how that’s not fair use — any WP host could do that to the plugin page of WP that they install. Other hosts just tend to be more hands off.
Also, you cannot install most plugins on wordpress.com unless you're on the business plan.
That part is absolutely fine and is covered in the original article under "Wait, aren’t WordPress plugins open source and free to modify": ( https://wpfusion.com/business/regarding-our-cease-and-desist... ) You can copy, fork, and even "sell" free software if you like, as long as you comply with its license terms.
This is a trademark dispute, not a copyright dispute.
The trademark dispute here is the use of the phrase "Advanced Custom Fields" in Automatic's marketing and on their website, as illustrated in the picture just above that section of the article. Automatic's core response is probably correct in a technical detail: e.g. in marketing for "Open Office Sheets", you are allowed to say "Open Office Sheets is better than Microsoft Office Excel because..." Even though "Microsoft Office Excel" is trademarked by Microsoft, you're using the name to draw clear distinctions, not to imply endorsement, nor to confuse people into thinking you're selling their product.
It would be an interesting legal case because even though Automatic may have been using the phrase in an allowable way, the result did create confusion in customers. Customers aren't reading the full sentences of the article, they're using Google to find something, clicking "buy", and then later contacting WP Engine for support for something they bought from Automatic. That's proof of the confusion that Automatic created.
Yes, I read that section. But two things. I feel like that's restating the same point I was already making as though it were an elaboration, which is frustrating. Yes, they are using the disputed terms, not just "Advanced Custom Fields" but also "WP Engine".
And secondly, it may be true in some notional sense that doing such a thing as using the term just in a comparative reference to something else (e.g. OpenOffice vs Microsoft Office) is fair use. But that's not what Automattic is doing, which is precisely why it's puzzling that invoking that sense of "fair use" is their response to a charge that is about their use in a much more specifically commercial context.
Is something Matt started, when he suddenly went after WPEngine for trademark use after decades of their use - during which time Matt praised and even invested in their business.
And he has publicly admitted trademark use not the real issue he has, but that he's using it as leverage in his attempt to extort WPEngine out of a huge amount of money that he's not legally entitled to - telling The Verge what he's doing is like Al Capone getting arrested/charged for taxes.
The last sentence in the OP is 100% true: "But as long as Matt’s motivations with WordPress are tied to his profits at Automattic, he can’t be trusted." (I'd go further and say there's pretty much nothing Matt can do now to regain the trust in him that's been lost.)
“In my role as owning WordPress.org, I don’t want to promote a company, which is A: legally threatening me and B: using the WordPress trademark. That’s part of why we cut off access from the servers.”
From: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262232/matt-mullenweg-w...
“The analogy I made is they got Al Capone for taxes,” Mullenweg says. “So, if a company was making half a billion dollars from WordPress and contributing back about $100,000 a year, yes, I would be trying to get them to contribute more.”
The legal term for this is nominative use [1] - sometimes "nominative fair use", although it's unrelated to the doctrine of fair use in copyright law.
Beyond the point that custom fields are pretty much always advanced, there has to be a point at which a term is so fundamentally non-specific that it cannot be subject to trademark.
I just think it's bloody madness sometimes.
Three words is even better.
Note that a tractor manufacturer could still trademark "Active Custom Fields" for agricultural equipment, because it would not be confusingly similar to the "Active Custom Fields" software.
Also trademarks have to be renewed every 5-10 years and you must show that you are actively using it.
Um... Apple? Shell? Alphabet? Chevron? Target? Caterpillar? Oracle? Orange?
No, it's not about ACF and has nothing to do with the company WP Engine. This is a trademark dispute about WP Fusion Lite from the company named Very Good Plugins.
That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
This is blatantly untrue. WPEngine have repeatedly said they launch WordPress code that is bit for bit identical to the zip file published on wordpress.org. That's a claim that could _very_ easily be disproven if it were not true.
I don't think WPEngine are entirely blameless with regard to the WooCommerce Stripe plugin stuff. But I have two thoughts about that, firstly I think it's sleazy of Matt/Automattic to have slipped in referral monetisation codes into a payment plugin in the first place, and secondly the GPL explicitly allows WPEngine to change the code however they choose anyway. And the "nuclear war" Matt's declared and is fighting is all around WordPress trademarks, not WooCommerce or the Stripe plugin code anyway. Both sides come out looking sleazy over Stripe commisions here though.
The ElasticSearch/Redis/MongoDB vs AWS things are quite different in my opinion. They weren't purely relying on trademarks to "Al Capone" Amazon into handing over money they're not entitled to. Instead they all relicensed their code using something the OSF no longer considers "Open Source" using instead things like "Business Source Licenses", which they could do because they owned all the copyright to all the code, either having written it themselves or having contributors assign copyright to them. Matt/WordPress/Automattic _cannot_ do this, because they do not own copyright in all the code. WordPress itself was a fork of previously existing B2 code who's authors still own copyright but granted anybody (including WordPress) a license to use it under GPL2+ terms. I am almost certain (but do not know for sure) that WordPress does not have a copyright assignment agreement from everybody that's written new code that's made it's way into WP core (and that wouldn't have helped anyway since it was all built on "viral" GPL code so any changes also needed to be GPL2+). I'm 100% certain WordPress have no copyright ownership over almost all of the 60 thousand odd plugins on wordpress.org.
and by design. These are freeloaders because open-source software's intention is to allow for people to freeload off it!
Why should "corporate" freeloaders be considered any different than just a regular freeloader? Just because they have some money?
If said software do not wish to have any freeloaders, don't use licenses that allow it. Use something like dual licenced AGPL or use a non-opensource license.
As an example, Epic's Unreal Engine is not open source, but source available. It's licensed so that hobbiests can use it free of charge, but high revenue generating projects must pay. It's a good license, as it makes their intentions completely clear and on the outset.
> AWS's freeloading on elasticsearch and others.
if elastic doesn't want it, they could've followed the same licensing model as Unreal Engine. But of course, elastic wanted the exposure and network effect of a truly open source license, but wanted to collect when someone manages to make money off it.
Preach!
I'm tired of people complaining about other people using open source software in the exact way it was intended as "freeloaders".
If you want people to pay you for your software, then just make it proprietary. There is nothing wrong with proprietary software if that's what you want to do. But if you make it open source, you can't complain when people use it in an open source fashion.
"In 2021, with the 7.11 release, we moved our Apache 2.0-licensed source code in Elasticsearch and Kibana to be dual licensed under Server Side Public License (SSPL) and the Elastic License, giving users the choice of which license to apply. In September 2024, we are adding the Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved AGPLv3 license as an option alongside SSPL and our Elastic license ensuring our community and customers have open source access to use, modify, redistribute, and collaborate on the code with a clear set of rights of their choice." -- https://www.elastic.co/pricing/faq/licensing
Either you have a legal case, or you don’t, everything else is just yapping. If you want to protect your business against “freeloaders”, choose a licensee appropriately.
And yes, changing the code they run is fair game, especially if nobody cares about that feature. Let’s not pretend that whatever they disabled is such a core feature of WordPress, but somehow basically none of their users cared or care about it even to this day.
Showing up a decade later, saying “nice business you got going on here, it would be a shame if something happened to it, better give me 8% of it, to make sure it is protected” is something I’d expect from a mafia movie, not blog hosting.
And the whole trademark thing is... frankly just incredibly lame in the first place. "Going nuclear" and trying to launch a public crusade is one thing if there was an actual moral high ground at play. But even if you are in the right... average people do not care about your trademark claims. Do it with lawyers behind closed doors.
Attacking your userbase and buying out employees over... a trademark? Shutting your mouth was free, as is admitting you were wrong.
I could understand a trademark issue if he had done this the second WP Engine opened business, but it is WAY too late to claim they are now defending their trademark. His legal council must be externally contracted yes men getting paid by the hour because there is no way a lawyer with equity would have said this was a good idea. I also suspect he did all this without talking to legal first :slapforhead:
This is only related to the recent WP Engine drama insofar as the author says it made them lose trust in Matt.
Mullenweg’s recent attempt to dunk on DHH for not capturing enough value from the Rails community is the most succinct mask-off moment of the recent events, in my opinion. He thought he was making a great point by criticizing DHH for not being extractive enough from the rails community. Instead, he only revealed his true thought process about how being at the center of an open source community should be a license to extract from said community. Really puts recent events into perspective.
Is it possible to do a short version or medium version summary of that, and/or a link where I can find out more?
DHH replied that made him happy / proud, giving a gift like that to the world.
The revelation that Matt considers he personally owns wordpress.org outright and can do whatever he chooses there even if it's diametrically opposed to the Foundations stated goals, dramatically changes the risk evaluation in relying on anything to do with Wordpress.
i could even understand if he suddenly went full value extraction mode. there are ways to do it ruthlessly and coldly, but his actions have this angle of being petty as well.
his blatant disregard for WP users while trying to gaslight them into thinking he's their champion, general "assholery" (for lack of a better word) to those who have been in the ecosystem for a long time who dissent.
i guess the mask is truly off.
I think that's understating the situation a bit, because the WP Engine drama was the provocation for the current action. Very Good Plugins learned of the WP Fusion copy in September 2023 but did nothing about it until October 2024.
"I didn’t want to start a legal dispute with Automattic and possibly damage our reputation. And, generally, I trusted Matt. I assumed he had a competent legal team that had already reviewed the legality of copying our plugins, and that he was acting in the best interest of the community."
In haven’t used Wordpress in probably fifteen years. Back then its main quality was ease of setup on prevailing hosting environments of the day. Everything else was a horrible mess that was patched over with plugins that did far too much with too little support from the system. It felt like the MS-DOS of web publishing.
Did they ever graduate to a “Windows NT” stage, or is today’s Wordpress still the same PHP hairball?
PHP has moved on, but WordPress hasn't.
Lots of long-EOLed PHP 5 shared hosting installs sitting out there, and they take great strides to keep things compatible as a result. No composer, global classes all over, etc.
What if I licensed WordPress?
"WP Fusion" is also, apparently, a trademark.
"Hey, that trademark is mine, take it down."
"Okay."
I don't get why there are still so many articles being written about Wordpress drama. There are no gotchas. Nobody can force Wordpress to provide anybody updates for free. You have all the right to enforce your trademarks if you think Wordpress wronged you.
Somehow, despite all of these articles, I still haven't seen a single one from WP Engine itself. I'm fairly sure they just deployed their own update repository in the deadline they were given and that was it. I have no idea where it will go from here, but I doubt it matters much.
"Never interrupt your opponent while he is in the middle of making a mistake."