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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

> We’ve made the decision to reallocate resources due to the lawsuits from WP Engine. This legal action diverts significant time and energy that could otherwise be directed toward supporting WordPress’s growth and health. We remain hopeful that WP Engine will reconsider this legal attack, allowing us to refocus our efforts on contributions that benefit the broader WordPress ecosystem.

The only reason the lawsuit happened is because Matt started the feud. This is literally the "guy puts stick in own bike wheel then falls off" meme.

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It started because WP Engine was abusing the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks in a way that was confusing to customers around the world.

Trademark abuse is a "business-on-business crime". Even if you were in the right (nobody was confused about branding except for you mother, apparently), this is not a cause you can expect users to rally behind.

Even the staunchest Disney fans don't rally behind Disney when one of their "trademarks gets abused".

> Trademark abuse is a "business-on-business crime".

So, I get where you're coming from, but I also have some second-hand exposure here because my wife is a trademark agent (and has to put up with all my inane hypotheticals about trademarks) - while you can call it a "business-on business crime", the question of fact revolves around whether an average consumer would get confused.

As a consumer, I'd feel pretty miffed about being misled into purchasing a product due to trademark confusion.

That's actually not true. E.g. Nintendo fans vs Palworld / Pocket Pair.

You're actually proving his point.

Palword vs Nintendo is not a trademark case but a patent one. People in gaming are notably very much not in love of patents restricting what games can or can't do.

I'm curious, are you just surrounded by "Yes men" at work? Do you actually have people who meaningfully criticise you or decisions from your leadership team?

There has been fairly widespread and well corroborated reporting that Matt has intentionally removed or incentivized people to leave who don’t agree with him.

My personal opinion theory is that either he is suffering a significant mental health crisis, or cynically trying to cash in on how widespread WordPress has become.

Of course we have seen this play out in FOSS history before, and we know how it goes, so it’s almost immaterial why he’s trying so hard to blow up his own spot.

Matt posted a blog late last night about blocking Joost de Valk, Karim Marucchi, Se Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen on Wordpress.org. It's precisely because they disagree with Matt's leadership.

https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/

When I saw that dreck in my inbox this morning I was speechless.

His talent for penning cynical, backhanded, sanctimonious doublespeak is astonishing. I genuinely believe he is unable to relate the reality around him to his actions.

I have a meeting next week where I have to try to explain all this nonsense to a marketing agency that has placed a lot of WordPress business with us. We plan to exit to the fork ecosystem as soon as it’s running and stable.

That's not what you said at WCUS. You only mentioned the trademark issue as an aside. Your primary beef was with their contribution level and the fact they were funded by private equity. That's a fact. Plain as day.

Stop trying to rewrite history. There is documented evidence of what actually happened.

And yet you have never pursued a trademark lawsuit which you clearly believe you would win. Why is that? Nor did you ever mention the trademark until they refused to hand you $32 million and became a cancer which must be eradicated.

It's almost like if you had not so loudly and deliberately set out to destroy the company you wouldn't currently be so tied up in this litigation which is apparently such a massive drain on Automattic's resources. But yeah, this is all WPE's fault. For trying to stymie your campaign to destroy them by leveraging laws which exist for exactly this purpose. How dare they. There was just no way to see this coming.

Aside: in the last 15 years I have had to explain the difference between .com and .org to hundreds of people. I don't recall a single instance of having to explain that WP Engine is not affiliated with either the project or the commercial hosting company. And now so many parts of .org unexpectedly direct navigation to .com. Remind me again who is brazenly and unfairly profiting off of the WordPress trademark?

Unsurprising that Matt never replied to you.

You are the dumbest person in most of the rooms you enter. A judge will express this in more words and flair, but it will mean the same thing.

That doesn't justify an extortion attempt, preventing users from receiving security updates, stealing their plugins, unfair competition, or banning their developers.

Absolutely. Sounds like a slam dunk case. Which is why you sued them for trademark infringement, right? You had them dead to rights because if you google "wordpress hosting", WPEngine is the only site that comes up.

Oh, that didn't happen. Because you know you would lose that case.

> Is there a law that says you have to give back? No. There is a law that says you can’t violate the trademark, so that’s the law that we’re using to try to encourage them to give back.

https://youtu.be/H6F0PgMcKWM?si=mcjqRvZsTh8KDjnw&t=804

Still not buying this argument.

If it was a simple matter of trademark abuse, your attorneys talk to theirs. If nothing good comes out of that, your attorneys file a suit. Have you done this? Nope.

This is not about the supposed trademark abuse.

Do you think we don't remember your confession? Do you just think we're stupid?

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