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Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

No amount of altruism or engineering work entitles you to lie/cheat/extort/defame/...

When you publish something under an open source license, you entitle the rest of the world to use it to get rich. That's what the license says on the tin, what the licenses have always been advertised, etc. I have absolutely no problem with AWS or WPEngine using that entitlement, nor do I have any problem with any software engineer (or software engineering organization like AWS) choosing not to publish source code they didn't promise to. Even if I wasn't of this opinion though - I don't see how someone violating this supposed prohibition could possibly entitle Matt to lie/cheat/extort/defame/...

Edit: I know it's off topic to talk about flagging, but can we consider not flagging the comment this is in reply to? I think it's generated valuable discussion for people learning about this case... even though I strongly disagree with the author.

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This open source purism only benefits the leeches.

This is the same defense I see repeated for Amazon and Google, and they're two of the biggest destroyers.

Honestly OSI and their definition of "open" has been a scourge. Google and Amazon encourage this thinking because it benefits them.

You can have non-commercial "fair source" for customers that prevents vultures from stealing your hard work. That's ethical, yet it gets dunked on by OSI purists.

You can demand that profiteers be required to open source their entire stack. But these licenses are discouraged and underutilized.

But when this keeps keeps happening again and again and continues to be met with victims blaming -- I'm disgusted by the open source community's failure to be pragmatic and sustainable.

You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy. And so what did they take and take and never give themselves?

Open source has a problem.

Open source, and Free Software especially, isn’t about pragmatism, or at least not only pragmatism. It’s about user freedom.

And I only hear people complaining about shared source and other proprietary software licenses when the people using them claim they’re open source so that they can piggyback on that goodwill without actually participating. It’s perfectly fine if someone wants to release stuff under a closed license. They just don’t get to do that and then brag about their open source contributions.

> It’s about user freedom.

I think it's worth asking "who is the user?" in this type of scenario. Because to my mind, AWS or WP Engine aren't really "users" per se - they are resellers that provide services to end-users, and the end-users are the only ones whose rights we should be particularly concerned about

Of course, most of these licenses were written before reselling open-source software was a hugely valuable endeavour, so they make no distinction between resellers and end-users...

They're using the software to achieve a useful aim (build a business that offers a service).

Difficult to get a purer example of a "user" than this.

There are things that are compact but build an interoperability ecosystem around them. Various compression algorithms, cryptography algorithms, communication protocols benefit from having a permissively-licensed implementation. Producing a closed-source fork won't make much sense, and where it does, won't damage the ecosystem. If I invented a new image compression format, I would like to see it supported everywhere, including all possible closed-source software.

There are things that are complex enough, and build an ecosystem on top of them. Producing a closed fork may split the ecosystem, and strangle the open branch if it. These things should use a copyleft license, or maybe dual strict copyleft + commercial license. Linux, Python, Postgres, Grafana, Nexcloud are good examples.

WordPress did it almost right, it uses GPL v2. But to force contributions from hosters, they should have used AGPL, which did not even exist at the time.

If you're mad about what someone can legally do under your license, get a better license

Bingo. This is the crux of the whole thing.

Thing is, whenever they use, or switch to, a "better" license, people get mad about that too.

People get mad about appropriating a term ("open source") that has had for 20 years a clear definition (among others "no discrimination against field of endeavor", "license must not restrict other software") for licenses that violate it.

Not the developer's problem. Don't like the license? Don't use the software.

(Note, I'm not defending anything that MM has done, but you're allowed to change your license, even if users dont like it.)

Well, yes and no. You can change it, but only going forward. A change doesn’t mean that WPengine would have to stop using it. They would have what they have, but they wouldn’t be able to use anything new, developed under new license terms. And I think a lot of the community would walk away from Wordpress and side with WPengine. There would be a high profile fork.

> You can change it, but only going forward.

I don't believe this is correct in this case; realistically, I don't think they can change it at all. As far as I can tell, the WordPress contribution process doesn't involve a CLA or CAA.

That means any license change for WordPress would require getting agreement from every single third-party contributor whose code is still present in the codebase; and/or, removing or rewriting code where the contributor (copyright holder) does not agree. In practical terms, that isn't going to be possible.

WordPress itself is also a fork, which further impacts the situation if any ancient b2/cafelog code is still present in the codebase.

The key point here is that without a CAA, third-party contributors still own the copyright to their code contributions; and without a CLA, the project owner has no legal authority to re-license that third-party code in ways which violate the contributors' license.

The "change it going forwards" thing generally only applies if a CLA or CAA was used; or if the previous license was a permissive one and the new license terms don't violate the old license terms in any way.

In practical terms as long as no one sues they can do anything they want, if enough money on the table then yeah, someone's going to sue, and WP greatly meets that bar.

Had a project I was a major contributor on relicensed to appease microsoft of all things and I just didn't care enough to do something about it besides tell the person they were an asshole.

Gotcha. Yea, in that case it’s difficult. You can only change the license for things you created, and only for new code. If Wordpress has mixed in contributions from a lot of other people, then it’s impossible in practice to get permission from all of them (and some might even be dead).

Let the chips fall as they may, no?

If there was a way to make changes entirely free of consequence, everybody would be doing it.

Yep, agreed. IMO, Matt just has sour grapes that someone was able to build a superior business.

The developer getting mad about their own choice is fundamentally different from other people getting mad about their choice.

Sadly, I can testify to that.

Your whole outlook is against the philosophy of Free Software. The whole point of free software is user freedom. If users can get better/cheaper services from WPEngine than they can from WordPress, and this is putting WordPress out of business: good. Companies should compete on services, not by enforcing a software monopoly.

This is better for users than the alternative. Since they're using open source software, they can always switch back if WordPress starts offering better services, or switch to some new company that can do it even better than either in the future.

Free software has nothing to do with making services cheaper.

It absolutely does. Even Stallman talks explicitly about this - it's one of the reasons why the freedom to do anything, including commercially, with the code is so important.

No, it doesn't. Freedom to commercialize does not mean the movement is designed to make things cheaper.

It's not designed to do that, no. But it is one of the goals, or at least one of the bonuses they expect to come of this. A big part of the freedom Stallman wants for everyone is the freedom to pay anyone who has the skills to work on your software, rather than the original creator having a monopoly on that and being able to charge monopoly prices to you.

That's a stretch. It's like saying the right to repair movement has a bonus of making cheaper phones because it introduces a point in which manufacturers can compete.

It's a long set of stretches, actually. People are just using the idea to either side with Wordpress or not, without understanding what it is. It leads to the misinterpretation of what free software is about (which I don't need to explain, since no one is actually interested in it here).

Nor is it about any obligation to contribute back.

I never said it was.

> You have to give away everything or you're the bad guy.

For source-availible software, you do. Someone "stealing" your code is table-stakes, if that turns your stomach then open source licenses aren't for you. You can sell your software and enjoy all the same protections of copyright that FOSS benefits from, instead. Microsoft built an empire doing that.

It's no use crying over spilled milk if the software is freely licensed. There just isn't. If a paid competitor can do a better job, it will inevitably replace the free alternative - that's competition. When you try to use fatalist framing devices like "open source has a problem" you ignore all the developers happily coexisting with FOSS. The ones who don't complain, many of whom spend their whole lives never asking for anything but the right to contribute.

If that's a problem and you dislike your neighbors, you're the one who needs to find a new neighborhood.

WP Engine sponsors the development of several WordPress plugins. Are we calling plugin developers leeches now?

If you don't like that, just use AGPL that force SAAS to publish the modifications.

Seriously. I don't even understand what the argument is about.

>This open source purism only benefits the leeches.

I don't understand what open source purism even is.

You pick a license for your software, and now you're mad because people are making money off of it. Then why even go with an open source license?

Do what Bill Gates did tell people to pay up for using Microsoft software, because Microsoft software isn't open source.

What are you crying about?

> I don't understand what open source purism even is.

I believe GP is referring to the behavior of users, not the developer. That is, an increasingly large segment of the industry refuses to touch software using non-OSI-approved licenses. Open source purists view non-OSI "source available" licenses with the same disdain as fully proprietary closed-source software.

In turn, this situation makes it extremely hard for independent-minded developers to form businesses for any software that doesn't lend itself well to SaaS. Massive companies can afford to release things as FOSS, but smaller/bootstrapped businesses effectively cannot.

Compare this to a few decades ago: the industry used to be less dogmatic regarding licenses, and there were a lot more smaller independent software vendors.

A good part of why this is is that, with a source-available license, you are almost as much at the mercy of the company developing the software as with proprietary software.

Sure, it's nice that you can read the code, maybe workaround certain bugs, or audit it for security. But, crucially, if the company decides to change their terms ask for much more money, or just refuse to do business with you, or goes out of business, you're in just as bad a situation as if you were buying Oracle software. You will have to replace them with new software, you won't have a choice to continue development or find a new vendor to support it for you.

How so, specifically? Can you provide examples of why this is the case with common non-OSI licenses such as SSPL, BSL, Functional Source License, or Fair Core License?

> In turn, this situation makes it extremely hard for independent-minded developers to form businesses for any software that doesn't lend itself well to SaaS.

People and companies don't want to pay for software. That's what makes it hard to form a business around selling software.

If your software is actually free, then it is easier to get people to use it, but that doesn't help you form a business.

A few decades ago, people and businesses also didn't like to pay for software, but saw fewer actually free options available.

No, that's tangential to what's being discussed in this subthread. You're talking "free as in beer" (gratis), but open source purists ostensibly care about "free as in freedom" (libre).

The key point here is that "source available" software is still gratis, and yet the open source purists shun it -- often quite vocally, even if the software doesn't claim to be "open source".

This means if you're launching an independent software business, and you choose licensing terms that protect your own interests (such as Fair Source), the vocal ill-will from open source purists could be very harmful to the viability of your business. But if you choose FOSS instead, then larger companies will eat your lunch. I believe this is what was meant upthread regarding "open source purism only benefits the leeches".

And lately some purists have been moving the goalposts even more. Just a few days ago, I saw a comment on here where someone claimed AGPL is "open-washing" if a CLA is required for contributions. That's especially ridiculous, since there's literally no other way to sustainably develop AGPL software directly supported by business revenue. (Without a CLA or CAA on external code contributions, a creator of AGPL software cannot legally host their own SaaS.)

This status quo only helps big tech incumbents. And given how ageist tech companies can be, it's depressing to see so many programmers espouse this type of licensing puritanism. This will only serve to prevent them from launching their own businesses in the future, once they're too old to be hired by the big layoff-happy tech companies benefiting from this licensing in the first place.

> Without a CLA or CAA on external code contributions, a creator of AGPL software cannot legally host their own SaaS

What do you mean? Anyone can run AGPL software, either the creator, a contributor, or anyone else, as long as they abide by the terms of the license. You are absolutely allowed to ask for money for an AGPL service, the only restriction is that you must make the source code available under the AGPL for anyone who pays to use the software.

In the "paid SaaS" situation, the SaaS version almost always has proprietary changes and enhancements, which are infeasible to open-source without ruining the business. With the code fully available, since anyone else can then launch an identical business on the same codebase, there's little chance for the project creator's own business to succeed, as it can't stand out on feature-set.

With a CLA on third-party contributions, the project creator can still operate an enhanced SaaS without that massive problem. And revenue from the business can then support sustainable development of the project as a whole.

fwiw, I have recently seen at least two "Show HN" posts where the author was running an enhanced paid SaaS on their AGPL project, which accepted many contributions without a CLA, but did not offer the enhanced SaaS codebase to users. That's a clear copyright violation and any of those contributors can sue the project creator if they wish; this is what I meant by "cannot legally host their own SaaS" although in retrospect I should have clarified the scenario.

> With the code fully available, since anyone else can then launch an identical business on the same codebase, there's little chance for the project creator's own business to succeed, as it can't stand out on feature-set.

This is not at all clear on the face of it. For example, RedHat has succeeded as a company for a very long time (ultimately getting themselves bought out by IBM for a very good price) by just selling support for Linux and other open source packages, even though anyone could just run CentOS and get the exact same code for most of this duration.

The point of the GPL and AGPL is to not allow any company to have a monopoly on code that users run - including the company that built that code in the first place. Subverting it with a CLA and first party proprietary extensions is a direct strike at its core purpose. I doubt you'll find many people willing to sign a CLA whose explicit goal is to prevent the main purpose of the AGPL.

RedHat killed off CentOS in its previous form. RedHat also now has a written policy of terminating customers who exercise their GPL rights of republishing RHEL source code. That seems like subverting the GPL far worse than a CLA. If that's the best example here, then that already speaks volumes.

Perhaps you can list some other examples of successful businesses who offer their core product under AGPL without a CLA?

As far as I've ever seen, when AGPL software is built by a business, a CLA is used.

To quote Heather Meeker: "In privately funded business, AGPL is almost always used as part of a dual licensing strategy [...] Vendors almost always use a contribution license (CLA) for contributions from the community." https://heathermeeker.com/2023/10/13/agpl-in-the-light-of-da...

> but open source purists ostensibly care about "free as in freedom" (libre).

Your business is unlikely to get revenue from these customers, so your business shouldn't feel an obligation to satisfy them.

That absolutely isn't true as a blanket statement. It varies a lot in terms of B2B vs B2C, distribution model, etc.

With B2B software using the popular model of "paid hosted SaaS + libre self-host", you can definitely get revenue from companies who happen to employ some open source purists. Ditto with the model of "libre self-host with paid technical support". But all of this is much harder with a non-OSI license, since the open source purists will protest, regardless of whether or not the company is even running the self-host version.

Software adoption also tends to follow network effects, so having any contingent of vocal people complaining about license choice is bad news for a business.

This is not "open source purism," dude, what are you even talking about? This is just choosing a proper open source license.

OSI was literally started by the leeching megacorps (look at their list of sponsors this is not some grand conspiracy) to shame people away from creating more fair licenses.

They are already angry enough that they had to consider AGPL as open source because it meets all their criteria.

If OSI wanted to adjust their definition to exclude copyleft licenses, they could easily do so, it would not even be particularly hard to argue as a position. But open-source does include free software, even if not the other way around.

The extortion was to get them to contribute or pay somebody to contribute. And the threat was to withdraw his own resources.

The threat was to "go nuclear". Among other things

* Start a smear campaign

* block people from wordpress.org unless they ticked a loyalty checkbox stating they weren't affiliated with wpengine

* Take over and null Advanced Custom Fields, a WPengine plugin

* Block wpengine from wordpress.org, which is baked into wordpress, refuse to name a price for access, refuse to allow development of any alternate plugin hosting system

* Ban wordpress.org accounts of anyone who spoke up in favour of wpengine

* Start specific campaigns to poach wpengine clients

* start a website listing the staging urls of all wpengine customers and cite which ones left wpengine

I'm sure I've forgotten some things. The deal with extortion is you may have a legal ability to request money you are not legally entitled to. You may have a legal ability to take certain actions. But what is often not legal is threatening to take certain otherwise legal actions UNLESS you are paid money you are not legally entitled to.

The extortion claim was dismissed as the judge found there's no civil extortion tort under California law. California prosecutors haven't seen fit to file charges, so no formal proceeding.

But you're being rather blithe in your description.

If we're listing them in detail personally I think one of the most offensive (though least commercially relevant) offenses was to attempt to use public resources, the trademark owned by a 501c3 charity, fraudulently transferred back to Matt, to extort them. Both since that's obviously fucking wrong, and they were already only making nominative use of the trademark (i.e. using it to refer to WordPress's product) which they have a free speech right to do.

This was all shitty behavior.

But WP Engine was equally shitty (even if it's "legal" - OSI purism has no sense of justice) to steal his company's lunch, from their decades of hard work, and contribute absolutely nothing back.

Again, it reeks of the same foul behavior we see from the hyperscalers.

Just to be clear, by “steal his company’s lunch” you mean “use software his company published in the manner specified by that software’s license,” right? It’s a funny definition of theft.

Exactly. “You complied with our license. How dare you!”

But them behaving badly (or not; I don’t know enough here to agree or disagree) isn’t the legal issue. Matt is in court for allegedly harming WPE’s business in violation of law and contracts, which has monetary damages WPE can seek to recover.

If you call me names, you’re misbehaving and should be called out for it. If I retaliate by knocking over your fence and spraypainting your cat, you get to sue me even though you were the one who behaved poorly, but legally, to start with.

TL;DR Matt claims WPE acted unethically, which is shameful. WPE claims Matt tried to ruin their business, in ways they say are illegal.

I agree with everything you've said.

By the letter of the law, WPE is squeaky clean. But by kumbaya ethics or community spirit or whatever you want to call it, they're scummy vultures.

They're dipping into the "take a penny" jar and not replenishing it.

I can't square this with any sense of justice or morality.

> But by kumbaya ethics or community spirit or whatever you want to call it, they're scummy vultures.

ACF was so important to the ecosystem that Automattic felt the need to grab it after they kicked out the maintainers. Doesn't that go against the story that WPEngine was contributing nothing?

> But by kumbaya ethics or community spirit or whatever you want to call it, they're scummy vultures.

> They're dipping into the "take a penny" jar and not replenishing it.

> I can't square this with any sense of justice or morality.

Speak for yourself. Other people have different values and therefore interpretations of what's "moral" or "just".

If you want to make the argument that the only use of open source that's moral is one in which the user contributes back, that's fine. But I think you'll find yourself in a minority.

It's not equally shitty. Actively lying or smearing someone else is at least one level above freeloading on shittiness. WPE has explicit permission to freeload. No one gives explicit permission to drag their name through mud. Sorry, "both sides" won't cut it here.

I don't agree that WPE's behavior was shitty (as already discussed), let alone "equally" shitty. Even if I did though, so what? Two wrongs don't make a right. Shitty behavior doesn't justify someone else's lying/cheating/extorting/defaming/... Even criminals, real ones who have done far worse things than anything that happens in a business dispute, have the right to seek recourse via the legal system.

> and contribute absolutely nothing back.

Absolutely nothing besides:

- contributions, bug and security fixes to the core codebase

- the creation of multiple plugins which were free to use (though some had a premium offering)

- the contribution of at a minimum several hundred thousand dollars a year on event and other sponsorship, including for events they were banned from attending, had all mention removed (and in one case, Matt stood on a stage and spat venom at them for 45 minutes).

"Absolutely nothing" indeed.

Would you care to disclose your identity?

The last time I encountered someone making these points, they had a financial bias. Is that true for you?

I wrote a blog post about this: https://ma.tt/2025/09/externalities/

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