Thesis, Automattic, and WordPress: A Conflict of Ideology | Hacker News Reader

Thesis, Automattic, and WordPress: A Conflict of Ideology

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112 pointskrogsgard49 comments

The behaviour of both parties is, at best, childish.

Thesis is clearly breaking the law (as WordPress has defined it -and rightly so-); but it should not ignite more than a tweet or a blog post by Matt. Matt can also go a long way as suggesting not to buy non-GPL licensed products for WordPress.

I don't really understand Matt aggressive (and childish) reaction. He is obviously not in the same play field, size or ambitions as Thesis. He also got his whole company (Automattic) into this strictly personal issue, by purchasing the domain (and probably hiring the lawyers) with Automattic assets/$$.

I would imagine he knows he made a series of mistakes but cant find the exit :(

I dunno, this latest thing over thesis.com is so outlandishly childish it's almost beyond belief. If I were on the board of Automattic I'd be showing him the exit, at least for a little while. This is not the measured behavior of someone I'd trust with making decisions for a multi-hundred-million dollar company.

This is his baby, and he feels very strongly on this issue. I hope his board, mentors, and team members help pull him in a little. Reality is hard to find in your own distortion bubble sometimes. He is a really good guy, just stuck on this and not realizing how bad it looks.

The law != the GPL. This is a matter of (potentially) breaking licensing terms, not the law.

Worse, this is a personal vendetta at this point. There is no legitimate reason why Matt/Automattic should own thesis.com or would try to invalidate the trademarks.

The worse part is that project leaders set the tone and establish acceptable behavior for the project. Instead of saying:

"Chris is a $%^#$& and breaking the license, let's follow the legal path."

Matt has said (publicly by his actions and supposedly privately):

"Chris is a $%^#$& and breaking the license, let's harass him personally and destroy his business."

Bad, bad precedent.

Copyright law is the law. Breaking the GPL and continuing to use and distribute the GPL-licensed software means violating copyright law. So I'm not sure why you'd say it's "not the law."

As noted in the article, there's a long-running problem with confusing the FSF's preferred interpretation of the interaction between copyright law and the GPL's wording with the reality of how copyright law would interact with the GPL's wording, especially on the matter of what does or does not constitute a derivative work of a piece of software.

And as noted in the article, there are potentially significant negative consequences -- including for the FSF's goals -- if the FSF's interpretation were to be endorsed by courts and applied uniformly.

I just thought of another set of implications:

WordPress Foundation is the non-profit that owns the WordPress trademarks and source code. Automattic is a commercial entity working to "defend" the trademark and attack a license infringer. And Matt Mullenweg runs both organizations.

If they're using funds from the commercial to support the non-profit and Matt Mullenweg runs both organizations, who's behalf are they acting on? Are they really separate organizations? Legally they are, but in practice, is that the case?

Does this begin to create legal liability because a) WPF isn't really being a non-profit; or b) Automattic has been attaching requirements to their contributions and support?

I honestly don't know. I'm wondering.

Ref: http://torquemag.io/wpf-automattic/

I suppose directing your 384-employee company to spend $100,000+ and a whole lot of lawyer-hours getting revenge over a personal grudge is a benefit of keeping the company private and closely held.

Mr. Pearson wrote things up from his point of view this month as well: http://www.pearsonified.com/2015/07/truth-about-thesis-com.p...

You know I started to dive back into WordPress very recently after a few years and there are a few things I noticed:

- Commercial themes are the selling point of the WordPress ecosystem. The themes are what gets a user to use WordPress in the first place, because it solves a real world problem (examples: you need a portfolio site, you need an urban bar site or you need a real estate site).

- That said the quality of WordPress themes can be terrible. They can have conflicting plugins or terrible security holes. So the quality of the developer base is uneven at best (quite a few script kiddies).

- WordPress still feels like it's stuck in the year 2008. The usability has only grown more complex, yet the functionality feels stuck in the web 2.0 era.

- Automattic is not a unicorn, in fact I feel that it's doomed. Right now the open web feels like it's in deep trouble, and WordPress just isn't mobile first platform. This should have their management in panic mode, but it does not.

- For example there should be a way to wrap a WordPress site into an app. Yes there are third party solutions that do this, but Automattic should be doing that. In fact WordPress should have done that in say 2010.

- There are also a number of third party plugins that allow you to create a web page sort of like InDesign, but they're all terrible hacks. Again this is something that Automattic should do, but doesn't.

- Even the branding of WordPress is a convoluted mess. I find myself time and time again explaining the difference between WordPress.com and self hosting the software itself.

So in the end you have a product that is too complex for a normal person (this is why squarespace or facebook pages do well) yet it's a platform that tech people feel is a bit of an old hack.

But what's sad to me is that this feels like a reflection of the dead end that the open web has become.

I couldn't care less about whether WordPress is a mobile-first platform or how easy it should be to wrap a WordPress site in an app. Most of that is presentation layer problem, which can and should be handled by individual themes and plugins. WordPress themes are incredibly powerful; they can do that and much more. The only part of the presentation layer that WordPress needs to concern itself with is the admin interface.

The "open web" might no longer be a cash cow worth billions, but a significant number of people still love to tinker with it and resist the trend of app-ifying everything. Most of them don't care whether they are worth billions, they care about being open and tweakable. If you don't, then you're simply not their target user.

So then you're agreeing that Automattic isn't a unicorn, and you also hinting that they should be a non-profit. And if that's the case and if that's what they want to do (wikipedia is that) then you're right. But I don't get the impression that Automattic views itself as a non-profit, but maybe they should.

Contrary to what some people in the startup scene would like to believe, there are many business models in between "unicorn" and "non-profit". There's nothing wrong with being a regular hornless horse as long as you're making enough money to live a comfortable middle-class life.

Yes but the article clearly refers to them as a unicorn.

Just because you disagree with the article and I disagree with you doesn't mean that I agree with the article on that specific point.

(I think you're right about WordPress being a primarily Web 2.0 platform. My disagreement with you is that I don't think there's anything wrong with being a Web 2.0 platform.)

> The only part of the presentation layer that WordPress needs to concern itself with is the admin interface.

If only this were the case. WP's underlying processes and database structure are so unbelievably stunted and entirely coupled to the core WP application, that to do something as simple as pull rendered posts from the database generally involves performing a series of SQL gymnastics just to retrieve the relevant data. Not to mention all of the convoluted WP functions that are needed to render the final content snippet.

There are pros and cons to WordPress' database structure. While it may take "a series of SQL gymnastics just to retrieve the relevant data" it's database structure is incredibly resilient to the changing requirements of different users. A "better" database structure would almost certainly be too fragile to meet the needs of as many users as WordPress does.

If you wanted to know how big of a mess WordPress is, just take a look at all the successful businesses that have been built just to explain how to use WordPress.

The WordPress UI hasn't changed in the 6 years that I've been using it. Everything about it feels "heavy".

Not a good experience, honestly.

Just that the free alternatives (Ghost, for example) are even more technically challenging.

Having businesses that are built just to explain software is not a sign of failure, it is a sign of success. Microsoft Windows has the same and no one could say that they were not a success for over two decades. It means that WordPress has "crossed the chasm" into the "early majority."

I lost a lot of respect for Matt Mullenweg in this fiasco.

This comment in particular: http://www.pearsonified.com/2015/07/truth-about-thesis-com.p...

Pursuing the trademark cancellation further is just downright vindictive. It's not too late for him, to say, "I f-ed up and I've let this blind my decision making. I've asked the legal team to rescind the trademark dispute and we won't pursuing this any further."

Until that happens, this cloud will continue to hover over Matt and the WP community.

I lost all respect for him as a decent human being in this fiasco. FWIW.

Thank you WP and thank you Automattic. I find all the negative comments directed at Matt here both surprising and deeply disappointing.

Wordpress powers about 20% of all the sites on the web. It's been a boon to humanity and much of the reason it has flourished as it has is its open sourced nature. Automattic has made profit, but only a tiny sliver of what it could have if concern for the rest of the world weren't an issue.

The Thesis guy, on the other hand, grossly violated copyrights while trying to play the victim (literally had copied WP code in his project) and is now applying for patents that would pretty much wreak blogging and with it the web if granted. Personally, I'm very happy to have people like Matt putting their efforts and money where their principles are. I'm all for building a business, but not that entails stealing from the open source community or breaking the web.

Automattic paid for thisis.com and I'm glad Chris wasn't able to take it by force.

They're both being childish, but frankly I have little sympathy for Matt or Automattic here; this kind of corporate "warfare" is abhorrent in all cases in my opinion. I don't know how you can defend Matt's behaviour here. And I say that as someone who has worked with WordPress professionally since 2006.

I can't tell if you're be hyperbolic...

All negative comments directed towards Matt are surprising?

How so? What's so surprising?

I agree with Mullenweg on every aspect of this conflict, and I think that Pearson is an unpleasant person trying to make money on the back of GPL'd software without sharing back.

That being said, I don't understand how he could prevail over Pearson on the thesis.com dispute, as Mullenweg clearly bought it out of spite and has no business connection to the name. His willingness to settle shows that he probably thought he was going to lose as well. I would think that the judge would accept the technicalities offered by Mullenweg's lawyers, and possibly force Pearson to move the trademarks to his business entity - but I guess that's my ignorance of the legal system showing.

His willingness to settle shows a level of understanding regarding the dollar, time and personal focus cost of lawsuits even for those who will win. It says nothing about the merits of a potential lawsuit.

I don't understand how the word "thesis" can be both "generic", as Automattic repeatedly claim, and "merely descriptive", as they claim in their trademark attack. There is probably some intersection between these two concepts, but it's very small. Perhaps "Salty" as a potential trademark for potato chips would be an example?

It sounds like Mullenweg just filed that complaint in order to threaten Pearson to drop the domain dispute. Filing frivolous suits and countersuits is a pretty popular, albeit dirty, tactic among some people.

If Apple can trademark the name of one of the world's most common fruits, I'm sure Pearson has a right to trademark "thesis".

"During that debate, I got defensive and acted like an asshole. At the time, I was woefully ignorant about software licensing, and I felt as though I was being backed into a corner and asked to accept something I didn’t fully understand. Instead of handling it in a measured, polite manner, I was a jerk. I made a mistake, and I paid dearly for it."

This something to keep in mind, stay calm. When you are agitated you don't think straight. What I don't understand is why Mullenweg and Pearson don't work together and increase the size of the market?

Having read this article, http://www.pearsonified.com/2015/07/truth-about-thesis-com.p... now I see why.

The last time I looked into the WP theme GPL issue, by some of the mentioned logic, every PHP script ever written and distributed would end up being a derivative work of the PHP engine.

One way to get around some of it, is to use WP as a data store and management layer, with your own 2nd layer on top of it, that does use WP's functions to pull that data out, but is not a theme that has to be installed nor activated.

Which is a actually what I've done with my website - but that's not why... It's basically a mini-cms that first checks the file system for the page, and if not found, calls into wordpress.

With the WordPress API, you can do exactly that: http://v2.wp-api.org/

Which would completely decouple the front/back ends and therefore, you could have a separate license on each.

More importantly, if WordPress/Matt/Automattic wanted to fight that the entire API community would be on opposite side because of the implications.

> The last time I looked into the WP theme GPL issue, by some of the mentioned logic, every PHP script ever written and distributed would end up being a derivative work of the PHP engine.

Running code through an interpreter or compiler has never in the past been held to create a derived work under the GPL. Linking with a library is pretty much the definitive example of what the GPL views as a derived work. I'm not sure how you see this case as particularly odd.

> Running code through an interpreter or compiler has never in the past been held to create a derived work under the GPL.

That's true, but the article mentions an interesting twist that might not be so clear. The key statement (which, AFAIK, is a direct quote from the FSF) is: "Subclassing is creating a derivative work." In certain programming languages (Java is the example given in the article), you can't write code without subclassing one of the classes built into the language (in Java, you have to, at a minimum, subclass Object), so if subclassing is creating a derivative work, you can't write a program in such a language that isn't a derivative work of the language. Even in languages that don't force you to subclass to write a program at all, there can still be a large set of programs that can't be written without subclassing (for example, in Python 3 any time you use the class statement you are subclassing, at a minimum, the built-in object class).

I don't think the FSF's intent was to make any Java program a derivative work of Java, or any Python 3 program that uses the class statement a derivative work of Python. But if so, they need to qualify their bald statement about subclassing being a derivative work.

You hit it on the head. IANAL, but I would argue that there are two good ways to go about arguing that a theme is not an infringing derivative work:

1. The parent class (more to the point, the interface which must be copied to be compatible as a theme) is not sufficiently specialized to be copyrightable in the first place.

2. Even if the code is derivative, the use and intent in copying is fair use because it was done to be compatible with the greater Wordpress system.

Sadly, because of the names involved (subclass, etc), I doubt that any judge without specific programming knowledge would rule that subclassing isn't automatically derivative.

My gut feeling is that those two idiots are on a collision course to sue each other. I'd say it'll be fun to watch the fireworks, but it's a bit hard to enjoy them when they're aimed at you.

But as noted above, python is not copyleft.

The (now obsolete) GNU implementation of the java class libraries was GPL licensed, and had a special exception just for this, called the "classpath exception": http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html

The Sun Java implementation was not GPL until 2006/2007. And since Oracle successfully sued Google for making its own compatible function prototypes and class definitions and such ... well I'll agree that the java situation may in fact be a shitshow.

Also, did you know that the GPL has a system library exception? So you can legally dynamically link to OS X's libc or Windows' win32 as needed to run a normal process. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#SystemLibraryExcep...

So really there's no language (except maybe sun's java, I dunno) where this is actually a problem.

It might, if PHP were distributed under a copyleft license that cared about such things. PHP is not (it's licensed under a BSD-style license [1], which permits redistribution under another license with attribution).

I'm actually having trouble finding an interpreted language (and accompanying standard library) that is licensed under a copyleft license. Python isn't (the PSFL isn't copyleft); Ruby isn't (it's dual-licensed under 2-clause BSD and a Ruby license that's their own); Perl isn't (it's dual-licensed under GPL and the Artistic License, with an explicit note by Larry Wall that scripts are not considered derivative works for GPL purposes).

[1] http://www.php.net/license/3_01.txt

Would guile [1] fit the criteria of a GPL'ed interpreted language?

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/

guile is LGPL, "dynamic" linking is allowed http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=guile.git;a=blob;f=LIC...

(damn it's hard to find a reference to the license on the web site)

EDIT: found a related link; some extra/common libraries are also LGPL http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/gnu-guile-projects.html#Co...

Well we know that a controversy and dispute makes for a good article, but this could easily be about the shared benefits of WordPress, and how different people use WordPress to make money in different ways.

I dont know why but every wordpress update breaks some or other thing. Like their latest update broke woo commerce which they have acquired now.

Dont they test before release?

When you have software that runs on 23% of the web, it is simply impossible to test for all permutations. Try it yourself sometime if you don't believe me. :-)

I really hate how this is framed.

Is there a legal website where one can download all the premium gpl themes?

Some of them (including Thesis -- the 1.x versions, anyways) come with their source code so there probably is. At the least, you can probably find torrents for them.

this reads like the author is in love with these two guys. doesnt come off as unbias.

And what does WordPress do for humanity that makes this legal spat of any interest?

I see only a drive for greater profits at play here - on both/all sides.

> And what does WordPress do for humanity that makes this legal spat of any interest?

By some estimates, it powers 25% of all sites on the internet (http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress/all/all)! I am not a fan of wordpress from a technical perspective, but you can't deny that it has had a HUGE impact on people having their own websites.

> Automattic filed cancellation requests for all three trademarks

umm... why Automattic is after DIYTHEMES trademark?

> There is a tendency to think that there are two things: WordPress, and the active theme. But they do not run separately. They run as one cohesive unit. They don’t even run in a sequential order.

So, by this analogy, every app/piece of code you write for a GPL licensed OS, then the people who hold the copyright, can claim over your code?

> The answer given in the GPL FAQ is short and to the point: “Subclassing is creating a derivative work.”

So, if tomorrow Apple releases Swift with GPL or Microsoft releases C# with GPL, then everything that is written using those languages has to be GPL?

Yes, if the language's class libraries are GPL and you're linking them into your binary, then your app has to be GPL too. That is the most common interpretation at least.

This is exactly why LGPL exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_Lice...

For open source class libraries, LGPL makes the most sense and is used by the vast majority of libraries in the Linux world.

Also, some libraries are GPL-licensed specifically to protect commercial interests. Under such a dual licensing scheme, you can use the free GPL version, but then your app has to be GPL as well... Or you can pay for a commercial license that lets you build closed-source apps using the library.

Qt used to have that kind of dual license, but they switched to LGPL after Nokia acquired Qt sometime around 2008.

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