> Sadly, instead of supporting open source with $5 million, they each will spend 10 million on lawyers.
I think both sides more or less see this as a case of standing up against a bully — they may lose out in the short run (in terms of money), but they think that they will discourage future bullying by fighting back.
I’m not sure if either side is right, but that’s why they both drew a line in the sand, imho.
Ignoring the executive drama (on both sides) it is in bad taste to build WPEngine off an Open Source project and barely contribute back to it.
It's probably a case where their version is so heavily customized they don't spend much time on the fundamentals. But still. I wonder if that had a petty rationale as well. Relationships are important in business.
WPEngine contributed a lot to WordPress. It was, in fact, one of the biggest sponsors of the conference it was just banned from participating in. It also wrote the most popular plugin.
When Matt says "contribute" he means monetarily. Probably (speculation) because his company is about to be bankrupt without finding a way to get more money.
Matt shouldn't have made his thing "open source" [1], just like Elastic and other vendors shouldn't have allowed Amazon to set up shop and steal their work.
Unrelated organizations coming in, soaking up all the profit, and not contributing back is horrible. "Open source" needs to be amended to prevent this.
Something like MAU, MRR, or market% seems like a healthy way to limit big time corporations from taking over.
To go to Matt’s for profit entity, for his for profit entity to direct as they wish.
“I demand you give resources to your for profit competitor for them to use as they wish. And I’ll pretend to be wearing my non-profit, independent hat while demanding it.”
And they demanded full auditing while also making them agree to not fork GPL licensed software. No CEO with even the most basic of business educations would sign this agreement. It's a total farse, he's trying to shut the company down and either doing so for his own benefit or for the benefit of his buddies at Newfold or Blackrock.
The term sheet is here [0], the money option offered was only to Automattic. The other choice was 8% of developer time to WordPress itself, which is arguably under the control of the non-profit, but no one is quite sure at this point what the distinction between the two even is.
Silver Lake and WPE's legal attacks may impact my ability to provide free services on WordPress.org in the future, especially things like Slack or forums that are grounds for discovery. I hope not, though. Going to fight this with everything I have.
Matt, I mean this sincerely: get yourself checked out. Do you have a carbon monoxide detector in your house? You're behaving so manically that it's hard to come up with a reason for this sort of behaviour unless there's something medical going on. The barely-veiled threats to take down WordPress.org (did you forget Cloudflare offered to host it for free?) aren't a rallying cry, they're a last gasp. WordPress is your life's work, don't ruin your meaningful contributions to the world. Go to a 10 day silent retreat, or buy a ranch in Montana and host your own Burning Man... anything but this. You're making a bunch of anti-establishment nerds side with Private Equity, that's how bonkers your behaviour is.
Thanks, I carry a co2 and carbon monoxide monitor. Co2 where I'm at is 572.
I do own a place in Montana, and I meditate several times a day. I have not threatened to take down WordPress.org. WPE's preservation requests do complicate things, legally, though, for the Slack and forums that W.org offers.
Both Cloudflare and Fastly have reached out offering CDN services to W.org, which we're considering. Cloudflare also serves a lot of WP Engine. We do like controlling our infrastructure, though, for a variety of reasons, and have run it without problems or downtime for 21 years. Currently the only outside vendor we use is Slack/Salesforce, which donates free Slack Pro accounts for 49k users. (I think that would cost ~5M/yr.) We also use some Github, which is free for open source.
You do realise just how guilty people sound when complaining about preservation requests for discovery during lawsuits?
If you're "right" and "on the side of good and freedom", what are you worried about in Slack/forums/whatever?
Because everything made public so far in their filing is pretty fucking bad (for you), I can only assume that discovery is gonna reveal some even worse behaviour on your part - or you'd have responded in public with some of that instead of whining about "preservation requests complicating thing"...
Yeah. I foresee a possible hilarious outcome here.
Matt wins this case, having the court determine the trademarks are "worth" so much that WPEngine - one out of thousands of WP hosting companies - owes licence fees of 10mil per year. Lets ballpark that at a billion dollar a year in licence fees worth of revenue, maybe 5 or 10 billion value.
The IRS then steps in and "Al Capones" Matt and Automattic for tax evasion by moving billions of dollars of assets between a non profit and a for profit company without disclosing or paying tax on it. IRS wins punitive damages, wipes out every company asset Matt's ever been involved with.
WPEngine and Silver Lake buy the remains of these companies (including the trademarks) at fire sale prices.
WPEngine isn't just one out of thousands of WP hosting companies. They're an absolute juggernaut dwarfing everyone else.
It's like saying AWS is one of dozens of cloud providers. The sad thing is that there are FAR BETTER WP hosting services out there, like Pantheon.io, and the majority of the WordPress community does not even know that they exist.
I think it was explained elsewhere, but Automattic has the commercial trademark rights, so licensing money wouldn’t be transferred to a non-profit foundation.
Yeah, but according to the filing, Matt had Automattic transfer the ownership of the trademarks to the foundation, they had the foundation grant the exclusive licence back to Automattic.
If those trademarks are asserted to be worth billions, there are presumably reporting and tax obligations for both the ownership transfer and the licence grant agreement.
Automattic: Owns the commercial right to use and sell the license
This is done because the WordPress Foundation is non-profit. The legal intricacies of this have been worked out a long time ago. You want to use the WordPress license? Then you'll have to buy it from Automattic.
Your chance to do that was before you threw a grenade into the WordPress ecosystem and injured hundreds of thousands of innocent WordPress developers over a {trademark|giving back|general bad vibes} dispute. No one here is buying your attempts to pawn responsibility for your actions off onto WP Engine.
They may have legitimately been the bad guys until a month ago, but you've thoroughly stepped into that role now and you're making no effort to step back.
I'm not going to engage with brand new accounts on this thread. It's nothing personal, but there are way too many of them posting here and it's too hard to distinguish sincere questions from sock puppets.
If you're legitimately new to HN, welcome! I hope to see you around engaging with other topics.
I don't think folks want you to provide those free services, is the thing. I think most folks want those housed inside a foundation that can seek industry support in the normal ways. A lot of people seem to have thought they already were.
The donkey, feeling unappreciated, approaches God with a heavy heart.
"Dear God," says the donkey, "why is it that all the other animals mock me, belittle me, and hold me in contempt?"
God listens patiently and replies, "My dear donkey, I understand your pain, but there's nothing I can do."
Surprised, the donkey responds, "But you are God! The all-powerful, creator of all things. Surely you can help?"
God smiles gently and says, "I may have created the world, but even I cannot change public opinion."
---
Matt Mullenweg might feel like God and might be among the most influential and richest people on the planet. But they won't be able to change public opinion, which is without a doubt against them.
I would advise stopping the madness before it is too late.
Matt, the Wordpress Foundation (which you control) explicitly lists the Plugin Repository and Theme Repository as Foundation projects, but now you’re saying that they’re your personal projects: https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/
lmfao my dude stop acting like a pariah, it's pathetic. You 100% brought this on yourself. Never thought anyone could be so reckless when extorting people.
I assume that you're well intentioned but Internet Psychiatric Diagnosis (IPD) counts as a form of personal attack (in effect, if not intent), and therefore not allowed here.
Sadly, instead of supporting open source with $5 million, they each will spend 10 million on lawyers.