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Comments
Wow 2 days ago Winamp making drama for their free labor license, and now this WordPress
What a Year
Well if it's a cease and desist, they could say "You have X amount of time to rectify the situation." That would put WPEngine on notice, WPEngine would be able to give their customers a heads up on what the future plans of their company are and the users could make a calculated decision on their next move.
If you were truly looking out for you users, that'd be the route you take.
Yes, 100 % feels like its emotional for Matt. Although I guess that's reasonable given what he feels is at stake.
I think that Matt guy might actually believe this in some twisted bizarro world-esque mentality.
Solid comment
Matt Mullenweg livestream
What's really at stake is his job. He hit a brick wall with revenue and doesn't know how to increase it. No amount of WordPress users using it within the allowed scope by its license takes away from WordPress or it's community and he knows that.
They don't contribute enough? Not in the license.
They disable features? The entire software was built to allow that, and it's allowed within the license.
He just wants a cut or to be the only managed WP host because he can't think of another way to please his investors.
I mean, running that infra definitely costs quite a bit, I'd guess it does anyway
That doesn't change if everyone on WP Engine were spread out across VPS providers. But that marketplace also generates revenue for developers so he has options.
Did you guys see what he said about WPEngine removing Automattic's Stripe attribution from WooCommerce and replacing it with their own?
It dosen't, but VPS providers don't sell managed WP
What does their selling managed WP do to increase overhead for Matt's company or to decrease community contributions?
Them existing does that. Them selling managed WP hosting makes it "right" for them to contribute. He can't go after them for not contributing, legally, of course, so he'll go after them for using the WordPress trademark, like labeling their smallest plan "WordPress Core", "WP Core" or something along those lines.
He's got a solid case of open-source remorse. Wordpress is good, but without a huge community of well-supported 3rd party plugin, it sucks. I'd use a different CMS altogether before I'd use a stock Wordpress instance.
The community is what MAKES Wordpress. If all of those people decided to up and leave and go to Ghost or something - Wordpress would be dead as a door nail. I'd love to be able to use something more lightweight that tackles all of the things I need it to do.
No it doesn't. Not unless you assume that WP Engine customers wouldn't be using WordPress without WP Engine. I don't think that's a fair assumption, everyone I know who went there did so because they use WordPress already. Which would mean that the drain is identical to if WP Engine didn't exist. There is also no requirement in the license for them to contribute a certain amount of code to the project. Feeling that it's "right" is about vibes. Everything is fair when we're talking about what we wish were true and how we feel emotionally about people and situations. But that's where this ends. It's emotional and t's opinions. The facts are that WP Engine has been within their rights, and the people who freely gave them those rights are now mad because other people are making money that they feel they deserve
Shouldn't give out free software if you're going to get mad when someone is commercially successful using it
How do you know that? Matt seems fairly certain that there's trademark infringements. I guess we'll see with time, I wouldn't make any certain claims about that in the meantime.
By the way:
Did anyone research this? Sounds insane.
It's publicly available information. They just changed their terms to walk them into trademark infringement, and no one is going to agree that they shouldn't have a little time to adjust to new terms or consult their lawyers about them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1foknoq/the_wordpress_foundation_trademark_policy_was/
So other hosts like BlueHost and HostGator (I believed he mentioned) just paid the commercial trademark fee for fun?
I don't know anything about that, but if they did then that would likely be my take. Why pay for something you don't have to, if the owners are giving it away and giving you the rights?
My guess would be that their lawyers deemed that they had to.
Anyway, good debate @emgh
As always
@sh97 my i m hav trading marks
it s correct
And that's exactly it.
You're not paying for the product, but for the hosting/management/extras. Just because someone happened amass a large clientele using something you give away for free doesn't mean you throw a temper tantrum, grab all your toys and leave the sandbox.
Think of how many tech-illiterate, mom and pops-type people that are completely dead in the water with no clue on what to do next, That's not even taking into consideration that they even KNOW that they're dead in the water. WPEngine's latest blog post was 3 days ago and it's talking about the block editor.
Things are already tight for folks financially but think if your sole source of income was hosted on WPEngine and POOF, the people you look to for support/answers isn't available.
"Yes, my actions were for the best of the users of Wordpress"
I mean I agree but it's been what? A day without updates? They're a billion dollar company, they'll find a solution.
echo chamber is meeting real world - and it'll hurt.
Bye, bye Matt
You'd think they'd at least acknowledge the fact that an issue has been brought to light that is going to significantly affect their business. Don't need a full game plan, but just to say "Yes, we're aware, these are the facts and we will post a blog update with our planned course of action." would be better than radio silence, ESPECIALLY since they're a billion dollar company.
Transparency goes a long way with people. Ma and Pa Kettle aren't sitting online all day reading industry drama - they're busy baking cookies and making christmas ornaments to sell on their website. If people knew there may be a potential issue that could negatively affect them , by disclosing that to them, you're empowering your users to make a risk-based decision on what their individual situation is.
The only person who could tell me what's best for me, is me.
It's on their status page
I think that BlueHost makes a ton of money by bribing WP.org - they are the N01 provider on their recommended providers list, and have been for a loooong time.
This is also interesting:
https://newfold.com/newsroom/website-professionals-can-now-take-advantage-of-the-new-bluehost
AFAIK the Newfold (BH's owner) is the only entity licenced to use the WP trademarks (along with Matt's wp.com and .org, of course).
WordPress brings a lot of money, and investors want tighter control over it (to milk it more).
Imagine if Linux started blackmailing every hosting provider that makes a lot of money to pay a cut. That's what it looks like - the hosting quality (compared to BH, really?!?) and trademark "misuse" are just red herrings. It's about the money.
Then I stand corrected!
Searching that out (regular internet search) and found it immediately.
I looked everywhere on their main website and couldn't even find a reference to a status page.
Having seen a lot of these websites, they usually don't update their plugins for years anyway