> Amusingly, in its war against WP Engine, Automattic might have created the single best advertisement for their chief rival. WP Engine now has proof it’s immune to unauthorized plugin takeover.<p>This is a great point. By weaponizing the fact that Automatic controls the plugin registry against a rival by doing something (at best) dangerously adjacent to a supply chain attack, WP Engine stands out now as uniquely immune to that type of attack.<p>This whole thing makes me sad, I used to use wordpress back in the 2000s and even had some plugins in the directory at the time. I was rooting for Matt but the more I read about this the more it seems like Automattic isn't the good actor here.
This seems like a pretty damning indictment of Automattic. The WordPress foundation (that they presumably set up) may have rules that give them legal cover for some of the moves they’re making, but it’s going to hurt them in the court of public opinion. I think that matters to developers, who are the people ultimately responsible for choosing whether or not to contribute to / use their product. It’s true that migration cost might prevent churn from these actions right now but stopping the train of logic there seems short sighted. What about all the business that they may have received in the future that they might not get now because they’ve tarnished their brand?
Regardless of all else I'm hoping we can all agree on:<p>* The wordpress foundation (and wordpress.org) is not independent enough from Matt & Automattic<p>* taking over a package in a package registry with automatic updates is really, really bad
I don't know if they committed "theft" under criminal law, but I would bet lots of money that Automattic is going to get obliterated by the complaint filed by WP Engine, probably including injunctive relief. Tortious interference in a contract is normally difficult to prove because one of the elements is malice or intent to cause harm, but Matt basically handed WP Engine's lawyers all the ammo they would ever need during his yappy media tour.<p>I would further bet that Matt's either on drugs or maybe has a brain tumor or some other undiagnosed medical condition. Only an insane person would destroy their entire reputation and life's work like this.
This debate is extremely dumb, and everybody gish gallops and implies something terrible when they try to explain what Automattic is doing wrong, because they can't figure it out. So they instead give reasons why they insist it will be bad for his business (isn't that his business?) and pretend like that's him "technically" not doing anything tortious. It's not technical, the lawsuit from WPE is there to read. It's silly, and if it's not thrown out it will be because the judge needs time to understand the complexities of the license (and the promise that "Wordpress" will be turned over to the community <i>after Automattic, who has an exclusive license to the trademark, shuts down</i>.)<p>Using the reasons that you think this is a bad business decision as proxy reasons why he's <i>wronged</i> everyone making a living from his work is a veiled threat. Don't threaten to leave, just leave.<p>Maybe the problem is this haunting by the "Spirit of Open Source" where people insist that they have all of these rights that aren't in the license. Wordpress <i>is not open source.</i> It is Free Software. You already own it. Fork it if you want. If WPEngine is already doing almost as much business as Wordpress.com, they can handle everything themselves. If people love WPEngine more, they can leave. Don't whine when the value proposition for WPEngine changes after they have to take care of everything themselves, and they start violating the <i>Spirit of Open Source</i> until their bottom line looks better again.<p>I'm swearing an oath to violate the Spirit of Open Source wherever I see a hint of it, I'm just sticking to the licenses. The Spirit of Open Source somehow makes already wealthy people feel entitled to everything in the world. Free Software is important to me, and the people who make it should be as aggressive as will financially benefit them, as long as they abide by <i>the letter</i> of the GPL. The software is what's important, not that your half-billion dollar business is built on top of somebody else's half-billion dollar business. That's a you-problem.<p>Also, this is just straight up abuser behavior towards this guy. He doesn't do what you want with what is his, so you degrade him and accuse him of stealing his own property. It's hard to watch.<p>I'm going to stop commenting on these threads, but this mobbing is ridiculous. I hope he's emotionally stable; but a lot of tech CEOs aren't, and his awkward reactions to the pitchforks don't give me confidence. If you're compulsively reading all of these threads, stop now. Stay strong and know that 95% of this is coming from people who are directly connected to this financially and just don't want to be inconvenienced.
The title made me wonder where they would go with this,<p>then it starts with "Imagine Apple decided Spotify was a big enough business threat that it had to take unfair measures to limit Spotify’s growth on the App Store."<p>Um, okay - apple's store is not open, and spotify is not open source - so the article is over in it's first line..<p>but let go further<p>Lock Spotify out of its developer ecosystem - sharecropping on someone else's land has risks - good thing about then a plugin or theme gets kicked out of wordpress.org's system is that WP users can "sideload" from anywhere with any sort of 'jailbreaking', you don't even need to click/tap 'it's okay to load from outside sources' (point 1 from the story)<p>point 3 - this is completely false - see <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/" rel="nofollow">https://wordpress.org/news/</a> - and everyone got to see news about this in the wp-admin dashbaord (I think I recall from more than one source)<p>the other 4 points are eye-roll worthy from me, again see point one.<p>This is not the first time a similar thing has happened with the wordpress plugin or theme directory.<p>The rest of this post is clearly very one sided and includes other falsehoods such as "The response was universally negative:"<p>Growing tired of the article, I scroll and I see a headline "Is WP Engine the only enterprise-ready WordPress hosting provider left"<p>are you kidding me?<p>Disagree with the entire piece.<p>and a return how about "Imagine Apple decided Spotify was a big enough business"... that they could easily afford to pay 30% of the proceeds they make from an app that lives in their ecosystem so that Apple can continue to develop, secure and grow<p>- so that the app could enjoy those benefits and all can grow..
and if they didn't pay up, they get kicked out of the Apple store,
I mean that would be outrageous!<p>And you could re-write the article replacing automatic with apple.. oh wait.
It's worth pointing out that even Apple (whom the auther uses as an exam to illustrate the point) has engaged in similar behavior. Not quite as bad, i.e. they didn't take over an app, but they have suddenly blocked apps from updating when the app had similar functionality to one they released.
This is a trademark dispute. WP-Engine uses the trademark, and made a tactical decision not to license it. Their thought was better to ask for forgiveness later then pay up front. Protecting your trademark is critical for an organization governing an open source product. Just look at Docker to see what happens when you lose control of your trademark. Last I checked, most owners aggressively protect their trademark. It's one of the few IP protections open source companies have. Why are you all defending the freeloading open source strip miner? Is WP Engine's use of the trademark fair use? Something tells me that they will end up settling this out of court...