Where's the pricing page? Where's the terms that say "once your customers use our service enough you have to pay"? Where's the option in WordPress to switch to another backend?
The accusation that WPE is responsible for there not being redundancy in API access to WordPress.org services is absurd. If AWS rents me a server running Windows, there's not an expectation that they run their own update servers and app store.
Automattic cut off API access for users who hosted on WPE. Let that be very clear: Automattic's position is that you can install WordPress on any server and get updates and plugins, so long as it's not WPE's servers. This is Automattic trying to extract rent from the people hosting the servers and preinstalling the software.
It doesn't help that wordpress.org urls are hardwired into the source. WPE of course has the resources to patch them, but making it customizable was clearly not a priority for Automattic, who collects all the telemetry data -- and notably does not share it with plugin devs.
WordPress.org isn't renting anything, it's providing those services for free. The analogy with AWS doesn't work because with WP money doesn't change hands. WP Engine or their users aren't paying for the services provided by WordPress.org and these are services that cost money for continued hosting. Anything provided is a gift and WP.org is under no obligation, moral or contractual, to keep providing those services.
There are many issues with how this was handled but this isn't one of them.
and WP.org isn't being targeted at all by WP Engine.
> The analogy with AWS doesn't work because with WP money doesn't change hands. WP Engine or their users aren't paying for the services provided by WordPress.org and these are services that cost money for continued hosting.
First of all, the analogy is very good imo.
Amazon in this case is WP.com, Windows would be WP.org. They are supposed to be completely separate legal entities. Now on to your "point"
> users aren't paying for the services
Neither are people hosting it on WP.com (Automattic).
Automattic is supposed to be a completely separate legal entity. Is Automattic (again wp.COM, not ORG) paying wp.ORG for this access to the wp.ORG theme/plugin API in a way that can be verified? Is this a requirement for everyone hosting WP now? What are the API rate costs and where do you pay?
> There are many issues with how this was handled but this isn't one of them.
Yes, this is absolutely one of them. Is wp.ORG and wp.COM the same company or not. Because either way, it smells like a 501c3 getting stripped.
Why is WP.org entitled to selectively blacklist one downstream consumer and not others? Have they demonstrated that WPE is putting undue load on the infrastructure? Have they even alleged it until just now?
If wp.org is part of the foundation, then they have a legally binding mission, and "acting in Automattic's strategic interests" is not in there. If they're not, then a8c is intentionally obfuscating their ownership of wp.org, thus placing the credibility and legal status of the foundation in jeopardy.
> a8c is intentionally obfuscating their ownership of wp.org
Automattic (my employer) does not own WordPress.org
There is no obligation on WordPress.org's part to provide free services to WP Engine. WP Engine uses trademarks in misleading ways while WordPress.org has a license from WPF to use the trademark.
So wordpress.org is owned entirely by Matt Mullenweg? The vast majority and default location of the whole plugin and theme distribution infrastructure is owned by one person? Perhaps you could point me to some page on wordpress.org that clarifies the ownership situation.
> Automattic (my employer) does not own WordPress.org
I really think your employer is lying to you about this. The Automattic CEO made an official WordPress.org announcement that the .org was taking action against WP Engine on September 25 in response to legal threats. WP Engine says - and neither Automattic nor WordPress.org have produced evidence to the contrary - that the only legal threat they've made was their public one to Automattic on September 23. This clearly implies to me that Mullenweg is operating WordPress.org as an extension of Automattic and its business interests, regardless of what official ownership records might say.
> Why is WP.org obligated to provide free services to WP Engine and their users? Why the entitlement?
Think about the questions I asked about this.
Why did I ask for API PRICING if I think anyone is entitled to it for free?
Stop trying to move the goalposts yourself. I never once said they were "obligated to provide free services" I asked where the pricing info is, since they clearly don't want to provide it for free..... or else they are being used to further a commercial entities fight...
> WP Engine or their users aren't paying for the services provided by WordPress.org and these are services that cost money for continued hosting
Why should WPE pay? They are hosting software on behalf of their users. It's (as far as we know) just stock WordPress. Should linode or Hetzner be forced to pay for their users to host WordPress on their servers? The only difference here is that WPE preinstalls WordPress for the user.
And to my point, the person who benefits is the end user, not WPE. WPE benefits in so far as their customers get to benefit from these services. But WPE isn't adding URLs to WordPress.org, that's what the software hard codes. So the truth is that yes, WordPress is trying to extract rent, because they gladly let anyone run their software on any server except WPE, and that's the case because they're demanding fees (which are completely arbitrary).
The reality and the lines are far less clear than you describe it.
Your response ignores many things:
1. WP.org is supposedly NOT part of the foundation, but something of Matt/Automattic's generosity.
2. Despite this, solicits donations that seemingly go to the foundation.
3. Despite this, is hosted on the foundation's AS number.
4. WP.org may not be under obligation to provide services, but when it chooses to discontinue services to one independent for profit user of the open source software, but not to another ostensibly independent for profit user of the open source software that just so happens to be owned by the person donating the services, then there is a conflict.
5. When the open source software, which has a hard coded news feed source that is mostly written by said owner, and this is used to post articles disparaging that other company, directly to their customers, this is also a conflict.
My question, related to the parent's post: why is WP.org under any obligation to provide any service to WP Engine and its users?
And you're saying that they targeted one user specifically ... I say, where's the problem?
To make a proper analogy, if Google abused Wikipedia or the Internet Archive, shouldn't these non-profits have the power to ban one specific user from abusing their free services?
And yes, Automattic pays WP.org's bills. I would prefer independence ... maybe if more companies contributed, that would happen.
> to provide any service to WP Engine and its users?
WordPress hard codes their own URLs in their software. They don't have published pricing. There's no criteria for who should have to pay unless they're WPE.
By the argument you're making, what makes it okay for anyone to run WordPress on a server without the host of that server paying a fee to WordPress? There's nothing that sets WPE apart from any other service out there that hosts WordPress except that Matt M decided he's on a crusade.
What if the open source software had hardcoded links to check for updates of itself and for downloading of plugins? Would that change their obligations in providing services for updates and plugin downloads?
$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://cdn-aws.deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main
deb http://cdn-aws.deb.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main
deb http://cdn-aws.deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main
> The issue you have to surmount is this reduces the value of the licenses in the short run. Which means less cash for the seller (the public) now versus a recurring productive asset.
Well, that assumes the public isn't really benefiting from the products and services that can actually take advantage of that spectrum. Making less in license fees is probably a good trade-off if your phone is faster or you get interesting and affordable satellite services.
> The money and the manpower does not exist to do all of it.
No, they both exist. Motivation by your legislator is what doesn't exist. There's a reason some departments get almost everything they ask for and others get almost nothing: they know how to grease the political machine. That doesn't mean we should fight over scraps for science and social programs, it means you need to acknowledge that there's a game that needs playing. And yeah, it feels real bad that there are lives at stake playing that game, but that's the fault of capitalism, not science.
It's 0.1% of the annual US revenue spread out over many years. So probably more like 0.01% per year. Picking on this one project, which is good science, is silly.
Stepping on my soapbox once again to say that putting money towards science doesn't take away money from everything else. There's no shortage of money, or corporations that can be taxes, or people who didn't pay their fair share that can be taxed. Don't get upset with the science, get upset with the politicians who don't give a shit about the programs you care about or enforcing tax law.
> Stepping on my soapbox once again to say that putting money towards science doesn't take away money from everything else.
This is objectively not true. Resource usage (money or other resources) is zero sum, and every dime spent on science is money that cannot be used for something else. I'm not opposed to spending money on science, but it doesn't do any good to make false claims like this.
By that logic the powers that be can arbitrarily decrease the amount of money for social or science programs at any time at their whim. Why do any science when you could be feeding the starving, and money could run out at any second?
That's ridiculous, though. But it's the logical extreme of the defeatist argument that there's no way to get more money for these things.
So you think we can always just tax them more, and they would accept that? That's equally absurd.
It's obvious that we can tax them a bit, but if we tax them too much they use their power to stop it. That power manifests in many ways. It can be to give money to right wing politicians, or it can be to move to lower-tax regimes. But anyway it's clear that there is not an unlimited pot of rich/corporate tax money out there ready for the picking without resistance.
Then let's not spend any resources but instead spend time weeping. It's not like stockpiling plutonium, gold, iridium and other rare earths metals used in spaceships is gonna make the world any better.
Should we instead force the scientists working on this to abandon space research to "fix the ills of the world" so they do "something useful" instead?
I honestly don't know what people who keep complaining about scientific research, especially space exploration, want. It is not those billions spent to send a probe to Europa the cause or the solution to the world's problems. Hint: it is not money the cause nor the solution to the world's problems, nor are drive-by social media activists complaining about it.
A big part of why this kind of space research is worth doing is weapons development. That is a big part of why huge money goes to space research - because it's more efficient to give that cash to JPL than to Raytheon in terms of developing certain kinds of rocketry and robotics technologies.
In comparison, many other branches of science work on much leaner budgets, and sending stuff to space actually does look very wasteful from a "$ per paper" perspective. If you disregard the weapons development value, there is actually very little reason to do these big-money experiments that could instead support the research of hundreds or thousands of more frugal science experiments.
At the same time, there are lots of ways to do space research more cheaply, like launching small satellites. Most of the people who don't like this stuff are against the billion-dollar single missions rather than against astrophysics or against the concept of sending things to space. Many of them also are against the FCC project at CERN, for example.
Automattic has had the trademark for a little under a decade. WP Engine has existed since 2010. The argument for the trademark has been lost. If you don't actively crack down on usages of your trademark, you can't arbitrarily decide to enforce it in the future. Especially not against a company allegedly making hundreds of millions in revenue from your trademark: you've had to actively ignore its use for a decade.
That's even ignoring the question of whether you can really argue that they're violating your trademark for calling their service "WordPress hosting" as shown in the exhibits. They're not passing something off as WordPress, it's literally WordPress that's being hosted.
Highlighting Reddit and Twitter posts calling WPE "WordPress engine" is nonsense. Highlighting a page where a WPE partner uses the wrong company name ("WordPress Engine") is embarrassing for WPE but still something of a reach. Highlighting a content farm post saying "WP Engine" stands for "WordPress Engine" is absurd. Making the argument that "WP" is covered by the trademark is ridiculous, especially when the replies on Twitter screenshot the receipts of WayBackMachine snapshots showing Automattic telling folks it's totally fine to use "WP".
I own a trademark for my business, and my lawyers had a (very gentle and kindly written) letter sent to two teenagers who started a podcast whose name infringed on the mark. If my lawyers care about that, Automattic has exactly no business trying to turn around on WPE at this point. This is just petty drama.
> Highlighting Reddit and Twitter posts calling WPE "WordPress engine" is nonsense.
You are taking this part of the letter out of context by assuming all of the exhibit images are for the same purpose. Exhibit C is there to highlight consumer confusion caused by the issue -- which is relevant to a trademark dispute, because if there's no confusion there's usually no problem in the eyes of the law. They are not claiming that random internet posts means the company is officially using the name, but that posts like that are evidence of widespread consumer confusion in differentiating the brands.
You don't get to say "go ahead and use it," wait a decade, and then grumble that people are "confused". But even then, some random reddit or content farm post doesn't rise to the level of demonstrating "widespread consumer confusion". Hell, that content farm post looks generated by ChatGPT, should a hallucination be admissable as evidence of "confusion"?
Had Automattic cared at all eight or nine years ago, they might have a case. But saying that a few random people on the Internet got it wrong (maybe even because some random content farm posted nonsense) after ignoring the issue for so long is decidedly nonsense.
The surrounding context explains that there are hundreds more, and consumer surveying to back up the claim:
> A few of the hundreds of examples of actual confusion are attached as Exhibit C. Moreover, an objective empirical survey by a leading professional survey expert indicates that a significant degree of marketplace confusion is caused by your infringing use of the WORDPRESS and WOOCOMMERCE trademarks.
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> they might have a case
To be clear, I don't believe they have a case, I wasn't commenting with the intention of saying that. They only have a cease and desist letter at the moment. There is no admissing of evidence at this point, there are only letters.
If there were a case, there's probably a good chance they will lose due to what you describe -- unenforced trademarks.
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