Nabeel S (Sep 22 2024 at 04:51): Nabeel S (Sep 22 2024 at 04:51):Odd drama going on in WordPress land. Thoughts?
Don MacKinnon (Sep 22 2024 at 20:36):Feels the the WP founders are trying to get the community to dogpile on WP Engine because they happen to limit the revisions count. It's not like they changed the core code, that's literally a setting in wp-config that they just happen to be forcing a default on. I think this is unnecessary drama. WP Engine should be able to run their business how they see fit. wp.com puts limitations on what plugins you may install so it seems a bit hypocritical.
Nabeel S (Sep 22 2024 at 21:12):Yeah, the thing about revisions and other reasons, seems like a very weak excuses to go after them.
Don MacKinnon (Sep 24 2024 at 15:05):Things are getting spicy! WP Engine has sent a cease and desist to Automattic's CEO https://x.com/wpengine/status/1838350670564377051
Nabeel S (Sep 24 2024 at 15:14):
Adam Stacoviak (Sep 24 2024 at 15:34):Scanned. If this is even close to accurate and those screenshots are true words Matt shared with WPE then that's pretty damaging. Not sure what this % (percentage) is behind the scenes being referenced but that wasn't discussed by him in that keynote.
Adam Stacoviak (Sep 24 2024 at 15:36):If open source is free in all the ways free is free...then WPE is also free to not contribute, or contribute very little. It's not cool. But they are free to act as such. That's why open source is so powerful. You are free in every way to, or not to, participate.
Don MacKinnon (Sep 24 2024 at 16:13):Yeah it feels like Matt is upset that WP Engine has built a wildly successful business on the project but that's just his feelings and there is no wrong-doing from any legal perspective that I can see. Could have been handled much better IMO
Adam Stacoviak (Sep 24 2024 at 16:15):I think his argument/stance is sound in terms of parasitic private equity co's, but that was not the place or the way to expose the idea and issue.
Nabeel S (Sep 24 2024 at 16:24):Feels like trying to do a rug pull without calling it a rug pull.
Nabeel S (Sep 25 2024 at 12:15): Jerod Santo (Sep 25 2024 at 13:21):Wow we were trying to get Matt on the pod to come discuss this, but now that it's entering the legal world I doubt his lawyers will want him talking about it publicly at all...
Erik Lundevall-Zara (Sep 25 2024 at 13:44):This feels a bit like a different approach to what Hashicorp did with its license change to get at the competition using their open source tools (specifically Terraform). No license change here though, and (for the moment) a specific competitor is the target.
What changed for this to happen now? It is hardly a new thing that WP Engine uses "WP".
If this really had been about the spirit of open source, it could have been handled in a different and better way than trying to discredit a specific company, using the tactics described in this drama.
Nabeel S (Sep 25 2024 at 22:59):https://x.com/photomatt/status/1838502185879167069
https://x.com/bgardner/status/1839070322617643212
Has anything like this ever happened in another OSS community?
Adam Stacoviak (Sep 25 2024 at 23:01):Crazy town
Adam Stacoviak (Sep 26 2024 at 01:42):Did WordPress.org seriously shutdown updating, installing plugins etc on WP Engine?
Nabeel S (Sep 26 2024 at 01:52):https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/
Nabeel S (Sep 26 2024 at 01:52):Seems so.
Adam Stacoviak (Sep 26 2024 at 01:54):Straight up war. 
Philip Durbin (Sep 26 2024 at 02:12):A Changelog episode about this would be interesting.
Nabeel S (Sep 26 2024 at 02:16):I don't know who you could interview that wouldn't be accused of bias one way or the other.
Nabeel S (Sep 26 2024 at 03:45):I wouldn't be surprised if this results in a major fork of WordPress.
Nabeel S (Sep 26 2024 at 03:48):Full disclosure: I'm ex-Automattic. But I've been out of the ecosystem for a long time, except for a plugin I maintain from time to time.
Jerod Santo (Sep 26 2024 at 13:29):So we talked about this in-depth on Tuesday's recording of Friends, which ships tomorrow. I'm afraid some of our conversation is already stale though :scream:
@Adam Stacoviak you may need to interject in post and catch people up to the latest, telling them that it's a moving target, etc...
Adam Stacoviak (Sep 26 2024 at 13:40):The responses here are like whoa https://x.com/wordpress/status/1839076201890984397
Don MacKinnon (Sep 26 2024 at 16:42):This is going to end up harming site owners using wordpress that have nothing to do with this feud.
Adam Stacoviak (Sep 26 2024 at 17:44):Yes, there are other ways to go about this feud. 
Nabeel S (Sep 26 2024 at 19:08):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE95Knb1JKs
Lars Ellingsen (Sep 26 2024 at 21:33):Nabeel S said:
Members only, but it's funny to me that it has a C# logo lol
Nabeel S (Sep 26 2024 at 21:50):Ah, same for me. It must have been publicly available online when it was being streamed live.
Matous Michalik (Sep 27 2024 at 20:21):Michael has a interview with Matt on his channel https://youtu.be/H6F0PgMcKWM?si=C72SSuuZNGOowbXO , this one isn’t members only.
The whole situation is clearly more nuanced than any of the sides would like to portrai it. To me it looks like Matt is trying to steer the issue to trademark infingement as a damage control attempt. Avoiding questions about why to press the issue suddenly now.
James Thurley (Sep 28 2024 at 06:44):I don’t get this bit:
It seems the WordPress Foundation has made some tweaks to its trademark guidelines in recent days. As of September 19th, the policy said you are “free” to use the WP abbreviation in “any way you see fit.” But now WordPress has deleted that language, replacing it with a line that says not to use WP “in a way that confuses people.
Can an entity just change the terms like that, and then accuse a long established company of violating the new terms?
Daniel Buckmaster (Sep 28 2024 at 08:59):For those who prefer reading and aren't logged in to twitter, this article seems like a pretty good summary of the story so far https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt
Nabeel S (Sep 28 2024 at 18:43):Seems like he should have started with a cease and desist if trademark was the motivation here.
Erik Lundevall-Zara (Sep 28 2024 at 20:10):A new interview by Primeagen with Matt
https://youtu.be/H6F0PgMcKWM?si=D5zA8u-M3Se2oxv_
A bit more nuanced picture after this I think, would be interesting to hear more from other companies who either pay this trademark fee or contribute hours. I guess though at this point that such companies would not want to get entangled legally.
Andrei Jiroh Halili (Sep 29 2024 at 01:26):Currently tuning in to Theo's live interview on X/Twitter: https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1YqKDkbBbLOxV
Andrei Jiroh Halili (Sep 29 2024 at 01:32):(also on YT if you prefer: https://www.youtube.com/live/F6vXWQrQXgY)
Nabeel S (Sep 29 2024 at 02:07):That was a very good and insightful interview.
Chris Duzan (Sep 29 2024 at 23:24):Just listened to the "Wrong place to slap a person" episode and I felt like this meme needed to be created. Credit goes to Jerod, Adam, and Nick for the inspiration.
7f59d262-5853-4bc1-8fa8-f6ab247d8dbc.jpg
Owen Valentine (Sep 30 2024 at 04:25):Hiiiiiii!
I'm a little on the fence about whether Matt is Automattically in the right, though this drama is definitely some good wp-content. :)
Notification Bot (Sep 30 2024 at 10:43):A message was moved here from #general > introduce yourself! by Scott Abbey.
Jerod Santo (Sep 30 2024 at 14:47):I'm writing up today's News and have no idea how to even talk about this story!
I do know one thing for sure, I'm going to include that meme you created @Chris Duzan :100:
Mason Stallmo (Oct 01 2024 at 15:57):James Thurley said:
I don’t get this bit:
It seems the WordPress Foundation has made some tweaks to its trademark guidelines in recent days. As of September 19th, the policy said you are “free” to use the WP abbreviation in “any way you see fit.” But now WordPress has deleted that language, replacing it with a line that says not to use WP “in a way that confuses people.
Can an entity just change the terms like that, and then accuse a long established company of violating the new terms?
^ this part really soured me on Matt and Automattic's position. I don't know about the legal status of being able to make a change like this but it feels like another version of an open source rug pull.
I'm not in the WordPress community but from an outsiders perspective it doesn't look great on the part of WordPress.org, Matt, and Automattic. It certainly seems that Matt is using his position in WordPress.org to attack a competitor to his for profit company.
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 01 2024 at 15:58): Nabeel S (Oct 01 2024 at 16:38):https://www.therepository.email/mullenweg-threatens-corporate-takeover-of-wp-engine
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 01 2024 at 17:11):“I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly decide to do this,” he said. “I was taken advantage of for so many years. The only way to deal with a bully is to fight,” he said.
“[WP Engine is] a half-a-billion dollar company. [WP Engine’s main investor] Silver Lake has disrupted the ecosystem. I’m fighting for my life’s work.”
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 01 2024 at 17:14):
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 01 2024 at 17:15):That screenshot is wild though. The fact that they call their plans "Essential/Core/Enterprise WordPress" is sus on the confusing of the general population of users.
Nabeel S (Oct 01 2024 at 18:54):Why is that sus? If you were providing hosted WordPress as a service, how would you phrase it?
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 01 2024 at 18:56):I think it's sus in light of the confusion factor. They changed it to be simply Essential, Core, and Enterprise in terms of a plan name. It's hosting, not WordPress the product. Feel free to describe the plan to include WordPress but not use it in the name because it's just a certain level of hosting.
Nabeel S (Oct 01 2024 at 19:20):WPE is probably big enough to know better, but I can imagine someone innocently phrasing things in a way that they think is fine but isn't. Then they get a cease and desist and respond with "Oh, my bad sorry. Let me fix that.".
Side note: WordPress also updated their trademark license documents recently to clarify some WPE specific issues.
Nabeel S (Oct 01 2024 at 19:26): Adam Stacoviak (Oct 01 2024 at 19:28):I'd say none of them really. They all seem to be offering WordPress hosting, not a plan that's called "Core WordPress"
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 01 2024 at 19:30):Whether it's on purpose or not, I can see how a plan, of which there were/are only three, called "X WordPress" could be confusing and WPE was willfully leveraging that blurred line.
Nabeel S (Oct 01 2024 at 19:34):I guess. It seems like a very small difference in wording to me, and an easy mistake to make. I also can't imagine paying 8% for the privilege of calling my product "Core WordPress" instead of "WordPress Hosting" or something like that.
But I'm an engineer. Maybe I just don't have the business brains to see the difference. :shrug:
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 01 2024 at 19:35):I'm not saying he's right in asking for 8% either
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 01 2024 at 19:36):Just that WPE was clearly over leveraging the WordPress name in a plan. The fix was easy, but the mistake was still made.
Nabeel S (Oct 01 2024 at 19:36):I think that's fair.
Chris Woods (Oct 02 2024 at 20:33):Adam Stacoviak said:
Just that WPE was clearly over leveraging the WordPress name in a plan. The fix was easy, but the mistake was still made.
I don't see it this way at all, to be honest. That page's headline, the boldest part of the page, says "Choose Your WordPress Hosting Plan." It seems very clear to me that they're selling WP Hosting.
Nabeel S (Oct 03 2024 at 00:43):https://x.com/wpengine/status/1841633469685723292?t=unsC8yZr4D_FEb-BL1tCCw&s=19
Don MacKinnon (Oct 03 2024 at 04:16):Chris Duzan said:
Just listened to the "Wrong place to slap a person" episode and I felt like this meme needed to be created. Credit goes to Jerod, Adam, and Nick for the inspiration.
7f59d262-5853-4bc1-8fa8-f6ab247d8dbc.jpg
I just listened to the episode and now I have even more appreciation for the meme :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
Don MacKinnon (Oct 03 2024 at 04:32):It does look like Matt is actively commenting about the lawsuit on Hacker News today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41726197
Jamie Tanna (Oct 06 2024 at 08:27):https://sakurajima.moe/@chikorita157/113256114788720233
Don MacKinnon (Oct 07 2024 at 15:47):Jamie Tanna said:
Oh that is not good. ACF is used by a lot of sites, it's kind of the defacto way of doing custom fields in WP.
Philip Durbin (Oct 08 2024 at 11:48):an episode about the drama: https://shoptalkshow.com/636/
Nabeel S (Oct 09 2024 at 00:37):https://world.hey.com/dhh/automattic-is-doing-open-source-dirty-b95cf128
Nabeel S (Oct 09 2024 at 13:51):This is so gross and childish:
image.png
Don MacKinnon (Oct 09 2024 at 14:41):Nabeel S said:
This is so gross and childish:
image.png
That's pretty shitty
Nabeel S (Oct 09 2024 at 14:46):Rug pulls are honorable compared to this. They should just go ahead and make WordPress proprietary.
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 09 2024 at 14:56):I think the way Matt has orchestrated the publicity of this issue is quite wrong and in some ways petty. But there’s also two sides to this coin. This seems to be some thing that has festered over multiple years and offenses.
Nabeel S (Oct 09 2024 at 15:03):I'll try to keep an open mind, but so far I haven't seen a satisfactory justification.
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 09 2024 at 15:04):Same. I’m just trying to remain hopeful for WordPress and open source’s sake. 
Nabeel S (Oct 09 2024 at 15:19):btw, what is "obj"?
image.png
:-D
Nabeel S (Oct 09 2024 at 15:19):Zulip bug? Mac/Windows incompatibility?
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 09 2024 at 15:30):I posted that using my voice via the iOS app. That's a weird space at the end of the message.
Maroš Kučera (Oct 09 2024 at 16:15):I was a member of the community a while back. I was a translation editor for my language of a popular plugin, I attended meet-ups and conferences. Our studio built many sites on the open-source project and since we still manage a few sites that use it (and are hosted on various generic hosting services or on-prem), I come into contact with it from time to time. This situation makes me immensely sad, since only grief and destruction can come out of such conflict after a certain point and that point was passed long time ago in this case.
That DHH post @Nabeel S linked is closest to how I feel about this. The open-source project is in a way a gift and if he felt it couldn't be sustained this way, there were ways to communicate that and to start making gradual changes toward sustainability. There was also definitely a way to phrase the message that WPE are harmful parasites and should be ostracised that wouldn't prompt the C&D letter. Or it would and people would sympathise with Matt, the victim of being silenced by a big bad wolf private equity fund and all that. Sure, some would raise their eyebrows, his company being a direct competitor of WPE (and also highly profitable), but the truth of the immense contribution disparity was on his side. These actions, however, from continuous W.org-branded attacks, through the hostage crisis with plugin directory access and WPE dev account suspensions, to petty moves like this last checkbox (again on W.org), just make the open-source project appear unstable, dangerous to rely on and being fully controlled by a single mad despot. It poisons "the well" as an instance and, in a way, "the well" as a concept. While I want to believe that this is not a case of Matt suddenly going crazy for no reason and there must be something bad they did that set him off, what followed is completely inexcusable.
Another aspect that terrifies me is watching the keynote, seeing Matt deliver it with his soft voice, smiling and making jokes, then realising this is the same person that used (in written text, so it was not just blurted out in the heat of the moment) language of utter war-time destruction :disappointed:
Nuclear and scorched earth is something that should be taught as a cautionary tale and not being used by a leader of an open-source project to describe how they'll use their influence and access against a competitor of their business, unless they pay a ransom. These terms are so ominous and horrible, once you realise what they literally mean :grimacing:
I wish the community and the open-source project a good future, although I cannot imagine it right now. The people I personally met in the community were all very kind and do not deserve this to happen to a project they like and depend on and into which they invested so much effort.
Don MacKinnon (Oct 09 2024 at 16:45):I agree with DHH's take on this, which is rare. I want to be on the side of Wordpress but their actions are not in line with the ethos of open source. If they wanted to keep a piece of WP Engine's revenue maybe their shouldn't have sold their stake in the company. This feud is going to end up causing harm to the community.
Nabeel S (Oct 09 2024 at 19:43):The thing is, Matt has stated that he owns, runs and 100% controls wordpress.org, and can do anything he wants. Who's going to want to contribute to that kind of setup?
Daniel Buckmaster (Oct 09 2024 at 19:46):@Maroš Kučera I love what you said about language. It reminds me of something Ursula Franklin said about de-escalating language, de-escalating hype and speed. Her example was "awesome" but the example of "going nuclear" would also have been important to her!
You also put words to a niggling feeling I'd had seeing Matt in those video interviews. Someone said recently that Rails isn't a cult but DHH would be a great cult leader... It kind of feels the same with WP and Matt :sweat_smile:
Nabeel S (Oct 09 2024 at 19:46):https://www.404media.co/wordpress-checkbox-login-wp-engine/
Nabeel S (Oct 10 2024 at 00:03):https://x.com/LucP/status/1843926970763227255?t=ktvj4O-wbQ-bV-geBPWeVQ&s=19
Nabeel S (Oct 10 2024 at 04:00):OMG :-D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTxTOHUaqPI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duz9crandDE
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 10 2024 at 04:03):This channel is GOLD
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 10 2024 at 04:04):The depth of this absolute mess is beyond where I thought open source would ever go.
Nabeel S (Oct 10 2024 at 04:05):Yeah, I've never seen or heard of anything like this. Feels like some important history is being made.
Daniel Buckmaster (Oct 12 2024 at 03:42):Listening to JS Party 342 I couldn't help agreeing with an idea I think KBall was getting at. I hope this drama underlines just how entwined the WP ecosystem is with its BDFL, and prompts people to consider how to step away from that a little.
E.g., hopefully we might see a community plugin registry come out of this? Or even, as some are calling for, more separation between wp.org and Automattic?
Nabeel S (Oct 12 2024 at 20:34):And now WordPress.org has "forked" a plugin maintained by WPEngine:
Don MacKinnon (Oct 12 2024 at 22:16):That's pretty messed up.
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 13 2024 at 00:12):I’d call that sporked
Nabeel S (Oct 13 2024 at 00:18):https://x.com/verygoodplugins/status/1845246925886353795?t=B1Xd2SSmoafD_i9UQcckrA&s=19
Nabeel S (Oct 13 2024 at 00:18):Thing keep getting weirder
Lars Ellingsen (Oct 13 2024 at 00:26):That actually does seem like a clear-cut case
Nabeel S (Oct 13 2024 at 00:29):The WordPress.com plug-in situation is really hypocritical in my opinion. If I search for a plug-in, Google takes me to WordPress.com, not .org. This is intentional confusion on the part of automattic.
Nabeel S (Oct 13 2024 at 00:30):They've done this to all plugins, not just the popular ones. But I guess that's ok since they own the trademark 🤷🏻
Nabeel S (Oct 13 2024 at 01:00):https://x.com/verygoodplugins/status/1845251470926487566?t=TUCQ0oSkTqynO6MRRH22aw&s=19
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 13 2024 at 02:03):Big change brings big change.
Siddhartha Golu (Oct 15 2024 at 03:17):This was such an unfortunate response from Matt on DHH's well argued posts.
Adam Stacoviak (Oct 15 2024 at 05:31):404’ing for me
Siddhartha Golu (Oct 15 2024 at 05:43):Looks like he deleted it. Here's an archive copy: https://archive.is/UZZit
Erik Lundevall-Zara (Oct 15 2024 at 11:03):So he argues about the messenger, rather than the message itself.
It does show that Matt Mullenweg perceives himself as the good guy here, but he does himself a disservice by going after DHH that way, regardless what one may think of DHH in other contexts.
His argument about only being one of three in the Wordpress Foundation board also is a bit hollow:
https://www.pluginvulnerabilities.com/2024/09/24/who-is-on-the-wordpress-foundation-board/
Leon Berenschot (Oct 15 2024 at 12:21):matt has the post back up w/ an apology.... https://ma.tt/2024/10/on-dhh/
Jerod Santo (Oct 15 2024 at 12:44):I think Matt is losing thread under all this pressure. He needs a good friend to come alongside him during this time. I hope he has one…
Nabeel S (Oct 15 2024 at 13:27):Lots of people have been trying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grZg-BEhKMI
Jerod Santo (Oct 15 2024 at 13:35):I don't think any of these people are his good friends...
Nabeel S (Oct 15 2024 at 13:41):These are just the people publicly speaking about it. I don't know about his family situation, but he has (or had) many great people who have been by his side at Automattic for over a decade.
Maroš Kučera (Oct 15 2024 at 18:06):I sincerely hope he does :hug:
Almost no one should be subjected to such pressure, even if they lit the match initially. And I honestly hope the things of the last few weeks is him going against their advice. The worst place he could be, even worse than being alone, is him being surrounded by yes-people thatwho just nod to everything he says and does, no matter the consequences for him and the wider community. Being from a country just west of Ukraine, I can think of at least one person that is in a similar situation :confused:
Don MacKinnon (Oct 15 2024 at 21:33):Siddhartha Golu said:
Looks like he deleted it. Here's an archive copy: https://archive.is/UZZit
I feel like this a response to Matt's now taken down post https://world.hey.com/dhh/capture-less-than-you-create-c30e462e
Nabeel S (Oct 16 2024 at 00:30):Maroš Kučera said:
... Almost no one should be subjected to such pressure ..
If you mean the pressure of the VCs/investors backing his company, then I agree. But if you mean the pressure that Matt has faced from the public, I think the backlash has been very proportional to his actions. It has only increased in intensity as he has dug in and continued to escalate the issue himself.
Nabeel S (Oct 18 2024 at 19:01):https://x.com/scottkclark/status/1847023270245126357?t=0VGeUv4-HZnxWEsu6XbX1A&s=19
Owen Valentine (Oct 19 2024 at 07:07):Man that whole response post feels super petty. The whole thing is the open source claim vs commercial entity. At least 37signals isn't appearing to be open with Hey, Basecamp etc
Nabeel S (Oct 19 2024 at 15:37):Yeah, it wasn't a great look. He sounded like he was accusing DHH of being a sucker for letting other companies build on and benefit from his work, and for being a loser because his company isn't "scaling".
Daniel Buckmaster (Oct 22 2024 at 21:06):Just been reading this 2019 interview between DHH and MM and it's really interesting in the context of they journeys they've both been on since. https://37signals.com/podcast/open-source-and-power-with-matt-mullenweg/
Nabeel S (Oct 22 2024 at 21:09):Thanks for sharing that! I look forward to listening to it.
Robert Purcell (Oct 30 2024 at 14:32):Matt Mullenweg will be taking the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
Live stream starting in a couple hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfEKk4kPVzQ
Nabeel S (Oct 30 2024 at 15:14):https://x.com/therepositorywp/status/1851038210547466386?t=l5YTlogJx-Mk3Fyn-ZFodw&s=19
https://www.paidmembershipspro.com/leaving-wordpress-org/
Nabeel S (Oct 30 2024 at 15:16):As a side note for those not following closely: wordpress recently updated their code of conduct to forbid the sharing/publishing of private messages. This is why Jason Coleman hasn't publicly shared the DMs that were sent to him. It's to avoid these new rules.
Lars Ellingsen (Oct 30 2024 at 17:52):Just keeps getting worse, eh?
Andrei Jiroh Halili (Oct 30 2024 at 17:55):Do you think Matt/Automattic is really digging their own graves at this point?
Andrei Jiroh Halili (Oct 30 2024 at 17:57):@Lars Ellingsen If we use the FAFO axis and the Are We Fucked thermometer from TheJuiceMedia's Honest Government Ads on climate crisis, in my opinion I think we going red towards Net Fucked by 2030-2050.
Andrei Jiroh Halili (Oct 30 2024 at 17:57):Pardon the language then
Nabeel S (Nov 08 2024 at 12:16):https://wordpressenginetracker.com/
Daniel Buckmaster (Nov 09 2024 at 02:25):Calling the site "WordPress Engine" tracker is such a knife-twist :expressionless:
Adam Stacoviak (Nov 09 2024 at 04:09):100%
Nabeel S (Nov 09 2024 at 04:16):Speaking of: https://wpenginetracker.com/
Lars Ellingsen (Nov 09 2024 at 04:47):I care nothing about PHP or WordPress but find myself rooting more and more for WP Engine in this
Nabeel S (Nov 27 2024 at 16:43):uh-oh: Did Dreamhost violate the WordPress trademark?
https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/14210
Nabeel S (Nov 27 2024 at 16:53):Also worth mentioning, WPE and Automattic had their first court session yesterday.
Nabeel S (Nov 29 2024 at 16:38):https://x.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1861698639564787726
Don MacKinnon (Dec 02 2024 at 21:23):I figured it was a significant amount but i didn't know it was $32 million
Siddhartha Golu (Dec 11 2024 at 13:02):it just keeps getting worse: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/12/is-wordpress-org-gdpr-compliant/
Nabeel S (Dec 11 2024 at 14:04):If I'm understanding the article correctly, the author says gdpr requires them to give him a copy of private conversations about him? I'm no expert but this seems wrong to me. Otherwise Elon Musk could demand petabytes of data be deleted on every platform out there, including this message right here :joy:
Lars Ellingsen (Dec 11 2024 at 19:41): Lars Ellingsen (Dec 11 2024 at 19:41):Courts getting involved now :eyes:
Nabeel S (Dec 11 2024 at 19:47):https://www.404media.co/wordpress-wp-engine-preliminary-injunction/
“It's hard to imagine wanting to continue to working on WordPress after this,” he wrote in that Slack, according to a screenshot viewed by 404 Media. “I'm sick and disgusted to be legally compelled to provide free labor to an organization as parasitic and exploitive as WP Engine. I hope you all get what you and WP Engine wanted.” His username on that Slack has been changed to “gone :skull:”
Don MacKinnon (Dec 11 2024 at 21:27):It's not exactly "free labor". Matt's own blog lists Automattic's valuation at $7.5 billion in 2021. They aren't hurting for money https://ma.tt/2021/08/funding-buyback-hiring/
Cry me a river Matt.
Lars Ellingsen (Dec 11 2024 at 21:39):Foot, meet gun
Lars Ellingsen (Dec 11 2024 at 21:40):It's pretty crazy how far this has gone. The only thing it's going to do is hurt the WP community as a whole...
Nabeel S (Dec 11 2024 at 22:27):Not to mention a big chunk of that "free labor" are volunteers and code/plugin authors contributing to the ecosystem.
Ron Waldon-Howe (Dec 11 2024 at 23:31):I'm contemplating dropping PocketCasts which is owned by Automattic...
Nabeel S (Dec 12 2024 at 00:12):I thought about it, but pocketcasts is so freaking good! I've been using it for about a decade.
Ron Waldon-Howe (Dec 12 2024 at 01:15):Same
I'm just mucking about with AntennaPod and using gpodder.net as the synchronisation backend
Last updated: Dec 12 2024 at 15:17 UTC