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Catching Up On The WordPress WP Engine Sitch 2 css-tricks.com
Response to DHH ma.tt via
kilic
5 months ago
kilic
5 months ago
🇬🇧 The UK geoblock is lifted, hopefully permanently.
@true_detective submitted one of the demand letters in this story and I removed it, asking for an overview. It’s hard to start from the middle and work out this whole story, especially when that one part claims to just be a trademark dispute. This is a fight between two businesses, but there’s a lot of topical material here around open source stewardship, shared public resources like the Wordpress theme + plugin directories, control of SaaS. I hope we can use these events to discuss the landscape of licensing and infrastructure more than trademarks, business negotiation, or the character of the individuals involved.
Wordpress has lifted their ban on WP Engine blogs accessing Wordpress.org services for updates for ~2.5 days. Worth reading this post to understand the level of professionalism and rhetoric that Wordpress.com is operating at.
I think at this point, the biggest case has been made to separate WordPress.com/Automattic and WordPress.org. Org shouldn’t be involved in whatever ego massaging is going on.
I wonder what a good solution to open source funding is. We’ve seen companies struggle before (ElasticSearch) but this seems like a scenario where no one is winning.
Automattic and Matt appear to be grasping on straws to paint WPEngine in bad light, down to sending threats over texts.
WPEngine appear to be freeloaders who aren’t contributing enough back to WordPress (do they need to though?)
WPEngine users lose the security and updates because of the ban.
I feel like having same person(Matt) in charge of a for-profit company and such a sizable influence on WordPress.org is not healthy and regardless of merits in his claims, the way this has been carried is bad for users overall.
I don’t think you can build a unicorn company around an open source project. I do think you can make money in Open Source but your run rate is going to be closer to $X million dollars and be mostly consulting and/or services related. VC’s should stop investing in OSS as a company it is never going to get the valuations they want and you’ll never be able to stop a big enough company being able to beat you at your own game.
Getting angry because you are getting beat in the market by a competitor who is free riding despite the fact that you used a license that allows them the freedom to do so is silly. Many of the companies struggling made money just not enough money to justify their valuations and size. That is never going to end well. OSS is not the path to Billion Dollar exits. It never was and never will be.
I guess the valuation is where this struggle is coming from. Automattic has taken significant investments, https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/automattic-raises-300-million-at-3-billion-valuation-from-salesforce-ventures/ and I guess they need to turn the profitability knobs now. Sadly, that’s being done by throwing users under the bus.
What I’m personally most curious about is if these major open source companies are struggling for funding, or if the numbers just aren’t going up fast enough to please their investors?
Automattic, for example, is apparently making enough money that they can reinvest their money into, and buy out, numerous other companies so it doesn’t seem like they’re struggling.
Maybe I’m not looking deep enough, and there’s actually a terrible revenue drop going on, but on a surface level this feels more like a financially viable company just trying to make themselves more money.
The other party in this dispute, WP Engine, is also funded by VC/private equity.
I think that’s a core question. Lots of businesses benefit from WordPress being around, and don’t contribute anything back, even if there’s always been that kind of value in the community. To be fair, Automattic has been pushing that ball for a while (are they the only one?).
On a side note, Mullenweg is in a position where he leads both a WordPress company, and the open-source project. It’s easy to how a competitor company could make that “difficult”.
Isn’t this the classic way in which open source developers were supposed to make money?
Extorting other companies that use (and even contribute to!) the open source project using trademarks isn’t how open source developers are usually expected to make money, though.
I agree Mullenweg has crossed a number of lines. But implicitely insisting that a FLOSS maintainer be kept from working commercially with their code is a step too far.
I believe Wordpress used to be a poster child for open source sustainability. A product that’s free to use but there’s still a thriving business providing support, hosting etc.
I don’t think anyone was insisting that. The problem isn’t that Mullenweg leads a company that makes money, the problem is that the whole point of the foundation was to make the project somewhat independent of any one company that has any commercial self-interest around WordPress, which means that there is a conflict of interest with Mullenweg both controlling Automattic and the WordPress Foundation.
Yes, I tend to agree (I have no personal experience here though. :) )
Still, a lot of people are targeting him for using one, or the other “wrong”. 🤷🏻♂️
And his for-profit wordpress company has an exclusive license to the wordpress trademark, which it pays nothing in return for. Seems like self-dealing.
It looks like Automattic, the company behind wordpress.com, gives away “a few” developer hours to improve WordPress at least. That’s does not look like nothing, or self-dealing, but YMMV.
Do those few hours compensate the value of the trademark? Matt wants millions of dollars per year to allow WPEngine to use the WordPress trademark, so clearly it’s quite valuable…
Another good summary, but a bit more opinionated: https://tedium.co/2024/09/25/wordpress-wp-engine-open-web-negative-effects/
This is the first I’m hearing about this, but from reading this article and a few others, I’m struggling to see what the argument is against Mullenweg. He’s noticed a company that is profiting off of the labor of himself and his employees, without compensation to Automattic and without substantially contributing back to the communal Wordpress project. The is all allowable under the GPL, but contrary to the free software ethos and, in my opinion, economic injustice (labor exploitation). Rather than compromise the GPL, Mullenweg has instead decided to pull on some of the other levers of power available to him: his position as BDFL and his IP under trademark law. He is entirely within his rights to do so, and he appears to be making strategically sound moves. I don’t see what there is to criticize about his position.
What I have seen in terms of criticism is simply discomfort that Mullenweg has chosen to fight so aggressively. But I do not think it’s unjust to fight, hard, against injustice, and when you fight, this is exactly what you should do: strike hard, strike fast. More power to him.
That he’s acting like a completely unhinged lunatic.
Megatons of companies use WordPress or sell WordPress hosting without compensating Automattic, how is WP Engine any different?
Incorrect. He has zero trademark claim to the initialiism “WP”. The WordPress Foundation’s previous trademark policy even explicitly said so. You don’t get to “take backsies” after spending a decade saying that something isn’t your trademark. And I don’t think the WordPress Foundation even uses “WP” as a mark, so they would have no claim to it under trademark law anyway.
What seems most likely to me is that since he took large investments from VC firms, he now has to somehow cough up profitable returns for them, so in desperation he’s lashing out at a more profitable competitor. And no one in the WordPress community seems to approve of his behavior. I’ve seen quite a few people who are scared that he’ll go after them next, or try to close down WordPress in some way.
edit: Also, WordPress the project and Automattic the company are separate for a reason! The WordPress Foundation is supposed to be an independent steward of the WordPress project, so subverting it to serve the economic interests of Automattic is a big violation of trust. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with WordPress being forked in the aftermath of this.
I’d be careful about throwing around this kind of labelling without far more information, but that’s just me. It’s very easy for PR to paint one or the other as “the bad guy” and people just run with it. I’ve also seen what appears to be a ridiculous number of bot posts on the orange site and around youtube about this recently, so be aware that there may be “campaigns” in either direction trying to influence the zeitgeist.
The shakedown messages WP Engine describes in their cease and desist letter are pretty damning. If the messages are real, it’s hard to imagine what additional context would paint them in a good light.
Supposedly (to be fair, according to one side of the story at least) this has been an ongoing conversation between parties for a long time, and it was just the last effort to get a deal done. Hopefully we will find out more as time goes on.
It doesn’t matter if it was a last ditch attempt at getting a deal done, it was still unhinged.
Edit: the top response in that thread really just puts it perfectly.
The discussions between Mullenweg and WP-Engine seem to have been ongoing for many months behind the scenes, up to the Wordcamp US announcement, and the following mess.
I wonder why WP-Engine did not bother to respond “No, we won’t contribute to WordPress.org on these terms, we’d rather do $this, thank you.” ?
What would that even mean? He wanted them to pay a bunch of money to his company Automattic, with no basis in anything. They obviously said no.
That would mean publicly stating that they won’t contribute to WordPress.org more than they do, which is pretty bad PR. :)
Apparently, that is not true:
(emphasis mine — source)
WP-Engine is using Automattic’s trademark (illegally apparently), so he’s free to ask whatever he wants, and they’re also well in their right to say no. Yet, they haven’t done so in several months, until they were forced to lawyer up.
I find interesting that the only thing WP-Engine is not talking about is contributing to WordPress. It’s like they don’t care at all about the project. At their size, and with their backing, they could do a lot of good for the community ; kind of what Shopify did for the Ruby/Rails ecosystem in the past years.
I think WP-Engine just played dumb “lalala we can do what we want, it’s GPL!”, and we got… this instead. :(
The allegation I’ve seen is that the Wordpress trademark policy previously did not exclude use of “WP” in naming, but was recently changed to do so, presumably for the sole purpose of making WP Engine’s name into a violation.
Which, if true, is not something I would good-faith behavior from Mullenweg/Automattic.
They appear to maintain some major plugins, which is a good for the community. And one of their plugins was apparently caught in the crossfire as they were unable to issue a security update to it due to being locked out of the plugin repository by Mullenweg fiat, which then was used as justification to seize the plugin, rename it, strip out WP Engine’s upsells, and violate WP Engine’s trademark.
The idea that Mullenweg/Automattic/Wordpress are some innocent victims of the evil freeloading policy-violating WP Engine (which IIRC Automattic was formerly even an investor in) has been pretty thoroughly debunked at this point.
Meanwhile, what I’ve seen of Mullenweg’s comments has mostly been him hiding behind following the strict letter of the GPL with things like the plugin seizure. If he wants to play that game, it’s worth reminding him that by the terms of the GPL he is owed exactly zero dollars in royalties from people who use Wordpress.
Also, not for nothing, but Wordpress itself is a fork of an even older blog engine (b2/cafelog), which is the main reason why Mullenweg can’t pull the usual maneuver of relicensing to something that forbids commercial competitors (he received the code originally from someone else under GPLv2 and thus cannot legally impose such restrictions on his downstream). How much of the money he’s made with his ventures has he donated back to the original developers? Surely if he thinks it’s vital enough a principle that he needs to take all this action against WP Engine, he must have been following that principle strictly himself, right?
Oh yes, that was quite the move… I’m sure that WP-Engine will further sue Mullenweg or his companies if they think they have a case. :)
Yes. The GPL and trademarks are two different things though.
You can start “The Debian Hosting Company”, but the Debian project can tell you to stop using their registered name, or ask you to at least contribute to Debian more than 3 packages… or failing to do so they could sue your company.
Things get more complicated if you own the only company that has an exclusive license to the Debian trademark and sue a rival over this. To me, it’s a valid business practice, but I’ll let the US courts decide if that’s also the case there.
It’s a bit more complex than that. Under US trademark law, generally you can’t stop what’s called “nominative use”. For example, suppose I write a book about how to use Debian, I can use the name of Debian in the title of the book, even though I’m doing it for commercial/for-profit purposes, and generally they can’t stop the usage.
Business naming is more of a gray area, but again the issue here seems to be that use of “WP” was allowed by the trademark policy until a recent change, and that recent change appears to have been tactical on the part of Mullenweg to try to gain leverage to demand money from WP Engine (and the change occurred after he was already trying to get them to give money). I don’t think that’s going to go so well for him – there are a lot of legal principles that can come into play there on WP Engine’s side.
There are two claims. 1) That the name WP Engine violates the trademark. 2) That advertizing that you provide WordPress hosting violates the trademark.
Both of these are absolute nonsense. The trademark doesn’t cover “WP”. Using another company’s trademarks is A-OK as long as you aren’t lying or devaluing them (so, offering WordPress hosting and then telling people that you offer WordPress hosting, is not a violation ever). Furthermore, you must enforce your trademarks consistently, not selectively only against some entities.
Ok lets have a closer look at the choices offered
So that’s like what? Probably more than half their profit? Directly to their competitor?
Commit 8% of their revenue to work to be controlled by WordPress.org (aka, Matt Mullenweg). Give their direct competitor extremely detailed insights into their operations. Yeah what a lot of nonsense. No one would ever agree to this ever.
Actually, 8% of WPEngine’s revenue going to the salaries of people working on WordPress would probably make them the biggest WordPress contributor of all. I believe WP Engine’s revenue is about 400 million, so that’d be 32 million in developer salaries. Let’s say each developer costs 250kUSD per year. That’d be 128 developers. Yup more than Automattic. Though since Automattic’s 104 WordPress contributors live across 93 different countries, many of them probably aren’t getting such a large salary.
And recently quite a few people have gotten banned from contributing due to being affiliated with WP Engine. Like the representatives of the accessibility team. So I’m not so sure Mullenweg actually cares about people contributing.
104 devs in 93 different countries, that seems very disparate. Is that true, is this a convenient generalization based on the information here?
It’s hard to compare apples and oranges for sure, and both companies have different structures.
Well, that’s just your opinion. 🤷🏻♂️ Following that train of thought, it looks like WP Engine built entire company on a project (and brand) controlled by someone else, and then refused to deal with them completely. I’m not sure that was a good idea. Contributing to WordPress.org would benefit everyone too, not just Mullenweg or WP-Engine.
Mullenweg has built a successful company on top of WordPress, while still committing developer-time to open-source work. That’s apparently a big investment since it’s around 8% of WP Engine’s revenues total. I’ve read people shout it’s nonsense, and that no one would ever agree to that, but that’s what it costs to get a healthy WordPress project. Would WP Engine be as successful without Mullenweg’s initiatives? Maybe, but I’m happy that someone’s called them out to do more for the community.
Actually, it’s a convenient misread of this which talks about them having 104 devs who work on WP. I accidentally got the 93 countries thing from the line about them having 1995 emplyees in 93 countries. Presumably, the devs are still quite spread out, Automattic being a distributed company and all, but not quite that spread out.
What does that mean? WP Engine haven’t violated any rule or law, and are far from alone in making lots and lots of money from WordPress hosting. And they do contribute, maybe not as much as one might think they should, but they do.
What it costs for a healthy WordPress project, is to give your direct competitor control over 8% of your revenue and let him micromanage your employees?
Maybe for a healthy WordPress project, there should be an independent foundation steered by a variety of people from all across the WordPress community.
So when it he gonna call out the other dozen large companies that provide similar services? Selective enforcement of trademarks is a one-way ticket to losing your trademark.
Again, that’s your opinion. At this point, this is something that a court will decide.
Yes, that’s precisely what I meant! Mullenweg should also be allowed access to your medical records, and GPS location at all times. :) /s
That’s very true. I think there’s a case for trademark violation here though. We’ll see how this plays out in the long run: what would it mean for WordPress if the trademark is lost in front of a US court?
That isn’t an argument. You this as if it’s self-evident, but I just wrote two paragraphs about why it seems to me reasonable and even admirable.
It would seem that no other company is as large and as exclusively focused on selling WordPress as a service as WP Engine is, without giving back to the community project. Mullenweg’s given lengthy treatments about why he objects to WP Engine, specifically.
That seems like a question of law that the courts are in the best position to decide.
Ah, now I agree this is a problem. If he did try to make WordPress closed source, or if he tried to attack the wider market, that would make him the villain. He seems to be very loud about his intentions though, and to me reads as if he’s solely focused on WP Engine. But he should do more to clarify his intentions if there’s still this type of uncertainty in the community.
On the contrary, to me the situation reads like Automattic is being put to use for the interests of the overall community. A nonprofit is not equipped to engage in corporate warfare, but a for-profit business is. If WP Engine is leeching off the community effort, someone needs to cut it off. The WordPress Foundation is not in a position to do that, but Automattic is.
I think you mean, “without giving back “enough””, since Mullenweg himself has said that WP Engine has an employee who spends 40 hours a week on WordPress. And why does focus matter? Does it not matter that many hosting providers provide the exact same service using the exact same wording, just because they also do other things? If Cloudflare came out with WordPress hosting tomorrow and crowded out the rest of the market, would that be fine because it’s just a small part of their business?
Yeah, like them taking VC money. Uh, just like Automattic.
Maybe Matt should try that instead of trying to extort them into paying. Besides, it’s not like this is some gray area, this is extremely clear cut, there is no trademark infringement here. Also! Trademark enforcement can’t be selective. You must have some rules for how your trademark can be used, and enforce those rules equally against everyone. Vaguely feeling that one of your competitors is “too big” and not “contributing enough” ain’t it.
8% of WP Engine’s revenue going straight to their competitor Automattic doesn’t sound like Automattic selflessly doing what’s best for the community. If a for-profit entity is needed to do this sort of stuff, the WordPress Foundation should own a corporation for that purpose, so that they could guarantee that licensing income will only go to doing what is good for the project.
Interesting video interview with Matt Mullenweg about his side in all this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6F0PgMcKWM
Another summary, a lot more opinionated; https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/fire-matt