2. Nominative use allows companies to refer to things by their name. It isn't obvious that "Wordpress Hosting" or "Wordpress plugin" is a violation or causes consumer confusion. Does Matt wish for all companies in the ecosystem to stop referring to their products as Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Plugins and Wordpress hosts?

It's worth noting that for years Wordpress.org has routinely referred to companies as "Wordpress hosts"

For example: https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/migrating-your-wordpres...

They don't seem to find it confusing and I suspect it would be difficult for Wordpress to launch a legal claim given tolerance of and direct use of those terms.

If the central repository is a problem, then each site draws on it in proportion to their usage and it isn't obvious why one site is an issue and others aren't.

Hence my question, does he wish hosts to move away from a central repository? He certainly can advocate for that but it's a larger issue than WPEngine.

Also sort of adjacent but Matthew Prince of Cloudfare has just offered to donate resources to fund the whole central repository: https://x.com/eastdakota/status/1841154152006627663

The norms of open source software don't really have much to say about this. Mullenweg is right: the typical thing companies that run GPL projects do when they end up competing with firms that don't pay their freight is to relicense. Being a little ruthless with trademarks seems strictly superior to switching to a "source available" license.

I do hope they open source the API. I might take a stab at implementing it using wpackagist (though possibly that's what they're using to mirror already)

I think Matt's position is that WP Engine is not Wordpress, so it's not appropriate to call their offerings Wordpress-anything.

>The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Referential use doesn't allow someone to use marks to imply an association or endorsement, and I think it's clear what they're calling out in the trademark policy changes.

In other words, a shakedown by another name.

Also, suggesting that WPE's contributions to the non-profit could be satisfied by paying Matt's for-profit company is almost the textbook definition of private inurement. I don't think he had lawyers familiar with non-profit law clear that offer before he made it. If I worked for the IRS right now WP and Matt would be pretty high on the list of organizations to take a closer look at.

I'm not a lawyer. Nominative fair use is complicated, as is WPE's use of the WP marks. All I can hope for here is to understand what claims people are making.

I realize you may just have been abbreviating, but until the middle of this current dispute, the WordPress Foundation explicitly allowed the use of "WP". Matt just edited it after framing it as a trademark issue.

Matt's was alleging violations of the license and the trademark. And he's wrong on both accounts.

It is a shake down. And the problem with negotiating with people like this is that it never stops.

There will never be enough contributions and money.

By contrast, this doesn't make WPE look good:

WP Engine had been siphoning “tens of millions” of dollars away from Woo’s revenue share partnership with Stripe into its own coffers. It’s understood WP Engine has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce.

That's the sort of thing that, if a proven problem, could seem less like a shakedown and more like active wire fraud.

EDIT: As replies note, GPL. OK, but I realize I grew up thinking if someone gives me software it isn't to rip out their revenue model and replace it with mine, it is for me to do my own value added thing with it. Meaning, the stealth edit might not be wrong, but still seems uncool.

This is explicitly the sort of thing that WP Engine would be allowed to do, and if Automattic isn't happy about this then perhaps they should have chosen non-free licenses.

Basically: "wire fraud" is an extremely overblown claim. Nothing criminal is happening here, because they're complying with the license. Is it ethical? Debatable.

Matt cannot stand competition, that's all.

WooCommerce is an open source, GPL project which allows people to modify the code in any way, including changing Stripe details, provided that they comply with the terms of the license.

Licenses are a fundamental part of open source precisely so that in situations like this everyone knows the rules of the game.