WP Engine vs WordPress: Cease & Desist letter from WP Engine was made public

Well just came across this post on SEJ and WP has filed for trademark of 2 terms (‘Managed WordPress’ and ‘Hosted WordPress’).
Definitely things don't good and if granted this will not only affect Hosts but also a large part of the development community too.

Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-files-to-trademark-managed-wordpress-hosted-wordpress/528112/

They are making a mockery of GPL licensing in entirety at this point.

What the hell is the point in using it if they can come along at any point to shoot down some plugin or service a lot of people's entire business may largely depend on? I am surprised WP hasn't been forked already.

umbreno said:

They are making a mockery of GPL licensing in entirety at this point.

What the hell is the point in using it if they can come along at any point to shoot down some plugin or service a lot of people's entire business may largely depend on? I am surprised WP hasn't been forked already.

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Exactly what I was going to say. It seems very childish and emotionally charged how they’re breaking core principles in order to attack one entity (WP Engine).

If they really want to go down this route why not change the model so that you have to pay for commercial use or something along those lines. I have no problem with that but it’s either open source and free for all to use, or it’s not and just because you see someone doing well with their business model, that doesn’t mean you have to get jealous and change all the rules.

I know there’s two sides to every story but it just seems childish how Wordpress are going about this and also it seems like if they get their way, they put a successful company and all of its employees out of work which doesn’t seem in good spirits at all.

Deleted member 752298 is talked about at around 40 minutes in.

davids355 said:

From that page; “they are a cancer to WordPress”.

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Meanwhile
WP Engine:

WP has been pretty aggressive in the past few years in expanding, taking over other smaller companys like Flywheel and Nitropack
It use to never really brand themselves as WP's really until recently. I can see why Wordpress is taking that stance.

But at the same time... plenty of other hosting providers does the exact same thing.. Wordpress is just salty honestly.

Instead of focusing on other people's success, they should focus on making sure their own shit is up to par like.,..

RoiBox said:

Deleted member 752298 is talked about at around 40 minutes in.

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TLDR: Matt says it is legal to sell under GPL, but it is the trademark that he could use to shut down Festingervault.

Matt did make a good point that it infringes copyright if WPengine are actively using "Wordpress" to promote their service.

However, it is also because of third party companies like WPengine/ Godaddy, etc that WP has become so much easier to setup.

4440 said:

TLDR: Matt says it is legal to sell under GPL, but it is the trademark that he could use to shut down Festingervault.

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Honestly sounds like they are double downing on trying to make "WP" their trademark

WordPress to improve plugin name checks to remove ‘WP’ trademark confusion

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and lets not forget..
Wordpress isn't even original, it was a fork of b2/cafelog

xReminisce said:

Honestly sounds like they are double downing on trying to make "WP" their trademark

and lets not forget..
Wordpress isn't even original, it was a fork of b2/cafelog

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Let the court make the final call.

If you ask my opinion, automatic is also leeching on the open-source WordPress community "trademark" and making money off of it, and they are no way different than WPEneine, according to how Matt sees things.

Giving back to the open source does not mean you can own it, Matt.

Wordpress is not yours.

Try making a closed-source competitor of Wordpress and see who will buy your shit., matt. At that time you can make money however you want.

RoiBox said:

Deleted member 752298 is talked about at around 40 minutes in.

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This makes sense now why they have applied for the trademarks of managed wordpress & Hosted Wordpress terms.

Since GPL can be exploited they are using trademark route.

4440 said:

Let the court make the final call.

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Agreed

4440 said:

If you ask my opinion, automatic is also leeching on the open-source WordPress community "trademark" and making money off of it, and they are no way different than WPEneine, according to how Matt sees things.

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automatic is Wordpress parent company

4440 said:

Giving back to the open source does not mean you can own it, Matt.

Wordpress is not yours.

Try making a closed-source competitor of Wordpress and see who will buy your shit., matt. At that time you can make money however you want.

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I agree too
I reckon Matt is just being greedy or being pressured to get a bigger slice of the cake

xReminisce said:

Agreed

automatic is Wordpress parent company

I agree too
I reckon Matt is just being greedy or being pressured to get a bigger slice of the cake

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Automatic is a parent of wordpress.com, not wordpress.org.
wordpress.com is their for-money platform, wordpress.org is the open-source.

xReminisce said:

Honestly sounds like they are double downing on trying to make "WP" their trademark

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4440 said:

If you ask my opinion, automatic is also leeching on the open-source WordPress community "trademark" and making money off of it, and they are no way different than WPEneine, according to how Matt sees things.

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Automatic pays for a license of the trademark that is owned by WordPress Foundation, that is what Matt want´s from WP Engine too. Either pay in cash or pay in contribution hours to WordPress as opensource, or a combination of both. In the end it will benefit us the normal users.

RoiBox said:

Automatic pays for a license of the trademark that is owned by WordPress Foundation, that is what Matt want´s from WP Engine too.

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i know automatic can use the "wordpress" trademark.

But using the "trademark" as a weapon is, another thing.

Either pay in cash or pay in contribution hours to WordPress as opensource, or a combination of both. In the end it will benefit us the normal users.

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So matt wants money or free software development hours, In the end, matt wants money.

Yes it can benefit normal users, but it does not mean automatic is as ethical as he told the story.

"Trademark" is just a cover he uses to, while trying to be ethical, and make more money off of the open-source.

Edited: Doesn't the engine staff have a family to feed?

4440 said:

"Trademark" is just a cover he uses to, while trying to be ethical, and make more money off of the open-source.

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Maybe, but in the end he owns the trademark, and if you felt someone used your trademark wrong and making money of it, you would probably do the same thing if you owned it for 20 years and it was your lifes work. Everything is just business when it comes down to it.

RoiBox said:

Maybe, but in the end he owns the trademark, and if you felt someone used your trademark wrong and making money of it, you would probably do the same thing if you owned it for 20 years and it was your lifes work. Everything is just business when it comes down to it.

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That's true.

Automatic owns the trademark so he can do whatever he wants.

I am all for it.

I am just disgusted by his "it is legal under GPL, so we use the trademark to shut them down" speech......

it was your lifes work.

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Also, I am not a believer in this.

If your project isn't open-sourced in the first place, maybe your WordPress won't exist without multi-million contributors all over the world.

Now you are taking credit of the WP only being as a co-founder of a fork.

That's typical (some of them) open-source community behavior: open-source, get free labor from other contributors(like he says he wants companies to contribute to it), and then take all the fruit.

If it is open-source, it is open-source.

Built your own closed-source product or a much better version of it as a paid product, people will buy it. However wordpress.com is their for-profit product, but he is just jealous that others are making so much more money, or he is pushed by others to make this move, it is childish.

Matt is somewhat contradicting himself when he states how many people are confusing WordPress as actually being part of WP Engine, but then later on in the interview (around 52 minutes in) he has trouble agreeing that WP Engine has had any impact on the number of people using WordPress (Reluctantly he would only agree to this number being "more than zero").

I am really having a hard time agreeing with anything Matt says but I do really like the interviewer as he seems to be very fair and trying to get the unbiased truth from both camps.

I don’t even use WordPress anymore, never used it intensively and even starting out with it, never once did come across any third-party hosts including WPengine and think to myself “yes it’s an official part of WordPress’. By that logic every single plugin called WP something or other must be too.

What a ridiculous justification to try to make.

Wordpress(com) vs WordPress(org) on the other hand I bet causes no end of confusion for newbies.

Not anyones fault they seem to really suck at marketing their own stuff.

I've just been looking at trademarked names as I have WP, it seems that it has already been trademarked by various companies, so I cannot see how WordPress can claim it as their own?

umbreno said:

I don’t even use WordPress anymore, never used it intensively and even starting out with it, never once did come across any third-party hosts including WPengine and think to myself “yes it’s an official part of WordPress’. By that logic every single plugin called WP something or other must be too.

What a ridiculous justification to try to make.

Wordpress(com) vs WordPress(org) on the other hand I bet causes no end of confusion for newbies.

Not anyones fault they seem to really suck at marketing their own stuff.

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I agree also. Looking at the WP Engine homepage I don't think for a second that it is part of WordPress. Its quite apparent to me they're simply a hosting provider. As to whether there is a copyright infringment I wouldn't really know how to establish that and I guess it is down to the courts to decide. However, its also very clear that Matt is using the copyright issue as a proxy to his main grevance which seems to relate more to the fact he thinks its unfair how much money WP Engine are making from WordPress. Personally thought I think that is their perogative; just like it was Matts to make WordPress free to use under GPL in the first place.

I do also agree with the interviewer in that video posted above that WP Engine being a hosting provider exclusively for WordPress is a) a massive show of support for WordPress and its wider community and b) a big help to the furtherment of WordPress.

I feel its a little bit like the chicken and the egg analogy whereby WordPress is so popular in part because of the community surrounding it; its popular because its good and its good because its popular. But, taking it to the extreme, what if all of the major hosting providers out there start to get worried about this same thing happening to them and instead decide to push other platforms; would users still seek out WordPress or would their marketshare slip as a result?