Open-source stewardship or how to deal with a deliberate bad actor.

Update 9/26/2024

WPE & Trademarks

Their conduct since this whole thing started has reinforced that trademarks, open source contributions, and revision storage are just small parts of the puzzle, this is about how large-scale private equity firms (and their portfolio companies) conduct themselves in open source…

— Peter Thomson (@PeterJThomson) September 26, 2024

Cease and desist back and forth.

WPEngine to Automattic

Automattic to WPEngine:

• Automattic’s cease and desist to WP Engine.
• WP Engine is not WordPress.
• WP Engine is banned from WordPress.org.

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Building up to WordCamp US Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic published on his blog:

WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinking and follow-up post on Are Investors Bad?

This is the context in which to watch the first few minutes of the In-person Q&A event at WordCamp US.

Tragedy of the Commons (Harvard Business School)

Five for the Future program WordPress.org

Left WPEngine 5FTF contributors / Right Automattic’s 5FTF contributors

Highlighting Over a Decade of Innovation and Contribution to the WordPress Community

WP Engine hit $400M revenue and 120K customers in 2024.

Automattic hit $220.2M in revenue in 2023

This is a valid discussion, but I think many comments are missing the point — that WP Engine is not "yet another WordPress" company, but a $400M in annual revenue machine with only 1100 employees. The question thus being, if you're the market leader (exclusively selling WP,…

— Noel Tock 🇺🇦 (@noeltock) September 21, 2024

Earlier this month, Automattic went after Festinger Vault, who is known for selling other people’s plugins without providing the creators with a revenue share. It’s the dark side of GPL. What is not part of the license are trademark and copyright, those are not free to use.

“We wanted to let you know about a temporary situation with our services.

Due to a legal claim from Automattic (WordPress) and WooCommerce regarding trademark usage and GPL compliance, we are forced to temporarily hold our offerings to prevent the risk of fines.

Our lawyers have requested the court’s decision to deny Automattics and WooCommerce’s claims that contradict the open-source philosophy. The Court hearing will occur on 2 October 2024, and a verdict is expected soon. In the meantime, we are negotiating with Automattic and WooCommerce to get back on track as quickly as possible.

But don’t worry—this is a brief pause, and we’re not going anywhere! Festinger Vault is still 100% dedicated to providing GPL-compliant, open-source plugins and themes for WordPress, and we’re confident in the legal process.”

https://festingervault.com/