This interview was completely on the spot. Matt showed up in the chat and said he would jump on. So if my questions weren't completely spot on, sorry. I had no time to prepare, just had to wing it in the moment
matt is not trustworthy, he was harassing trans people on tumblr for weeks and even openly harrased a banned tumblr user on twitter over her disapproval of tumblr's severely unequal application of site policy. hetero porn and hate speech from actual holocaust deniers can be on the site no problem no matter how much they get reported, but fully clothed selfies from a trans woman are deemed "sexually explicit" and warrant nuking her entire account to the point where even reblogs are wiped. ps, we on tumblr didn't even know it was possible to wipe a reblog chain like that, reblogs usually remain after a blog is deleted. he is unhinged and vindictive beyond any other person I have seen. do not trust him. he is also responsible for the REPEATED hiding the opt out of ai crawling option on tumblr, to the point where there were multiple different "settings" pages that were otherwise visually identical, and people had to navigate a god damn maze to get to it.
Something I learned a long time ago after getting backstabbed: never make verbal agreements. always, ALWAYS, have written records and if possible with confirmation from the other party. Record any call or conversation too. Thank me later
Bingo Bango. Thing is though....... WP Engine was following the contract as written for the longest time. Wordpress is the backstabber in this case. They changed the wording, They are imposing restrictions that didn't exist. There is a reason that most Opensource things like Wordpress, or some software you could make something off has a requirement for contractual use for comerical purposes, but allows 'consumer use' Never trust a well-funded 'Free reigns' use of such software if you're running a business. They will attempt to squeeze you dry if they think your fat. I'm also going to laugh because those documents will come out because people like matt forget what they said to someone, and 10:1 everyone who interacts with him keeps it surface level or recorded better than the deepstate does on political actors.
You do need to be careful about recording conversations, especially in tech. A lot of tech companies operate out of California which is a two party consent state.
I founded a startup along with two other people. I would be the tech lead for enterprise projects, another guy would be tech lead for consumer projects and the 3rd guy was the one with the funding who would do the sales and admin. He promised us stock and seats on the board but never put anything in writing. after about six years, when the business had grown a substantial amount, we were let go from the company we had helped found.
And if somehow it has to be verbal and no recording, send communication to them in writing (email or whatever with a paper trail) confirming what was said. Even if they don't reply in the affirmative, the fact it was stated and sent and not immediately refuted, can be helpful
@@seif9923 You have to do the trick: hum hum, Dear prime, I know there is 0 PERCENT CHANCE you will read this comment on YOUR OWN video, absolutely IMPROBABLE, but i wanted to say blablabla...
Yeah… when his evidence for it being a long term issue was just his calendar appointments… I was thinking this too. I understand his point a lot better now though.
"They could sign an agreement right now, and this would all go away" I literally burst out laughing when I heard that. I also thought he initially brought up a good point, saying they have trademark agreements with other entities. But then he lost me by refusing to elaborate at all on that.
@@Acorn_Anomaly Those other entities might not appreciate being name dropped in the middle of this. Matt needs to get some sleep, and talk with a PR person and the lawyers before having public conversations like this.
@@mcdermottpa I don't even expect him to name the other entities, just explicitly confirm that they have signed agreements with other entities, and that they're basically just asking for the same here. He mentions other agreements vaguely _once,_ and then any time after that when Prime tries to get him to clarify that, he just waffles a bit with "well we're fine with what the other people do", which isn't what he said, nor what was asked. It's just not a good look all around.
he did finally say that one company has bought rights to use the Wordpress trademark but didn't confirm that they agree on the 8% deal. Also never answered the WP mark guidelines.
@@TrevorPhilipsBro I don't know when we fell into the twilight zone but its some time the fruit logo on my underwear lost the cornucopia and the Berenstein bears mess. This shit is just tossing more wood on the fire.
Thank you for this - it is good to hear Matt's perspective. What he should say is "If they had been contributed back to the WordPress community, our issues with the Trademark would not be a question" but what I am hearing is "They have made millions off the work of the community and we deserve a piece of the pie"
This interview was so great. The fact that it was impromptu was even better. Getting the facts from the source is much better than conjecture and speculation.
Assuming Matt is being sincere, the fact that he has lunches with these people going back years but literally nothing on the record (emails, texts, etc) leads me to believe that they preyed on his naivety and never intended on doing the right thing.
WP Engine definitely is feeding of wordpress tradmark, i had impression for years that this is official WordPress hosting by creators of wordpress by seeing their advertisements here and there.
It's possible. It just seems so wild that he wants to show calendar events as proof. Like, bro, maybe you just get drinks with them because they used to hang out. Who knows? This really feels like he's either dumb or dodgy situation.
@@somerandomlittlechannel7860 he tried to evade. No one logically thinks a calendar invite or a photo is evidence that you asked them to give you 8% of their revenue 6 years ago.
I feel like the guy is just naive and got enough of it. At least that's how it come off to me. While not giving back to community is a dick move I don't think is illegal and it seems to be the core of the grief. Enforcing trademark seems to just be the mean they took to force a giveback. Not entirely sure if he is totally honest either... The only thing I have a real issue with is the attribution code change in their server which mean that woo commerce does not get the money they should from stripe which should be illegal IMO.
Yep the code change is egregious, but the using the Wordpress CDN to deliver updates is just as egregious. This generates cost in the millions for Wordpress. And with the trademark, given that other hosting providers do not have such issues and properly licenses the Wordpress term for commercial use is a clear sign that there is most likely a probable violation. Because why would other hosters spend $$$ on a commercial Wordpress license if they didn't think it was required.
Isn’t the woo commerce plugin also GPL? Since it plugs into Wordpress I believe it has to be. Which means it is within their rights to make the change. Doesn’t make it nice, but if they want to enforce something like that then they have to pick a different license. They might not be able to pick a different license without overhauling the way plugins integrate.
This is awesome! I love that people like you and Thor give other people a platform to communicate. This is what most people want in general, open communication.
So from what I've gathered from this interview. Everyone is allowed to use the WP trademark, but if your company is making half a billion in revenue or what ever amount, and your huge base of clients consumes the official wordpress endpoints, then they would like you to pay for their license OR pay that amount in hours/contribution to the core to make the platform better for everyone, instead of pocketing the money.
@@bezimiennygrzes5593 They do have that in writing on the wordpressfoundation website trademark policy. I unfortunately can't link without my comment getting eaten by youtube for linking. It mentions "If you would like to use the WordPress trademark commercially, please contact Automattic, they have the exclusive license."
It's not just about using 'WP.' Prime highlighted how this is similar to the Linux trademark issue-like the difference between saying 'We provide Linux experts' and 'We have engineers who are experts in Linux.' The former implies a closer affiliation. They also presented Exhibit B, which compared 'WordPress hosts' to 'people who can help host WordPress,' illustrating the distinction. So, it's not just about using 'WP,' but also about other language that suggests a closer affiliation
You treated him in a very empathetic way, for a person who seemed to be clearly ovewhelmed while still pressing to get your answers. This was fantastic. Earned my membership, congrats!
The problem is that a lot of Matt's apparent case here is based on emotional appeal solely. Almost every answer was emotionally charged. "I'm the one committing to open source" "You don't see them interviewing like I am" "Look at all of the companies in good standing with me." I think it's also damning that he can't provide any evidence except for unrecorded call logs and "lunches" that will obviously not fly in legal proceedings. Can't tell if he's being malicious or naive though...
@@maxdayton614 was he supposed to record everything prior to bringing it public just because ... Because ? Why not just take it at face value. As soon as he went public they sued the life out of him. How is that not more damning?
Agreed, I'm unconvinced by his emotional appeals. It's a business, not a charity. But he does make a persuasive claim in here: it seems like to side with WP Engine would require forcing WordPress to host services for free, right? I can't find anywhere that requires WordPress to do this. They seem to be free to pick who they host services for any reason they seem fit.
@@08nittany the only emotionally charged element is that he would rather not do this, he knows these people and has known them for years. That is presented to persuade the mountain of derps in primes chat who seem to not know literally anything about what private equity in an open source context looks like
I don't trust Matt's vibe at all, but I do agree that WP Engine's branding does seem confusing from a trademark standpoint. I saw someone in the twitch comments asking whether other companies like GoDaddy could offer "Managed Wordpress" plans and I don't think anyone would be confused by that whatsoever whereas WP Engine sounds like they develop the core software of the application.
i did think for years that WP Engine is official wordpress product and this is hosting provided by wordpress org. I don't make websites but i got this impressions from WP Engine advertisement seeing it around over the years. They definitely play dirty
13:00 seems damning. He's saying to WPEngine that they need to give back, and then says "There's no requirement to give back. We're using trademark law to *encourage* them to give back". Like, bro. Your lawyer was phoning to tell you extortion is illegal!
Matt dodged the million dollar question at 10:32... How is this helping the community? You're punishing a large portion of the businesses, agencies, and individuals that are collateral damage from these actions. Take your issues to the courts, give users time to move away, don't put us in a manufactured crisis because you're trying to squeeze them for money or "to do the right thing". This is only going to keep people away from WordPress and send them to competitors, this is not accomplishing what you're trying to do. You're exposing the biggest vulnerability in WordPress... and it's Matt.
@@CalifornianVikingit is spun as a trademark issue because there is no legal way of enforcing OSS contribution. Like he says multiple times, if they contribute, this stops.
How in the hell did you get that conclusion? I'm sorry, but you're failing to understand just how OSS works. They are abusing trademark - they are claiming the use of WordPress, exploiting the technicality of OSS without engaging with the spirit of OSS. You say this is "punishing WordPress users" how, exactly? The user contracts are with WPEngine and WPEngine is a $$$ company, versus the volunteers who do the work of keeping it going? Either your understanding or your moral compass are messed-up, either way, the copyright and trademark holders have the right to do what they want, within the bounds of the law.
Phenomenal off-the-cuff interview. I think your line of questioning was direct and probing without being emotionally compromised, unprofessional, or biased. I think we certainly got clarity on Matt's position and whether or not he has legal ground to stand on.
This. I think the average terminally online web developer that keeps up with WP news understands the difference. But the majority couldn't tell you the difference between Wordpress and a wordpress hosting platform, let alone specific ones like WP engine.
sounds to me like WordPress license is open-source so they cant force for profit companies to give back to those who's code they are using to make their money, so WordPress is trying to use trademark to force them to give back. This seems to be a trend recently with lots of open source projects, how to keep others from profiting off their work without giving back while still remaining open
The WordPress license does not make WordPress free to use. So they can, as owners of WordPress, require payment of some kind to use WordPress in a commercial manner.
Where is this trend you are talking about? Who else is doing this. They not trying to force them, they give them an offer, they can refuse and host their own plugins.
WP Engine is free to use WordPress code. Do you understand the difference between using open-source code and using infrastructure and a registered trademark?
WordPress itself is free, but Matt isn't obligated to provide WordPressOrg services for free to a company that sued him. Would you? It's surprising how some people don't understand the distinction between the WordPress project and WordPressOrg, yet still feel confident commenting on the issue.
"they write less lines of code and make more money!" geez. It feels like Silicon Valley episode when everybody is screaming at Richard to stop talking and he keeps going out yapping, digging himself deeper and deeper
What I liked the most is him mentioning also to look at all the years as reputation. That applies in everything in life. That has to mean something at least as a baseline when there are several parties claiming something.
I'm not interested in any moral or ethical claim here. Legally, it sounds WP Engine is free to use WordPress under the GPL and WordPress is within their rights to refuse to service WP Engine. Matt seems to be right: let WP Engine set up and do their own hosting and there's no argument, WP Engine is just salty about their bottom line. IDK why this is so controversial. WordPress isn't required to provide any free hosting to WP Engine. Seems pretty black and white. Great interview.
As long as they follow the GPL license, there shouldn't be any moral issues. Switch to AGPL or something else if you wanna force contributing back. And dont try to control how companies use non-trademarked terms that you've even confirmed in writing to be free to be used in any way.
WPF doesn't claim WPEngine cannot use WordPress in their service. They can't use the TRADEMARK "WordPress" in a manner that violates the terms or introduces confusion. Apparently they were selling a PRODUCT called "Core WordPress" while not having a trademark license on WordPress.
@@thekwoka4707I don't think it has standing. It similar to selling Linux. You can sell your own distro of Linux as your own product and call it "X Linux", because you have license to use Linux however you want, including reselling of it. They may have something here, but they didn't present anything close to enough to actually side with them.
@@thekwoka4707 I don't think it's wise to conflate the trademark issue. It's a red-herring. WP can still prohibit WP engine from access its servers without enforcing any trademarks.
This is an unwarranted shakedown for cash. The message to the WordPress community is, you can be successful but not TOO successful. Automattic strong-arms companies into making donations by force or be hit with sudden mandatory monetary trademark enforcement claims.
@@arjix8738 Yes, but a "dick" move doesn't constitute breaking a business agreement that never existed. That's why companies have legal teams who draw up contracts. In this case there doesn't seem to be a definition of either "freeloader" nor "more successful" but both are brought to appeal to morals in the absence of enforceable contracts.
@@arjix8738 Weaponizing trademark law for this goes against what trademark law is for though. If you don't want to share, just don't use a Free Software license such as GPL. Choose the right license. I do get why he's upset, but he's hurting his own case pursuing this and claiming victimhood.
That was really fast I don't think other techtubers can acchieve this kind of fast tech news, Thats why the primeagen has "prime" on his name, absolutely terrific +1 subscriber here, and a well deserved like
9:58 - clear admission that this is a very personal vendetta, not based on any universal set of principles and no LEGAL grounds for blocking WPE's access to the repo
I think Matt/WPF is perfectly within their rights to block WPE from accessing the repo... WPF are footing the bill for millions of traffic coming from WPE. Why should WPE get to leverage this for free? As far as I can tell, Matt is saying he's willing to turn a blind eye to the cost if they contribute in kind, which is totally fair.
Yeah I think the problem as well is that they call it WP engine, or even like Matt mentions about "Wordpress core". Both of these make it feel like it's something that a laymen could easily read as being a necessary part of hosting wordpress, or at minimum officially sanctioned
As far as WP Engine, the trademark policy 100% allowed unfettered use of “WP” prior to the recent change to their policy saying “don’t make it confusing”. The problem with that recent change, is it’s silly to make that change, considering WP Engjne has existed for a very long time, and only now have they made the trademark change, just because a business became successful doing it. Feels dirty.
I imagine that one of the main reasons folks use WP Engine as their host in the first place, is that they are non-technical people. They may have heard some of these terms, but are not familiar enough with them to be able to discern what is "official" and what is not. It does at least appear that WP Engine is deliberately exploiting that confusion. Doesn't make much sense that they would rather kill their golden goose than feed it a few scraps of grain.
And I totally can see the confusion. I just checked WP engine out, and as someone that have never used Wordpress I found it difficult to figure out how it was different from just Wordpress. Or even what they are trying to offer me.
I do feel for this guy, but I think he's just struggling seeing other people get super rich of "his" stuff that HE open sourced. It's too late bro, you opened it up now other people can do what ever the fuck they want with it.
yeah, seems forced to avoid their own ambiguity because they tied their own trademark/brand to their open source product. Calling it WordPress would weaken the claim to the trademark... which is why the claim is kinda stupid to begin with... but private equity also definitely sucks
It's not a matter of speaking in acronyms or not, the company "WP Engine" is called "WP Engine", not "WordPress Engine", the latter does not exist, the company is "WP Engine" that's why they say "WP"
I've no horse in the game, but he pretty much dodged the question on what's the threshold of company size vs their (non)contribution that would initiate a trademark dispute of this kind? It all seems so arbitrary, based on his own personal feelings, and I would not like to stake my business on someone else's feelings.
Fuck it if he can outplay them fair game. WP Engine would fleece him if they could. His biggest error is putting his face on this, he should have acted behind the scenes as the WordPress entity. I think he's probably morally in the right too.
@@thewhitefalcon8539 WP Engine self report 40 hours per week of effort (as opposed to Automattics 1000's of hours) , and Events are considered more self promotional. They were a good company till the VC took over.
@@thewhitefalcon8539 Automattic also controls the code contributions and what is on the roadmap etc. Their only comparison so far is against themselves.
This guys mental instability is right now affecting 50% of the worlds websites. Probably 90% of all local businesses are dependent on this guy for their websites. And he is fucking it up for everyone.
Now that I've heard the interview with him and I have heard him talk. Totally convinced that this guy is not legal savvy whatsoever and that's why it feels like this is completely out of the blue. He needs serious help with the legal part of the trademark issue. And hopefully this interview will convince him to keep his mouth shut until he gets help
What do you mean other side? WP Engine is one of the most evil corporations in the world. They have hard KPIs, and literally fired their employees for contributing to open source and not meeting KPIs. Stop both siding the argument. People like you are the reason Redis maintainer quit open source and RedisLabs was able to take over an awesome product for free.
Matt: "I can sleep soundly at night based on how I handled the last two weeks" Also Matt: "Sorry I didn't answer that question well, I haven't got much sleep"
I can sleep soundly at night = my conscience is clear. I didn't sleep well last night = the actual activity of not getting proper sleep. Do you even English?
I see the spirit of what he’s trying to say. But I think the informality and ambiguity of the agreements is the issue here. At what level of revenue must you hit before you have to contribute or risk having the trademark enforced? Hosts are at the whim of when Matt decides enough is enough and they must contribute. I imagine Matt sees that as exploitation, and maybe it is. But without clear terms like, you can’t really know. So what I see here is that WP Engine is forcing Automatic’s hand to say exactly where in the sand they draw the line as far as revenue versus contribution. Possibly Matt thinks that these businesses should contribute because it’s the right thing to do. And they probably should. But I think the way he’s been managing it by nudging these companies on the “right direction” but asking for fees or contributions and it leading to an “or else” conversation is probably, technically, extortion, even if his heart is in the right place and he feels he’s pushing companies to be more moral. The naivety of it is probably mostly in thinking these informal agreements, instead of complex licensing agreements, was the way to go. Because it, I imagine he thinks, _shouldn’t_ be necessary. But it probably is.
It's pretty clear. If you sell a service using the WordPress trademark, you need an agreement with them. It's not about "when is it enforced" that's completely the wrong question here. It doesn't matter at all. If you want to profit from the trademark, you have to give back. It's as easy as that.
I see what you mean and I see what Matt means BUT, in my book, trademark is 0 and 1. What Matt does is wait till someone is making millions then extort them. If I'd be the judge I would say. Give me the list of all companies that are currently in violation and they get notified TODAY. WPE should pay IF there is on paper notice and no dinner chit chat with WPE CEO is not the way to go. I want it black on white. Other ways we they just get notification and termination of all the processes. But as of right now, this look like blackmailing to me.
@@CombobreakerDe yeah but he knew that YEARS AGO, he intentionally waited like he had silent agreement. There is and has to be more to that story. Being on such a high position and calling himself naive is a stretch. He's not stupid, he know's there is more to the story and soon we will find out.
I don't know anything about the situation, but this guy does not pass the vibe check. My gut is telling me that he isn't be truthful. Edit: Also, around 11 mins he says "Yeah, it's open source you can do what you want with it", then at 15:15 refers to altering the Stripe plugin as "hacking" it. He is very careful about using specific language to paint WP Engine as a bad guy that he's had infinite patience dealing with, but ultimately WP Engine doesn't owe Wordpress anything outside of a possible copyright violation. I believe this is an extortion gambit.
Matt.. the guy that bough a domain name for $100k just to be spiteful to a small developer. He is not a good guy in this, and I have no allegiance to WPEngine (other than being a customer) who is also a VC backed business. This is just about a rich guy being greedy, he doesn't seem to care about the users or community at all.
Agree, if he cared he'd stop the "PLUGIN BLOCKADE" and let us get our updates! I see a huge class-action lawsuit if/when sites begin to get overcome with malware or worse and he needs to be held accountable!!
As someone who has struggled almost my whole life wither anger, bitterness, and seeking vengeance. Those things are so clearly at play here. I can see those things I struggle with in Matt's logic
In MBTI terms this is a clear display of toxic Fe. Using Fe to try to extort, manipulate, while still putting a smiling face throughout the shenanigans while not providing anything clear, like Te facts, Ti logic or even "real" Se.. The entire point of "putting it public" is to start smear campaigns, and is a huge professional red flag.
Dude... you are projecting. Matt did not give off ONE HINT of anger in this. He was measured with his words, calm and listening. Must be a wp-engine bot.
The ice cream analogy doesn't have a 62% CMS market share with over 580 million websites all counting on these themes and plugins remaining accessible for updates, shutting this off makes you the one that doesn't care about the users!! The obligation is to us NOT WP Engine.
Damn i love reading the side chat twatter thing on the side. Every time this dude says something its "No that isnt true and here is why" its so much more informative.
Aside from sidestepping some arguments: why didn't he take it to court instead of threatening to campaign against WP? I'm inclined to see it as "both sides are doing bad things"
This argument sounds like the guy that was upset because his neighbor changed the password on the neighbor Wi-Fi. Just because you have stolen something in the past does not mean you have the right to steal it today.
@@CalifornianViking Case law for trademarks is like this. It's not about stealing, but about a specific segment of IP laws. If a company doesn't actively defend their trademark, they might have a bad case in court. Which is probably why this never went to court or was handled in a professional manner. Trying to now take it to the "court of the public", will only hurt Wordpress and open source in general.
That's the man who's gotten more servers rooted and turned into torrent trackers and open mail relays than anyone else in history. Definitely need to celebrate him.
This guy doesn't seem to understand trademark law; you cannot selectively enforce trademarks, that's for copyright. You have to protect your trademark against all uses in order to maintain that trademark.
@@myname7021 Ya... and they should know the fact that they changed the use of WP how they did will deal critical damage. I doubt they either can stand up to the man baby of matt, or are smart enough to see they've already lost with what has transpired.
@@myname7021 All he has, is a team of lawyers willing to take money to do lawyering work. It is correct to say you can't selectively enforce trademark. The problem is it's not black and white. Selective enforcement in some cases can result in not being able to enforce your trademark. Failure to prosecute all of the other people using the term in the same way has the effect of "weakening the strength" of the trademark, which has legal implications in a court. I am not a lawyer, but the continued use of the trademark in this same way by a whole variety of customers, means I don't think a trademark case would be successful.
@@aidenberzinsjust don't infringe trademark, duh! Problem is that WP Engine branding is so similar to WordPress official branding WP Engine looks like official product from WordPress.
You fail to explain why. I do not think so at all. In fact they lawyer who with "feared" business lawyers and are to scared to speak publicly, use smear tactics and lies. He is transparent and open and goes on a stream even when tired. He already shifts the court of public opinion more towards his side, who are surprisingly a lot on the side of some investment firm. There is nothing he said here that could be reasonably used against him so WTF are you talking about?
6:55 He keeps LITERALLY describing extortion or blackmail (all you have to do is pay me and this all goes away), but with this sickening fake "nice guy" Mr. Rodgers facade.
hmmm i don't buy it. "wp" was free to use. contributing back is not a requirement. building a half a billion dollars company on top of some open source stuff isn't an argument as long as the company complies with the licenses. matt was extorsive on wp engine, willingly or not.
It's not the "WP Engine" name that's in contention, it's that they describe themselves as "managed WordPress hosting" instead of "managed hosting for WordPress". Like how third party apps for Windows are not Microsoft Windows apps. One construction indicates compatibility, the other infers origin. "WordPress hosting" means hosting by WordPress, whereas "hosting for WordPress" means a hosting service that is compatible with the WordPress software.
@@k225 Very true. Like apps are always "Slack for Windows, Slack for MacOS". Selling a PRODUCT called "Core WordPress" seems pretty clearly a violation. It's not "Core (for Basic Wordpress)"
Doesn’t sound like Matt has much of a case and is just complaining and even bullying them into money. Feels like Automattic is in need of cash and shaking down a big target that nobody will feel bad for because they’re PE-owned.
@@Necropheliac I didn't realize they did a 288M funding round in 2021 which included BlackRock and others.. criticizing companies for PE investment is a bit hypocritical eh?
At 5 minutes in he said they had a choice of how to pay but they chose zero. Then he sued them. Seems to me that is the perfect definition of extortion. WordPress is probably going to lose this lawsuit.
1. If you would rather not spend money on maintaining remote services. Don't add cloud services into your open-source software that will cost you money once it scales. 2. If you don't want others modifying your code, adding their own or removing original lines. Don't launch your software with an open-source license. 3. Don't weaponize your trademark to extract money from others. This is a legal abuse. Trademarks are to protect your brand and business (defense), not to extort money from others. That is what patents are for (royalty fees). He does not mention 'license' because it's open source, but is basically demanding precisely that and using the trademark element. Just like Google claims Android is free but demands OEM's to pay for the hardware certification per device. Regardless of what naming you are using, it's the same. (money for using your software). He complains WP Engine modified the code and then in another part says it's open source, and you can do whatever you want with it. What a contradiction! He wants to keep the users calmed marketing it as open source, but at the same time talks as if WP Engine must pay them royalties. Developers can't have it both ways, your software is either commercial with a proprietary license or open source. So many companies and developers lately wish to benefit from open source but impose their requirements to make money. There is nothing wrong with making money, we all need to put food in your tables, just don't pretend it is open source and be honest that it's a commercial license. Nobody has to contribute anything to open source. It's called free for a reason, free of your money, free of your time, free to use however you want. It's nice and welcome behavior to do it, in particular if you make money, we all should give back. But that is the equivalent to a donation or tipping. It is not an obligation to give back. WordPress itself uses a lot of open-source software themselves. It would not exist otherwise. Watch @ThePrimeTimeagen face during the interview. That should tell you everything you need to know.
Did you miss the part of him saying the company could contribute their own engineering hours? Did you also miss reading the comments how many people thought WPE was the actual company? As a non-coder if I were to host WP I would vote with my euros and host with anyone but WPE.
Ive been on tumblr for awhile, before it was owned by automattic. This dude is famous on there for making extremely rash moderation decisions and then very publicly doubling down on them in every avenue he can. It does not surprise me that he showed up in your chat after you had talked about him to do exactly that
Something I think people are missing out, is he can't bring receipts to a spur of the moment stream, when he's just engaged legal procedures. Legal would not want him to share anything that would be used in court. Is Matt coming across as Naive, yes. He admits as much himself. As much as you can do agreements via email, and get all meetings on record as much as possible.
Great interview interesting points on both sides. I think my biggest problem is conflating the idea of the trademark and them using their services (which I see as separate points), and then the fact that no solid threshold was mentioned, when is too big?
Thats all well and good. But don't effect your core user base. We are now looking to migrate 20+ sites off WPE to something else because we can't receive security updates due to him going "scorched earth". So now I'm looking to abandon WP from my tech stack all together because we can't afford to manage all the server side BS using WP brings. Settle this in court over the Trademark violation. Don't make a stink of it and harm your users.
What server side BS? I manage far more sites than that across tens of servers by myself. It is a one person job. Automation and monitoring is your friend.
That is 100% WP Engine's fault. They should have their own local mirrors -- which they are allowed to do -- rather than pulling from another website. They own the responsibility for the impact on THEIR customers. You can disagree with Matt on a lot but you cannot on that. As the server owner he is allowed to decide who can and cannot use the website / server.
It will take a week at max for WP Engine to have proxy or vpn setup to pull the updates. Another to have their own mirror, which they should have as it would save then bandwidth costs.
I've seen a lot of people defending Matt/WP but they're all missing the point here: At the core of this is the reality that the users of WordPress are under NO legal obligation to contribute to the project. You can't have it both ways when choosing a popular OSS license for a project. This is simply a personal vendetta against WPE for their success in the market. I've been in Matt's position having built and run a successful OSS project with large usage and his claims have zero merit (though he's been able to raise a ton more VC $ than I did, like an absurd amount). If the issue is the trademark well the 10+ years of zero enforcement plus their previous statements that using "WP" is acceptable, then the trademark claims are baseless. This has all just been so damn sad to watch and I don't think it will end well for WordPress or the community.
Things are relative, it's not inappropriate. While Microsoft sponsoring some Gay Pride parade in Prague is cool, we don't pretend that means they are the ultimate champions of the gays. Cause we also know how much they did to do that was 1. marketing to get their name on things, and 2. a drop in the bucket from them. If you make $500m a year on the back of another service, leaching resources, and you only give them $100k, that's certainly not "enough" under most math. That's like a 0.2% tax rate. Yes, it's not strictly "nothing", but it is "relatively" speaking.
will Matt get mad at another hosting company and turn off access to plugins for them too? That's the question that is harming the wordpress community right now. Matt needs to give clear guidelines on when/how he will ask for contributions from hosting companies. That will reduce consumer uncertainty on if they will have access to plugins.
He just admits that Automattic/himself decides to enforce Trademark based upon his feeling of vibes. You gotta codify this stuff or you gotta deal with it. He complains private equity is capricious, but this is the definition of capricious.
@@heinzerbrew yeah, it is really confusing for me to understand his true intention here. He has interests in both the WordPress organization as well as making companies pay licensing fees to Automattic. He brags about how many hours the Automattic employees contribute to WordPress, but it is him having his employees work on his project that he co-founded. That's great, I just don't get why he expects everybody else to do the same thing.
This interview was completely on the spot. Matt showed up in the chat and said he would jump on. So if my questions weren't completely spot on, sorry. I had no time to prepare, just had to wing it in the moment
That said, you did a fantastic job!
Did a great job managing the interview man, felt like Matt was pretty spent at this point. When’s the 24hour news channel* coming?!
This interview could use a short intro outlining the situation.
To be honest you looked more prepared
matt is not trustworthy, he was harassing trans people on tumblr for weeks and even openly harrased a banned tumblr user on twitter over her disapproval of tumblr's severely unequal application of site policy.
hetero porn and hate speech from actual holocaust deniers can be on the site no problem no matter how much they get reported, but fully clothed selfies from a trans woman are deemed "sexually explicit" and warrant nuking her entire account to the point where even reblogs are wiped.
ps, we on tumblr didn't even know it was possible to wipe a reblog chain like that, reblogs usually remain after a blog is deleted.
he is unhinged and vindictive beyond any other person I have seen.
do not trust him.
he is also responsible for the REPEATED hiding the opt out of ai crawling option on tumblr, to the point where there were multiple different "settings" pages that were otherwise visually identical, and people had to navigate a god damn maze to get to it.
Is Prime the mainstream media for all tech news now? I am not complaining 😊
no
@@somerandomlittlechannel7860 yes + ur pp small
I would also be okay with this.
Pretty much yea.
Turns out if you just ask questions without bias people will listen
What the heck?! How quickly did this all come together - literally just watched the article video
Scorched earth, mf!
right?🤯
Soon enough an article will be written about this interview and another dev will make a video reading that.
Something I learned a long time ago after getting backstabbed: never make verbal agreements. always, ALWAYS, have written records and if possible with confirmation from the other party. Record any call or conversation too.
Thank me later
Bingo Bango. Thing is though....... WP Engine was following the contract as written for the longest time.
Wordpress is the backstabber in this case. They changed the wording, They are imposing restrictions that didn't exist.
There is a reason that most Opensource things like Wordpress, or some software you could make something off has a requirement for contractual use for comerical purposes, but allows 'consumer use'
Never trust a well-funded 'Free reigns' use of such software if you're running a business. They will attempt to squeeze you dry if they think your fat.
I'm also going to laugh because those documents will come out because people like matt forget what they said to someone, and 10:1 everyone who interacts with him keeps it surface level or recorded better than the deepstate does on political actors.
You do need to be careful about recording conversations, especially in tech. A lot of tech companies operate out of California which is a two party consent state.
I founded a startup along with two other people. I would be the tech lead for enterprise projects, another guy would be tech lead for consumer projects and the 3rd guy was the one with the funding who would do the sales and admin. He promised us stock and seats on the board but never put anything in writing. after about six years, when the business had grown a substantial amount, we were let go from the company we had helped found.
And if somehow it has to be verbal and no recording, send communication to them in writing (email or whatever with a paper trail) confirming what was said. Even if they don't reply in the affirmative, the fact it was stated and sent and not immediately refuted, can be helpful
Be extra cautious when dealing with british and americans, reminder they were the original pirates.
Prime, I know you don’t read these, but shit man you are legend. Thank you for this!
I do read them every now and, and thank you very much for that
@@ThePrimeTimeagen did you read mine in here?
@@ThePrimeTimeagenhow about this?
@@ThePrimeTimeagen M I N O R M I S T A K E D E T E C T E D
@@seif9923 You have to do the trick: hum hum, Dear prime, I know there is 0 PERCENT CHANCE you will read this comment on YOUR OWN video, absolutely IMPROBABLE, but i wanted to say blablabla...
I have a feeling that missed call was his lawyer trying to tell him to GTFO this stream.
That’s what I thought, too
What, you mean his lawyer wouldn't want him saying they're trying to "encourage" WPE to pay up?
Lmfaooooooo
@@C0pernicus what's wrong with that if they are infringing on the trademark??
Yeah… when his evidence for it being a long term issue was just his calendar appointments… I was thinking this too. I understand his point a lot better now though.
Cant help but think some parts of this stream will get played in court lol
"They could sign an agreement right now, and this would all go away"
I literally burst out laughing when I heard that.
I also thought he initially brought up a good point, saying they have trademark agreements with other entities.
But then he lost me by refusing to elaborate at all on that.
@@Acorn_Anomaly Those other entities might not appreciate being name dropped in the middle of this. Matt needs to get some sleep, and talk with a PR person and the lawyers before having public conversations like this.
@@mcdermottpa I don't even expect him to name the other entities, just explicitly confirm that they have signed agreements with other entities, and that they're basically just asking for the same here.
He mentions other agreements vaguely _once,_ and then any time after that when Prime tries to get him to clarify that, he just waffles a bit with "well we're fine with what the other people do", which isn't what he said, nor what was asked.
It's just not a good look all around.
he did finally say that one company has bought rights to use the Wordpress trademark but didn't confirm that they agree on the 8% deal.
Also never answered the WP mark guidelines.
@@Acorn_Anomaly Tell me you didn't watch the video, without telling me you didn't watch the video.
It's in there buddy, but you shills love to lie
Prime: “Is it a requirement that they give back?”
Matt: “Umm… what is a requirement? Ya know…”
😂
Where am I?
@@TrevorPhilipsBro I don't know when we fell into the twilight zone but its some time the fruit logo on my underwear lost the cornucopia and the Berenstein bears mess. This shit is just tossing more wood on the fire.
I think he took it as more of a "to use generally" as opposed to what Prime meant as "to use wordpress"
The good old Jordan Peterson “what do you mean by” answer.
Thank you for this - it is good to hear Matt's perspective. What he should say is "If they had been contributed back to the WordPress community, our issues with the Trademark would not be a question" but what I am hearing is "They have made millions off the work of the community and we deserve a piece of the pie"
Completely agree. Time will tell if WP Engine has be infringing upon the trademark or not
Prime did a real good job given the circumstances
From a legal stand point this was Horrific.. this man shouldn't be speaking without an advisor
I miss read prime as Press. Sry
This interview was so great. The fact that it was impromptu was even better. Getting the facts from the source is much better than conjecture and speculation.
11:47 missed call from his lawyer trying to tell him to stay quiet
Assuming Matt is being sincere, the fact that he has lunches with these people going back years but literally nothing on the record (emails, texts, etc) leads me to believe that they preyed on his naivety and never intended on doing the right thing.
who said there's nothing on the record?
WP Engine definitely is feeding of wordpress tradmark, i had impression for years that this is official WordPress hosting by creators of wordpress by seeing their advertisements here and there.
It's possible. It just seems so wild that he wants to show calendar events as proof. Like, bro, maybe you just get drinks with them because they used to hang out. Who knows? This really feels like he's either dumb or dodgy situation.
@@musicaeclectica he was put on the spot, tried to answer in the moment when she shouldn't have
@@somerandomlittlechannel7860 he tried to evade. No one logically thinks a calendar invite or a photo is evidence that you asked them to give you 8% of their revenue 6 years ago.
I really appreciate you for "seeing through the bullshit" and asking direct questions.
I feel like the guy is just naive and got enough of it. At least that's how it come off to me. While not giving back to community is a dick move I don't think is illegal and it seems to be the core of the grief. Enforcing trademark seems to just be the mean they took to force a giveback. Not entirely sure if he is totally honest either... The only thing I have a real issue with is the attribution code change in their server which mean that woo commerce does not get the money they should from stripe which should be illegal IMO.
He does sure seem naive, but do some web searching. Mr. Mullenweg has a well searchable history of... Incidents.
Yep the code change is egregious, but the using the Wordpress CDN to deliver updates is just as egregious. This generates cost in the millions for Wordpress. And with the trademark, given that other hosting providers do not have such issues and properly licenses the Wordpress term for commercial use is a clear sign that there is most likely a probable violation. Because why would other hosters spend $$$ on a commercial Wordpress license if they didn't think it was required.
Isn’t the woo commerce plugin also GPL? Since it plugs into Wordpress I believe it has to be. Which means it is within their rights to make the change. Doesn’t make it nice, but if they want to enforce something like that then they have to pick a different license. They might not be able to pick a different license without overhauling the way plugins integrate.
@@MasonPayne Didn't thought about this... Does that mean that someone managing their own installation would be able to make the same change ?
@@alexas09 yes you are free to modify the source files on your installations to make changes you need
This is awesome! I love that people like you and Thor give other people a platform to communicate. This is what most people want in general, open communication.
So from what I've gathered from this interview.
Everyone is allowed to use the WP trademark, but if your company is making half a billion in revenue or what ever amount, and your huge base of clients consumes the official wordpress endpoints, then they would like you to pay for their license OR pay that amount in hours/contribution to the core to make the platform better for everyone, instead of pocketing the money.
do they have that in writing?
@@bezimiennygrzes5593 They do have that in writing on the wordpressfoundation website trademark policy. I unfortunately can't link without my comment getting eaten by youtube for linking.
It mentions "If you would like to use the WordPress trademark commercially, please contact Automattic, they have the exclusive license."
It's not just about using 'WP.' Prime highlighted how this is similar to the Linux trademark issue-like the difference between saying 'We provide Linux experts' and 'We have engineers who are experts in Linux.' The former implies a closer affiliation. They also presented Exhibit B, which compared 'WordPress hosts' to 'people who can help host WordPress,' illustrating the distinction. So, it's not just about using 'WP,' but also about other language that suggests a closer affiliation
@@michaelvo9820 this makes no sense at all. If this is what we're going for then open source is dead and some douchy WordPress ceo killed it
@@michaelvo9820 Makes sense yeah.
You treated him in a very empathetic way, for a person who seemed to be clearly ovewhelmed while still pressing to get your answers. This was fantastic. Earned my membership, congrats!
The problem is that a lot of Matt's apparent case here is based on emotional appeal solely. Almost every answer was emotionally charged. "I'm the one committing to open source" "You don't see them interviewing like I am" "Look at all of the companies in good standing with me." I think it's also damning that he can't provide any evidence except for unrecorded call logs and "lunches" that will obviously not fly in legal proceedings. Can't tell if he's being malicious or naive though...
@@maxdayton614 was he supposed to record everything prior to bringing it public just because ... Because ? Why not just take it at face value. As soon as he went public they sued the life out of him. How is that not more damning?
It doesn’t matter. Trademark violations don’t care about emotions.
Agreed, I'm unconvinced by his emotional appeals. It's a business, not a charity. But he does make a persuasive claim in here: it seems like to side with WP Engine would require forcing WordPress to host services for free, right? I can't find anywhere that requires WordPress to do this. They seem to be free to pick who they host services for any reason they seem fit.
@@08nittany the only emotionally charged element is that he would rather not do this, he knows these people and has known them for years. That is presented to persuade the mountain of derps in primes chat who seem to not know literally anything about what private equity in an open source context looks like
why would Wordpress have to offer any services to WP Engine? The source code is enough, there is no contract for any other service.
Thanks!
I don't trust Matt's vibe at all, but I do agree that WP Engine's branding does seem confusing from a trademark standpoint. I saw someone in the twitch comments asking whether other companies like GoDaddy could offer "Managed Wordpress" plans and I don't think anyone would be confused by that whatsoever whereas WP Engine sounds like they develop the core software of the application.
"vibe"
Mr vibe police thank you for your indepth investigation
i did think for years that WP Engine is official wordpress product and this is hosting provided by wordpress org. I don't make websites but i got this impressions from WP Engine advertisement seeing it around over the years. They definitely play dirty
Eccentric at a minimum
@@talzander Sir, that's insubordination, it's Detective Vibe.
13:00 seems damning. He's saying to WPEngine that they need to give back, and then says "There's no requirement to give back. We're using trademark law to *encourage* them to give back". Like, bro. Your lawyer was phoning to tell you extortion is illegal!
This video is now linked to in WP Engines court filing today. Matt is absolutely cooked.
Real?
@@我的家-j4byeah
he lied ... he'll pay. Well, Salesforce will pay
@@user-uk9er5vw4c salesforce huh
@@user-uk9er5vw4cwhat are you cooking?
Matt dodged the million dollar question at 10:32... How is this helping the community? You're punishing a large portion of the businesses, agencies, and individuals that are collateral damage from these actions. Take your issues to the courts, give users time to move away, don't put us in a manufactured crisis because you're trying to squeeze them for money or "to do the right thing". This is only going to keep people away from WordPress and send them to competitors, this is not accomplishing what you're trying to do. You're exposing the biggest vulnerability in WordPress... and it's Matt.
Yep he’s gonna regret the day he pulled this stunt IMO.
Can't WP Engine fix this right now? The code is open source. They can distribute it themselves.
This is a trademark dispute, not a OSS dispute.
@@CalifornianVikingit is spun as a trademark issue because there is no legal way of enforcing OSS contribution.
Like he says multiple times, if they contribute, this stops.
I agree! It’s frustrating… I have so many clients on flywheel and Wpengine.
How in the hell did you get that conclusion?
I'm sorry, but you're failing to understand just how OSS works. They are abusing trademark - they are claiming the use of WordPress, exploiting the technicality of OSS without engaging with the spirit of OSS.
You say this is "punishing WordPress users" how, exactly? The user contracts are with WPEngine and WPEngine is a $$$ company, versus the volunteers who do the work of keeping it going?
Either your understanding or your moral compass are messed-up, either way, the copyright and trademark holders have the right to do what they want, within the bounds of the law.
Phenomenal off-the-cuff interview. I think your line of questioning was direct and probing without being emotionally compromised, unprofessional, or biased. I think we certainly got clarity on Matt's position and whether or not he has legal ground to stand on.
Thank you for Wordpress it got me initially into programming
I had to take over a WP site after an acquisition. It took me a long time before I realized WP Engine was not part of core WP.
How much did they pay you?
ladies in gentlemen; one of the 15% of confused customers
This. I think the average terminally online web developer that keeps up with WP news understands the difference. But the majority couldn't tell you the difference between Wordpress and a wordpress hosting platform, let alone specific ones like WP engine.
@@TrevorPhilipsBro iamverysmart
💥
sounds to me like WordPress license is open-source so they cant force for profit companies to give back to those who's code they are using to make their money, so WordPress is trying to use trademark to force them to give back. This seems to be a trend recently with lots of open source projects, how to keep others from profiting off their work without giving back while still remaining open
This how moodle made its money. Pay for trademark use. Otherwise nobody contributes
The WordPress license does not make WordPress free to use. So they can, as owners of WordPress, require payment of some kind to use WordPress in a commercial manner.
Where is this trend you are talking about? Who else is doing this. They not trying to force them, they give them an offer, they can refuse and host their own plugins.
"do whatever you want with Wordpress code"
"you should give us 8% of your top line revenue"
WP Engine is free to use WordPress code.
Do you understand the difference between using open-source code and using infrastructure and a registered trademark?
"for your protection"
That isn't what this is about though.
WordPress itself is free, but Matt isn't obligated to provide WordPressOrg services for free to a company that sued him. Would you? It's surprising how some people don't understand the distinction between the WordPress project and WordPressOrg, yet still feel confident commenting on the issue.
bad take. rewatch the video kid
"they write less lines of code and make more money!" geez. It feels like Silicon Valley episode when everybody is screaming at Richard to stop talking and he keeps going out yapping, digging himself deeper and deeper
What I liked the most is him mentioning also to look at all the years as reputation. That applies in everything in life. That has to mean something at least as a baseline when there are several parties claiming something.
I'm not interested in any moral or ethical claim here. Legally, it sounds WP Engine is free to use WordPress under the GPL and WordPress is within their rights to refuse to service WP Engine. Matt seems to be right: let WP Engine set up and do their own hosting and there's no argument, WP Engine is just salty about their bottom line. IDK why this is so controversial. WordPress isn't required to provide any free hosting to WP Engine. Seems pretty black and white. Great interview.
As long as they follow the GPL license, there shouldn't be any moral issues. Switch to AGPL or something else if you wanna force contributing back.
And dont try to control how companies use non-trademarked terms that you've even confirmed in writing to be free to be used in any way.
WPF doesn't claim WPEngine cannot use WordPress in their service. They can't use the TRADEMARK "WordPress" in a manner that violates the terms or introduces confusion. Apparently they were selling a PRODUCT called "Core WordPress" while not having a trademark license on WordPress.
@@thekwoka4707I don't think it has standing. It similar to selling Linux. You can sell your own distro of Linux as your own product and call it "X Linux", because you have license to use Linux however you want, including reselling of it. They may have something here, but they didn't present anything close to enough to actually side with them.
@@thekwoka4707 I don't think it's wise to conflate the trademark issue. It's a red-herring. WP can still prohibit WP engine from access its servers without enforcing any trademarks.
This is not a GPL OSS dispute, it is a trademark dispute in combination with a hosting service agreement.
thank you prime. this is a good interview to clear the air within wordpress community
Matt looks exhausted, and thanks for Prime to open this channel for him to explain his side!!!
30M is about 200FTEs - still a paltry amount that A8C gives which is over 1,000. So put that in perspective.
@@AlexSirota sorry new to all this, can you please explain?
and you bought it ... naive
Next title : Heather Brunner talks about WP Engine Situation.
This is an unwarranted shakedown for cash. The message to the WordPress community is, you can be successful but not TOO successful. Automattic strong-arms companies into making donations by force or be hit with sudden mandatory monetary trademark enforcement claims.
The issue is, there is a limit to the goodwill of a company.
You can't be a freeloader and be more successful.
That is plainly a "dick" move.
@@arjix8738 Yes you can. It's fu,cking free software. Supposed to be.
@@arjix8738 Yes, but a "dick" move doesn't constitute breaking a business agreement that never existed.
That's why companies have legal teams who draw up contracts.
In this case there doesn't seem to be a definition of either "freeloader" nor "more successful" but both are brought to appeal to morals in the absence of enforceable contracts.
@@arjix8738 Weaponizing trademark law for this goes against what trademark law is for though.
If you don't want to share, just don't use a Free Software license such as GPL. Choose the right license.
I do get why he's upset, but he's hurting his own case pursuing this and claiming victimhood.
It's completely warranted.
"I'm such a good guy, I do so much charity, how dare YOU don't do the same?? you must be punished!!"
yep that is exactly what he sounded like
That was really fast I don't think other techtubers can acchieve this kind of fast tech news, Thats why the primeagen has "prime" on his name, absolutely terrific
+1 subscriber here, and a well deserved like
just watching some parts of this again and this is SUCH a F***ing good interview - well done
9:58 - clear admission that this is a very personal vendetta, not based on any universal set of principles and no LEGAL grounds for blocking WPE's access to the repo
I think Matt/WPF is perfectly within their rights to block WPE from accessing the repo... WPF are footing the bill for millions of traffic coming from WPE. Why should WPE get to leverage this for free? As far as I can tell, Matt is saying he's willing to turn a blind eye to the cost if they contribute in kind, which is totally fair.
Yeah I think the problem as well is that they call it WP engine, or even like Matt mentions about "Wordpress core". Both of these make it feel like it's something that a laymen could easily read as being a necessary part of hosting wordpress, or at minimum officially sanctioned
As far as WP Engine, the trademark policy 100% allowed unfettered use of “WP” prior to the recent change to their policy saying “don’t make it confusing”. The problem with that recent change, is it’s silly to make that change, considering WP Engjne has existed for a very long time, and only now have they made the trademark change, just because a business became successful doing it. Feels dirty.
I imagine that one of the main reasons folks use WP Engine as their host in the first place, is that they are non-technical people. They may have heard some of these terms, but are not familiar enough with them to be able to discern what is "official" and what is not. It does at least appear that WP Engine is deliberately exploiting that confusion.
Doesn't make much sense that they would rather kill their golden goose than feed it a few scraps of grain.
And I totally can see the confusion. I just checked WP engine out, and as someone that have never used Wordpress I found it difficult to figure out how it was different from just Wordpress. Or even what they are trying to offer me.
I do feel for this guy, but I think he's just struggling seeing other people get super rich of "his" stuff that HE open sourced.
It's too late bro, you opened it up now other people can do what ever the fuck they want with it.
This man gives off super "male feminist Reddit mod" vibes, with a hint of "i watch my girlfriend as she sleeps" vibes 😜🤣🤣😜
25:57 - "Any piece of software that will get millions of dollars worth of engineering effort will always get better"
Yeeeaah, idk about that lol
Including WordPress itself, large piece of shit software
@@eduantech Where's your software that's been 40%+ of the web for more than a decade?
@@jonno081 You can just swallow this weak ass argument...
@@jonno081 homboi here is likely an unwise summer child.
This is awesome, you're a journalist now.
Saying "wp" seems to defeat the purpose of speaking in acronyms seeing as it's twice as many syllables as just saying "wordpress"
yeah, seems forced to avoid their own ambiguity because they tied their own trademark/brand to their open source product. Calling it WordPress would weaken the claim to the trademark... which is why the claim is kinda stupid to begin with... but private equity also definitely sucks
It's not a matter of speaking in acronyms or not, the company "WP Engine" is called "WP Engine", not "WordPress Engine", the latter does not exist, the company is "WP Engine" that's why they say "WP"
What's a Syllable? I'm so dumb 🤣
WordPerfect was way ahead of wordpress, and the internet, when it came to the use of WP as abbreviation.
@@pureheroin9902 name checks out
I've no horse in the game, but he pretty much dodged the question on what's the threshold of company size vs their (non)contribution that would initiate a trademark dispute of this kind? It all seems so arbitrary, based on his own personal feelings, and I would not like to stake my business on someone else's feelings.
All I hear is "I want the donation money!"
I thought WP engine was an official product
Same
same
I mean that's exactly what the alleged problem was
Here we go, more people deceived by WPE. They need to pay up or f--off
Here we go, more people deceived by WPE.
Fuck it if he can outplay them fair game. WP Engine would fleece him if they could. His biggest error is putting his face on this, he should have acted behind the scenes as the WordPress entity. I think he's probably morally in the right too.
He is honest. That's all I see.
@@polarxta2833 honesty often loses in business sadly… strategy wins
WP Engine sponsors a dozen full time developers as well as most WordPress events including the one they were just banned from
@@thewhitefalcon8539 WP Engine self report 40 hours per week of effort (as opposed to Automattics 1000's of hours) , and Events are considered more self promotional. They were a good company till the VC took over.
@@thewhitefalcon8539 Automattic also controls the code contributions and what is on the roadmap etc. Their only comparison so far is against themselves.
This guys mental instability is right now affecting 50% of the worlds websites. Probably 90% of all local businesses are dependent on this guy for their websites. And he is fucking it up for everyone.
Good on Prime for asking some tough questions, this is great.
Now that I've heard the interview with him and I have heard him talk. Totally convinced that this guy is not legal savvy whatsoever and that's why it feels like this is completely out of the blue. He needs serious help with the legal part of the trademark issue. And hopefully this interview will convince him to keep his mouth shut until he gets help
Are you going to interview the other side, that would be hilarious and legendary at the same time.
If they want to, I'm sure he would. But they sound more corpo
@@thekwoka4707 yeah probably Prime wont be able to interview them because most likely WPEngine Lawyers will not allow them.
@@j-p-d-e-v Thats how you know they're the good guys. Lawyers are attracted to honesty.
What do you mean other side? WP Engine is one of the most evil corporations in the world. They have hard KPIs, and literally fired their employees for contributing to open source and not meeting KPIs.
Stop both siding the argument. People like you are the reason Redis maintainer quit open source and RedisLabs was able to take over an awesome product for free.
@@cannaroe1213 lawyers are attracted to money.
The funniest part is seeing your chat call out "his lawyer is calling"
Great commentary. This show is cooking nicely.
Matt: "I can sleep soundly at night based on how I handled the last two weeks"
Also Matt: "Sorry I didn't answer that question well, I haven't got much sleep"
I can sleep soundly at night = my conscience is clear.
I didn't sleep well last night = the actual activity of not getting proper sleep.
Do you even English?
I see the spirit of what he’s trying to say. But I think the informality and ambiguity of the agreements is the issue here. At what level of revenue must you hit before you have to contribute or risk having the trademark enforced? Hosts are at the whim of when Matt decides enough is enough and they must contribute. I imagine Matt sees that as exploitation, and maybe it is. But without clear terms like, you can’t really know. So what I see here is that WP Engine is forcing Automatic’s hand to say exactly where in the sand they draw the line as far as revenue versus contribution. Possibly Matt thinks that these businesses should contribute because it’s the right thing to do. And they probably should. But I think the way he’s been managing it by nudging these companies on the “right direction” but asking for fees or contributions and it leading to an “or else” conversation is probably, technically, extortion, even if his heart is in the right place and he feels he’s pushing companies to be more moral. The naivety of it is probably mostly in thinking these informal agreements, instead of complex licensing agreements, was the way to go. Because it, I imagine he thinks, _shouldn’t_ be necessary. But it probably is.
No he's kicking them off repos and sending extortion texts. The man needs to get some rest and call his lawer because he's looking at jail time here.
@@GetFitEatRight Wdym
It's pretty clear. If you sell a service using the WordPress trademark, you need an agreement with them. It's not about "when is it enforced" that's completely the wrong question here. It doesn't matter at all. If you want to profit from the trademark, you have to give back. It's as easy as that.
I see what you mean and I see what Matt means BUT, in my book, trademark is 0 and 1. What Matt does is wait till someone is making millions then extort them. If I'd be the judge I would say. Give me the list of all companies that are currently in violation and they get notified TODAY. WPE should pay IF there is on paper notice and no dinner chit chat with WPE CEO is not the way to go. I want it black on white. Other ways we they just get notification and termination of all the processes. But as of right now, this look like blackmailing to me.
@@CombobreakerDe yeah but he knew that YEARS AGO, he intentionally waited like he had silent agreement. There is and has to be more to that story. Being on such a high position and calling himself naive is a stretch. He's not stupid, he know's there is more to the story and soon we will find out.
I don't know anything about the situation, but this guy does not pass the vibe check. My gut is telling me that he isn't be truthful.
Edit: Also, around 11 mins he says "Yeah, it's open source you can do what you want with it", then at 15:15 refers to altering the Stripe plugin as "hacking" it. He is very careful about using specific language to paint WP Engine as a bad guy that he's had infinite patience dealing with, but ultimately WP Engine doesn't owe Wordpress anything outside of a possible copyright violation. I believe this is an extortion gambit.
I'm getting the "goes to church on Sunday" vibes.
@@ea_naseer ask him of his opinions on trans people, or just look up what happened on Tumblr a few months ago
yeah, holier than thou backstabber
@@ea_naseer Which obviously makes him dodgy compared to a Venture Capitalist corporation right ?
@@polarxta2833 He literally owns an angel investing firm haha
This is pretty funny stuff. It's always entertaining to see people emotionally lash out when they know they're in a losing legal battle lol
Matt.. the guy that bough a domain name for $100k just to be spiteful to a small developer. He is not a good guy in this, and I have no allegiance to WPEngine (other than being a customer) who is also a VC backed business. This is just about a rich guy being greedy, he doesn't seem to care about the users or community at all.
Agree, if he cared he'd stop the "PLUGIN BLOCKADE" and let us get our updates! I see a huge class-action lawsuit if/when sites begin to get overcome with malware or worse and he needs to be held accountable!!
one of the best channel love all the content
As someone who has struggled almost my whole life wither anger, bitterness, and seeking vengeance. Those things are so clearly at play here. I can see those things I struggle with in Matt's logic
In MBTI terms this is a clear display of toxic Fe. Using Fe to try to extort, manipulate, while still putting a smiling face throughout the shenanigans while not providing anything clear, like Te facts, Ti logic or even "real" Se..
The entire point of "putting it public" is to start smear campaigns, and is a huge professional red flag.
Dude... you are projecting. Matt did not give off ONE HINT of anger in this. He was measured with his words, calm and listening. Must be a wp-engine bot.
Nailed it! Good stuff Prime.
The ice cream analogy doesn't have a 62% CMS market share with over 580 million websites all counting on these themes and plugins remaining accessible for updates, shutting this off makes you the one that doesn't care about the users!! The obligation is to us NOT WP Engine.
Damn i love reading the side chat twatter thing on the side. Every time this dude says something its "No that isnt true and here is why" its so much more informative.
Aside from sidestepping some arguments: why didn't he take it to court instead of threatening to campaign against WP?
I'm inclined to see it as "both sides are doing bad things"
maybe he tried to negotiate it without any pr damage on both sides
but now it seems it gone worse for both 🤣
@@kurku3725 nice negotiating skills
@kurku3725 "The risk I took was calculated... But boy, am I bad at math"
This argument sounds like the guy that was upset because his neighbor changed the password on the neighbor Wi-Fi. Just because you have stolen something in the past does not mean you have the right to steal it today.
@@CalifornianViking Case law for trademarks is like this. It's not about stealing, but about a specific segment of IP laws. If a company doesn't actively defend their trademark, they might have a bad case in court. Which is probably why this never went to court or was handled in a professional manner.
Trying to now take it to the "court of the public", will only hurt Wordpress and open source in general.
I love that you didn't soft ball this interview. I'm quite impressed how you handled this.
That's the man who's gotten more servers rooted and turned into torrent trackers and open mail relays than anyone else in history. Definitely need to celebrate him.
Dear MAtt - I Grateful to you...uggg....
F
Attended my first Wordcamp on STL in 2014 ish....so many grateful uggs.
This guy doesn't seem to understand trademark law; you cannot selectively enforce trademarks, that's for copyright. You have to protect your trademark against all uses in order to maintain that trademark.
I would assume Automattic has a team of lawyers that are well versed in trademark law.
@@myname7021 No no no no, AnthonyDresser is the ultimate oracle about trademarks (contains irony).
@@myname7021 Ya... and they should know the fact that they changed the use of WP how they did will deal critical damage. I doubt they either can stand up to the man baby of matt, or are smart enough to see they've already lost with what has transpired.
@@myname7021 All he has, is a team of lawyers willing to take money to do lawyering work. It is correct to say you can't selectively enforce trademark. The problem is it's not black and white. Selective enforcement in some cases can result in not being able to enforce your trademark. Failure to prosecute all of the other people using the term in the same way has the effect of "weakening the strength" of the trademark, which has legal implications in a court. I am not a lawyer, but the continued use of the trademark in this same way by a whole variety of customers, means I don't think a trademark case would be successful.
"You have to protect your trademark against all uses" No you don't - Its up to you.
My spidey tingle is going crazy... I'm getting so many Willem Dafoe's Goblin vibes about to reveal his dark side here!
I hear what he's saying... But the waters are pretty muddy and some of his answers do feel evasive. I'm interested in seeing how this develops.
"the code is open source, you can do whatever you want"
"the code" , they are free to host it themselves
This is where I am like dude wants to play both sides. Buts what’s to stop him from coming after the next person.
Code NOT the name
@@aidenberzinsjust don't infringe trademark, duh! Problem is that WP Engine branding is so similar to WordPress official branding WP Engine looks like official product from WordPress.
even very permissive licenses like BSD or Apache or MIT don't let you use the name of the open source product as your own.
What a great interview!
Every attorney representing him is cringing fucking hard right now.
Really? He's been in this for so many years, probably works with people who know him well and know how he operates already.
You fail to explain why. I do not think so at all. In fact they lawyer who with "feared" business lawyers and are to scared to speak publicly, use smear tactics and lies. He is transparent and open and goes on a stream even when tired. He already shifts the court of public opinion more towards his side, who are surprisingly a lot on the side of some investment firm. There is nothing he said here that could be reasonably used against him so WTF are you talking about?
@@EmilyRose0 This aged like milk lmao. You still think it's a good idea to talk about the things you're about to get sued in public?
Ohh man.
Prime is the best interviewer. He is direct. Ohh I love this.
6:55 He keeps LITERALLY describing extortion or blackmail (all you have to do is pay me and this all goes away), but with this sickening fake "nice guy" Mr. Rodgers facade.
It's not extortion if there's been a trademark violation.
amazing interview
hmmm i don't buy it.
"wp" was free to use.
contributing back is not a requirement. building a half a billion dollars company on top of some open source stuff isn't an argument as long as the company complies with the licenses.
matt was extorsive on wp engine, willingly or not.
It's not the "WP Engine" name that's in contention, it's that they describe themselves as "managed WordPress hosting" instead of "managed hosting for WordPress". Like how third party apps for Windows are not Microsoft Windows apps. One construction indicates compatibility, the other infers origin. "WordPress hosting" means hosting by WordPress, whereas "hosting for WordPress" means a hosting service that is compatible with the WordPress software.
One more “open source” going AGPL, probably.
The also used and specifically sold WordPress.
watch the video before commenting.
@@k225 Very true. Like apps are always "Slack for Windows, Slack for MacOS". Selling a PRODUCT called "Core WordPress" seems pretty clearly a violation. It's not "Core (for Basic Wordpress)"
@@k225if that’s true, why did they immediately update the terms on usage of “WP”?
Really good content!!!!
Doesn’t sound like Matt has much of a case and is just complaining and even bullying them into money. Feels like Automattic is in need of cash and shaking down a big target that nobody will feel bad for because they’re PE-owned.
@@Necropheliac I didn't realize they did a 288M funding round in 2021 which included BlackRock and others.. criticizing companies for PE investment is a bit hypocritical eh?
At 5 minutes in he said they had a choice of how to pay but they chose zero. Then he sued them. Seems to me that is the perfect definition of extortion. WordPress is probably going to lose this lawsuit.
Next target for Matt is Azure. He want to get 8% og Azure total revenuel……
Great interview!
1. If you would rather not spend money on maintaining remote services. Don't add cloud services into your open-source software that will cost you money once it scales.
2. If you don't want others modifying your code, adding their own or removing original lines. Don't launch your software with an open-source license.
3. Don't weaponize your trademark to extract money from others. This is a legal abuse. Trademarks are to protect your brand and business (defense), not to extort money from others. That is what patents are for (royalty fees).
He does not mention 'license' because it's open source, but is basically demanding precisely that and using the trademark element. Just like Google claims Android is free but demands OEM's to pay for the hardware certification per device. Regardless of what naming you are using, it's the same. (money for using your software).
He complains WP Engine modified the code and then in another part says it's open source, and you can do whatever you want with it. What a contradiction!
He wants to keep the users calmed marketing it as open source, but at the same time talks as if WP Engine must pay them royalties.
Developers can't have it both ways, your software is either commercial with a proprietary license or open source. So many companies and developers lately wish to benefit from open source but impose their requirements to make money. There is nothing wrong with making money, we all need to put food in your tables, just don't pretend it is open source and be honest that it's a commercial license.
Nobody has to contribute anything to open source. It's called free for a reason, free of your money, free of your time, free to use however you want. It's nice and welcome behavior to do it, in particular if you make money, we all should give back. But that is the equivalent to a donation or tipping. It is not an obligation to give back.
WordPress itself uses a lot of open-source software themselves. It would not exist otherwise.
Watch @ThePrimeTimeagen face during the interview. That should tell you everything you need to know.
Good writeup! I usually don't comment on youtube, but I just couldn't find any redeemable point after this interview for doing these things.
Did you miss the part of him saying the company could contribute their own engineering hours? Did you also miss reading the comments how many people thought WPE was the actual company?
As a non-coder if I were to host WP I would vote with my euros and host with anyone but WPE.
@@vitalis I did not. You do realize from your wording that 'could' means optional. Nowhere in the open-source license, they are obligated to do so.
Thanks for the talk guys!
Ive been on tumblr for awhile, before it was owned by automattic. This dude is famous on there for making extremely rash moderation decisions and then very publicly doubling down on them in every avenue he can. It does not surprise me that he showed up in your chat after you had talked about him to do exactly that
He's such a petty tyrant, is he a chess master yet?
Who??? Mat???
Interesting
13:55 conference organisation and sponsorship is valid contribution to the community
Prime, I’m glad you’re putting my $5 a month to good use my guy, the interviews and the content lately have been 🔥🔥🔥
Something I think people are missing out, is he can't bring receipts to a spur of the moment stream, when he's just engaged legal procedures.
Legal would not want him to share anything that would be used in court.
Is Matt coming across as Naive, yes. He admits as much himself.
As much as you can do agreements via email, and get all meetings on record as much as possible.
Great interview interesting points on both sides. I think my biggest problem is conflating the idea of the trademark and them using their services (which I see as separate points), and then the fact that no solid threshold was mentioned, when is too big?
I love that the ads are just hostinger cackling maliciously.
Thats all well and good. But don't effect your core user base. We are now looking to migrate 20+ sites off WPE to something else because we can't receive security updates due to him going "scorched earth". So now I'm looking to abandon WP from my tech stack all together because we can't afford to manage all the server side BS using WP brings. Settle this in court over the Trademark violation. Don't make a stink of it and harm your users.
good point, not sure if that part was thought out too well...
You might want to blame WP Engine for that.
What server side BS? I manage far more sites than that across tens of servers by myself. It is a one person job. Automation and monitoring is your friend.
That is 100% WP Engine's fault. They should have their own local mirrors -- which they are allowed to do -- rather than pulling from another website. They own the responsibility for the impact on THEIR customers. You can disagree with Matt on a lot but you cannot on that. As the server owner he is allowed to decide who can and cannot use the website / server.
It will take a week at max for WP Engine to have proxy or vpn setup to pull the updates. Another to have their own mirror, which they should have as it would save then bandwidth costs.
dude.. you are good at this!
Thank you Prime for being actually awesome.
Gene out there asking the right questions to the right person and forcing him to clarify
I've seen a lot of people defending Matt/WP but they're all missing the point here: At the core of this is the reality that the users of WordPress are under NO legal obligation to contribute to the project. You can't have it both ways when choosing a popular OSS license for a project. This is simply a personal vendetta against WPE for their success in the market. I've been in Matt's position having built and run a successful OSS project with large usage and his claims have zero merit (though he's been able to raise a ton more VC $ than I did, like an absurd amount). If the issue is the trademark well the 10+ years of zero enforcement plus their previous statements that using "WP" is acceptable, then the trademark claims are baseless. This has all just been so damn sad to watch and I don't think it will end well for WordPress or the community.
Seeing what the guy is like explains so much about WP...
I love that Matt lives in a world where $100,000 a year is "nothing" to him.
Things are relative, it's not inappropriate. While Microsoft sponsoring some Gay Pride parade in Prague is cool, we don't pretend that means they are the ultimate champions of the gays. Cause we also know how much they did to do that was 1. marketing to get their name on things, and 2. a drop in the bucket from them.
If you make $500m a year on the back of another service, leaching resources, and you only give them $100k, that's certainly not "enough" under most math. That's like a 0.2% tax rate. Yes, it's not strictly "nothing", but it is "relatively" speaking.
he wants 8% giveback not 0.2%
seeing as theyre dumping TENS of times that on marketing ( the 0.2%), it makes sense for his demands
Appreciate you asking tough questions.
will Matt get mad at another hosting company and turn off access to plugins for them too? That's the question that is harming the wordpress community right now. Matt needs to give clear guidelines on when/how he will ask for contributions from hosting companies. That will reduce consumer uncertainty on if they will have access to plugins.
No if they don't use the letters WP in thair name or in the plans
He explained that in the interview.
@@polarxta2833 no he didn’t. he gave a “i know it when i see it” answer.
@@ivan.jeremic It's not just WP... did you listen at all?
Braindead.
You are the man to watch for hot button tech issues,
He just admits that Automattic/himself decides to enforce Trademark based upon his feeling of vibes. You gotta codify this stuff or you gotta deal with it. He complains private equity is capricious, but this is the definition of capricious.
So he is Automattic? He talks like it is a seperate company he has no control of.
@@heinzerbrew He is the CEO of Automattic.
@@Patrick-et2bq ok, then his wording was very weird and makes me question what I watched. A CEO doesn't know the criteria the company uses...
@@heinzerbrew yeah, it is really confusing for me to understand his true intention here. He has interests in both the WordPress organization as well as making companies pay licensing fees to Automattic.
He brags about how many hours the Automattic employees contribute to WordPress, but it is him having his employees work on his project that he co-founded. That's great, I just don't get why he expects everybody else to do the same thing.
with the context of how this guy acts normally, I feel like this is a load of hot air