Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

(torment-nexus.mathewingram.com)

154 points davidandgoliath | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 18:53 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

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codegeek ◴[17 Oct 24 20:55 UTC] No.41873704[source]▶

Mullenweg just keeps digging. He is the only person I have ever seen interacting in such a petty manner that he made a company backed by Private Equity look like a victim. If Trademark was the issue, why did it take him over a decade ? Why is he not going after all the other gazillion WP providers that use similar phrase on their website ? We all know the answer. The only company (WP Engine) that beat his for profit company (wordpress.com). He is just salty.

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pessimizer ◴[17 Oct 24 22:06 UTC] No.41874296[source]▶

>>41873704 #

What you've said is completely true, but I still can't detect any bad behavior here. He stopped supporting a company that was threatening (not unfairly) his company with his software. Why would he be obligated to justify that?

If you built your business next to mine, and I shared e.g. my water infrastructure with you for free or for a nominal fee, then one day your business got large enough to threaten my business, am I obligated to let you keep using my water, or should you have figured something else out long ago?

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1. bigiain ◴[18 Oct 24 00:41 UTC] No.41875304[source]▶

>>41874296 #

I'd love to see the receipts where Automattic is paying 8% of their revenue to Rasmus Lerdorf or a company he's in control of?

Seems totally fair, right? WordPress is 100% reliant on PHP and getting updates, new features, and security fixes for free, none of which the PHP project is obligated to provide?

Surely Automattic, a company valued at over 7 billion with annual revenues of over 700mil is happily paying Rasmus 50 odd million a year?

No? Why not? Are the rules different for WPEngine and Silver Lake compared to Automattic and Blackrock/Alta Park?

And, you know what? You can't run Wordpress without Linux, Windows, macOS, and maybe a few *BSD operating systems to run it on. I guess Matt's owes Linus and Bill and Tim, and a bunch of BSD project leads another $50mil.

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