Afaik, some examples are: DigitalOcean, Linode (or whatever it's called today) and also Amazon AWS (via the LightSail offering).
Is Automattic going after them as well?
And the moment lawyers are involved, forget it..
This feud is the type of thing that’s entertaining when the people involved are CEOs, upper management or tech personalities with all the high school drama and pet hates, when they start changing licenses, involving lawyers and suing each other it’s not fun anymore and quite pathetic. No one looks good in this.
Also not much of a fan of Wordpress.org after using it for 15+ years (and recently ditching it), but that’s mainly because of having to field questions from non-technical friends who have bloated awful Wordpress sites riddled with malware or abandonware.
Even less of a fan of Wordpress.com
But in the bigger picture Wordpress - or the idea of Wordpress - is a good thing.
But who on earth is advising Mullenweg here? Or is he so powerful within the Wordpress ecosystem that he can just do crazy things like this and everyone bends to him as WP BDFL? (Though arguably now more D than B)
I thought his presentation where he kicked off this war was a little odd. He seemed either very nervous or very amped up, there were a lot of awkward vocal ticks/tremors/nervous laughter/heavy breathing in his run up to his “big reveal”. Or maybe he’s always like that. This was my first time watching him speak and I came away thinking less of him and less of WPE. But mainly less of him because I already had a pretty febrile opinion of WPE.
This latest salvo is just crazy. As someone else in this thread has said it’s Muskesque.
But maybe that’s the strategy. “Just be out and out crazy and burn everything to the ground to try and save it”.
I wonder how many “normal” wordpress users are aware of this stuff, or whether it’s confined to a little bubble of tech industry folk reaching for the popcorn?
Before:
> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.
When in doubt about your use of the WordPress or WordCamp name or logo, please contact the Foundation for clarification.
After:
> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.
> If you would like to use the WordPress trademark commercially, please contact Automattic, they have the exclusive license. Their only sub-licensee is Newfold.
> For non-commercial use, you can contact us here at the Foundation.
They literally made an example out of WP Engine in their trademark policy.