Oddbean new post about login | logout I did not follow the details so far. but I have high respect for and trust in Matt. isn’t it about a trademark misuse? that could have easily be solved?
My reading is that Matt was basically extorting WP Engine and the trademark thing is just a post hoc justification.
how did he do that? it looked to me reasonable that they should not mis/abuse the WP trademark.
It can't easily be solved. They built an entire brand around WP (as the trademark rules allowed) years ago and now he's changing the rules after extorting them. That isn't worthy of respect in my opinion. He is making weak claims in an attempt to avoid competing with them.
+1 I'm biased towards Automattic, for sure, because everything I've seen them do has been to support Free Code ecosystems and social web communities. Like hiring the ActivityPub for WP developer fulltime to work on the plugin. I've only skimmed the first half of the article you linked. But if even half of Matt's claims about what WP Engine are doing are true, It reminds me of the shitfuckery LibLime / PTFS tried with the Koha project, or Oracle with OpenOffice. In which case, Automattic and the WP Foundation are well within their rights to use any means at their disposal to protect the WP ecosystem from this kind of corporate parasitism. Especially in its particularly pernicious private equity firm, see; https://redgreenandblue.org/2023/01/07/cory-doctorow-antitrust-twilight-zone-thats-feeding-monopoly-explosion/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-plundering-the-u-s-economy/ https://www.theverge.com/23758492/private-equity-brendan-ballou-plunder-finance-doj
Also Private equity rips off its investors, too: https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/08/sucker-at-the-table/#clucks-definance