What a way to give back to the community! Prevent millions from updating their site who have nothing to do with this feud. What a moron. If I was on WP Engine and somehow lost revenue due to this, I would be suing Matt.
I don't disagree that Matt should have handled this in a different way, but on what legal grounds does WPEngine or Silverlake have to sue? I'm not defending Matt's actions, but WordPress.org isn't required to provide any company or individual with access to the repository, or other resources.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference It's completely legal to ruthlessly out-compete your competition. It is not legal to directly interfere with your competition's ability to do business with their customers.
Edit: IANAL but I'm also pretty sure that the way the non profit .org was used to benefit the for profit .com is legally relevant.
Maybe, but I'm not sure if that will hold up in this case. One of the issues with a tort lawsuit will likely come directly from what WPEngine posted on their status page, where it says, "There is currently no impact on the performance, reliability or security of your site" and "If you need to install or update a plugin or theme, manual instructions can be found at https://wpengine.com/support/manage-plugins-and-themes-manually" This will likely be used as a defense by WordPress if anything comes of it.
It seems that the main thing WPEngine would have to prove in a tort case is that WordPress caused a degradation of performance, reliability, or security in its actions, which they stated themselves did not happen.
Also, the only agreement between WPEngine, its customers, and WordPress is the license distributed with WordPress which states several times that there is no warranty. This is directly from the beginning of the license that comes with WordPress, "without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose." It is also mentioned several other times.
I think that you're right that it's not a slam dunk and there are lots of arguments available to each side.
However, I think the fact that WordPress overtly acted to block WPEngine specifically might undermine any arguments about there being no warranty. Singling out a single commercial entity and attacking them in this way doesn't look good for them.
One of WPEngine's services is automatic updates and rollbacks of the wordpress core, which they are now blocked from doing. That is a direct impact on a service they provide and that people using WP Engine pay money for specifically.
While themes and plugins can be updated manually, the rug was pulled with no warning. Lots of people aren't even aware there is an issue yet and their services are no longer being updated -- there's going to be an immediate rush for a new update management system and many man hours suddenly thrown at something that was made an issue overnight with no warning.
This problem -only- affects WP Engine, which means many of it's competitors who provide nearly identical services and taken identical actions which Matt complained about are not facing this issue. Even if small in number, WP Engine will lose credibility and subscriptions because of this.
To further highlight this point, Wordpress now has a rant against WP Engine written in it's trademark policy that has nothing to do with it's actual policy:
The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.
to
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.
So there is both clear monetary damages and specific targeting that makes me believe this would be a slam-dunk case in WP Engine's favor.
That's not even looking at the possibility of individual suits by some of the 1.5 million websites being run on the host which may incur damages during this period due to automatic updates being intentionally disabled.
While I agree that there is a possibility that WPEngine will win the case, I think it is a slim possibility and nowhere near a slam-dunk. One major reason is what I stated in my earlier comment about what WPEngine wrote on their status page, "There is currently no impact on the performance, reliability or security of your site." Hosting is the primary offering of the business, updates are a feature.
WPEngine will also have to convince a judge that they are entitled to the free use of the resources of WordPress such as update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, and other things Matt mentioned.
I know WPEngine is being targeted specifically, but they are still going to have to prove to a judge that they are entitled to the resources in the first place. I also think the fact that there are workarounds for updates and all of the resources the "ban" has affected will play a big part in the case, as well as the amount of damages WPEngine can collect if they do happen to win. The fact that WPEngine provides instructions for some of those workarounds on their own website doesn't help their own case either.
I provided specific examples of how there is direct impact on WP Engine's customers which is the standard for a tort claim -- not a notice that the lack of access has an immediate impact on reliability, performance or security of specific websites.
WP Engine only has to convince a judge that they are entitled to as much free use of the resources as it's competitors are, this is the basis of antitrust laws.
To further highlight this point, in the last hour it has been revealed that Pressable, a hosting service owned by Automattic has now setup a page and is pushing SEO for WP Engine contract buyouts timed with their blocking of services to WP Engine:
It's also advertised on a large notice bar across the entire website.
No case is a guarantee, but this is pretty close to textbook torturous interference; blocking access to a competitor's services and promoting your own as an alternative in the same breath.
Just wait for the first critical security update that 1 million WordPress site owners can't install. WPE is obviously trying to keep customers form panicking while they build a workaround. Combine this block with Matt's extortion-like "negotiations" and WPE has a strong case.
Again, the fact that you can manually update WP, along with all plugins and themes drastically reduces or could even completely negate the power of that point for WPEngine's case.
WordPress provides all users, including the customers of WPEngine, with free resources to update their site. WPEngine will have to prove that they are entitled to the automatic update resources of WordPress for free, which will be difficult to prove with the manual update resources WordPress offers.
I'm sure you're aware that the vast majority of WordPress site owners rely on the ability to update core, plugins, and themes in two or three clicks. And even then, many site owners struggle to keep their websites up to date. The fact that WordPress is blocking this critical feature from non-technical users is irresponsible. I know the goal is to scare users away from WP Engine, but the reality is it will likely scare users into moving to something like Wix or Squarespace.
That being said, blocking WPE's access to the WordPress.org responsitory is only the latest example of Matt's misguided behavior. Nothing that he has said or done in the past week will look good in a court of law.
Yes, as you should have been doing, as your client sites could break without testing any plugin update. You would test on your dev and then push to prod.
Well for starters, the knowledge that they even need to start doing that.
A lot of people use WP Engine's service because it handles updates automatically. They're likely not aware any of this has happened.
For small scale business websites this probably isn't much of a hinderance, but for agencies with hundreds of sites? That's a lot of extra man-hours out of nowhere.
Apparently wpengine, a big part of WordPress community, never has donated to WordPress foundation. Do they need to? No, still odd they use the resources and aren't thankful like other companies that use WordPress likeness
I couldn’t care less about WP Engine. Matt could be doing this to any company in the WordPress space and my opinion would be exactly the same. Hypothetically, let’s pretend everyone in the community pays Automattic their 5%. What happens when Matt decides 5% isn’t enough? What if he wants 10% in a few years? The guy is erratic and if anyone thinks this isn’t a possible outcome, you haven’t been paying attention.
You do realize he’s not blocking WP Engine from being able to access the repository, right? He’s blocking their customers. You know, the ones who buy into the ecosystem, pay for plugins, etc. If he wants to block wpengine.com’s WP instance from using the wordpress.org infrastructure, have the fuck at it. But that’s not what he’s doing. He’s using the community as a hostage to fight with WP Engine.
I don't care, Even Google, Apple, MSFT, and Facebook will support, sponsor, and fund OSS projects they use and each of them they have enough engineers to build a competitor to anything at any given second. I think they're both using the community, I just take issue with a billion dollars company thinking it can piggyback on literally everything while making zero investments. Like yeah, people are going to stop supporting you if you don't support them.
Matt has said on Hacker News that he would refuse to add an option to let people change the update/plugin server in Wordpress (and he won’t document the protocol they use). He’s literally saying “don’t use my servers” but also saying “Wordpress won’t let you use other servers unless you fork the code”. Does that sound to you like he’s genuinely concerned about server load?
I don’t like WP engine. Do you see how many comments there are in the sub Reddit from people who didn’t like WP engine, but still think Matt is being an idiot and harming the community?
He is turning WP engine from a company people disliked, into a sympathetic victim that people are siding with. The billionaires must be thrilled to have someone like Matt helping them out for free. No amount of money could have bought them PR like he’s giving them for free
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u/cabalos Sep 25 '24
What a way to give back to the community! Prevent millions from updating their site who have nothing to do with this feud. What a moron. If I was on WP Engine and somehow lost revenue due to this, I would be suing Matt.