WordPress.org bans WP Engine, blocks it from accessing its resources
WordPress.org bans WP Engine, blocks it from accessing its resources
WordPress drama went up another notch on Wednesday after WordPress.org banned hosting provider WP Engine from accessing its resources.
The blocked resources in question? Automatic security and features updates and plugin/theme repository access. Matt Mullenweg reasserted his claim that this was a trademark issue. In tandem, WordPress.org updated its Trademark Policy page to forbid WP Engine specifically (way after the Cease & Desist): from "you are free to use ['WP'] n any way you see fit" to a diatribe:
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.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/26/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained attempts to provide a full chronology so far.
Edit:
The WordPress Foundation, which owns the trademark, has also filed to trademark “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.” Developers and providers are worried that if these trademarks are granted, they could be used against them.
Would it be wrong to hope they manage to commit some gross act of mutual destruction, and that the outcome would be that I never have to deal with Wordpress ever again?
That would be great but the reality is that client’s mindsets need to change. I tried to explain to a client that Wordpress is not a good fit for their complex web application and yet they didn’t wanna switch to anything else. People are way too worried about new tech and wanna stick with whatever they know, even if it causes massive problems.
Wordpress is not a good fit for their complex web application
Seriously. People want to shove everything into Wordpress then get cranky when you can't make Wordpress into a ecommerce store, marketing platform, personal blog, file sharing service, and NFT marketplace.
And then it gets hacked because they needed 14 SEO plugins, 2 different form plugins, and were not going to pay for managed updates because that's easy they can do it themselves.
I haven't done web work for well over a decade and recently was surprised to learn that Wordpress is still very relevant. I remember back then, seeking alternatives as we expected it to become more of a legacy thing a few years down the track, so we were on the lookout for future-proofing client sites with a better foundation. At that point it was a decade old and annoying af because it morphed into a messy way of doing websites because people misused it's original purpose. Brain had to think like a blog and then trick it into doing what you want, kind of like using tables to structure pages before CSS-P saved the day.
This year I stopped to let my clients pick the CMS. I tell them you wouldn’t ask a carpenter to make a chair, but restrict them to only use metal.
Wordpress is not a good fit for virtually any modern application. It's designed as a blogging platform and basically no one makes blogs anymore. That functionality kind of got eaten up by Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, so no one needs blogs.
Instead of letting WordPress die the death it most definitely deserves they shoehorned in functionality, which would be fine if it wasn't such a bodge job.
I have off-and-on searched for alternative software for personal blogs that can be self-hosted and it doesn’t seem like there are many options anymore. The only ones I’ve seen are WriteFreely and FlatPress. Are there any other options you’re aware of?
Depends on if you need a CMS, or if you can use a static site generator.
For a CMS, I'm still a fan of Ghost and it has (mostly) not enshittified to the point it's unpleasant to use.
If you don't need the whole CMS thing, there's an awful lot of options. (And hosting them is super simplified since you can just stuff the output into a S3 bucket/Cloudflare Pages/Github Pages/a dozen other providers for basically free.)
Any suggestions for a free easy to use alternative to wp?
There really isn't one that's a true alternative to WP.
There are plenty of nice static site generators, but those are significantly harder to use and not just drag and drop, they also don't have the huge plugin marketplace that WP does.
Everyone loves to complain about WP (rightfully so in some cases, it has its own problems), but will suggest alternatives that are nothing like it.
Yeah, open source licenses don't entitle you to use trademarks.
This looks pretty bad to me.
WP Engine for WordPress.
That seems to be the commonly accepted solution if you look at other 3rd party trademark cases - situations like "RIF is fun for Reddit" coming to mind.RIF did have to change their name though. https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/el8ri3/reddit_is_fun_is_being_renamed_to_rif_is_fun_for/
Like JohnEdwa said, using a trademark to refer to someone else's product is considered nominative fair use: "referencing a mark to identify the actual goods and services that the trademark holder identifies with the mark."
What does WP stand for then?
I must be old - it's WordPerfect to me.
Exactly what I thought. I'd love to sit a young person today in front of that blank blue screen with the blinking cursor. Now, I have to go take my pills before bed.
WillPeoplenoticethecashgrab
Wow Matt really looking bad on this one. This just reeks of trying to push out a major business competitor to wordpress.com and abusing control over wordpress.org to do it.
ThePrimeagen invited Matt to explain what's going on.
TL;DW Matt's claim is that he tried to get WP Engine to pay for a Trademark license (or whatever it's called - I'm recalling from watching yesterday), over several months, and they tried to legally block him in every way. Their self-claimed contributions to Wordpress were (as he tells it) that they held conferences where they promoted their own stuff only - code contributions have been minimal.
So the combination of not willing to pay for the trademark + not contributing back (not in code, not in helping the community) is Matt's reasoning for blocking them from using Wordpress' resources.
He also mentioned that he has good relations with other Wordpress hosts, so it's not like he's trying to block anyone else from hosting, but they were all willing to pay for the use of the Trademark (and/or contribute back).
This is accurate, but also, "minimal" here is 40 hours of code contributions per week compared to Automattic's near-4000. Additionally, WP Engine is the biggest Wordpress.com competitor.
The open-source side of WordPress is pretty pissed off at Matt right now. The Slack is heavily downvoting/disliking all of this.
Wordpress is a security hole anyway, use something else if you have to use plugins for your usecase.
Just not Drupal. Its still pretty bad.
Hopefully this spurs Automaticc to put more attention into the fediverse. With Tumblr moving to use Wordpress code that could bring all tumblr blogs to the fediverse and get more programmers and resources interested
Fuck WordPress, but also it kinda sounds like WordPress is more in the right here.
Nah. WordPress is GPL, they can't bitch about someone else reselling it. That would be like Linus Thorvalds blocking a company that sells linux distro because he doesn't like them.
And also wordpress is a piece of trash.
Wordpress is junk.
greymatter blog superiority
WordPress is total garbage and businesses should really stop outsourcing web development to a bunch of 3rd world outsourcing companies who hire "developers" for poverty wages that can't even write a single line of code. Sites are getting stuffed with dozens of useless freemium plugins, everything uses jQuery, and it's one giant security risk. Often times a static site generator can do the job just fine or use a headless CMS like payload. There are plenty of alternatives: https://jamstack.org/headless-cms/. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Wix, and all the other mutant leftover abominations belong in the trash and set on fire. Fucking normies and corpo boomers.
That's a lot of hate from you there. I can almost smell it in my room.
Drupal...damn it's been years since someone mentioned Drupal. I remember it being the next big thing....