I'm going to create a compilation of all the times Theo pauses, sighs and asks "how do I wanna ask this?" only to go and ask the same question and get the same answer.
54:58 no, Theo. You're wrong. When a smaller brand uses a bigger brand, it's promoting itself using the bigger brand. Only when a bigger brand references a smaller brand it can then be considered as promoting the smaller brand. WPEngine uses the Wordpress brand because that brand adds more value to their business than their own brand. They are ripping off the Wordpress brand. Note: I don't use Wordpress, never had, never will, I don't even like PHP, and I've never heard about WPEngine up until now. So I have no stakes in this matter, and I'm completely unbiased.
@@NunoFerreiraX That's a very narrow way of looking at it. WP Engine IS promoting WordPress. If my grandma decided tomorrow that she wanted to start a blog and the first thing she comes across is WP Engine, she will also now become aware of WordPress. That's what advertising is, awareness. It's generally thought of as a way of promoting and making money, but that's simply a byproduct. In addition to the advertising effect, WP Engine has also added a new user to the WordPress ecosystem, acclimating that person to the WordPress framework and making far easier to reach for WordPress anytime they need a blogging solution moving forward. This is a net benefit for WordPress.
You're right, but the point Theo was making was whether WPE was contributing to the ecosystem, and how, full stop. (I.e. separately from whether the WordPress brand was benefitting WPE.) It is important to consider this in isolation, because Matt himself said that contributing to the ecosystem is effectively one way to license the WordPress trademark. WPE's existence, providing a service to 1.5 million willingly paying website customers, is objectively a positive contribution to the ecosystem. Whether Matt/Automattic considers this enough may be a judgment call only he can make (as well as the relative opportunity cost, if a host with better quality/service would arise if WPE faded out of existence), but the point should at least be acknowledged, because other hosts may also think they are contributing to the ecosystem by offering hosting and the waters are muddied. Matt could use your point to say why he doesn't think it's enough, but it would be helpful to articulate all of this properly, so that there is clarity about the relationship between contributions vs trademark licensing.
@@JaredThirsk providing a paying service to a third party is not a contribution to the ecosystem. Exploring the success of an ecosystem and not giving a part back is not contributing.
@@JaredThirsk "WPE's existence, providing a service to 1.5 million willingly paying website customers, is objectively a positive contribution to the ecosystem." This is not "objectively true" and, in fact, is false imo. providing a paying service is not "contributing to the ecosystem" just because you use the WP brand. It just means you're using the WP brand to make money. Wth are you contributing? lol. nothing. They dont contribute any code (or less than 1 percent of the code) and the dont contribute any money. and they also dont contribute free education. They make more money that most of the other WP hosts, yet contribute the least. It's greed. Not contribution. That being said, i think it's Matts fault for assuming they would be good faith. I dont think he's going to win this lawsuit.
One looks like Richard during exciting startup days at Bachman's house, the other looks like defeated Richard after moving to corporate offices with a board to answer to.
My problem here, is it feels like Mat counters every moral argument with a legal one and every legal argument with a moral one. which just feels like arguing in bad faith.
I am not sure you guys fathom what it means editing an open source for someone to piggy back on it, make billions, then piss in your eyes instead of giving back, and you help him stay in business? I do not think so, VCs are like vultures, they care about their customers even less than Matt, otherwise they would have given back to the community that made it possible for them to thrive. It's a gentleman agreement, if you break it, it's more than fair you get technical repercussions on the platform you have been piggybacking from. The mistake is on the VC's head, they bluffed and he called it, now they f*cked and deserve every little bit of it, if you want too much you get nothing! End of story, I am with Matt. 'trop bon, trop con' you say in French.
@@BoominGame nah, you should establish clear contract and rules for everyone to follow, then you are totally fine taking actions against those who do not behave. What it's not cool is creating blurry lines that you can arbitrarily enforce depending on how you feel. Also you can act wrong regardless if you are a VC or an open source contributor, those generalisations are dogmatic and unhelpful, specially when discussing the details of a given case.
Auth.js creator here. I posted a link but apparently UA-cam took it down. If you go to our website, there's a history section under the contributions page about the project's development and how it came to be. Vercel never owned the project, but they generously let me work on it in the past (I'm a Vercel employee) as they are great supporters of OSS. I assume that's where the confusion came from.
"There are a lot of things that are not my style that I have to do as a CEO"--Theo Brown That shit hit me in the face like a shovel. Bravo man. Bravo! Needed to hear that.
To be honest, this should've all just been a C&D and a post explaining the confusion and delaying tactics. Maybe even a paragraph about how it's not about the WP part of their name specifically. There was no need for the name-calling, and other stuff that will likely just hurt your court case in court, and potentially give them a reason to sue you instead.
From Matt's explanation of him and Heather's interactions, think the fact that there was a personal relationship involved may have gotten in the way of what should have been simple business dealings. That and the inclusion of community politics, which always makes things messy imho
My take away from this interview is that Matt has legitimate grievances with WP Engine that were not publicly visible but his reaction to realizing he was led on inflicted more harm upon himself, his community and the customers of WP Engine than it did to WP Engine. I really appreciate Theo calling that out and offering to help talk Matt down from taking such sudden rash action if he starts feeling such an escalation of things in the future.
TBH, I thought Theo was pretty tedious from 50m to 60m and a bit condescending throughout the entire interview. There's no way this whole thing has done more damage to Matt or WordPress than it has to WP Engine.
@alchemist_one On that point, you are completely right. This is a sad situation with major implications for the people directly involved and the entire community. I believe this had been 'cooking' in Matt's mind for some time, but he needed more time to cool off. He should have found a better or different strategy to address the issues he was having with WPE, or even just quit and fought another day. His decisions seem too hot-headed, and someone in his position can't afford to act like that. In the end, I believe he broke some of the trust people had in him, even though one might argue that he's actions can be justified.
55:00 - No Theo, there is a difference between contributing to Wordpress by promoting it to your buddy (because you like the eco system) and "contributing to Wordpress" by promoting it as a business (because you make money).
Isn't that why he continually suggests there are different ways of contributing? I at least never got the impression he was saying they were the same. Instead was suggesting there is a plethora of ways in which contributions can be made.
Yes, there are other ways to contribute, but „contributing“ by promoting your business is something that is wholly in their financial interest, not something to give credit for.
@@t1nytim I think you are right in the sense that Theo believes that there are different ways of contributing - while Matt differs between what is "contribution" and what is "paid promotion".
This. The reason that WP Engine doesn't also promote Drupal is because that destroys their *positioning* in the marketplace. Most businesses that use Wordpress evaluate more than one hosting provider, and if you do a sales call with WP Engine, their entire pitch is that you should host Wordpress with them because they understand it better than anyone else. The WP Engine branding is to win B2B sales, not to promote an open source ecosystem.
@@moosegoose1282 They're charging for running servers, not for the software. Also open source gives you the legal rights to use the software for whatever you want. Not in a "technically legal" way, but in a "that's the entire point of it being open source" way.
@@Etcher There is nothing petty when you know how much wordpress has given to the world, for a couple of lame VCs trying to getting rich on it and give nothing back, you are all wrong.
Well bear in mind this is personal for him. It's like having your kid score all the goals in the soccer match but the ground keeper takes all the credit
When Theo asked about betting on WordPress, that contributes nothing to the community, they are betting on a successful model and running a sensible hosting model by focusing on one tool that is already crazy popular. Wordpress doesn't need promotion.
It sickens me to see how Matt is so happy and laughing about the fact that hundreds of WordPress users and administrators are stuck without updates. If you don't know, this are still people who deserve respect!
@@SpeakChinglish Are you guys being paid by this company or what? Because otherwise it seems you don't understand a simple story? Do you know how long Word Press has been around giving everything for free??
Because they used his platform to make billions and never gave anything back. What part of it don't you get? You break a gentleman agreement you end up in a duel, that's how it works. And I am overreaching by calling VCs Gentlemen
Because they used his platform to make billions and never gave anything back. What part of it don't you get? You break a gentleman agreement you end up in a duel, that's how it works. And I am overreaching by calling VCs Gentlemen.
10:27 I am baffled by Matt's unwavering and unapologetic commitment towards diverting all blame to WP Engine for his actions despite holes constantly being poked in his arguments and opportunities constantly presented to him to not only adjust his position but take accountability.
If WPEngine are being punished for a trademark violation why are they not being taken to court? Why are the end-users of WPEngine being punished by not being able to download plugins from the directory in the same way that any other WordPress users can?
Why aren't WP Engine hosting the open-sourced things themselves? They're a hosting company. A very successful one at that. With that estimated $400 million or more a year, they can't afford it? If a company takes legal action (they sent a cease & desist and leaked cherry picked private messages that are very one-sided and hiding any messages from their part to smear Matt, that is so obvious) against another company that happens to host free access to plugins for them, should that company still be expected to keep providing that free service because the company sending that legal threat happens to have a large customer base relying on it? There is also still the potential of things being taken to court, first you open up a dialogue and see if you can come to an agreement. Court cases are expensive. I think it's a bit naive to put blame on WordPress/Matt for not wanting to provide free access to their service when there are potential legal actions in the air. He acted too rash and things escalated, in the eye of the public at least, too quickly, but I don't think what has been done is unexpected or inexcusable.
If you’re providing a service to a company that you think violates your contract - it’s common to stop (after warnings) providing the service. Even if you wanna take them to court later. Court cases can take years and a ton of money and effort not everyone is willing to do it. Either way - in the meantime they can sort of ”cancel” the service
@@BenRangel The service is for the USERS. They'd be using it whether or not they are at WP engine. This attempt at punishing WPengine, only punishes users. Therefore it's unjustified and morally reprehensible.
@@fullstackcrackerjack I think, to your point, there are other services which host WordPress sites. Blocking WPE's ability to use WordPress services (for violations) hurts both users and WPE, but users have the ability to switch hosts. The challenge is that there wasn't really ample public notice of this impact on customers, reducing their ability to navigate and plan to switch hosts. This is what is justified regarding the ire of clients, imo. Other, WordPress has every right to protect their brand/trademark and ban service accordingly
@@fullstackcrackerjack I agree it hits users hard, and is a moral question! But I guess the common, brutal state of business is - if you don’t get paid you stop providing your service. If a power company doesn’t get paid by a landlord - must they provide FREE power cause otherwise tenants will suffer? If a deliver company doesn’t get paid by the one grocery store in small town - should they deliver food for free? I hope they would and would get paid by the government retroactively as a thanks for not leaving people without power or food But a web service company wouldn’t Would make it a hell of a tough spot to be a service provider if you’re expected to never be able to say ”pay me or I’ll cancel your service” to your customer - just cause that causes pain for end users
personally when i saw WP engine ads, i thought it was just enterprise or company wordpress or something like that, the main thing being, they were apart of worldpress, didn't know they were separate till this whole drama started
Theo you harped on about WP Engine being exclusively WordPress and how that benefits WordPress for ages...I honestly can't tell why you seemed to think this was an important point? What does it matter if it supports WordPress more? Their reasoning for being 100% WordPress is likely also simply more that they started their business around what they knew/liked and because they branded it that if they wished to branch out they would be more likely to launch a separate company/brand for other platforms.
yeah like wordpress powers 40% of the internet. it's simply good business to niche yourself to create a marketing advantage over giants like godaddy. they aren't making a "bet" on wordpress (as if it needs the "support" of one web host given its enormous scale), they're catering to enormous market demand that far outpaces every javascript framework combined i think also theo's constant comparisons to nextjs arent really relevant. the audience of people using nextjs are legitimate software engineers that are far more skilled and knowledgable than the layman. wordpress is used by millions of non-technical people that are far more easily misled & confused
Matt said that companies can donate in various ways and marketing was one he specifically called out in this interview. Theo called him out on this point and Matt suddenly changed his tune about how much marketing Wordpress was a contribution. The legality of Matt’s case, judging solely by this convo, was extremely weak because he’s very loose with the trademark. After this is done, either Matt will have to be more enforcing with the TM to hold everyone to the same standards or WPEngine will win this case - bigly!
Yes. But I guess what Theo’s is sayin is: some hosts get away without a license cause they are marketed as multi platform, but might need to pay if they bet everything on wordpress alone. (That’s also a meh argument though. If I’m a soda store with the tagline ”I sell soda, root beer, pepsi, juice, fanta, coca cola and dr pepper” i might be fine, but If I’m called The Coke Store - coca cola might require me to get a license)
@@BenRangel He kept repeating 'betting on WordPress,' implying that mimicking WordPress branding-using it across your homepage, naming your plans, and plugins to appear affiliated-was somehow supporting the platform. In reality, this is a clear case of infringement, especially when you're generating $500 million annually.
@@PhonkEchoit depends on what else is happening. WP Engine doesn't make product names, they make products. What Theo was saying is that them putting so much effort into making *products* that run on WordPress, regardless of their names, is a sign that they are "betting on WordPress". Granted, they could also just be putting in the least amount of work possible into development and putting most of the work into the naming.
@@PhonkEcho I don't think that was the message he was trying to make at all, I believe he was trying to make the point that WP Engine's entire business model is built off the use and implementation of WordPress only and no other services such as Drupal or React, that in itself is showing the trust & respect that WP Engine may have in the framework that they leverage wholistically in their business model, that approach in itself makes it very hard to believe that they would take actions in their business that would very much hurt the community of framework that makes them so successful without WordPress their is no WP Engine. Where as other services that may dedicate a portion of their business to WordPress hosting would be less phased and you would believe should wholistically support the WordPress community less, Matt is trying to claim other services do "Much more" then WP Engine but he also is a firm believer WP engine contributes null, anything more then nothing is something which is probably an easy way for him to justify that answer to himself using his own morals and what he deems as a "worthy contribution". Which I think Theo was trying to gauge from Matt as Theo could see quite a bit that WP Engine do widely for the community that could be seen as worth contributions, which was entirely negated by Matt as he does not agree with Theo's opinion in that assessment. Yes their is a potential Trademark violation that will be reviewed and settled legally, but Matt clearly cares less about this as he is willing to drop that case if they just give into his demands that does not solve the Trademark violation issue at hand. If he really cared about that at all he would see through the correct legal action to remedy the trademark violation case and drop the BS claim that contributions will fix the Trademark violation. Matt absolutely is in a position where he can strong arm organizations and is taking advantage of that power.
It’s a little contradictory of Matt to say that WP Engine is so commonly confused as being part of WordPress and yet be so reluctant to concede that WP Engine has had any meaningful impact on the number of people using WordPress. This seems like an oxymoron. Aside from that, this was a really good interview and has given me an understanding from both parties points of view. I still feel like it could have been handled better and it does highlight the dangers of a community relying so heavily on one platform.
You are dead wrong. Nobody comes to WP because they so desperately want to host their website on WP Engine for no reason at all. You make ZERO sense. WP drives nobody to use WordPress. Its like this: People know and used WP for years, they know what it is, they know how it works, they look for a good professional host because they leveled up their site or just look for a good host. WP Engine is used by people who are WordPress users already, nobody switches to, or learns what WordPress is because they exist. Make it make sense. In fact what WP Engine does, is drives paying customers from other popular hosts who actually contribute back to WP away to them. So they are actually hurting WP.
theo is framing what wp engine is doing as "betting their business on wp because they like it" and i'm seeing it more as "using wp, while confusing the customers about the business being a part of the core wp project, to make as much profit"
@@saintpyo He is just a moron to think that everyone esp. Private Equity would think that way. WP engine has built their whole brand around WordPress so they can maximize revenue. Not for "betting on the brand". What a waste of 30-40 mins of everyone's time arguing on that stupid point.
@@saintpyo Theo simply hasn't been exposed to enough corporate shenanigans and toxic incentivised people. He's still a small level tech founder, which is great but often too idealistic (I'm often the same way, but i've learned a few more things).
That whole line of questions trying to persuade the WP dev and us that running ads and paying thousands of money was promoting WP ... If I didn't know better I would have thought this was a bad faith comment ... For a smart person Theo tried to push a very weird agenta that looked like he either has 0 understanding of reality or trying something dishonest. I bet he tried to not side with either but in the end it felt really wrong. I would have followed more on the actual bad side of this whole thing, usage of the trademark to enforce contributions of any kinda feels bad, especially for a GPL license.
I believe we should consider things from a different perspective. Microsoft's Calculator is MIT licensed. We could create a website called MS Calc or Microsoft Calculator that hosts the calculator as a web app, add some plugins, and see what happens in terms of legal action. The site would get sued into oblivion by utilizing the trademark of Microsoft. On top of that, let's charge to create your own instance of a calculator, refuse to pay for trademark utilization, and claim we are simply "promoting" Microsoft.
Great point at 1:34:00 when someone builds their entire business on your platform, it’s not only a great compliment but also a sign of deep commitment and trust. It demonstrates a much stronger investment than simply providing hosting for your platform along with dozens of others
We have reached to the point where you cannot say or show you use an open source project because the name & logo is Trademark'd. I think we should be discussing if open source projects should be allowed to trademark its logo and promotional assets.
Theo comes across a bit harsh here, not in the sense of asking critical questions which is good, but in terms of giving advice to Matt and coming across as arrogant (like for real, the guy worth 400 million is not going to call you up for advice)
Yea, the guy who freely shared a project that has grown the web and made so many people money and transformed self publishing all around the world should really call up and take advice from mr big shot youtube guy.
While WordPress is an open-source platform, it's essential to set clear boundaries on its use. Open-source doesn't mean "anything goes" - it means contributors must respect the project's vision and guidelines. The WordPress project owner, or core team, should have the authority to address actions that conflict with their vision. Misleading users or exploiting the WordPress brand undermines the platform's integrity. Open-source is about freedom with responsibility, ensuring transparency, trust, and a shared vision for the community. From my perspective, Matt is right. I prefer an open-source project with a strong vision and clear guidance over one with no direction. Take Linux, for example - despite its potential, it only holds a 4% market share. Why is that? A lack of a unified vision, structure, and consistent guidance. WordPress, on the other hand, thrives because it follows the opposite approach.
I completely and entirely sympathize with Matt... That said I do not like how defensive he got during this video. I am not sure if it was out of a misunderstanding of what Theo was saying, or if he understood and was desperately trying to defend his/wordpress's reputation, but he kept ignoring the points Theo was making and trying to reframe the conversation on something that would make him look better. I get the sense that he is trying, and maybe there are reasons he couldn't, but I think he would have done a lot more to repair his reputation if he had accepted Theo's premise and taken responsibility for it rather than trying to come up with flimsy excuses as to why it was justified. I think Theo is absolutely right that Matt was using trademark law as a weapon against WP Engine to retaliate against something (in my opinion) is entirely separate from the trademark issues. I agree with Matt that those trademark issues are entirely valid and are probably legally defensible, but it seems pretty clear that the ONLY reason they are bothering to go after them for it at all is due to the whole contributions thing. A better defense in my opinion would have been "I strongly believe that we are legally in the right to do what we did, but that doesn't mean that what we did was right. In the future we commit to our community to being more open and transparent about issues that arise before they get to a point that they will affect the general public." and so on and so forth. Defend the right to have done what you did but do not defend the way in which you enacted that right. The bare minimum to be legal is often not enough to be moral and right. Using legal right to justify being good guys is not a good play, you need to do better. Great interview btw and I am really happy that Matt willingly subjected himself to such a tough interview.
What I got from this whole drama is that they have talked about the trademark thing and the confusion of consumers from months prior. Theo even read an email detailing that dated in June or July relatively early in the video, I forgot. They ignored these requests, and it escalated. Matt also did seem to agree that he escalated it on a too short a timeframe, a few days instead of perhaps a month or two, Matt agreed to that in the later part of the video. Did we watch the same video? I think Theo had some wild ideas though. It would be terrible to tell a whole conference that "some of you aren't contributing" leaving everyone wondering if they are being targeted. That would have been far more damaging than calling out the specific "bad actor". Theo framed a question about "how many is too many affected" in regards to him/them taking legal actions and closing off WP Engine from their hosted plugins on the org site, but that is a weird thing to ask. By that logic nobody can take legal actions against anyone if they have a large enough customer count that would be affected. Nobody can go on strikes to negotiate better pay because it will affect the innocent customers, etc., how do you even answer that.
bros being attacked for protecting his copy, id get hella deffensive too specially when influencers (for lack of better word) already ran with the narrative that Matt was doing this out of greed/maliciousness.
I think the main reason is that Auth.js is now framework-agnostic, meaning it can be used with other frameworks like Nuxt, Astro, Svelte, etc., not just Next.js.
I feel like the real issue here is that Matt may not be the greatest communicator. I think Theo pushed him hard (which a good interview should be doing, the MSM should be taking notes from Theo on how to interview someone) on some points and Matt could have and should have pushed back and explained things in a way he never did. I think the biggest example is when Theo argued that Matt is using the legal issue to enforce the moral issue talking about using the trademark dispute to get community contributions. I don't think that was fair. I think the response Matt should've given is It is our obligation to enforce our Trademark and we may choose to do that by making them stop using the trademark in a confusing way or granting them a license to permit them to use the trademark. We were trying to do them, and the community, a favor by saying hey we are ok with giving you a license and while al license would generally entail a monetary payment we are willing to allow all or part of that license fee to be in the form of community contributions. And they could've come to the table and negotiated for what that amount is, or the could've said no we don;t want to buy the license, and we will stop using your trademark in this confusing manner, and that would've been satisfactory as well. Another example was calling him out when he said they contribute nothing. I took that in a hyperbolic not a literal sense, but Theo was acting as if it could only be taken in a literal sense. Another example and Matt tried to explain this but maybe not as well as he could've is when Theo was arguing that by using WordPress in their marketing they are benefiting WordPress. I think that's completely backwards thinking. 'd argue WordPress is more well known than their brand, so they are riding the coat tails of WordPress and they receive value by connecting themselves to the WordPress brand not the other way around like Theo is trying to argue. Also not sure if this happened before or after this interview but according to the wayback machine its within just the last couple of days WP Engine took "WordPress" out of their homepage H1, and added a footnote about the WordPress and Woo Commerce trademarks. Seems like an admission of guilt by action to me from WPE.
It's worth listening to in full, because after not conceding points and being generally defensive for almost 2h, it's near the end, after Matt and Theo connect on a passion they have in common (writing) that Matt really listens and genuinely takes feedback in. Theo: good job with being persistent and offering sound advice. It's clear that the slow build up and sense of betrayal leading to this situation has brought a lot of stress on Matt, who didn't have the tools nor the support he needed to handle that gracefully. Hopefully Matt as a person will learn better solutions and will bring in the organization around him a group of people capable of supporting and advising him better as well. I'm referring to 1:51:00 approximately
The biggest issue (for me) with this whole drama is not whether wp engine did something wrong. It's really about how Matt went about addressing this. Publicly calling WP engine cancer etc. because of vague reasons. He is just now coming up with some hard facts backed up by actual data. Matt has a history of doing this. Some people worry Matt might do something similar to page builder plugins (elemetor, divi etc.) so that they can push the core's block editor and full site editing features. That worry has only become stronger after these recent events.
Base on history, WPEngine was chased multiple times for contributions. There are trademarks involved, at the end of the day, WPEngine should have contributed.
I don't think the community issue is the lawsuit, which, as you stated, is a court issue - I believe it's more how the decisions of one person or party can affect so many others, and the whether the reasonable level of trust we as developers/consumers have for this product and for Matt is well-placed or not. If it isn't, the community has a right to let Matt know, and provide that criticism. That's big part of having an open-source community
@@stevenstraker5105 Correct. Community members have been arguing and fighting for proper governance in WordPress for many years. Unfortunately, many got harassed and pushed out of the community. A project and community of this size, needs governance and leadership that goes beyond one person.
Theo is tryiing to say that WP Engine is supporting the community by chosing to host wp sites, is a bit like saying a car dealer choosing to sell fords is supporting all ford owners. Im sure you can make a case for it but, really, are they doing this to support the communiy or chosing a popular brand to make more money than they could with an unpopular brand?
Exactly. And I'm pretty sure Ford would be upset if that dealership wanted to call themselves "Ford Engine". They wouldn't put up with it for as long as matt has, for sure.
From zero to nuclear is rarely good. This conversation maybe could make him look less like an impulsive ADHD person in the future… This shitstorm could definitely been handled more smooth.
One thing to note, the confusion with NextJS and NextAuth is a little different as it is targeted at a different audience. Developers mainly. Where WPEngine is also targeting ‚the Barbershop Hosting a Basic Elementor Page‘.
I went to NextAuth right now, and I could easily have seen myself thinking it was a part of NextJS if I didn't read too much around the page, I also noticed they have a banner up top saying it is changing name to AuthJS, so.. maybe they were asked to not confuse the users?
58:34 I mean, when Netscape created their new language and called it JavaScript, it wasn't because they loved Java and wanted to make Java more successful, it's because Java is already hugely popular and they wanted a share of this popularity. The same goes for WordPress hosts. They don't promote WordPress as much as having WordPress promotes them.
Matt's opinion matters because he has unilateral power to shut off access at a whim. So don't let him fool you when he hand waves away a question stating thats *just* his opinion...
he is pure evil here, the customer that get hurt here, is a lot of poor people that don't have the money to move, so he see $$$ and hurting poor people here, WPE got the money to be fair here, this only the customers, we should all stop using WP.
"I started as an engineer, coded Wordpress, contributed a lot of code, I wasn't a CEO before, I haven't had public relations training - I'm going to screw this up"
I wish we held other industry leaders to this standard and level of scrutiny, we’re setting for Matt & Automattic. My perception of this, is that people reacting to Matt’s actions as damaging to the community & future of Wordpress they need to take a step back and realize that it’s perfectly reasonable action and under their provision. Wordpress has a great future ahead because of this actions, someone standing up for a corporation doing the least amount of effort, and maximizing their own profitability. The sustainability of the OSS ecosystem is constantly under founded, there are way too many instances of this issue… and it represents a signal that OSS is not as healthy as we thought.
@@DavoGalavotti Matt could have unilaterally chosen to protect 1.5M sites and not ban security updates. (At least some of 2M ACF plugin updates are also affected.) Among Matt's many responsibilities is one as a community leader to do what he can to protect trust in core infrastructure. Nobody forced him to do this and he has to own it 100%, even if WPE has fault elsewhere. WPE is not responsible for trust in WordPress's core infrastructure.
The more Matt talks, the more this feels about money. It feels like a company is making more money than his own, and now wants a cut. There is something about his messaging that is missing that key thing that better explains the problem.
I have not finished watching this but I was baffled by the community reaction to this. Like why are you all defending a trillion dollar investment company and claim that cutting them off is like "damaging the community". They provide overpriced hosting that they lured you into. Hosted on Google servers not even their own, they bought up a lot of plugins just to promote themselves and make more money. With them cut off nothing of value is lost. The value in WP and the community comes from the Open Source other companies contribute to and by the tons of independently deved plugins and official plugins that are there for you to use. I think Matt was right with everything on this one. I detest what he did to Chris Pearson back in the day, stealing his demain ... he can be very vicious and wrong but in this I am just baffled how dumb the community is. Yes the is the WP dictator, yes he controls everything, yes he demanded money from them. AND? The way he pushes other companies to be better and contribute is overall a very good things for the community. Its thanks to this kind of defending of the community that it is what it is and that so many websites use WP. YOU make it damaging, he just secures the future and prevents its from being taken over by some soul sucking for profit company. And BTW stop quoting this BS number that 40% of the web is run on WP that Matt just made up. Its based on stats of the top 500 websites or something Rarst wrote about it, its NOT TRUE. And I say that as a WP dev. Oh just hearing that WP Engine changed the ref code inside the Woo-commerce Stripe plugin to their own, like am I getting this right that they changed it for the original plugins people use on their platform? Like rewriting or replacing the plugin? If so that is really shady!
@@EmilyRose0 right? WordPress has done years and years and years of good to people all over the world, providing a free product etc. And people are defending a private trillion dollar company that is benefiting off the WordPress good name. It's a literal trademark dispute
1.5M+ websites were affected without warning, and 2M+ ACF plugin users, and you are baffled? Because of the way it was done, a lot of people had to work to mitigate a panic situation, involving emotional duress. Are there other hosts that people have been "lured into" that may be cut off soon? If so, do tell, please. That there is no good answer to this is also stressing out the community. None of this has to do with defending a trillion dollar investment company. "he just secures the future and prevents its from being taken over by some soul sucking for profit company." I am all for defending FOSS from soul sucking companies that degrade quality and jack up prices, like it sounds like maybe WPE is doing, but there was a way to go about it that didn't create so much collateral damage and uncertainty.
I like you as a coder.. but love you as a podcaster! Seriously dude, you did excellent.. no softballs and got to the meat of numerous issues! GREAT work!
55:44 No No Theo, spending $100m on ads is not caring about what you do IT IS ABOUT GETTING CUSTOMERS. They're basically snatching customers from WordPress through those tactics
That's not entirely fair. WPE can be growing the market for WordPress by doing this. It's not a zero sum game. And if people create a WordPress site with WPE and later become dissatisfied with WPE, they will more likely migrate their WordPress site to another host rather than start over from scratch with Wix or something.
Dude if I sell Mercedes car parts, that doesn't mean I'm trying to snatch their customers. If people want to buy their parts from Mercedes then cool. If not, I'm there. It's called competition - which is a good thing. You don't want a monopoly.
@@JaredThirsk if you're bidding on a keyword "wordpress hosting" everyone by definition is already interested in using wordpress vs something like "site builder"
The point is kinda obviously that it can be confusing to those who don't. Mom and pop that is looking for a solution to host a website for their small business without much knowledge about it all. I'm tech savvy, and had I looked at WP Engine's website with the little knowledge I have of WordPress (having thought of it is as a lame amateur website building solution for the past 21 years and not keeping up with it due to those first impressions) and seeing all the WordPress branding they do, I'd easily think they were a part of the official fold. Even the name, due to things like Unreal Engine, Unity Engine, Source Engine, makes me think of it in combination with that overuse of the WordPress branding as if they are the backend that runs WordPress, that they are an official branch of it. I can believe and understand if people would be confused.
the strange thing about all this is that people (like you, the commenters, twitter users, etc), somehow have it in your heads that mullenwag needs to "win" your approval for what's going on? it's his trademark, the court of public opinion has no say in this. either he wins or he loses in court. you know, actual court. then everyone goes about with their lives as they were before. this entire debacle is insane to me lol
@@imadetheuniverse4fun It's not about the lawsuit or whether he wins or loses. It's the impetus behind the lawsuit and the precedent it sets. If Matt wakes up one day and decides he doesn't like you, he's going to find a way to punish you (lawsuit, blog article, etc). It will be under the guise of stewardship for the community, despite the fact that it's potentially killing tools and hosting that the community relies on.
I agree: the trademarks are a matter for the court. Whether WPE "contributes enough back to the community" is a separate matter. It's too confusing to muddy the waters by mixing these two issues.
@JaredThirsk Theo only focus on this because it had been established that wordpress said they are using trademark lawsuit as a mean to punish WPE for "messing up moraly" and when asked into what he consider WPE did that was "morally wrong" he said they are not contributing back to the community. Trademark law is for the court to decides, but his reasoning and claim that he used the law to enforce a moral judgement is something the community should look into
@@tinnguyen5055 I absolutely agree. The community needs to look into moral expectations, and possible punishments (such as being unplugged from plugin updates.)
Really appreciate Theo's interviewer skills, he makes great points, argues with logic & examples, does its best to get Matt to fully disclose his contradictions without being disrespectful. Quality.
Both sides make great points. At a first look, I sided with WPEngine, but I am now more on Matt's side. 1 - If I rent a space to set up a shop, I am not contributing to my landlord. 2 - You are violating our trademark. Either pay for the license ( with contributions or actual money ) or stop.
This is where I am conflicted. He’s not wrong to push the trademark violation. WP engine should pay. But want we want to know is at what point does Matt consider it worth his time to press the issue. Which he can’t seem to objectively give some measure for what constitutes a contribution and at what point he then requires a commercial license for the use.
@@aidenberzins But there's no trademark violation. They're using WordPress, so they're allowed to call it WordPress. There's no rule saying you can't do that - there is in fact an explicit rule that says you can do that (nominative use).
One of your best vids Theo. Controversial but friendly. Firm but Fair. Thoughtful and insightful. I was swayed to Matt's side over the course of this interview. But don't forget he said that there was a smear campaign incoming and that we haven't heard Matt's lawyers yet. And it's being funded by a billionaire. Damn. Prayin for ya Matt. Also make damn sure that Theo does all your PR from now on. 😂
Politics, laws, and courts aside, I truly believe that Matt gave WPE a lot of chances and appreciated that a company could become so successful using his work. He just wanted something in return for his community-something that wasn’t solely about increasing their profits. He wanted something that truly showed they respected and acknowledged that their success was not only due to their efforts but also to the community. As a big company, WPE should show a bit more respect and appreciation 😑
@@Vim_Tim Yes makes sense. But Theo's way of questioning didn't make this clear. It appeared very accusatory towards Matt and trying to win arguments (not saying T was intending this). Not enough time was spent on the real crux of the issue, Private Equity firms like Silverlake just wanting to extract value from opensource communities like Wordpress. Matt probably should have let someone else deal with this case, as he's too emotionally invested since his good will was taken advantage of by Silverlake.
This isn’t the first time things back fire. VCs are able to flip flop the original creator is kept to their word, even if it means starving while everyone else sails off in yacht. Then they snap or something else and they try to take control.
I disagree that going 100% in on WordPress is contribution. If you are going 100% into WP then if someone is not looking for WordPress then they aren’t going to find you. Bring a WP host is helping you
not sure, but this is the rich people screwing each other over and over and this is just the breaking point, i'm grabbing popcorn and watch this unfold :D
The whole trademark thing is so shady. Matt explained it in various formats now, and it doesn't make sense. Moreover, even though he connects it to the "Five for the Future"-thing, I just don't see the connection. Even more, the WP brand has always been free to use for anyone, and the "Five for the Future" is not a contract others agree to. If Theo had heard about any of this more than two weeks ago, hopefully, he would've not let so many of Matt's non-answer slide.
@@jonno081 did you listen to the part of how its set-up? Moreover, what is it? Not contributing enough, the “WP”-part, the “WordPress”-part, which one is it. The fact that the terms were changed on the foundation’s trademark page for the term “WP” after(!) WordCamp US, thats shady.
nextAuth and Next UI, definitely were confusing, If I would have used it, one of main reason would have been the confusion that, it is officially maintained by NextJS. If vercel would have similar package, they would have been a little dissopointed due to confusion. In this case I do think that Next UI is getting more benefit due to nextJS than otherwise.
That is a clearly a "skinny" definition coming from some overweight American who thinks fat or big build is normal. These are two pretty normal weighted men right there. In the rest of the world nobody would call any of them skinny. And this typical woke trashing of one sex and skin color is obnoxious. You would not dare to do it in any other way but because its white men you think its OK because you are brainwashed and thing they are THE OPPRESSORS TM.
I love how all the JS developers on the internet dismiss and talk about WordPress like it's irrelevant until there's drama and a half billion company involved.
@@gregoriusmike I taught myself modern PHP with Laravel. Life changing. The first thing I built was a social network. Took about a year, and I worked as a co-founder. It was a huge learning experience and I pulled it off without issue 100% self taught based on Laravel. 10 years later, I built my own custom CMS. Every aspect of the system is designed for LARGE amounts of content. The sites I manage have more then 50k pages of content. Big properties. Previously, our deployments on WP at WPengine took over an hour. Now they take 5 mins. Because I wrote the code myself. There's no bullshit. I'm in control. SEO isn't an afterthought. It's part of the core system. It uses SchemaOrg (JSON-LD) natively. It has it's own 404 tracking and redirection system. It has it's own sitemap builder. It even has "lazy sessions" so it plays nicely with Cloudflare caching. It has "as you type" search. Results change on the screen in real-time the database is that fast. My boss has complemented me over and over on the system. Touting that it makes WP look like a pile of crap. It's waaayyy faster than WP will ever be. I tripled my salary over the years because of this. WP is ultimately a crutch that holds you back from reaching your true potential. You learn how you "shouldn't build things" as the standard. I earned my freedom. There's nothing holding me back at this point except time.
I am begging Matt to get literally any PR training. Somewhat related, not too long ago in February, he pissed off a huge portion of the tumblr community. There were several people raising concerns about transphobic moderation practices, and rather than *just* being like "we messed up, sorry, here's the steps we're taking to do better, and we're open to more feedback here" and leaving it there, he got into heated debates with random tumblr users, taking issue with the way they were harassing him over it. And again, instead of just banning the people sending rule-breaking harassment and threats his way, he used his massive platform to namedrop them and publicly shame them. From what I can tell, outside of Matt's interactions with random tumblr users, the tumblr team seemed to handle the overall situation pretty well, and had he been able to show the slightest bit of restraint, it wouldn't have been nearly as big of a deal
Wholly agree, I think he's way too bad at PR to be doing all these public statements. They should have gotten someone who's job it is PR if they wanted to look the best.
1:00:25 no, Theo. Just do a Google trends comparison. WPEngine is a speck of dust compared to Wordpress. There is no benefit for Wordpress in WPEngine offering hosting services for Wordpress. They offer Wordpress hosting because it's beneficial for WPEngine to use such an high profile brand. Imagine you're a company. Imagine you want to host both Drupal and Wordpress. But there is a law that says if you only host one of those brands, it's considered promotion and you're exempt to pay royalties. What would stop you from creating a WPEngine for hosting only Wordpress, and a DPEngine for only Drupal? So, Theo, WPEngine is wrong here. No doubt about it. It's making a lot of profit from someone else IP without proper legal proceedings.
WordPress explicitly allowed the use of "WP" in their terms, and has been on good terms with WPEngine even up to a week ago when they were a sponsor at an official event. So it's far from a slam dunk to say WPEngine has been misusing someone else's IP, especially to an extent that warrants the "nuclear" option.
I find it sooo difficult to focus on and trust what he says when he dodges the questions all the time. I’m really impressed by Theo being able to stand his ground, get back to the questions he asked and doing it in a very honest, non-aggressive way.
What is impressive when he doesn't have skin in the game? He can say anything he wants, obviously the CEO of a company with 1800 employees isn't going to go buck wild and make assertions that have legal implications.
I am dying to hear what those two board members are thinking. Great job Theo, impressive thinking on your feet. You really did a great job trying to reel this in and get us back to normal. MM is just singlemindedly and ham fistedly going to take this all the way into the ground. Ugh.
I'm with Matt, always available, puts his face to it, responds to DMs, stickers on the Mackbook, wants to defend Wordpress, his creature, from an Investment Firm and the cat has confirmed this to me. 😹😻😹
@@newvocabulary Mhmhm I am not from Slack, I prefer Matt to defend Wordpress against those who charge me for hosting and change my code without my knowledge, I prefer my contribution to go to WooCommerce (which I use without paying a penny) for my sales on Stripe, rather than to WP Engine which I already pay for hosting, or if I go to retrieve a revision for a client who does damage on a post and I get zero revisions without knowing it.
@@newvocabulary I am not from Slack, I prefer Matt to defend Wordpress against those who charge me for hosting and change Wordpress code without my knowledg, I prefer my contribution to go to WooCommerce (which I use without paying a penny) for my sales on Stripe, rather than to WP Engine witch I already pay for hosting, or if I go to retrive a revision for a client who does damage to a post and I get zero revisions without knowing it.
@@newvocabulary I prefer Matt to defend Wordpress against those who charge me for hosting and change Wordpress code without my knowledg, I prefer my contribution to go to WooCommerce (which I use without paying a penny) for my sales on Stripe, rather than to WP Engine witch I already pay for hosting, or if I go to retrive a revision for a client who does damage to a post and I get zero revisions without knowing it. And I am not from Slack.
I dont get what the issue is. Seems a bigger fish is making a buck off wordpress and wordpress creator would like them to be less parasitic and more on board with his philosophy and give more back. But WP engine are like well what we are doing is permitted so what is the beef. What is legally allowed or right or harm of this battle to users is less clear. Seems like another case of open source goes wrong. Id be pissed if a company made half a billion a year off my shit and i was not getting any love.
"Id be pissed if a company made half a billion a year off my shit and i was not getting any love." Fair, but would you be pissed to the extent that you unfairly threw 1.5M+ innocent bystander sites under the bus and made them and the community pissed at you?
@JaredThirsk yes, if I had attempted prior good-intention engagements with that company. Matt tried to bring them to the negotiating table and they refused. And although Matt may look bad in the short term, a large portion of those customers will migrate to other WP hosting sites that will contribute to WP. And WP engine will be seen as the unreliable hosting service.
He could have done this in court- instead he tried to “go with the nuclear option” which was basically publicly slander another company- legally he is going to lose all he would have gotten from the trademark issue in lawsuits
@@spamman888 it seems to me, it's not about the money, it's about the message. I don't think he'll care if he doesn't ever see the money. Automatic and WP will be fine
Good job to Theo for hosting this interview - especially holding Matt to a higher standard and spending time / confronting about him about the public view/opinion. Also good job for Matt for being so open.
WPE was told in WordPress license terms that 'WP' is ok to use. Nominative use to say "we offer WordPress hosting" is also allowed by law. WPE was accepted as a sponsor of an official WordPress event last weekend. So there's a case that by and large, WPE is not violating the trademark. (The only thing I think might be a minor infraction is their plan names, but this is perhaps probably best decided by a court.)
@@JaredThirsk They are branding their site with well over 70 counts of the word WordPress. Some are actually confusing. While it was changed today, their plans used to say "Host your website with the WordPress experts" (now "Host your website with the experts") and a bit further down on the page, as a heading for their self-promoting blog posts, it says "Moving WordPress forward The latest in WordPress". Even the podcast that's linked in that blog section is called "Press WordPress Community Podcast". Why isn't it WPE Community Podcast? Why did it say "the WordPress experts"? "the" experts? Combine the name WP >ENGINE< (sounding as if it is the backend it all runs on) with things like that, and it certainly seems more endorsed/official/associated than it is. Also they obviously weren't accepted as a sponsor just last week, that was probably agreed and paid for LONG before this; event planning and preparation takes months. Matt even said he offered them a full refund of the 75,000 USD they had paid for their sponsor spot and the reason they were accepted as a sponsor was because they kept leading him/the foundation on that WPE were going to do something about the issues he/they had with the trademark abuse. Theo even read one of Matt's emails dated in June that spoke of his disappointment with how people are confusing WP Engine as something official. It seems like WP Engine is also a bit shitty here, not only Matt. Matt was unprofessional, but so was WP Engine when they rertorted by releasing private messages that only show one side of the dialogue, cherry picked to smear him as an individual. He called a faceless company cancer, they framed him, a person, as an evil person without showing what responses they had made. It was so obvious that those messages they shared were cut and doctored to only show his side and not what they might have said in return.
Because they’re not exercising it fairly. They’re using it to extort people who are making “too much money” and making moves beyond that, hurting end users because of some grievance with the company. He’s also been known to be a weasel previously, so the manner in which this kicked off didn’t sit well with a lot of people.
I want to listen to the whole interview yet but has he told you the following WP engine commits 45 hours but he rejects all their commits? This is proven by someone who used to script to pull their hours from the core this week. That the highest after Automattic in contributing hours is 204 hours and most don't contribute at all it is also not a requirement. That WPE contributed considerable money to word camps and sponsorships and core work that they paid people to do? Not that any contributions are required for the trademark. That Matt changed the terms of the trademark on the website on the 25th and the 26th? That he launched a marketing campaign for Pressable ,something that he owns, against WPEngine as a host? That the invested in WordPress engine in 2010 and haven't had an issue with the trademark until very recently? And in the meantime is extortung millions of dollars from WP engine? Also I've had multiple sites on WP engine for a decade and sites never go down and they never get hacked, so whatever Matt's talking about it either lying or it's like a couple people came to him because you can get on WP engines chat and they fix anything immediately.
That line really summed up everything thus far - "stop digging, man". If I were in his legal team I'd have done everything I could to stop him from opening his mouth.
If you look at what happened and what was released, I think Matt Mullenweg is heavily abusing his power and this destroyes all the trust in WP for the whole ecosystem. Reminds me of the USA freezing about 300 bln of Russian assets and then wonder why the BRICS alliance is getting stronger and astronger and is about to launch their own financial system and wants to drop the dollar asap. The whole WP community needs to drop Matt Mullenweg now. He needs to step down to let WP survive otherwise this is after the failing and never ending Gutenberg project the second nail in the coffin of WP.
I'm going to create a compilation of all the times Theo pauses, sighs and asks "how do I wanna ask this?" only to go and ask the same question and get the same answer.
yep
"It's a trademark violation"
@@illionskeige3150 Yep 2 can take the piss, depends who can piss further.
54:58 no, Theo. You're wrong. When a smaller brand uses a bigger brand, it's promoting itself using the bigger brand. Only when a bigger brand references a smaller brand it can then be considered as promoting the smaller brand.
WPEngine uses the Wordpress brand because that brand adds more value to their business than their own brand. They are ripping off the Wordpress brand.
Note: I don't use Wordpress, never had, never will, I don't even like PHP, and I've never heard about WPEngine up until now. So I have no stakes in this matter, and I'm completely unbiased.
For me what's weird is that there are no sanctions on all the other commercial plugins that are called WP Something
@@NunoFerreiraX That's a very narrow way of looking at it. WP Engine IS promoting WordPress. If my grandma decided tomorrow that she wanted to start a blog and the first thing she comes across is WP Engine, she will also now become aware of WordPress. That's what advertising is, awareness. It's generally thought of as a way of promoting and making money, but that's simply a byproduct. In addition to the advertising effect, WP Engine has also added a new user to the WordPress ecosystem, acclimating that person to the WordPress framework and making far easier to reach for WordPress anytime they need a blogging solution moving forward. This is a net benefit for WordPress.
You're right, but the point Theo was making was whether WPE was contributing to the ecosystem, and how, full stop. (I.e. separately from whether the WordPress brand was benefitting WPE.) It is important to consider this in isolation, because Matt himself said that contributing to the ecosystem is effectively one way to license the WordPress trademark.
WPE's existence, providing a service to 1.5 million willingly paying website customers, is objectively a positive contribution to the ecosystem.
Whether Matt/Automattic considers this enough may be a judgment call only he can make (as well as the relative opportunity cost, if a host with better quality/service would arise if WPE faded out of existence), but the point should at least be acknowledged, because other hosts may also think they are contributing to the ecosystem by offering hosting and the waters are muddied. Matt could use your point to say why he doesn't think it's enough, but it would be helpful to articulate all of this properly, so that there is clarity about the relationship between contributions vs trademark licensing.
@@JaredThirsk providing a paying service to a third party is not a contribution to the ecosystem. Exploring the success of an ecosystem and not giving a part back is not contributing.
@@JaredThirsk "WPE's existence, providing a service to 1.5 million willingly paying website customers, is objectively a positive contribution to the ecosystem."
This is not "objectively true" and, in fact, is false imo.
providing a paying service is not "contributing to the ecosystem" just because you use the WP brand. It just means you're using the WP brand to make money. Wth are you contributing? lol. nothing. They dont contribute any code (or less than 1 percent of the code) and the dont contribute any money. and they also dont contribute free education. They make more money that most of the other WP hosts, yet contribute the least. It's greed. Not contribution.
That being said, i think it's Matts fault for assuming they would be good faith. I dont think he's going to win this lawsuit.
I'm gonna tell my kids this was pewdiepie
😂
Bro...This is an apex top tier comment. 😂
He looks like you can buy him at Ikea.
Lol
Look kids, this is the guy they based Richard Hendrix on for Silicon Valley
why they both look like richard hendricks
One looks like Richard during exciting startup days at Bachman's house, the other looks like defeated Richard after moving to corporate offices with a board to answer to.
@@PhonkEcho So true!
😂
lol him calling out the Republican on his board felt exactly like Richard accidentally outing the gay developer as a Christian in that one episode
Haha I couldn't put my finger on it but you did it for me, thanks! Two good dudes here, just like my man Richard.
My problem here, is it feels like Mat counters every moral argument with a legal one and every legal argument with a moral one. which just feels like arguing in bad faith.
I am not sure you guys fathom what it means editing an open source for someone to piggy back on it, make billions, then piss in your eyes instead of giving back, and you help him stay in business?
I do not think so, VCs are like vultures, they care about their customers even less than Matt, otherwise they would have given back to the community that made it possible for them to thrive.
It's a gentleman agreement, if you break it, it's more than fair you get technical repercussions on the platform you have been piggybacking from.
The mistake is on the VC's head, they bluffed and he called it, now they f*cked and deserve every little bit of it, if you want too much you get nothing!
End of story, I am with Matt.
'trop bon, trop con' you say in French.
@@BoominGame nah, you should establish clear contract and rules for everyone to follow, then you are totally fine taking actions against those who do not behave.
What it's not cool is creating blurry lines that you can arbitrarily enforce depending on how you feel.
Also you can act wrong regardless if you are a VC or an open source contributor, those generalisations are dogmatic and unhelpful, specially when discussing the details of a given case.
@@Adrian_Galilea VC vs contributors a dogmatic generalization, you know what, you are right, let's leave it like that.
44:00 to be fair, for a very long time I was convinced that NextAuth was made by Vercel (and used it because of that). Am I an idiot?
I thought the same 💯
was thinking the exact same thing, and i thought that they only changed to authjs so that they can use more frameworks but still vercel "owened"
Auth.js creator here. I posted a link but apparently UA-cam took it down. If you go to our website, there's a history section under the contributions page about the project's development and how it came to be. Vercel never owned the project, but they generously let me work on it in the past (I'm a Vercel employee) as they are great supporters of OSS. I assume that's where the confusion came from.
Same here
Same thing with NextUI. They actually explicitly call it out on their website because it's such a misconception.
"There are a lot of things that are not my style that I have to do as a CEO"--Theo Brown
That shit hit me in the face like a shovel. Bravo man. Bravo! Needed to hear that.
To be honest, this should've all just been a C&D and a post explaining the confusion and delaying tactics. Maybe even a paragraph about how it's not about the WP part of their name specifically. There was no need for the name-calling, and other stuff that will likely just hurt your court case in court, and potentially give them a reason to sue you instead.
From Matt's explanation of him and Heather's interactions, think the fact that there was a personal relationship involved may have gotten in the way of what should have been simple business dealings. That and the inclusion of community politics, which always makes things messy imho
Where’s the fun in that 🍿
My take away from this interview is that Matt has legitimate grievances with WP Engine that were not publicly visible but his reaction to realizing he was led on inflicted more harm upon himself, his community and the customers of WP Engine than it did to WP Engine.
I really appreciate Theo calling that out and offering to help talk Matt down from taking such sudden rash action if he starts feeling such an escalation of things in the future.
You are right. But part of the resino is because WPE decided a PR campaign against Matt was money better spent than licensing the brand.
I understand Matt. If someone used your branding, made $500 million and kept pretending like you were cool all along...I would go off
Matt is being very careful with his words. Politics, laws, and courts aside, I would really enjoy hearing Matt’s thoughts on this 😂
TBH, I thought Theo was pretty tedious from 50m to 60m and a bit condescending throughout the entire interview. There's no way this whole thing has done more damage to Matt or WordPress than it has to WP Engine.
@alchemist_one On that point, you are completely right. This is a sad situation with major implications for the people directly involved and the entire community. I believe this had been 'cooking' in Matt's mind for some time, but he needed more time to cool off. He should have found a better or different strategy to address the issues he was having with WPE, or even just quit and fought another day. His decisions seem too hot-headed, and someone in his position can't afford to act like that. In the end, I believe he broke some of the trust people had in him, even though one might argue that he's actions can be justified.
55:00 - No Theo, there is a difference between contributing to Wordpress by promoting it to your buddy (because you like the eco system) and "contributing to Wordpress" by promoting it as a business (because you make money).
Isn't that why he continually suggests there are different ways of contributing? I at least never got the impression he was saying they were the same. Instead was suggesting there is a plethora of ways in which contributions can be made.
Yes, there are other ways to contribute, but „contributing“ by promoting your business is something that is wholly in their financial interest, not something to give credit for.
@@sepro5135yeah and? No disagreement here.
@@t1nytim I think you are right in the sense that Theo believes that there are different ways of contributing - while Matt differs between what is "contribution" and what is "paid promotion".
This. The reason that WP Engine doesn't also promote Drupal is because that destroys their *positioning* in the marketplace. Most businesses that use Wordpress evaluate more than one hosting provider, and if you do a sales call with WP Engine, their entire pitch is that you should host Wordpress with them because they understand it better than anyone else.
The WP Engine branding is to win B2B sales, not to promote an open source ecosystem.
People keep asking if this guy has receipts and he keeps saying, "I have them, just trust me."
truth
Bro just arbitrarily deciding he'd up the 8% figure? This is looking REALLY petty.
Nothing is petty when there are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake
wat is petty is wp engine taking advantage of open source charging not even free version
@@moosegoose1282 They're charging for running servers, not for the software. Also open source gives you the legal rights to use the software for whatever you want. Not in a "technically legal" way, but in a "that's the entire point of it being open source" way.
@@omduggineni 'use the software' and not the trademark
@@Etcher There is nothing petty when you know how much wordpress has given to the world, for a couple of lame VCs trying to getting rich on it and give nothing back, you are all wrong.
I really appreciate that you pushed against Matt and stood your ground on several occasions.
Everytime I agree with Matt, he follows up with a dark turn. WHY.
lmaoo
because he's a poisonous snake
Sounds like you're agreeing at the wrong times 😂😂
Well bear in mind this is personal for him. It's like having your kid score all the goals in the soccer match but the ground keeper takes all the credit
@@jonno081 I get that… but then don’t open source your life’s work,
When Theo asked about betting on WordPress, that contributes nothing to the community, they are betting on a successful model and running a sensible hosting model by focusing on one tool that is already crazy popular. Wordpress doesn't need promotion.
Wordpress has given so much to the world, I don't even understand what we are talking about, they made billions, they give back, and that's that.
It sickens me to see how Matt is so happy and laughing about the fact that hundreds of WordPress users and administrators are stuck without updates. If you don't know, this are still people who deserve respect!
Well, he don't provide then any PAID service, WP Engine does. He owes them nothing.
The more I watch him, the more it feels like he has a toxic personality and mentality.
@@SpeakChinglish Are you guys being paid by this company or what?
Because otherwise it seems you don't understand a simple story?
Do you know how long Word Press has been around giving everything for free??
Because they used his platform to make billions and never gave anything back.
What part of it don't you get?
You break a gentleman agreement you end up in a duel, that's how it works.
And I am overreaching by calling VCs Gentlemen
@@SpeakChinglish that's kinda irrelevant don't u think? Smear campaign tactics too obvious.
am I the only one worried about the glass of water so close to the laptop 😅
true lol
This hurts. Just lost my MacBook displays because of a few drops of water on my keyboard.
0:27 and his wrist/arm is in a position such that, if moved, the glass could be knocked over.
Came here to say this
The anxiety
I still don't understand why he's done this, and why he seems sort of happy about it?
definitely weird
Because they used his platform to make billions and never gave anything back.
What part of it don't you get?
You break a gentleman agreement you end up in a duel, that's how it works.
And I am overreaching by calling VCs Gentlemen.
@@BoominGame what about Netflix using Linux platform to make billions? Drug addict arguments...
10:27 I am baffled by Matt's unwavering and unapologetic commitment towards diverting all blame to WP Engine for his actions despite holes constantly being poked in his arguments and opportunities constantly presented to him to not only adjust his position but take accountability.
Did Matt have some kind of sponsoring deal with whoever makes that drink? He seems very intent on making sure it appears on camera!
Lol ikr it might just be some sort of OCD though I think a lot of Devs catch it hahah (I don't think you can actually catch OCD it's an exagération)
If WPEngine are being punished for a trademark violation why are they not being taken to court? Why are the end-users of WPEngine being punished by not being able to download plugins from the directory in the same way that any other WordPress users can?
Why aren't WP Engine hosting the open-sourced things themselves? They're a hosting company. A very successful one at that. With that estimated $400 million or more a year, they can't afford it?
If a company takes legal action (they sent a cease & desist and leaked cherry picked private messages that are very one-sided and hiding any messages from their part to smear Matt, that is so obvious) against another company that happens to host free access to plugins for them, should that company still be expected to keep providing that free service because the company sending that legal threat happens to have a large customer base relying on it?
There is also still the potential of things being taken to court, first you open up a dialogue and see if you can come to an agreement. Court cases are expensive.
I think it's a bit naive to put blame on WordPress/Matt for not wanting to provide free access to their service when there are potential legal actions in the air. He acted too rash and things escalated, in the eye of the public at least, too quickly, but I don't think what has been done is unexpected or inexcusable.
If you’re providing a service to a company that you think violates your contract - it’s common to stop (after warnings) providing the service. Even if you wanna take them to court later.
Court cases can take years and a ton of money and effort not everyone is willing to do it. Either way - in the meantime they can sort of ”cancel” the service
@@BenRangel The service is for the USERS. They'd be using it whether or not they are at WP engine. This attempt at punishing WPengine, only punishes users. Therefore it's unjustified and morally reprehensible.
@@fullstackcrackerjack I think, to your point, there are other services which host WordPress sites. Blocking WPE's ability to use WordPress services (for violations) hurts both users and WPE, but users have the ability to switch hosts.
The challenge is that there wasn't really ample public notice of this impact on customers, reducing their ability to navigate and plan to switch hosts. This is what is justified regarding the ire of clients, imo.
Other, WordPress has every right to protect their brand/trademark and ban service accordingly
@@fullstackcrackerjack I agree it hits users hard, and is a moral question! But I guess the common, brutal state of business is - if you don’t get paid you stop providing your service.
If a power company doesn’t get paid by a landlord - must they provide FREE power cause otherwise tenants will suffer?
If a deliver company doesn’t get paid by the one grocery store in small town - should they deliver food for free?
I hope they would and would get paid by the government retroactively as a thanks for not leaving people without power or food
But a web service company wouldn’t
Would make it a hell of a tough spot to be a service provider if you’re expected to never be able to say ”pay me or I’ll cancel your service” to your customer - just cause that causes pain for end users
personally when i saw WP engine ads, i thought it was just enterprise or company wordpress or something like that, the main thing being, they were apart of worldpress, didn't know they were separate till this whole drama started
yeah when you have the name on it, that's kinda what it is until it becomes something else (like Java in JavaScript)
Theo you harped on about WP Engine being exclusively WordPress and how that benefits WordPress for ages...I honestly can't tell why you seemed to think this was an important point? What does it matter if it supports WordPress more? Their reasoning for being 100% WordPress is likely also simply more that they started their business around what they knew/liked and because they branded it that if they wished to branch out they would be more likely to launch a separate company/brand for other platforms.
yeah like wordpress powers 40% of the internet. it's simply good business to niche yourself to create a marketing advantage over giants like godaddy. they aren't making a "bet" on wordpress (as if it needs the "support" of one web host given its enormous scale), they're catering to enormous market demand that far outpaces every javascript framework combined
i think also theo's constant comparisons to nextjs arent really relevant. the audience of people using nextjs are legitimate software engineers that are far more skilled and knowledgable than the layman. wordpress is used by millions of non-technical people that are far more easily misled & confused
It was all part of pushing against the idea that WPEngine has contributed nothing, wasn't it?
Matt said that companies can donate in various ways and marketing was one he specifically called out in this interview. Theo called him out on this point and Matt suddenly changed his tune about how much marketing Wordpress was a contribution. The legality of Matt’s case, judging solely by this convo, was extremely weak because he’s very loose with the trademark. After this is done, either Matt will have to be more enforcing with the TM to hold everyone to the same standards or WPEngine will win this case - bigly!
@@GreenJalapenjo As a percentage WPE contribution amounts to pretty much nothing., towards the product that makes the whole business possible.
He kept asking because Matt kept avoiding an answer.
I appreciate how you handled this. I was expecting an infomercial but instead you really grilled him on the important parts
Its a stupid argument by Theo to say if you buy the commercial license it means you are not betting the business on WordPress
Yes.
But I guess what Theo’s is sayin is: some hosts get away without a license cause they are marketed as multi platform, but might need to pay if they bet everything on wordpress alone.
(That’s also a meh argument though. If I’m a soda store with the tagline ”I sell soda, root beer, pepsi, juice, fanta, coca cola and dr pepper” i might be fine, but If I’m called The Coke Store - coca cola might require me to get a license)
@@BenRangel He kept repeating 'betting on WordPress,' implying that mimicking WordPress branding-using it across your homepage, naming your plans, and plugins to appear affiliated-was somehow supporting the platform. In reality, this is a clear case of infringement, especially when you're generating $500 million annually.
@@PhonkEchoIt's not infringement at all. Google "nominative use".
@@PhonkEchoit depends on what else is happening. WP Engine doesn't make product names, they make products. What Theo was saying is that them putting so much effort into making *products* that run on WordPress, regardless of their names, is a sign that they are "betting on WordPress".
Granted, they could also just be putting in the least amount of work possible into development and putting most of the work into the naming.
@@PhonkEcho I don't think that was the message he was trying to make at all, I believe he was trying to make the point that WP Engine's entire business model is built off the use and implementation of WordPress only and no other services such as Drupal or React, that in itself is showing the trust & respect that WP Engine may have in the framework that they leverage wholistically in their business model, that approach in itself makes it very hard to believe that they would take actions in their business that would very much hurt the community of framework that makes them so successful without WordPress their is no WP Engine.
Where as other services that may dedicate a portion of their business to WordPress hosting would be less phased and you would believe should wholistically support the WordPress community less, Matt is trying to claim other services do "Much more" then WP Engine but he also is a firm believer WP engine contributes null, anything more then nothing is something which is probably an easy way for him to justify that answer to himself using his own morals and what he deems as a "worthy contribution". Which I think Theo was trying to gauge from Matt as Theo could see quite a bit that WP Engine do widely for the community that could be seen as worth contributions, which was entirely negated by Matt as he does not agree with Theo's opinion in that assessment.
Yes their is a potential Trademark violation that will be reviewed and settled legally, but Matt clearly cares less about this as he is willing to drop that case if they just give into his demands that does not solve the Trademark violation issue at hand. If he really cared about that at all he would see through the correct legal action to remedy the trademark violation case and drop the BS claim that contributions will fix the Trademark violation. Matt absolutely is in a position where he can strong arm organizations and is taking advantage of that power.
It’s a little contradictory of Matt to say that WP Engine is so commonly confused as being part of WordPress and yet be so reluctant to concede that WP Engine has had any meaningful impact on the number of people using WordPress. This seems like an oxymoron.
Aside from that, this was a really good interview and has given me an understanding from both parties points of view. I still feel like it could have been handled better and it does highlight the dangers of a community relying so heavily on one platform.
You are dead wrong. Nobody comes to WP because they so desperately want to host their website on WP Engine for no reason at all. You make ZERO sense. WP drives nobody to use WordPress. Its like this: People know and used WP for years, they know what it is, they know how it works, they look for a good professional host because they leveled up their site or just look for a good host. WP Engine is used by people who are WordPress users already, nobody switches to, or learns what WordPress is because they exist. Make it make sense.
In fact what WP Engine does, is drives paying customers from other popular hosts who actually contribute back to WP away to them. So they are actually hurting WP.
theo is framing what wp engine is doing as "betting their business on wp because they like it" and i'm seeing it more as "using wp, while confusing the customers about the business being a part of the core wp project, to make as much profit"
maybe theo is too much of a good faith founder and is trying to extend this good faith mentality to other companies a little to much
@@saintpyo What did he found?
@@saintpyo He is just a moron to think that everyone esp. Private Equity would think that way. WP engine has built their whole brand around WordPress so they can maximize revenue. Not for "betting on the brand". What a waste of 30-40 mins of everyone's time arguing on that stupid point.
@@saintpyo Theo simply hasn't been exposed to enough corporate shenanigans and toxic incentivised people. He's still a small level tech founder, which is great but often too idealistic (I'm often the same way, but i've learned a few more things).
That whole line of questions trying to persuade the WP dev and us that running ads and paying thousands of money was promoting WP ... If I didn't know better I would have thought this was a bad faith comment ... For a smart person Theo tried to push a very weird agenta that looked like he either has 0 understanding of reality or trying something dishonest. I bet he tried to not side with either but in the end it felt really wrong. I would have followed more on the actual bad side of this whole thing, usage of the trademark to enforce contributions of any kinda feels bad, especially for a GPL license.
Why didn’t Pressable come up in conversation and the campaign for buy our contracts sent out the same day this went down?
I believe we should consider things from a different perspective. Microsoft's Calculator is MIT licensed. We could create a website called MS Calc or Microsoft Calculator that hosts the calculator as a web app, add some plugins, and see what happens in terms of legal action. The site would get sued into oblivion by utilizing the trademark of Microsoft. On top of that, let's charge to create your own instance of a calculator, refuse to pay for trademark utilization, and claim we are simply "promoting" Microsoft.
You have described literally every Linux distribution
@@ShedewrS so people protect their trademark others don't.
18:28 holy sh*t that is straight up sociopathic glee of disabling someone else's system.
What I get from this is a person who acted impulsively based on their emotions instead of crafting a good plan to actually deal with this situation.
Bingo
Great point at 1:34:00 when someone builds their entire business on your platform, it’s not only a great compliment but also a sign of deep commitment and trust. It demonstrates a much stronger investment than simply providing hosting for your platform along with dozens of others
We have reached to the point where you cannot say or show you use an open source project because the name & logo is Trademark'd.
I think we should be discussing if open source projects should be allowed to trademark its logo and promotional assets.
Trying to pay attention but I'm struggling getting past the 8% of revenue number. That's a large number and Matt was a fool for mentioning it.
Not really when you're entire business is made on top of someone else IP.
@@christopherboisvert6902it’s open source bub
Theo comes across a bit harsh here, not in the sense of asking critical questions which is good, but in terms of giving advice to Matt and coming across as arrogant (like for real, the guy worth 400 million is not going to call you up for advice)
yeah 100%, it's pretty cringey
Yea, the guy who freely shared a project that has grown the web and made so many people money and transformed self publishing all around the world should really call up and take advice from mr big shot youtube guy.
While WordPress is an open-source platform, it's essential to set clear boundaries on its use. Open-source doesn't mean "anything goes" - it means contributors must respect the project's vision and guidelines. The WordPress project owner, or core team, should have the authority to address actions that conflict with their vision. Misleading users or exploiting the WordPress brand undermines the platform's integrity. Open-source is about freedom with responsibility, ensuring transparency, trust, and a shared vision for the community.
From my perspective, Matt is right. I prefer an open-source project with a strong vision and clear guidance over one with no direction. Take Linux, for example - despite its potential, it only holds a 4% market share. Why is that? A lack of a unified vision, structure, and consistent guidance. WordPress, on the other hand, thrives because it follows the opposite approach.
in response to whether Pantheon is violating the trademark, "why don't you do a survey". Really?
I completely and entirely sympathize with Matt... That said I do not like how defensive he got during this video. I am not sure if it was out of a misunderstanding of what Theo was saying, or if he understood and was desperately trying to defend his/wordpress's reputation, but he kept ignoring the points Theo was making and trying to reframe the conversation on something that would make him look better. I get the sense that he is trying, and maybe there are reasons he couldn't, but I think he would have done a lot more to repair his reputation if he had accepted Theo's premise and taken responsibility for it rather than trying to come up with flimsy excuses as to why it was justified.
I think Theo is absolutely right that Matt was using trademark law as a weapon against WP Engine to retaliate against something (in my opinion) is entirely separate from the trademark issues. I agree with Matt that those trademark issues are entirely valid and are probably legally defensible, but it seems pretty clear that the ONLY reason they are bothering to go after them for it at all is due to the whole contributions thing.
A better defense in my opinion would have been "I strongly believe that we are legally in the right to do what we did, but that doesn't mean that what we did was right. In the future we commit to our community to being more open and transparent about issues that arise before they get to a point that they will affect the general public." and so on and so forth.
Defend the right to have done what you did but do not defend the way in which you enacted that right. The bare minimum to be legal is often not enough to be moral and right. Using legal right to justify being good guys is not a good play, you need to do better.
Great interview btw and I am really happy that Matt willingly subjected himself to such a tough interview.
What I got from this whole drama is that they have talked about the trademark thing and the confusion of consumers from months prior. Theo even read an email detailing that dated in June or July relatively early in the video, I forgot. They ignored these requests, and it escalated. Matt also did seem to agree that he escalated it on a too short a timeframe, a few days instead of perhaps a month or two, Matt agreed to that in the later part of the video. Did we watch the same video?
I think Theo had some wild ideas though. It would be terrible to tell a whole conference that "some of you aren't contributing" leaving everyone wondering if they are being targeted. That would have been far more damaging than calling out the specific "bad actor". Theo framed a question about "how many is too many affected" in regards to him/them taking legal actions and closing off WP Engine from their hosted plugins on the org site, but that is a weird thing to ask. By that logic nobody can take legal actions against anyone if they have a large enough customer count that would be affected. Nobody can go on strikes to negotiate better pay because it will affect the innocent customers, etc., how do you even answer that.
bros being attacked for protecting his copy, id get hella deffensive too specially when influencers (for lack of better word) already ran with the narrative that Matt was doing this out of greed/maliciousness.
Next auth is now AuthJS maybe this is the reason?? Theo skipped that..
I doubt it. NextJs is what vercel has trademarked not Next, so NextAuth and NextUI are not good examples in this case
I think the main reason is that Auth.js is now framework-agnostic, meaning it can be used with other frameworks like Nuxt, Astro, Svelte, etc., not just Next.js.
I feel like the real issue here is that Matt may not be the greatest communicator. I think Theo pushed him hard (which a good interview should be doing, the MSM should be taking notes from Theo on how to interview someone) on some points and Matt could have and should have pushed back and explained things in a way he never did.
I think the biggest example is when Theo argued that Matt is using the legal issue to enforce the moral issue talking about using the trademark dispute to get community contributions. I don't think that was fair. I think the response Matt should've given is It is our obligation to enforce our Trademark and we may choose to do that by making them stop using the trademark in a confusing way or granting them a license to permit them to use the trademark. We were trying to do them, and the community, a favor by saying hey we are ok with giving you a license and while al license would generally entail a monetary payment we are willing to allow all or part of that license fee to be in the form of community contributions. And they could've come to the table and negotiated for what that amount is, or the could've said no we don;t want to buy the license, and we will stop using your trademark in this confusing manner, and that would've been satisfactory as well.
Another example was calling him out when he said they contribute nothing. I took that in a hyperbolic not a literal sense, but Theo was acting as if it could only be taken in a literal sense.
Another example and Matt tried to explain this but maybe not as well as he could've is when Theo was arguing that by using WordPress in their marketing they are benefiting WordPress. I think that's completely backwards thinking. 'd argue WordPress is more well known than their brand, so they are riding the coat tails of WordPress and they receive value by connecting themselves to the WordPress brand not the other way around like Theo is trying to argue.
Also not sure if this happened before or after this interview but according to the wayback machine its within just the last couple of days WP Engine took "WordPress" out of their homepage H1, and added a footnote about the WordPress and Woo Commerce trademarks. Seems like an admission of guilt by action to me from WPE.
It's worth listening to in full, because after not conceding points and being generally defensive for almost 2h, it's near the end, after Matt and Theo connect on a passion they have in common (writing) that Matt really listens and genuinely takes feedback in.
Theo: good job with being persistent and offering sound advice.
It's clear that the slow build up and sense of betrayal leading to this situation has brought a lot of stress on Matt, who didn't have the tools nor the support he needed to handle that gracefully. Hopefully Matt as a person will learn better solutions and will bring in the organization around him a group of people capable of supporting and advising him better as well.
I'm referring to 1:51:00 approximately
Wow, props to Matt for willingly submitting to an outright grilling.
The biggest issue (for me) with this whole drama is not whether wp engine did something wrong. It's really about how Matt went about addressing this. Publicly calling WP engine cancer etc. because of vague reasons. He is just now coming up with some hard facts backed up by actual data. Matt has a history of doing this. Some people worry Matt might do something similar to page builder plugins (elemetor, divi etc.) so that they can push the core's block editor and full site editing features. That worry has only become stronger after these recent events.
Base on history, WPEngine was chased multiple times for contributions. There are trademarks involved, at the end of the day, WPEngine should have contributed.
I don't think the community issue is the lawsuit, which, as you stated, is a court issue - I believe it's more how the decisions of one person or party can affect so many others, and the whether the reasonable level of trust we as developers/consumers have for this product and for Matt is well-placed or not.
If it isn't, the community has a right to let Matt know, and provide that criticism. That's big part of having an open-source community
@@stevenstraker5105 it's open source only when it's convenient, other times, it's matt's life's work, right?
@@stevenstraker5105 Correct. Community members have been arguing and fighting for proper governance in WordPress for many years. Unfortunately, many got harassed and pushed out of the community. A project and community of this size, needs governance and leadership that goes beyond one person.
Theo is tryiing to say that WP Engine is supporting the community by chosing to host wp sites, is a bit like saying a car dealer choosing to sell fords is supporting all ford owners. Im sure you can make a case for it but, really, are they doing this to support the communiy or chosing a popular brand to make more money than they could with an unpopular brand?
Exactly. And I'm pretty sure Ford would be upset if that dealership wanted to call themselves "Ford Engine". They wouldn't put up with it for as long as matt has, for sure.
From zero to nuclear is rarely good. This conversation maybe could make him look less like an impulsive ADHD person in the future…
This shitstorm could definitely been handled more smooth.
One thing to note, the confusion with NextJS and NextAuth is a little different as it is targeted at a different audience. Developers mainly.
Where WPEngine is also targeting ‚the Barbershop Hosting a Basic Elementor Page‘.
I went to NextAuth right now, and I could easily have seen myself thinking it was a part of NextJS if I didn't read too much around the page, I also noticed they have a banner up top saying it is changing name to AuthJS, so.. maybe they were asked to not confuse the users?
58:34 I mean, when Netscape created their new language and called it JavaScript, it wasn't because they loved Java and wanted to make Java more successful, it's because Java is already hugely popular and they wanted a share of this popularity.
The same goes for WordPress hosts. They don't promote WordPress as much as having WordPress promotes them.
Exactly. The fact that this interviewer seems so deeply entrenched in such a deeply flawed argument made this hard to watch.
Matt's opinion matters because he has unilateral power to shut off access at a whim. So don't let him fool you when he hand waves away a question stating thats *just* his opinion...
he is pure evil here, the customer that get hurt here, is a lot of poor people that don't have the money to move, so he see $$$ and hurting poor people here, WPE got the money to be fair here, this only the customers, we should all stop using WP.
"I started as an engineer, coded Wordpress, contributed a lot of code, I wasn't a CEO before, I haven't had public relations training - I'm going to screw this up"
just the fact that the cat choose him makes me more confident in his statements
31:45
Him?
Matt is a good guy. Good talk, really ballsy to do this without really knowing Theo at all.
I wish we held other industry leaders to this standard and level of scrutiny, we’re setting for Matt & Automattic.
My perception of this, is that people reacting to Matt’s actions as damaging to the community & future of Wordpress they need to take a step back and realize that it’s perfectly reasonable action and under their provision. Wordpress has a great future ahead because of this actions, someone standing up for a corporation doing the least amount of effort, and maximizing their own profitability.
The sustainability of the OSS ecosystem is constantly under founded, there are way too many instances of this issue… and it represents a signal that OSS is not as healthy as we thought.
It's perfectly reasonable to suddenly stop plugin security updates for 1.5M website owners without warning them?
@@JaredThirskthey tried, wp engine censored it
@@JaredThirsk thats WP Engine responsibility, not Automattic. They’ve chosen this path as well.
@@DavoGalavotti Matt could have unilaterally chosen to protect 1.5M sites and not ban security updates. (At least some of 2M ACF plugin updates are also affected.) Among Matt's many responsibilities is one as a community leader to do what he can to protect trust in core infrastructure. Nobody forced him to do this and he has to own it 100%, even if WPE has fault elsewhere. WPE is not responsible for trust in WordPress's core infrastructure.
@@DavoGalavottiYes, they chose the path of not giving in to Matt's attempt to extort them for tens of millions of dollars he isn't entitled to.
The more Matt talks, the more this feels about money. It feels like a company is making more money than his own, and now wants a cut. There is something about his messaging that is missing that key thing that better explains the problem.
We'll call that the 'Theo standard'
xD
I have not finished watching this but I was baffled by the community reaction to this. Like why are you all defending a trillion dollar investment company and claim that cutting them off is like "damaging the community". They provide overpriced hosting that they lured you into. Hosted on Google servers not even their own, they bought up a lot of plugins just to promote themselves and make more money. With them cut off nothing of value is lost. The value in WP and the community comes from the Open Source other companies contribute to and by the tons of independently deved plugins and official plugins that are there for you to use.
I think Matt was right with everything on this one. I detest what he did to Chris Pearson back in the day, stealing his demain ... he can be very vicious and wrong but in this I am just baffled how dumb the community is. Yes the is the WP dictator, yes he controls everything, yes he demanded money from them. AND? The way he pushes other companies to be better and contribute is overall a very good things for the community. Its thanks to this kind of defending of the community that it is what it is and that so many websites use WP. YOU make it damaging, he just secures the future and prevents its from being taken over by some soul sucking for profit company.
And BTW stop quoting this BS number that 40% of the web is run on WP that Matt just made up. Its based on stats of the top 500 websites or something Rarst wrote about it, its NOT TRUE. And I say that as a WP dev.
Oh just hearing that WP Engine changed the ref code inside the Woo-commerce Stripe plugin to their own, like am I getting this right that they changed it for the original plugins people use on their platform? Like rewriting or replacing the plugin? If so that is really shady!
@@EmilyRose0 right? WordPress has done years and years and years of good to people all over the world, providing a free product etc. And people are defending a private trillion dollar company that is benefiting off the WordPress good name. It's a literal trademark dispute
1.5M+ websites were affected without warning, and 2M+ ACF plugin users, and you are baffled? Because of the way it was done, a lot of people had to work to mitigate a panic situation, involving emotional duress.
Are there other hosts that people have been "lured into" that may be cut off soon? If so, do tell, please. That there is no good answer to this is also stressing out the community.
None of this has to do with defending a trillion dollar investment company.
"he just secures the future and prevents its from being taken over by some soul sucking for profit company." I am all for defending FOSS from soul sucking companies that degrade quality and jack up prices, like it sounds like maybe WPE is doing, but there was a way to go about it that didn't create so much collateral damage and uncertainty.
Here after the lawsuit citing Theo and Prime
I like you as a coder.. but love you as a podcaster! Seriously dude, you did excellent.. no softballs and got to the meat of numerous issues! GREAT work!
55:44 No No Theo, spending $100m on ads is not caring about what you do IT IS ABOUT GETTING CUSTOMERS. They're basically snatching customers from WordPress through those tactics
That's not entirely fair. WPE can be growing the market for WordPress by doing this. It's not a zero sum game. And if people create a WordPress site with WPE and later become dissatisfied with WPE, they will more likely migrate their WordPress site to another host rather than start over from scratch with Wix or something.
Dude if I sell Mercedes car parts, that doesn't mean I'm trying to snatch their customers. If people want to buy their parts from Mercedes then cool. If not, I'm there. It's called competition - which is a good thing. You don't want a monopoly.
Yeah that was a little wild haha
@@Farhan-l4g6o Exactly. Especially if Mercedes was a non-profit with the stated mission of "democratizing cars".
@@JaredThirsk if you're bidding on a keyword "wordpress hosting" everyone by definition is already interested in using wordpress vs something like "site builder"
It's not confusing to people who use WordPress remember a lot of the people watching you are not WordPress users.
The point is kinda obviously that it can be confusing to those who don't. Mom and pop that is looking for a solution to host a website for their small business without much knowledge about it all. I'm tech savvy, and had I looked at WP Engine's website with the little knowledge I have of WordPress (having thought of it is as a lame amateur website building solution for the past 21 years and not keeping up with it due to those first impressions) and seeing all the WordPress branding they do, I'd easily think they were a part of the official fold. Even the name, due to things like Unreal Engine, Unity Engine, Source Engine, makes me think of it in combination with that overuse of the WordPress branding as if they are the backend that runs WordPress, that they are an official branch of it. I can believe and understand if people would be confused.
the strange thing about all this is that people (like you, the commenters, twitter users, etc), somehow have it in your heads that mullenwag needs to "win" your approval for what's going on? it's his trademark, the court of public opinion has no say in this. either he wins or he loses in court. you know, actual court. then everyone goes about with their lives as they were before. this entire debacle is insane to me lol
@@imadetheuniverse4fun It's not about the lawsuit or whether he wins or loses. It's the impetus behind the lawsuit and the precedent it sets. If Matt wakes up one day and decides he doesn't like you, he's going to find a way to punish you (lawsuit, blog article, etc). It will be under the guise of stewardship for the community, despite the fact that it's potentially killing tools and hosting that the community relies on.
I agree: the trademarks are a matter for the court.
Whether WPE "contributes enough back to the community" is a separate matter. It's too confusing to muddy the waters by mixing these two issues.
Public opinion from developers matters when you have a product and platform that caters to developers.
@JaredThirsk Theo only focus on this because it had been established that wordpress said they are using trademark lawsuit as a mean to punish WPE for "messing up moraly" and when asked into what he consider WPE did that was "morally wrong" he said they are not contributing back to the community. Trademark law is for the court to decides, but his reasoning and claim that he used the law to enforce a moral judgement is something the community should look into
@@tinnguyen5055 I absolutely agree. The community needs to look into moral expectations, and possible punishments (such as being unplugged from plugin updates.)
Great to hear Matt. Thanks Theo for doing this interview. Matt is the cool open source software steward that I always thought he would be.
Really appreciate Theo's interviewer skills, he makes great points, argues with logic & examples, does its best to get Matt to fully disclose his contradictions without being disrespectful. Quality.
This was an awesome and insightful interview! Thank you both so much!
Matt seems like such a humble and super-nice dude. Host is a bit nerdy and younger, but Matt's transparency is greatly appreciated!
Both sides make great points.
At a first look, I sided with WPEngine, but I am now more on Matt's side.
1 - If I rent a space to set up a shop, I am not contributing to my landlord.
2 - You are violating our trademark. Either pay for the license ( with contributions or actual money ) or stop.
WP Engine is a vulture
This is where I am conflicted. He’s not wrong to push the trademark violation. WP engine should pay.
But want we want to know is at what point does Matt consider it worth his time to press the issue. Which he can’t seem to objectively give some measure for what constitutes a contribution and at what point he then requires a commercial license for the use.
@@aidenberzins But there's no trademark violation. They're using WordPress, so they're allowed to call it WordPress. There's no rule saying you can't do that - there is in fact an explicit rule that says you can do that (nominative use).
You both are so awesome. I am glad this conversation happened. Matt's LIFE work is on the line, not a simple cash grab from PE.
Absolutely! Instead of just fighting each other on X, both Theo and the guy agreed to sit and talk about their perspectives. Congratulations to both.
One of your best vids Theo.
Controversial but friendly. Firm but Fair. Thoughtful and insightful.
I was swayed to Matt's side over the course of this interview. But don't forget he said that there was a smear campaign incoming and that we haven't heard Matt's lawyers yet. And it's being funded by a billionaire. Damn.
Prayin for ya Matt. Also make damn sure that Theo does all your PR from now on. 😂
Like this format from Theo with no cuts podcast
Politics, laws, and courts aside, I truly believe that Matt gave WPE a lot of chances and appreciated that a company could become so successful using his work. He just wanted something in return for his community-something that wasn’t solely about increasing their profits. He wanted something that truly showed they respected and acknowledged that their success was not only due to their efforts but also to the community. As a big company, WPE should show a bit more respect and appreciation 😑
56:30 Theo is wrong here. They are selling WordPress because it’s what people want. It’s not because they’re doing good for “community”.
Theo isn't arguing exclusivity. They are doing it to get more customers and it supports Wordpress at the same time
Two hours of Theo teaching EQ
Great video! Theo did a great job pushing Matt for some answers, and did an amazing job of keeping the talk on topic. Like really solid performance.
Theo you did a fantastic job with this interview, like really well done!
I think it's great that Matt is fighting private equity who just want to enrich themselves and to extract from the Wordpress community.
Most of Theo's point was that there were so many better ways to do this that would've had less disruptive impact on WordPress users.
@@Vim_Tim Yes makes sense. But Theo's way of questioning didn't make this clear. It appeared very accusatory towards Matt and trying to win arguments (not saying T was intending this).
Not enough time was spent on the real crux of the issue, Private Equity firms like Silverlake just wanting to extract value from opensource communities like Wordpress.
Matt probably should have let someone else deal with this case, as he's too emotionally invested since his good will was taken advantage of by Silverlake.
Matt is literally doing exactly that. It’s such a thinly veiled excuse to prevent other people from profiting from “his” venture.
MongoDB moment
This isn’t the first time things back fire. VCs are able to flip flop the original creator is kept to their word, even if it means starving while everyone else sails off in yacht. Then they snap or something else and they try to take control.
I disagree that going 100% in on WordPress is contribution. If you are going 100% into WP then if someone is not looking for WordPress then they aren’t going to find you. Bring a WP host is helping you
not sure, but this is the rich people screwing each other over and over and this is just the breaking point, i'm grabbing popcorn and watch this unfold :D
The whole trademark thing is so shady. Matt explained it in various formats now, and it doesn't make sense. Moreover, even though he connects it to the "Five for the Future"-thing, I just don't see the connection. Even more, the WP brand has always been free to use for anyone, and the "Five for the Future" is not a contract others agree to. If Theo had heard about any of this more than two weeks ago, hopefully, he would've not let so many of Matt's non-answer slide.
So Wordpress having a trademark is shady but the roughly 2,5mil for profit business trademarks are ok?
@@jonno081 did you listen to the part of how its set-up? Moreover, what is it? Not contributing enough, the “WP”-part, the “WordPress”-part, which one is it. The fact that the terms were changed on the foundation’s trademark page for the term “WP” after(!) WordCamp US, thats shady.
This moustache must be stopped!
nextAuth and Next UI, definitely were confusing, If I would have used it, one of main reason would have been the confusion that, it is officially maintained by NextJS. If vercel would have similar package, they would have been a little dissopointed due to confusion. In this case I do think that Next UI is getting more benefit due to nextJS than otherwise.
The skinny white san franisco guy energy is strong here.
Why are you so comfortable with casual racism and racial stereotyping?
@@btrswtluvltr
Its ok if its white skinny san franisco dudes.
That is a clearly a "skinny" definition coming from some overweight American who thinks fat or big build is normal. These are two pretty normal weighted men right there. In the rest of the world nobody would call any of them skinny.
And this typical woke trashing of one sex and skin color is obnoxious. You would not dare to do it in any other way but because its white men you think its OK because you are brainwashed and thing they are THE OPPRESSORS TM.
I love how all the JS developers on the internet dismiss and talk about WordPress like it's irrelevant until there's drama and a half billion company involved.
The reason I became a developer was to get away from WP 😂
What did you make without Wordpress?
@@gregoriusmike I taught myself modern PHP with Laravel. Life changing.
The first thing I built was a social network. Took about a year, and I worked as a co-founder. It was a huge learning experience and I pulled it off without issue 100% self taught based on Laravel.
10 years later, I built my own custom CMS. Every aspect of the system is designed for LARGE amounts of content. The sites I manage have more then 50k pages of content. Big properties.
Previously, our deployments on WP at WPengine took over an hour. Now they take 5 mins. Because I wrote the code myself. There's no bullshit. I'm in control.
SEO isn't an afterthought. It's part of the core system. It uses SchemaOrg (JSON-LD) natively. It has it's own 404 tracking and redirection system. It has it's own sitemap builder. It even has "lazy sessions" so it plays nicely with Cloudflare caching. It has "as you type" search. Results change on the screen in real-time the database is that fast.
My boss has complemented me over and over on the system. Touting that it makes WP look like a pile of crap. It's waaayyy faster than WP will ever be.
I tripled my salary over the years because of this.
WP is ultimately a crutch that holds you back from reaching your true potential. You learn how you "shouldn't build things" as the standard. I earned my freedom. There's nothing holding me back at this point except time.
Probably several hundred thousand dollars at least.
@@himagainstill Show us your work
@@gregoriusmike Several years x decent dev salary = a couple of hundred grand.
I am begging Matt to get literally any PR training.
Somewhat related, not too long ago in February, he pissed off a huge portion of the tumblr community. There were several people raising concerns about transphobic moderation practices, and rather than *just* being like "we messed up, sorry, here's the steps we're taking to do better, and we're open to more feedback here" and leaving it there, he got into heated debates with random tumblr users, taking issue with the way they were harassing him over it. And again, instead of just banning the people sending rule-breaking harassment and threats his way, he used his massive platform to namedrop them and publicly shame them.
From what I can tell, outside of Matt's interactions with random tumblr users, the tumblr team seemed to handle the overall situation pretty well, and had he been able to show the slightest bit of restraint, it wouldn't have been nearly as big of a deal
Wholly agree, I think he's way too bad at PR to be doing all these public statements. They should have gotten someone who's job it is PR if they wanted to look the best.
1:00:25 no, Theo. Just do a Google trends comparison. WPEngine is a speck of dust compared to Wordpress. There is no benefit for Wordpress in WPEngine offering hosting services for Wordpress. They offer Wordpress hosting because it's beneficial for WPEngine to use such an high profile brand.
Imagine you're a company.
Imagine you want to host both Drupal and Wordpress.
But there is a law that says if you only host one of those brands, it's considered promotion and you're exempt to pay royalties.
What would stop you from creating a WPEngine for hosting only Wordpress, and a DPEngine for only Drupal?
So, Theo, WPEngine is wrong here. No doubt about it. It's making a lot of profit from someone else IP without proper legal proceedings.
WordPress explicitly allowed the use of "WP" in their terms, and has been on good terms with WPEngine even up to a week ago when they were a sponsor at an official event. So it's far from a slam dunk to say WPEngine has been misusing someone else's IP, especially to an extent that warrants the "nuclear" option.
I find it sooo difficult to focus on and trust what he says when he dodges the questions all the time.
I’m really impressed by Theo being able to stand his ground, get back to the questions he asked and doing it in a very honest, non-aggressive way.
What is impressive when he doesn't have skin in the game? He can say anything he wants, obviously the CEO of a company with 1800 employees isn't going to go buck wild and make assertions that have legal implications.
@@jambalaya974you don’t have to have skin in the game to be good at interviewing.
@@sebastianmihaiprisacariu8975 There is no difficulty in asking questions over and over again lmao.
I, not gonna lie, wanted more of this.
WordPress man needs to feign humility. Its clear he can't feel it.
I am dying to hear what those two board members are thinking.
Great job Theo, impressive thinking on your feet. You really did a great job trying to reel this in and get us back to normal. MM is just singlemindedly and ham fistedly going to take this all the way into the ground. Ugh.
"people that are confused... like your mother" lmao
I'm with Matt, always available, puts his face to it, responds to DMs, stickers on the Mackbook, wants to defend Wordpress, his creature, from an Investment Firm and the cat has confirmed this to me. 😹😻😹
Ya, we saw the internal slack messages instructing you guys to post here. We get it, you have to post or you're in trouble.
@@newvocabulary Mhmhm I am not from Slack, I prefer Matt to defend Wordpress against those who charge me for hosting and change my code without my knowledge, I prefer my contribution to go to WooCommerce (which I use without paying a penny) for my sales on Stripe, rather than to WP Engine which I already pay for hosting, or if I go to retrieve a revision for a client who does damage on a post and I get zero revisions without knowing it.
@@newvocabulary I am not from Slack, I prefer Matt to defend Wordpress against those who charge me for hosting and change Wordpress code without my knowledg, I prefer my contribution to go to WooCommerce (which I use without paying a penny) for my sales on Stripe, rather than to WP Engine witch I already pay for hosting, or if I go to retrive a revision for a client who does damage to a post and I get zero revisions without knowing it.
@@newvocabulary I prefer Matt to defend Wordpress against those who charge me for hosting and change Wordpress code without my knowledg, I prefer my contribution to go to WooCommerce (which I use without paying a penny) for my sales on Stripe, rather than to WP Engine witch I already pay for hosting, or if I go to retrive a revision for a client who does damage to a post and I get zero revisions without knowing it. And I am not from Slack.
i'm with the opposite of Theo, as usual ! Always good to check if i'm on the wrong side and if i'm there with Theo, I'm in the wrong !
I'm rewatching the linux talk on gpl2, since wpengine are making changes, where can I see those changes? . I assume they are gpl2 in some sort of way.
i was looking at the glass of water right beside his laptop and his hands keep moving towards the glass. I hope it did not spill on the laptop.
I dont get what the issue is. Seems a bigger fish is making a buck off wordpress and wordpress creator would like them to be less parasitic and more on board with his philosophy and give more back. But WP engine are like well what we are doing is permitted so what is the beef. What is legally allowed or right or harm of this battle to users is less clear. Seems like another case of open source goes wrong. Id be pissed if a company made half a billion a year off my shit and i was not getting any love.
"Id be pissed if a company made half a billion a year off my shit and i was not getting any love."
Fair, but would you be pissed to the extent that you unfairly threw 1.5M+ innocent bystander sites under the bus and made them and the community pissed at you?
@JaredThirsk yes, if I had attempted prior good-intention engagements with that company. Matt tried to bring them to the negotiating table and they refused. And although Matt may look bad in the short term, a large portion of those customers will migrate to other WP hosting sites that will contribute to WP. And WP engine will be seen as the unreliable hosting service.
He could have done this in court- instead he tried to “go with the nuclear option” which was basically publicly slander another company- legally he is going to lose all he would have gotten from the trademark issue in lawsuits
@@spamman888 it seems to me, it's not about the money, it's about the message. I don't think he'll care if he doesn't ever see the money. Automatic and WP will be fine
@@daniele.2944 my point is that what he did is going to get him sued- and wp engine will win
Good job to Theo for hosting this interview - especially holding Matt to a higher standard and spending time / confronting about him about the public view/opinion. Also good job for Matt for being so open.
I honestly don't understand the whole argument, what's the point of having the trademark if you're getting bullied, when you try to exercise it?
WPE was told in WordPress license terms that 'WP' is ok to use. Nominative use to say "we offer WordPress hosting" is also allowed by law. WPE was accepted as a sponsor of an official WordPress event last weekend. So there's a case that by and large, WPE is not violating the trademark.
(The only thing I think might be a minor infraction is their plan names, but this is perhaps probably best decided by a court.)
@@JaredThirsk Thank god some common sense in this comment section. yes. 1000% here.
@@JaredThirsk They are branding their site with well over 70 counts of the word WordPress. Some are actually confusing. While it was changed today, their plans used to say "Host your website with the WordPress experts" (now "Host your website with the experts") and a bit further down on the page, as a heading for their self-promoting blog posts, it says "Moving WordPress forward The latest in WordPress". Even the podcast that's linked in that blog section is called "Press WordPress Community Podcast". Why isn't it WPE Community Podcast? Why did it say "the WordPress experts"? "the" experts? Combine the name WP >ENGINE< (sounding as if it is the backend it all runs on) with things like that, and it certainly seems more endorsed/official/associated than it is. Also they obviously weren't accepted as a sponsor just last week, that was probably agreed and paid for LONG before this; event planning and preparation takes months. Matt even said he offered them a full refund of the 75,000 USD they had paid for their sponsor spot and the reason they were accepted as a sponsor was because they kept leading him/the foundation on that WPE were going to do something about the issues he/they had with the trademark abuse. Theo even read one of Matt's emails dated in June that spoke of his disappointment with how people are confusing WP Engine as something official. It seems like WP Engine is also a bit shitty here, not only Matt. Matt was unprofessional, but so was WP Engine when they rertorted by releasing private messages that only show one side of the dialogue, cherry picked to smear him as an individual. He called a faceless company cancer, they framed him, a person, as an evil person without showing what responses they had made. It was so obvious that those messages they shared were cut and doctored to only show his side and not what they might have said in return.
Because they’re not exercising it fairly. They’re using it to extort people who are making “too much money” and making moves beyond that, hurting end users because of some grievance with the company.
He’s also been known to be a weasel previously, so the manner in which this kicked off didn’t sit well with a lot of people.
great interview Theo, I hope WP engine becomes as transparent in this matter as Matt has been
I want to listen to the whole interview yet but has he told you the following
WP engine commits 45 hours but he rejects all their commits? This is proven by someone who used to script to pull their hours from the core this week.
That the highest after Automattic in contributing hours is 204 hours and most don't contribute at all it is also not a requirement.
That WPE contributed considerable money to word camps and sponsorships and core work that they paid people to do? Not that any contributions are required for the trademark.
That Matt changed the terms of the trademark on the website on the 25th and the 26th?
That he launched a marketing campaign for Pressable ,something that he owns, against WPEngine as a host?
That the invested in WordPress engine in 2010 and haven't had an issue with the trademark until very recently? And in the meantime is extortung millions of dollars from WP engine?
Also I've had multiple sites on WP engine for a decade and sites never go down and they never get hacked, so whatever Matt's talking about it either lying or it's like a couple people came to him because you can get on WP engines chat and they fix anything immediately.
That line really summed up everything thus far - "stop digging, man". If I were in his legal team I'd have done everything I could to stop him from opening his mouth.
The dude is worth like $400 million, pretty sure he does not need advice from any of us
@@iamsh4r106I think that's exactly why he needs it.
Murphy is a chad for this stunt 36:17
If you look at what happened and what was released, I think Matt Mullenweg is heavily abusing his power and this destroyes all the trust in WP for the whole ecosystem. Reminds me of the USA freezing about 300 bln of Russian assets and then wonder why the BRICS alliance is getting stronger and astronger and is about to launch their own financial system and wants to drop the dollar asap.
The whole WP community needs to drop Matt Mullenweg now. He needs to step down to let WP survive otherwise this is after the failing and never ending Gutenberg project the second nail in the coffin of WP.