WPEngine, Inc. vs. Automattic– Order on Motion for Preliminary Injunction
courtlistener.com> Here, Mullenweg’s “statement that he had the right to disable WPEngine’s account access and to make changes to the ACF plugin for the sake of public safety[,]” see Opp. at 27-28, is belied by the declarations of WPEngine’s executives stating that the claimed vulnerability was minor [...]
@photomatt literally screwed himself over by talking about his actions here, when everyone was screaming at him to shut the fuck up. Will he start listening now?
In short, what this injunction does is a) remove the checkbox, b) return ACF to WPEngine, c) restore access to website, d) no bond required.
Here's the HN thread that's an exhibit in this court filing (screenshot on page 24),
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41821336#41821399 ("Secure Custom Fields by WordPress.org (wordpress.org)")
I'm not sure how many people (including myself) told him to stop talking about the case on Hacker News. He never listened.
Wasn't it good that he kept talking though? Sorry for being crass, but I'd prefer him loosing this case.
Agreed.
But that's a weird thing to do. Why advise people to do stuff detrimental to the world?
Trying to help people be better versions of themselves is a good thing.
But this wasn't about trying to help someone to be better, it was to help them avoid facing consequences for being bad, like advising a wife beater about concealer options for his wife (overly dramatic example, I know).
"You should stop doing dumb/illegal stuff, it might impact you" is very different advice than "You should stop talking about the dumb/illegal stuff you do, they may stop you".
It was probably an error in judgement for me to have advised the man to stop talking.
Or judgment even
Both spellings are considered correct, although i personally prefer 'judgment'.
Tell me you are from the U.S. without telling me you are from the U.S..
Like every dictator, he knows better than you, me or anyone. If you don't believe that, just ask him.
When does ACF return to WP Engine? Still looks like it's under the control of "WordPress.org" https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/
within 72 hours..
72 hours have passed now, no change.
It got restored at about 5:30pm PST on Friday evening: https://x.com/wp_acf/status/1867761686389604368
Mullenweg posted a whiny tweet about it: https://x.com/photomatt/status/1867759730992586756
I hope Matt considers placing all the community resources of Wordpress into the foundation, including Wordpress.org, constituting an actual board, contributing funds, and setting up a governance and contribution system that matches the open ethos of the license and community.
I think this is an area that Drupal gets right, and Dries wrote an interesting post about it in October:
I don't see this happening, as it would de-throne Matt and Matt hasn't shown any "remorse", any understanding of him being the issue and that there's a clear conflict of interest. No, in fact he keeps doubling down [1] on claiming that all of his/Automattic's efforts are happening for the good of open source and the community.
Agreed. Matt thinks he is solely responsible for this cafelog fork taking over so much of the Internet… he needs some humble pie…
Pride cometh before the fall...
Advocating, in other words, the creation of a sort of
Automattic for the People
Bravo. I haven’t listened to that record for ages. Thank you!
He would argue that Matty got a raw deal.
yeah yeah yeah yeah.
This is pretty on the nose considering Matt's latest blog post[1]. I feel for Matt in some regard, and I do think the lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS developers are required to provide software with warranty. However, I say that with not fully understanding the seperation of actions between Automattic the company and Matt in his own personal capacity.
> I do think the lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS developers are required to provide software with warranty
1) This is a preliminary injunction, not a decision. An injunction which resets a situation to the former status quo pending a decision isn't all that unusual.
2) I don't think the issue here is so much a "warranty" as much as that Automattic (et al) set out to discriminate against WPEngine to obtain a business advantage. If Automattic wanted to shut down the WordPress plugin repository entirely, they'd be within their rights to do so. (It'd be business suicide, of course - but the point is that they could.)
Given that OSS litigation typically spans decades an injunction might as well be a decision
For the purpose of preventing action by the defendant, yes. For the purpose of setting binding precedent that affects the outcomes of other lawsuits, not at all.
The open source nature of WordPress is largely irrelevant to this case. Neither party is contesting the copyright status of WordPress or its plugins.
>and I do think the lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS developers are required to provide software with warranty
If Matt hadn't tried to extort WP Engine he would have been perfectly within his right to say "large hosts have to pay to use the WordPress plugin directory". The injunction is purely about one specific company who was allegedly harmed by Automattic.
I agree in general, but there's still a problem with encouraging people for decades to build businesses around a version of WP hardcoded to .org, not letting them "phone home," not making clear that they were building on a private company instead of a foundation with a clear mission statement, and then pulling the rug without notice. I don't think all of those steps would be legal, either.
The other lasting problem is that he completely destroyed the foundation’s credibility as an independent organization. I don’t see it retaining non-profit status unless he and his cronies are completely removed.
It’d make sense for a true non-profit to ask all hosting companies and other high volume users to help fund it, but if it’s not a fully-owned subsidiary of Automattic that’d be everyone, not just when he needs leverage against one company.
> OSS developers are required to provide software with warranty
This injunction is against WPcom (a for profit entity) and not WPorg. Matt conducted tortious interference. This sets zero precedent on OSS maintainers.
> I do think the lawsuit sets a precedent that OSS developers are required to provide software with warranty.
Not really. The court order is to restore things to the status quo of 3 months ago, to require that Matt undo all of the things he specifically had to single out to do to fuck over WPEngine. If Matt hadn't specifically singled out WPEngine, and instead decided to stop providing the website to everybody, there wouldn't have been much of a case anyone could bring.
> However, I say that with not fully understanding the seperation of actions between Automattic the company and Matt in his own personal capacity.
As I understand it, everything Wordpress is Matt in three trenchcoats. Certainly, that's how he's pushing it in his defense filings in this lawsuit.
> However, I say that with not fully understanding the seperation of actions between Automattic the company and Matt in his own personal capacity.
Automattic and the Wordpress Foundation are both Matt's to use as he sees fit. There isn't a meaningful distinction between him and his organizations.
Matt honestly seems unaware this is how it’s done in many projects. I even asked him about it and he responded with “when has that ever been successful”
Yes, they did use Matt's Hacker News comments against him. (p24)
The more relevant outcome of WPEngine getting the injuction is in Section F (p40), which includes removing that WordPress login checkbox.
Matt hasn't commented here in 57 days. I wonder what changed from, paraphrased, my lawyer okayed this communication[1] and now.
Almost certainly the lawyer either A) did NOT ok it, B) OK'd it and then realized that was a huge mistake and reneged, C) was replaced by a different lawyer who made it very clear it was an awful idea.
Matt is pretty clearly a terrible client from a client control perspective. He's simply not good at doing anything but exactly what he wants to do.
As I have said elsewhere, he is now in this situation solely due to his own actions, having gained almost nothing and lost a lot. He'll lose more if this goes to trial.
https://ma.tt/2024/10/first-amendment/
The lawyer thing was hilarious. Someone actually claiming to be his lawyer was on the HN threads and anytime he was asked a question the response was a version of "Oh, I hadn't heard about this. I can't answer that."
what they’re trying to do is ask a judge to curtail my First Amendment rights.
I've heard about corporations being persons too but a person claiming to be a corporation is a new one. Has that regal "L'État, c'est moi" ring to it.
I don't think he claims to be a corporation here.
What he says is that, because wordpress[dot]org is his personal site, telling him what to do with it would violate his First Amendment rights.
Its still stupid. The first amendment doesn't mean you can do literally anything you want.
I've come to realize that for some people the law is considered in a Big Lebowski manner: "that's just, like, your opinion, man".
A billionaire who will remain nameless is reportedly very fond of saying “Sue them” when he’s not getting his way. It’s the lawyers job to figure out what to actually sue them _for_.
First amendment right is against the government; not other companies and individuals.
> After this post, I will refrain from personally commenting on the WP Engine case until a judge rules on the injunction.
Well, a judge did indeed rule on the injuction.
He just retweeted this tweet about the case: https://x.com/brian_essig/status/1866640985842692452
> This is actually bullshit. Agree with him or not, the court is forcing an open source maintainer into providing services to a user. What’s next, a company finds a bug and a court orders a maintainer to fix it?
That's not an accurate description. An accurate description is that the court is ordering an open source maintainer to stop treating one particular user in a hostile and exclusionary manner. Now, you can object to that too, but there's a serious difference. It's like fixing a bug, but intentionally excluding some particular user from getting the bug fix - it's not the same as fixing a bug. Fixing a bug anew requires additional work, and forcing somebody in un-contracted work is usually hard. Allowing a user to access the bug fix everybody else can access requires just stopping being a jerk, no surprise the court is much more willing to grant such kind of relief.
Also, promissory estoppel, which an actual attorney explained as such:
Even though you don't have a contract, you make a promise (Matt: wp.org is free forever to anyone), someone (WP Engine) relies on that promise to their detriment, and the plaintiff's reliance on that promise was reasonable. Discussion of promissory estoppel at 44:17 (over the next 3 minutes or so) in [1].
And note that singling out WP Engine for very explicitly a payment is part of the rationale.
Shortly after Mike also discusses the same point made by /u/DannyBee [2], ie that the attorneys seem to be considering this case not in the context of the wordpress business, in which Matt being allowed to say you all have access to the code / updates / plugins at my whim is not great for wordpress the company outside of this narrow cirumstance.
[1] A discussion by attorney Mike Dunford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdwiZEhRS3o
It's funny because i literally explained in the original thread how this actually works legally, and that's exactly what happened.
Can you link to that explanation, please, for those of us not well versed in how this works?
It's always lame when somebody's arguments get shut down in court and then they just repeat the same failed arguments after.
Like, come up with some new material.
The court is forcing the operator of wordpress.org into providing services, being an open source maintainer is entirely irrelevant here. This entire thing is closer to app store litigation than anything even vaguely open source.
Given the amount of downvotes his comments attract, I wouldn't be at all surprised that he just behaved like a normal human and decided to stop posting on a site where everyone seems to disagree with him.
Iunno, if I felt being misunderstood, I would try to make the same point over and over, irregardlessly (or: exactly because of) the downvotes.
I used to do that, too. It didn't work.
Pretty sure everyone except Matt saw that one coming
I feel like photomatt's comments are going to be enshrined in the same way the Dropbox one was. He talked up such a huge game but everyone knew he was in the wrong - we need to intercept cocky executives before they incriminate themselves in media res.
> we need to intercept cocky executives before they incriminate themselves in media res.
Please don't, just let them.
Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.
There’s a community of users to think about…
I think Matt needs to be replaced, and while the “what” may be arguable, he loses hard on the “how”.
These people care little of the potential consequences, they operate from a particular mental model in that regard [1]. The harm will be done. When they swan dive from a reputational and legal perspective, step back and the problem solves itself.
I agree if we're talking from the perspective of his lawyers. From the wordpress community perspective, I think we benefited from Matt's extraordinary outspokenness here. It made all the bad acts very easy to bullet point in this injunction!
Maybe he'll have to step back like Linus had a few years ago.
And maybe give the wp.org domain ownership to the Foundation, making WP a bit more reliable and resilient to one's actions.
That wouldn't change anything - he IS the foundation.
Curious as to what was the Dropbox comment? Can you please share or link? Thanks!
Congrats, you're one of today's lucky 10000:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
Also worth reading the poster's follow-up years later and the ensuing discussion. Graeme's observation about the significance of the comment is super important:
Time for another episode of "The Case for 9224" (not criticizing you! it's just my hobby, apparently)
That comment has gotten a bum rap over the years. The commenter was trying to be helpful with Dropbox's YC application (that's what "app" meant on HN in 2007). Back then, file synchronization was widely thought to be a solution-in-search-of-a-problem. I've been trying for years to get people to understand this (starting at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275, then https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), even though I know you can't argue with the internet.
The comment only became infamous years later [1, 2], after Dropbox was clearly a success—so this is a case of hindsight. If people would only read all three comments, instead of stopping at the first, they'd see that the exchange was pleasant and successful [3]. But a meme is more fun. It didn't exist, so it had to be invented! [4]
Compare that with the other infamous-HN-comment-from-2007, "did you win the Putnam" [5], which got pilloried in real time. No hindsight fallacy there!
If the hivemind had empathy (which alas it does not), people would stop to consider how they'd feel about getting publicly mocked over decades for something they posted with good intentions at age 22 [6]. Alas, this is how the internet works—not much we can do about it. It's amazing, though, what a good sport BrandonM has been about it all this time. That part of the story is actually real, so we should celebrate that too.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6138488 (August 2013, i.e. 6 years later) seems to be the earliest reference on HN itself.
[2] April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306 (Oct 2013)
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9272 from Drew, and then https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9479
[4] https://www.whitman.edu/VSA/trois.imposteurs.html
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079, but don't miss the witty and graceful concession (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35350)
I never interpreted these comments as mean-spirited, it’s just funny how the comment is completely wrong on hindsight. Kind of like the 640 kB of RAM thing or horses being better than cars.
I don’t think the point is that the people saying it at the time were stupid, it’s just interesting that people can come to completely wrong conclusions which seem reasonable at the time.
It's not completely wrong in hindsight†. It's only "wrong" if you assume "app" means Dropbox itself, and if you ignore the context of the thread. Brandon was talking about an application that framed Dropbox as an alternative to USB drives, and critiquing the pitch.
There was a time on HN where it actually made sense to bat a YC application back and forth, and to talk about what might make a more or less compelling one. It's long gone, and the people dunking on this comment have completely lost touch with what the original community was. I'm not saying that community was better (it was much more insular), but it was certainly more collegial.
† In fact, I think we now know it was literally correct, and YC had the same qualms, accepting Drew Houston just to get access to him and apparently hoping he'd find something better to work on.
At least point 1 and 3 were completely wrong (or technically not wrong but irrelevant to the point).
As you can see by the success of Dropbox, point 1 wasn’t a real issue. That’s also the funniest point, because „why would anyone pay for XYZ, as a software engineer I can just do A, B, C, and D myself“ is such a common counterpoint which completely neglects that most customers aren’t going to do ABCD themselves because they don’t want to deal with it and don’t have the know how.
And point 3 probably can also be classified as wrong, at least Dropbox seems to make some amount of money.
No, couldn't possibly have been wrong, because YC agreed with them. Again: you're missing what Dan is saying. The thread isn't about Dropbox-the-product. It's about the YC application Drew Houston wrote to pitch Dropbox. I really don't think there's a way to rhetoric your way out of this one!
But do you think the commenter meant „here are my issues with this YC application, you should make those points more clear: …“ or do you think he meant „here are my issues with this YC application, you should find something else to do!“?
Because to me it seems like he’s criticizing the product itself, not just the presentation.
The former.
And in case anyone needs it, the 10,000 number is referencing this: https://xkcd.com/1053/
It would be this one, I'm sure.
Why intercept them? I don't want douchebags like that to succeed in their douchebaggery. I want them to mouth off.
Rooted in speculation about why this meltdown occurred in the first place: be very careful about taking money, as well as the amount and who from. My guess from day one is that Matt was put under pressure from investors and this was the only "fix" he saw.
A real shame to see such a great legacy flushed for zero ROI.
I've often wondered if his emphasis on how private equity was ruining WordPress was him telegraphing his frustration with his own investors at Black Rock while technically abiding by his contract with them. It's interesting to consider that his performance could have been a type of malicious compliance with their demands—going so far overboard that he intentionally destroys the whole ecosystem as a kind of revenge.
It's probably more likely he just went nuts, but it's fun as a head canon.
> his own investors at Black Rock
Blackrock does not at all operate the same as a private equity and it's a huge pet peeve of mine when people lump them in together. Usually they are confusing Blackrock with Blackstone.
All Blackrock does is manage wealth and investments on behalf of individual clients. One of the ways they do this is by sticking private assets into funds for their clients. It's more akin to Vanguard than anything to do with private equity. There's no reason to believe BlackRock would be breathing down their necks when all they do is broker the funds on behalf of their clients.
Automattic DOES have private equity backers though like Tiger Global, Insight, ICONIQ, and more.
I like how confident this post is.
Blackrock absolutely has private equity operations which they do not hide even a little bit
> Private equity is a core pillar of BlackRock’s alternatives platform. BlackRock’s Private Equity teams manage USD$41.9 billion in capital commitments across direct, primary, secondary and co-investments.
https://www.blackrock.com/institutions/en-us/strategies/alte...
They also do more traditional asset management, but saying they “do not operate at all the same as a private equity” is like saying that Jack In The Box “does not operate at all like a taco place” despite the fact that you can buy a taco at every one of their locations.
> Our platform takes a holistic approach to investors’ private equity portfolios and is designed to offer strategies and solutions that align with client objectives and deliver persistent outperformance.
I get your point, but again, they are doing this on behalf of clients. And 49b is less than a percent of their holdings. So I would still think of them as a brokerage.
This would be like calling Uber a restaurant company just because they launched UberEats.
That's what all private equity firms do. They get paid to manage private equity funds. The managers don't usually put up most of the money. It comes from outside investors.they are doing this on behalf of clients> This would be like calling Uber a restaurant company just because they launched UberEats.
an apt comparison.
Some people dislike how ubereats operate.
The dislike of private equity is not unfounded, but also the problems don't actually stem from private equity at all, but from bad/misaligned incentives. People tend to want to assume that private equity buying a business will retain the same incentive as the original owners - but the reason why PE would buy a business is _because_ the original owners weren't being perfectly efficient (aka, stingy).
This has nothing to do with private equity per se, and has everything to do with capitalism at it's core.
$42 billion at Blackrock is nothing. They manage over ten trillion dollars.
Shouldn’t you compare the sum to other private equity firms, not the rest of black rock? If they are a significant player in the space, I don’t think their other assets matter when saying that they operate in the space.
People often confuse BlackRock, an asset manager, with Blackstone, which is a private equity firm. However, I doubt Blackstone counts low enough to have bought part of Automattic. Blackstone also owns a considerable portion of BlackRock.
Which company whose name started with Black was the PMC in that case?
That was Blackwater ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company) ), no relation.
Someone should found "BlackFire" and "BlackAir" to complete the ancient elements.
The BlackElements existed in harmony until one day etc
Fair enough. /at Black Rock/d
Thank you very much for this clarification!
As amusing as that thought is... I think he could have done that without misrepresenting [the 'contracts' of] open source software so readily.
He stood to gain from this little knife twist, we all may still lose. Who knows what misconceptions were born/the downstream effects. WPEngine was never under any obligation to Matt himself/Automattic/WordPress/the Foundation [whatever distinction - if any - that may offer!]... outside of the license.
I don't believe it's a question of distance overboard, it started there! To quote Kendrick: "colonizer"
Matt has claimed[1] before to be "post-economic", i.e. has enough money that it doesn't matter to him anymore. It's hard not to see this as personal, not financial.
> It's hard not to see this as personal, not financial.
Despite not needing the money, Matt seemed to be very upset that WPEngine was making money.
What's the common thing people with more than enough money to spend want? "more"
After every possible need is met. Money becomes "points".
In terms of cognitive impairment that's like being kicked in the head by a horse every day.
That was before he made tons of horrible angel investments - https://pitchbook.com/profiles/investor/106035-94#exits you can see how many of his portfolio are out of business or near death.
Isn’t that pretty normal for angel investments? It’s a numbers game.
No, it was this past September 26, in the middle of all of this.
That sounds like what every person pretending to be rich but isn't as rich as they claim to be, says.
had
WPEngine (and a horde of Emanuel Urquhart lawyers led by Rachel Kassabian) are taking him to the cleaners. This won't be pretty. A preliminary injunction is not easy to get, it's really likely WPEngine will win at least something.
No, Matt is just a classic CEO exhibiting symptoms of narcissist personality disorder who's now getting served in court and doesn't realise how much he earned it.
Matt went on a Youtube channel last week to partake in a Wordpress speed building challenge, and he got frustrated several times using his own product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqY5bje8D2o
He spent years squashing anyone who complained about Gutenberg, and then he calls WPEngine a cancer and accuses them of offering an inferior version. All to find out that he's not even familiar!
Sure seems like it.
I agree with the theory about him telegraphing the frustration with his investors through his accusations of the fight against "evil private equity." That is so, so typical. Enough accusations form a whole letter of confession with these kind of people.
I dunno, I mean he could have applied the "fix" in a more cold and calculated method. Tons of PE companies out here doing the same and squeezing the stone without resorting to random personal attacks of those they disagreed with. Everything just had this air of pettiness to it instead.
The difference between an MBA and a hacker who lucked into a profitable business.
I would say, negative ROI at this point.
> Defendants’ arguments in opposition do not persuade otherwise. They assert that “[t]he public is not, and will not, be subject to any harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction” noting that WPEngine implemented a workaround for Mullenweg’s interference with its access to WordPress. Opp. at 33. Not so. In his reply declaration, Prabhakar explains that the temporary solution “is impractical for many reasons.” Prabhakar Reply Decl. ¶ 4. Without access to wordpress.org, those who use WPEngine’s plugins “would not know that their plugins require update[.]” Id. Many do not know how to update plugins manually. Id. For those that do, if they manage several websites, and those websites run multiple plugins, the process of performing manual updates would be too onerous and time consuming to be workable. Id. Moreover, even if WPEngine’s workaround did not present the difficulties Prabhakar describes, the costs associated with its implementation, as necessitated by Mullenweg’s conduct, supports the issuance of injunctive relief.
Ouch. The court is basically saying that they need to implement the preliminary injunction for the wider public good. Rather puts the lie to several assertions by Mullenweg.
In fact, it's not at all looking good for Mullenweg or Automattic.
> remove the purported list of WPEngine customers contained in the “domains.csv” file linked to Defendants’ wordpressenginetracker.com website (which was launched on or about November 7, 2024) and stored in the associated GitHub repository located at https://github.com/wordpressenginetracker/wordpressenginetra....
Considering the only changes [1] [2] have been to add more sites to the list I guess there's going to be a second hearing to enforce the injunction.
[1]: https://github.com/wordpressenginetracker/wordpressenginetra...
[2]: https://github.com/wordpressenginetracker/wordpressenginetra...
> Within 72 hours, Defendants are ORDERED to:
So they can add sites to the tracker GH right up to the 71 hour, then remove it and still be in compliance with the order.
edit: as the WPEngine checkbox has been removed from https://login.wordpress.org/ since the order, I don't see why they won't also follow the order regrading the site tracker.
Removed 5min ago hmmmhm
> restoring WPEngine’s and Related Entities’ access to wordpress.org in the
> ...
> slack.wordpress.org); and
That is going to be a very awkward slack channel.
TL;DR: This is a huge verdict against Automattic. To get an injunction like this is a really high bar - you have to prove that you have a winnable case AND that you/the public is actively being harmed right now and it can't wait until trial.
The injunction covers almost everything relevant - returning ACF, taking down the website tracker, removing the checkbox, etc. Basically return everything as it was before Matt became a supervillain the day of Wordcamp.
This is a huge sign that the case against Matt is a slam dunk. The writing in injunctions like this is indicative of the court's thinking based on the pleadings, and they have basically regurgitated the complaint while adding on more evidence from Matt being an ass on social media, which suggests that the judge has a strong preference.
Right - not just a preliminary injunction but basically the Court dismisses basically every argument put forth by Automattic in all even claims as "not withstanding scrutiny", "not supported by evidence", and "a consequence of their own actions". Throughout the document, there is -very- little that says Automattic's defense to any of this has any substance.
Uh, yeah, and in fact, the judge found likelihood of success on the tortuious interference claim which basically never happens, and so didn't bother to deal with the unfair competition part.
That's remarkably bad for Automattic - tortuious interference is often a throwaway claim.
The judge here clearly does not think much of Automattic's positions.
I wonder if Neal found the merit yet[1].
Automattic made the unusual choice of publishing a blog saying "We did a tortuous interference intentionally" which makes it a lot easier.
I don't know if Neal has found the merit yet, but Automattic seems to be losing their company lawyers at a pace of one per week since a couple of months ago. That seems a pretty good indicator of where the legal department of the company sees things going towards.
As much as the US justice system is deeply, deeply flawed, it is one of the few places where very wealthy people ever hit the "find out" stage after fucking around. Some recent examples, apart from this case, certainly include SBF going to prison, Elon Musk being forced to buy Twitter, Alex Jones' enormous civil judgment, and so on.
I'm not saying I have faith in the system, exactly, especially when it tends to only do this at the behest of other very wealthy people demanding it, but it is nice to see.
Matt Mullenweg, if you're reading this (and we know you read HN), feel free to not listen to your attorneys and continue to attack random individuals and companies randomly because you decide you don't like them, or whatever. It will surely end well for you and definitely not with more massive own goals like this one. (And if you are Matt Mullenweg's attorney, and reading this because he decided to follow my bad advice instead of your good advice, well, I'm happy to take a steak dinner in appreciation of the massive bill you'll soon be sending him.)
Matt's attorney - or someone claiming to be him - was saying that Matt is in the right and everything he's posted since the start was cleared by him. On here and on Twitter.
That jives with Matt's claims that his lawyers were on board with all of his nonsense (and now, probably legally incriminating!) posts. But it could also have just been someone LARPing.
Since Matt was personally commenting in the threads, I think he would have made a comment saying that the person claiming to be his lawyer isn't actually his lawyer.
Unless the person claiming to be his lawyer was actually Matt.
Or John Barron.
In almost every example you cited, the very wealthy people were also very stupid and violated bedrock principles of the court system in a way that could not be swept under the rug. Specifically:
- Elon Musk put it in writing that he was going to buy Twitter with no due diligence. Contracts are nine tenths of the law; no court in the world is going to get you out of one because the biggest value the court system has to the wealthy is contract enforcement.
- Alex Jones never actually argued the merits of the defamation case against him. He didn't even show up to court. Judges have wide latitude to rule against people who don't show up to defend their cases, because otherwise nobody would be dumb enough to actually defend themself in a (neutral) court of law.
- One of the few things US law can actually still protect you against is all the classic failure modes of banks and investments, both because the wealthy demand protection for their wealth and because the less-wealthy have been fleeced by investment fraud for so long that the list of memestock victims includes Issac Newton. SBF did the one kind of financial crime that the system actually cares about[0].
Today's system is corrupt on the margins: it needs to at least provide the appearance of impartiality, because the wealthy still rely on it being an impartial arbitrator of competing interests. In 1500s England, wealthy people didn't get divorces, they got annulments, where they paid a priest to go squint at Bible verses and find something to explain why the marriage was spiritually invalid. The wealthy person gets to sidestep the rules, but only if someone can find their desired loophole. Sometimes, they can't.
And then sometimes a Henry VIII comes along, tries to have it both ways, gets told no, says "fuck that, I'm the church now", and completely replaces the partially corrupt system with a completely corrupt one. Matt Mullenweg seems to be playing at the same bit, doing ideological purges of Automattic and such; but he doesn't own the WordPress community, and he doesn't own the law.
Enjoy it while it lasts, because it might not survive convicted felon / ex-President / President-Elect Donald Trump, depending on how many of Big Tech's Henry VIIIths come running to Trump for protection from countries that actually enforce their antitrust laws.
[0] This also goes for Martin Shkreli; whose first criminal charge was for running a Ponzi scheme, not for jacking up the cost of generic drugs to exploit FDA regulations on sole-supplier drugs.
>He didn't even show up to court.
Yes he did, under oath, and he didn't do so well - he was caught lying about evidence during his testimony, and famously admitted that he knew that the shooting wasn't staged.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/03/alex-jones-trial-def...
He didn’t show up to court, so he was given a “default judgement”.
There WAS a trial, but it was not about guilt or innocence, it was about “how much” cause he already lost due to him not showing up
In Lafferty et. al. v. Jones, Jones was ordered to be deposed under oath in March 2019, as part of the trial. This was the deposition in which he admitted the deaths were real. It wasn't until 2021 where the judge in that case found him liable by default.
Deposition != court
Alex Jones' loss of infowars has been rejected by the judge, who seems intent on handing it to the assets Jones transferred to his parents to shield them instead. You might want to reevaluate.
That's not an accurate description of what happened, and in any case, I was referring to the massive approximately $1 billion judgement against Jones, which isn't going anywhere regardless.
Can anyone here summarize the legal principle involved here?
Why does Matt legally have to provide services to people he doesn't want to, even if he's morally wrong or generally being an asshole?
To my non-lawyer and only-watching-from-the-sidelines self, the ACF situation seems more clearly actionable, but the other things are very interesting.
“Tortious interference” is wrongful interference in others’ contractual or business relationships. Wordpress does not have to provide free services to anyone in particular, only to honor their legal agreements and treat their users equally. In this case they did not; they took action specifically to damage WPEngine.
Matt may even be morally correct in some ways, but that doesn’t give him the right to use his position as Wordpress leader to damage the business of someone who competes with Automattic.
It's not a long document, but to take one of the example torts mentioned: torturous interference with a business contract is illegal, even if you own the means of interfering.
Could matt/automattic/wordpress.org/wordpress.com (they all act as the same entity: matt) have withdrawn services in a way that didn't tortiously interfere with a business contract? Of course. But he didn't, because tortiously interfering with WPEngine's customer contracts was his primary goal. His complaints about cost were secondary at best, and seem to have been entirely a pretext.
To add more perspective: withdrawing services from everybody usually requires one to simply stop working and/or paying bills. To withdraw services from WPEngine, matt had to consciously expend time/effort/money, just to interfere with WPEngine's customer contracts. Doing nothing would have been less work and cost matt less.
I get the impression this injunction is really just saying that WPEngine's legal case has some veracity, and Automattic's actions seem to be retaliatory and/or not legal (depending on the eventual outcome of the actual case), and so is saying everything needs to be set back to where it was, while the courts work through an actual legal decision.
I think this is fair. I think wordpress had every right to cut WPEngine off, but
1) the fact that subbing in his fork of their plugin killed already purchased "pro" user features without warning was an illegitimate attack on the "pro" customers themselves (who probably have a case against him personally),
2) the pretense that he was doing it for "security reasons" because there was an exploit (every single part of everything about wordpress has an exploit in a random month) shows that he thought he was doing something unjustifiable; he should have been clear and open about why he was forking, and not do anything that broke people's installs, and
3) the behind-the-scenes harassment was just over the top. He should have just made his demand, and when they turned it down, sent a follow up explaining how he was going to cut off access so they could coordinate doing it cleanly. Instead he was intentionally optimizing for chaos and saying this in private communications over and over again.
He could have done almost all of the same things, and just refused to update "pro" users to the fork and instead refer them to WPEngine's alternative setup. Instead he ranted and raved ominously behind the scenes, trying to make it as clear as possible that this was extortion when in essence it wasn't. It was all of the fake snarkiness in public and in private, attempts to poach employees, threats to destroy the company, and insinuations of security problems that made it extortion.
WPE is going to win this because Mullenweg seemingly has no ability to emotionally self-regulate. Real teenage swatter vibes. And I think he was in the right, and I think that without all of the crap, they'd probably have backed down and started contributing.
They'll probably end up getting a remedy where he has to help them set up and maintain their alternative plugin directory, he might have to pay them damages, and he might even end up having to allow everyone use of the mark freely. Then what does he have? He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
> I think wordpress had every right to cut WPEngine off
Even though wordpress.org is built/maintained by volunteers such as WPEngine who were all told it's a "community asset", "nobody owns it but wordpress", "it's maintained by the foundation".
Volunteers who now find out from court documents that wordpress.org is the personal website of Matt who can do whatever he wants with it?
Volunteers who are now banned from the thing they helped build for simply voicing disagreement with actions which are accepted by most as extreme/unwarranted?
Even volunteers who work on WordPress (not w.org), who built in to the Core reliance on w.org infrastructure after being lied to that it's owned by the Foundation.
I think in this specific case, they have absolutely no right and the injunction supports that.
> the pretense that he was doing it for "security reasons" because there was an exploit (every single part of everything about wordpress has an exploit in a random month) shows that he thought he was doing something unjustifiable
Not to mention the threats posted online to other plugin developers, "we can and will find an exploit in your plugin and do exactly the same to you if we want" indicated it had very little to do with security. I'm sure he had Automattic employees pulled onto finding even the most trivial of exploits just to be able to do this.
> they'd probably have backed down and started contributing
WPE contributes probably in the seven digit a year range to WP. The very conference that Matt went "nuclear" at was sponsored by WPE to the tune of $75K (and for insult on injury, they were denied the ability to attend, and I believe all references to them were removed, but the money was kept).
The explanations in the injunction with regards to clients' contracts of wpengine does not read like he ever had any right to cut wpengine off. And his argument about how trademarks somehow gave him a right to ask for money from a wp hoster was never valid. I don't think he ever had a right to cut off wpengine, neither legally nor ethically. The case will be a complete loss for WordPress, and matts statements probably didn't even change that all that much, they just make the decision easier and add additional charges to lose, like the blatant extortion.
(It's thinkable to ask for money from entities accessing the plugin registry, making it a paid api. But not a fee from a company just for using a Foss software. The license doesn't allow that.)
Ehh. I speak as a pretty long-term WP-oriented developer who is no fan of WP Engine for reasons that are defined by having used their product when I say:
This was the only sensible and just outcome.
The "Secure Custom Fields" thing is one of the most egregious things to happen in open source for at least a decade. Just crazy.
Hopefully Matt understands he has become self-limiting and steps back from some of his positions/takes off one of his too many hats.
I stopped following it for a bit after the initial drama after Matt had repeated meltdowns and showed his true face in all of this. It was just tiring try to fight all the non-stop gaslighting which was probably part of the strategy. Any leg he had to stand on was betrayed by his tantrums. Good to see some movement.
It feels as if Automattic doesn't do a complete paradigm shift and become truly open with their software everyone is going to give up on them entirely - at least everyone with significant talent and investment.
I agree with you that Automattic needs a paradigm shift (massive leadership change, probably), but I don’t think the openness of their software is the problem.
Just because they have a huge number of OSS projects. Most of it is open source, even things that really don’t see 3rd party contributions (like https://github.com/Automattic/vip-go-mu-plugins, https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso, https://github.com/Automattic/redvelvet-lib, https://github.com/Automattic/newspack-plugin, https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-ios)
Automattic has other issues (leadership, especially!!) but software development happens largely in the open. Just look at the GH issues and PRs in the WP-calypso and Gutenberg repositories, and you’ll see even a lot of technical discussion and planning happening completely public. You can even chime in if you want :)
Automattic has lots of issues. But they simply have much more open software development practices than nearly any other tech company (most of which are completely private and closed source). I just don’t think this is the core problem.
Anyone taking bets if he will obey the injunction? My feeling is that his ego will not let him do so.
That's a good way to find that judges also have fairly hefty egos, and the ability to jail you for impacting it.
I'm taking bets matt will just do a "I bet you my ego is bigger" and end up going to jail for contempt of court for 10 years.
And then the day he gets out he'll continue the feud.
More like 10 days, contempt of court starts small and only accumulates if you keep doing it. I think he would get the message after the first time. But he’s got lawyers, there’s about 1% chance he’s going to jail for that.
Tried to get bond for an amount covering bills for two years; lol. This gives me more hope than most things I've read lately
Makes you wonder if they really thought that would work. I guess it never hurts to shoot for the moon.
+1, something about landing among the stars. I think Matt wanted to be one; this had a very astroturf feel - making himself the champion... and now, lol. But I repeat myself!
I sort of wish the court did a hand wavy estimate of the marginal cost of providing service to WPEngine (Automattic was claiming the bond was to cover the cost of service) and ordered a bond of something like $0.01
This is the preliminary injunction, which needs to be issued relatively quickly to preserve the status quo for the litigation, so the court isn't going to ask for anything it doesn't already have. Automattic only asked for covering the total cost of website hosting, which was clearly too high, so the court didn't have sufficient information to be able to make any reasonable estimate.
matt is one of those inspirational people - like dhh, jason cohen people who built products from scratch and bootstrapped them. so it's sad seeing him go ape shit like that.