The blocked resources in question? Automatic security and features updates and plugin/theme repository access. Matt Mullenweg reasserted his claim that this was a trademark issue. In tandem, WordPress.org updated its Trademark Policy page to forbid WP Engine specifically (way after the Cease & Desist): from "you are free to use ['WP'] n any way you see fit" to a diatribe:

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/26/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained attempts to provide a full chronology so far.

Edit:

The WordPress Foundation, which owns the trademark, has also filed to trademark “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.” Developers and providers are worried that if these trademarks are granted, they could be used against them.

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[–] 80 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Would it be wrong to hope they manage to commit some gross act of mutual destruction, and that the outcome would be that I never have to deal with Wordpress ever again?

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    That would be great but the reality is that client’s mindsets need to change. I tried to explain to a client that Wordpress is not a good fit for their complex web application and yet they didn’t wanna switch to anything else. People are way too worried about new tech and wanna stick with whatever they know, even if it causes massive problems.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Wordpress is not a good fit for their complex web application

    Seriously. People want to shove everything into Wordpress then get cranky when you can't make Wordpress into a ecommerce store, marketing platform, personal blog, file sharing service, and NFT marketplace.

    And then it gets hacked because they needed 14 SEO plugins, 2 different form plugins, and were not going to pay for managed updates because that's easy they can do it themselves.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago*

    If you're trying to turn WordPress into an application, for christs sake go use Django, Laravel, or Rails. Don't send a CMS to do an applications' job.

    Shit you don't even need a CMS at this point. I moved off WordPress to Hugo and SFTP and i'm happier than a pig in shit. Shit loads fast and no external threats.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Wordpress is the Excel of CMSs. It can do just about anything, but at this point it barely manages content well.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    That's a great analogy actually. You can do almost anything with it but what the vast majority of people choose to do with it is wrong.

    Just like how people insist on using Excel as a database or Excel as a form.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago*

    I haven't done web work for well over a decade and recently was surprised to learn that Wordpress is still very relevant. I remember back then, seeking alternatives as we expected it to become more of a legacy thing a few years down the track, so we were on the lookout for future-proofing client sites with a better foundation. At that point it was a decade old and annoying af because it morphed into a messy way of doing websites because people misused it's original purpose. Brain had to think like a blog and then trick it into doing what you want, kind of like using tables to structure pages before CSS-P saved the day.

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  • [+] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)
  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I've been pushing Squarespace for most people who come to me asking about setting up a small store or just simple business website.

    Yeah, it's closed source and blah blah blah, but the end of the day, it's not about my opinions on software, it's about the most cost-effective, simple, usable option for the client who is asking me for my expertise, which is almost always not something they're going to have to keep paying me to maintain.

    Like if you really really want Wordpress, I'll get you set up, and then quote you a couple thousand a year for maintenance.

    Unshockprisingly, very few people think that's the right choice once they see what the keep-it-from-being-exploited cost is.

    (And for anyone who thinks that's an unreasonable amount, okay cool. But maintaining a staging environment and testing updates and then pushing everything into production assuming there's no regressions you have to address takes a lot of time.)

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I have off-and-on searched for alternative software for personal blogs that can be self-hosted and it doesn’t seem like there are many options anymore. The only ones I’ve seen are WriteFreely and FlatPress. Are there any other options you’re aware of?

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  • Depends on if you need a CMS, or if you can use a static site generator.

    For a CMS, I'm still a fan of Ghost and it has (mostly) not enshittified to the point it's unpleasant to use.

    If you don't need the whole CMS thing, there's an awful lot of options. (And hosting them is super simplified since you can just stuff the output into a S3 bucket/Cloudflare Pages/Github Pages/a dozen other providers for basically free.)

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    There's Contao, Drupal, Blogger, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace...

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (13 children)

    Any suggestions for a free easy to use alternative to wp?

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 44 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Yeah, open source licenses don't entitle you to use trademarks.

    This looks pretty bad to me.

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  • [–] [S] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Like JohnEdwa said, using a trademark to refer to someone else's product is considered nominative fair use: "referencing a mark to identify the actual goods and services that the trademark holder identifies with the mark."

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What does WP stand for then?

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Wow Matt really looking bad on this one. This just reeks of trying to push out a major business competitor to wordpress.com and abusing control over wordpress.org to do it.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    ThePrimeagen invited Matt to explain what's going on.

    TL;DW Matt's claim is that he tried to get WP Engine to pay for a Trademark license (or whatever it's called - I'm recalling from watching yesterday), over several months, and they tried to legally block him in every way. Their self-claimed contributions to Wordpress were (as he tells it) that they held conferences where they promoted their own stuff only - code contributions have been minimal.

    So the combination of not willing to pay for the trademark + not contributing back (not in code, not in helping the community) is Matt's reasoning for blocking them from using Wordpress' resources.

    He also mentioned that he has good relations with other Wordpress hosts, so it's not like he's trying to block anyone else from hosting, but they were all willing to pay for the use of the Trademark (and/or contribute back).

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Wordpress is a security hole anyway, use something else if you have to use plugins for your usecase.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    Hopefully this spurs Automaticc to put more attention into the fediverse. With Tumblr moving to use Wordpress code that could bring all tumblr blogs to the fediverse and get more programmers and resources interested

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (18 children)

    Fuck WordPress, but also it kinda sounds like WordPress is more in the right here.

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    [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    greymatter blog superiority

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