News: 0175184843

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WP Engine Sues WordPress for Libel, Extortion

(Thursday October 03, 2024 @11:02AM (msmash) from the how-about-that dept.)


WP Engine, a major web hosting provider, has [1]filed a federal lawsuit against WordPress [PDF] co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging libel and attempted extortion. The suit stems from a public dispute over WordPress trademark usage and open-source licensing.

WP Engine, which hosts over 200,000 websites, accuses Mullenweg and Automattic of "abuse of power, extortion, and greed." The conflict escalated after Mullenweg called WP Engine [2]a "cancer to WordPress" on his blog , prompting a cease-and-desist letter. Automattic subsequently demanded 8% of WP Engine's monthly revenue as royalties for alleged trademark infringement. The lawsuit includes 11 complaints, ranging from slander to violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.



[1] https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Complaint-WP-Engine-v-Automattic-et-al-with-Exhibit.pdf

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/23/1348226/wordpress-founder-calls-wp-engine-a-cancer-to-wordpress-and-urges-community-to-switch-providers



Third opinion (Score:2)

by CEC-P ( 10248912 )

As a former web UI designer and web developer, I hate them both. They're garbage and a complete and utter stain on the internet. They make generic garbage websites and let unqualified people run the whole website project into the ground while getting their email accounts hacked to send out phishing scams. You know, instead of hiring a professional web design firm to do it, who probably also is some dumb 20 year old with no college degree who also uses wordpress and thinks scaling an image while changing the

Re: (Score:2)

by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

I'm going to join in with you here and at least one of us will be downmodded, probably me. Even without adding questionable addons, Wordpress is a security shitshow. For example, there have been numerous SQL injection and XSS vulnerabilities in the WP core.

Cites: [1]https://patchstack.com/databas... [patchstack.com]

[1] https://patchstack.com/database/

Re: (Score:2)

by whoever57 ( 658626 )

That link doesn't provide the support for your argument that you claim.

A casual look at it shows that WP plugins are a security shitshow.

It's true that WP has had its share of security issues in the past, but I think that recently, it has been much better.

Re: (Score:2)

by cstacy ( 534252 )

> scaling an image while changing the aspect ratio is just fine and doesn't know what JPG encoding levels even is.

How you even know you got JPG encoding levels, kid?

[1]a childhood memory [youtube.com]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_mC6EZ8Jpk

Re: (Score:2)

by bradley13 ( 1118935 )

Welcome to modern IT. There is such a huge demand for software (and I loosely include websites as software) - there just aren't enough competent IT people to produce it all. There is the flip-side as well: what top-notch IT person wants to produce endless crappy websites? Hence, you get tools like WordPress that let marginally competent people produce stuff.

Why WordPress a mess? It is designed to let basically anyone do basically anything, either directly, or with any of a zillion plugins. There is no way

Re: (Score:2)

by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 )

I 100% agree with you, but I also 100% disagree with you. Wordpress and Drupal are terrible... And so was everything else before they existed. And so are "professional" websites created by scratch by small, medium and large companies. They're all crap. HTML/CSS was a mistake. Bring back gopher.

Re: (Score:2)

by rickb928 ( 945187 )

"'scaling an image while changing the aspect ratio is just fine and doesn't know what JPG encoding levels even is."

Um, I've known all that since around 1995. I'm not an expert, no college, no training except my own self-taught.

So the experts, professionals, for so long, were designing web pages more than 18700 pixels tall, when common monitors were 800x600, and 1024 monitors were pricey and uncommon. Forcing most visitors to scroll to see the SUBMIT button just to accept the TOS/EULA agreements and actually

Re: (Score:1)

by jonadab ( 583620 )

Eh, I'm not a huge fan of WordPress either, but at least its output can be meaningfully styled with CSS, and can reflow reasonably when the browser window is a different width. The real cancer in web design is those horrible PrintShop-esque prefab website services (Wix, SquareSpace, etc.)

Re: (Score:2)

by mysidia ( 191772 )

As a former web UI designer and web developer, I hate them both.

Wordpress solves a problem. So unless you have a better solution to that problem which is not massively more expensive (such as requiring people familiar with handcoding HTML, CSS, and JS to build websites), and is not massively more limited (Such as not capable of doing what wordpress can do to the same extent with the same ease for its userbase): The existence of Wordpress is a net positive for the internet as it makes things better for

Re: (Score:2)

by Targon ( 17348 )

The thing that strikes me is that you have WP Engine that uses WordPress as the core of what it offers to its customers/clients, but then decides to start saying how horrible WordPress is. Now, it makes some sense for WordPress to tell WP Engine, "Well, you don't like what we provide, so, fuck off!", then WP Engine suddenly realizes that without WordPress, their business is GONE.

When you are taking something and making a business based on what you are taking, going public and saying how much you dislike t

My giveacrap-o-meter is reading below 0 (Score:3)

by acroyear ( 5882 )

Seriously, this isn't as fundamental an argument as, say, SCO v Linux or the Java/Javascript trademark issue, or even deno v node. It doesn't need the daily attention on /. that the mods seem to be giving it.

All of this... (Score:2)

by peterww ( 6558522 )

because one dude didn't like that a completely separate company wasn't enabling version control in its customers' web pages

JFC. How about you just make a marketing campaign that *your* company is superior because it has versioning? Rather than get into a pointless legal battle?

E = MC ** 2 +- 3db