Matt Mullenweg & Automattic/WordPress vs WP Engine

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Kola said:
Automattic have made a website smugly tracking how many sites have left WP Engine: https://wordpressenginetracker.com/
This WILL be used in court documents by WP Engine.
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Yep. It's been added to WP Engine's amended complaint (filed today, btw).
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/wpengine-inc-v-automattic-inc/
NEW: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/51/wpengine-inc-v-automattic-inc/

The "wordpressenginetracker" thing is on pages 58-59.
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Just last week, in an apparent effort to brag about how successful they have been in harming WPE, Defendants created a website—www.wordpressenginetracker.com—that “lists . . . every domain hosted by @wpengine, which you can see decline every day. 15,080 sites have left already since September 21st.” September 21 was not selected randomly. It is the day after Defendants’ self-proclaimed nuclear war began – an admission that these customer losses were caused by Defendants’ wrongful actions. In this extraordinary attack on WPE and its customers, Defendants included on their disparaging website a downloadable file of “all [WPE] sites ready for a new home”—that is, WPE’s customer list, literally inviting others to target and poach WPE’s clients while Defendants’ attacks on WPE continued:
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Worse, this downloadable file contains private information regarding WPE’s customers’ domain names, including development, test, and pre-production servers—many of which are not intended to be accessed publicly and contain sensitive or private information. Many of these servers are intentionally not indexed or otherwise included in public search results because the servers are not safe, secure or production-ready and not intended to be accessed by the general public. By disclosing this information to the general public, Defendants put these development, test, and pre-production domains at risk for hacking and unauthorized access.
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Related - here's an article from a few days ago about wordpressenginetracker.com:
https://www.therepository.email/aut...er-site-fuels-ongoing-tensions-with-wp-engine [Archive]
Apparently wordpressenginetracker was briefly labelled as a phishing website by Cloudflare, lol. Probably due to Redditors sending in false reports.
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That lookalike domain mentioned above is kinda funny. Angry troon detected:
https://wpenginetracker.com/
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Stop bullying trans people links to this: https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-transphobia-matt-mullenweg [Archive]
It mainly whines about how Tumblr's porn ban (which was implemented due to rampant child pornography on the platform, fyi) somehow disproportionately affected "LGBTQ+ content and users". Big Thunk... 🧐
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And the article also goes on to complain about moderation on Tumblr not sweeping up for troons enough (to their liking). Naturally. 🙄

I just find it really interesting how the troons keep sniffing around this whole drama. I really wonder what their plans are if/when Matt Mullenweg somehow gets ousted from Wordpress.
 
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skunt said:
automattic submitted to have dismissal the same day as the preliminary injunction.
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stuck down as moot, goes ahead for 26th of this month


ORDER: In light of 51 the Amended Complaint filed November 14, 2024, the 36 Motion to Dismiss, 38 Motion to Strike, and 43 Motion to Shorten Time for Briefing and Hearing are DENIED AS MOOT. Signed by Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin on November 15, 2024. (This is a text-only entry generated by the court. There is no document associated with this entry.) (amolc1, COURTSTAFF) (Filed on 11/15/2024) (Entered: 11/15/2024)
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I read their new amendment complaint and there are now 20 claims for relief, including violations of Computer Fraud and Abuse, which can even result in Mullenweg spending years in the can. I think they have a case here since he forced his plugin into thousands of websites, including those ran by competitors, while deliberately confusing them into thinking that this is still the same ACF they've already been using. They're also accusing him of trademark misuse because the plugin still has the old URL which is trademarked by WP Engine.

They're also accusing him of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act in several ways, including monopolization and attempted monopolization which can, in some cases, result in Automattic (and possibly Mullenweg's other companies) being broken up.
 
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Temperance said:
The username and profile picture of "AlienneLeigh" seemed weirdly familiar to me. (It turns out he's a tech troon connected to several other tech troon lolcows.)
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He's also MetaFilter user adrienneleigh. [A] He posted in this thread [A] confirming the link between the MF account and the one on Reddit.
Screenshot 2024-11-16 at 17-20-08 weusedtobefriends comments on Chat Thread (July 22 2024).png
 
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skunt said:
court is tomorrow
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it was on zoom, the call was full. i wasn't about to join anyway. there's a good rundown here


the super quick TL:DR is that the judge was well prepared, everyone seemed to expect WPE to lead with tortious interference, damages etc - instead they went with extortion. It's adjourned (?) until monday when they meet again. If anyone spots anything I didn't please post it. Doesn't seem all that interesting or surprising so far. Matt has to shut up until Monday lol.
 
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John Andrews Stan said:
Goodbye, Dreamhost affiliate payments!
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Interesting note here is the person who implemented this change was the "nonbiased" ex wordpress subreddit moderator (and for a time head moderator). He did step down, just goes to show how much leeway they used to have (and probably still have in other places). This isn't really a dig at Otto either, he's just doing his job AKA what matt wants.
 
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It's interesting and surprising to see $1500/hr lawyers making serious mistakes. E.g. the judge stresses that the original request for injunction is vague, and doesn't stipulate any concrete measures. You'd think it's bread and butter for them. Wordpress's lawyers also make very weak arguments, confuse terms, and bring up court cases which make their arguments weaker (e.g. a case where the opposite verdict was made to the one they're seeking).

EDIT: According to a guy on Reddit (admittedly not a high bar of credibility), Mullenweg is seething, malding, and coping on Slack.

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Kola said:
It's interesting and surprising to see $1500/hr lawyers making serious mistakes.
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It's very likely that the $1500/hr guys aren't directly involved; they probably went forward with their standard legal team, and lawyers are very often like contractors - they'll do what you ask them to, and not comment on the strategy or make recommendations unless you ask.

Part of it may also be that many consider the injunction request a formality that always gets denied.
 
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A lot of open-source technology has a benevolent dictator, but it sort of lives and dies on the dictator. It's pretty crazy what happens when the dictator cashes in on their power. Every single time, the project goes into the "enterprise SaaS" shitter, and the maintainer never gets the same amount of power/glory back.

Linus Torvalds and Richard Hipp (the SQLite guy, RIP) were both too smart to fuck this up. Malding Matt Mullenweg was not, but he seems to be unique in that it took him so long. Most people, like Redis, Elastic Search, and similar don't take nearly this long to sell out.

Personally, I hope users and developers abandon Wordpress after this so it can sink like the obsolete piece of trash it is. Matt Mullenweg deserves to be the overlord of an empire that rapidly crumbles before him.

Also, not a lawyer but a frequent enough client to opine a bit on how terrible this is for Matt:
  • These injunctions are often a sort of litmus test on the judge's feelings about the case, and the injunction being granted is very, very rare. Even when the judge writes very favorably about the plaintiff's case, they will often deny the injunction. Not here: Every single point GRANTED while essentially regurgitating the complaint as the reasoning, which is about as bad as it gets for Matt.
  • Tortious interference is often a throwaway claim in these kinds of lawsuits as a general "you did something bad and it cost me money." It's very hard to prove tortious interference because there are lots of non-tortious ways to interfere with someone's business. Well, somebody ran his mouth on social media, and the judge was even favorable on tortious interference, let alone the other causes of action.
 
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even 404media are reporting on it now (archive)

In the immediate aftermath of the decision, Automattic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg asked for his account to be deleted from the Post Status Slack, which is a popular community for businesses and people who work on WordPress’s open-source tools.
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truly an amazing christmas present. thank you matt, i hope you live forever

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the checkbox has been removed already. good job matt, you're doing great!
 
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He's also retweeted a post about Aaron Swartz, a Reddit co-founder who killed himself (by hanging). The post is from 2020, so it's nothing recent. Is this a passive-aggressive cry for help?
 
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