Legal win
ma.tt138 points by pentagrama 4 hours ago
138 points by pentagrama 4 hours ago
Matt is in large part mischaracterizing, although not outright lying about, the court's ruling. If you follow the link he provided to the ruling itself, many of the dismissed claims were dismissed "with leave to amend" (basically WPEngine has to fix their allegations), and one was dismissed for the reason that it should instead be asserted "as an affirmative defense if appropriate later in this litigation." There were some claims dismissed in a way WPEngine can't fix, but not many, and others were upheld.
I have no connection to either side here, nor am I a lawyer, but I do know how to read a legal opinion.
In case Matt removes the link to the actual ruling from his post, and also simply for HN readers' convenience, here it is: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/169/wpengine-i...
Just the claims where dismissal was outright denied are also potentially (up to judge and jury at later stages) enough for some pretty devastating damages... I second that this was a loss for Matt. It wasn't even "a draw" where the plaintiffs have to try again with an amended complaint (not that they will necessarily not bother to amend).
> I have no connection to either side here, nor am I a lawyer, but I do know how to read a legal opinion.
Describes me as well.
[flagged]
No amount of altruism or engineering work entitles you to lie/cheat/extort/defame/...
When you publish something under an open source license, you entitle the rest of the world to use it to get rich. That's what the license says on the tin, what the licenses have always been advertised, etc. I have absolutely no problem with AWS or WPEngine using that entitlement, nor do I have any problem with any software engineer (or software engineering organization like AWS) choosing not to publish source code they didn't promise to. Even if I wasn't of this opinion though - I don't see how someone violating this supposed prohibition could possibly entitle Matt to lie/cheat/extort/defame/...
Edit: I know it's off topic to talk about flagging, but can we consider not flagging the comment this is in reply to? I think it's generated valuable discussion for people learning about this case... even though I strongly disagree with the author.
The extortion was to get them to contribute or pay somebody to contribute. And the threat was to withdraw his own resources.
The threat was to "go nuclear". Among other things
* Start a smear campaign
* block people from wordpress.org unless they ticked a loyalty checkbox stating they weren't affiliated with wpengine
* Take over and null Advanced Custom Fields, a WPengine plugin
* Block wpengine from wordpress.org, which is baked into wordpress, refuse to name a price for access, refuse to allow development of any alternate plugin hosting system
* Ban wordpress.org accounts of anyone who spoke up in favour of wpengine
* Start specific campaigns to poach wpengine clients
* start a website listing the staging urls of all wpengine customers and cite which ones left wpengine
I'm sure I've forgotten some things. The deal with extortion is you may have a legal ability to request money you are not legally entitled to. You may have a legal ability to take certain actions. But what is often not legal is threatening to take certain otherwise legal actions UNLESS you are paid money you are not legally entitled to.
The extortion claim was dismissed as the judge found there's no civil extortion tort under California law. California prosecutors haven't seen fit to file charges, so no formal proceeding.
But you're being rather blithe in your description.
If we're listing them in detail personally I think one of the most offensive (though least commercially relevant) offenses was to attempt to use public resources, the trademark owned by a 501c3 charity, fraudulently transferred back to Matt, to extort them. Both since that's obviously fucking wrong, and they were already only making nominative use of the trademark (i.e. using it to refer to WordPress's product) which they have a free speech right to do.
This was all shitty behavior.
But WP Engine was equally shitty (even if it's "legal" - OSI purism has no sense of justice) to steal his company's lunch, from their decades of hard work, and contribute absolutely nothing back.
Again, it reeks of the same foul behavior we see from the hyperscalers.
But them behaving badly (or not; I don’t know enough here to agree or disagree) isn’t the legal issue. Matt is in court for allegedly harming WPE’s business in violation of law and contracts, which has monetary damages WPE can seek to recover.
If you call me names, you’re misbehaving and should be called out for it. If I retaliate by knocking over your fence and spraypainting your cat, you get to sue me even though you were the one who behaved poorly, but legally, to start with.
TL;DR Matt claims WPE acted unethically, which is shameful. WPE claims Matt tried to ruin their business, in ways they say are illegal.