Even if they had literally disabled 80% of the functionality of wordpress, would...

throwawaymaths · 2024-10-17T22:32:09.000000Z

Trademark is exactly supposed to protect the reputation of WordPress. If people confuse WPEngine for WordPress, and assume if WPEngine doesn't have it, WordPress doesn't then that's damaging to WordPress. Except that WordPress doesn't (and legally can't) claim "WP". I'd be frustrated.

This is like asking what is it a concern of McDonald's if you open up your own restaurant call McDonald in your town and make it a dump

ceejayoz · 2024-10-17T22:41:55.000000Z

If McDonalds for years had a page on their website that said “you can use McD any way you want, it isn’t trademarked”, that would be a good analogy.

throwawaymaths · 2024-10-17T22:58:43.000000Z

I don't know about three letters but two letters cannot be trademarked. The exact point is that WordPress cannot do anything legally, and that's understandably frustrating.

ceejayoz · 2024-10-17T23:00:51.000000Z

But until the last few weeks the Wordpress site enthusiastically endorsed its use by third parties.

It wasn’t “we really wish you wouldn’t”.

lolinder · 2024-10-18T02:55:43.000000Z

Yep. This is what it said on September 19, the day before Matt launched his nuclear war:

> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.

It was changed to its current spiteful text on September 25.

http://web.archive.org/web/20240919043912/https://wordpressf...

throwawaymaths · 2024-10-18T05:17:29.000000Z

Doesn't this serve as evidence that my speculation that Matt is frustrated with the behavior of WP engine? Please and spiteful language is not legally binding.

ceejayoz · 2024-10-18T13:26:37.000000Z

I don't think "Matt is frustrated with WP Engine" is speculation. That much is abundantly clear.

What's not clear is if they did anything wrong to deserve it.