alt Hacker NewsAt 14:50 in the video they read a term sheet together. Prior to that, they read aloud an email complaint (not a birthday party invite) from this summer. He claims that they've been meeting in person about this; I don't disbelieve him.
For what it's worth: I agree with you about what seems subtextually to be behind this whole thing. But then: if they've been on notice for many months about Mullenweg being upset about their use of the trademarks and lack of participation in the community (confirmed on camera, unless he forged emails), it feels to me like WPE --- a company with an 8-9 figure run rate --- should have been in a position to know what was coming with WordPress.org and how to mitigate that.
I'm not casting Mullenweg as a hero; just making a case for it being a JABOG† situation, as I said above. And, of course, that the summary in the story we're reading is pretty one-sided.
† gonna make this a thing
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Matt (intentionally?) mumbles it so that might be how you missed it but at 14:50 he shows the term sheet email and says “September 20th” which is the day of the initial blog post that kicked off the storm. There was no term sheet until the situation was public.
The trademarks argument seemed overblown, "JABOG" style.
The new to me allegation in this is this alleged WPE swap out of WooCommerce Stripe affiliate account:
WP Engine had been siphoning “tens of millions” of dollars away from Woo’s revenue share partnership with Stripe into its own coffers. It’s understood WP Engine has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce.
Ripping out an OSS' revenue model would seem not great. There's a term for use of electronic communication systems to redirect money to oneself. But, not cut and dried, if the source code containing that model is fair game...
To your point, this must be a one-sided take as well, since one would have expected an accusation of 8 figure wire fraud to escalate more clearly if it were that simple.
> But then: if they've been on notice for many months about Mullenweg being > upset about their use of the trademarks and lack of participation in the community (confirmed on camera, unless he forged emails), it feels to me like WPE --- a company with an 8-9 figure run rate --- should have been in a position to know what was coming with WordPress.org and how to mitigate that.
Matt's company owns and uses wordpress.com, so Matt's sudden concern about WP Engine using Wordpress' trademark does not seem very believable (or at the least massively hypocritical). The trademark issue just seems like a handy weapon to get what he wants. However, there are no good guys in this feud as you said -- only mud.