Permissively licensed software is intentionally designed to be used by anybody for any reason with essentially no restrictions beyond attribution. Advocates of permissive licenses explicitly reject the argument that commercial users ought to have any kind of obligation to the authors. "Thief" seems like a category error here.

For people who want to make money down the line, what is so hard about selling commercial licenses? Or better yet using GPL so that your software is still open source but the big commercial users will still want to pay you for a separate license?

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gpm 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

WordPress is GPL - the GPL, like all "Open Source" (using OSI's definition) licenses enables commercial use, and that is a subset of one of the FSF's core principles (The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose).

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acoustics 4 days ago | parent [-]

I haven't been following this conflict: have the terms of the GPL been broken?

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gpm 4 days ago | parent [-]

By WPE - I don't think anyone has even claimed that informally - since they don't distribute software and WordPress is GPL not AGPL it would be hard to. Moreover they (according to themselves) use an unmodified version of WordPress which would make it next to impossible. Of course according to Matt they use “something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress” but “is not WordPress.” And is a “cheap knock off” or a “bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code.” [1] but there's still no claim that they distribute that simulacra.

By Matt - no one has claimed it formally but I think there's at least a plausible claim that he has violated part 6 with his attempts at extortion, which requires "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein". Especially clearly as it pertains to any existing nominative use's of the WordPress trademarks within the unmodified WordPress code (which trademark law in no way prohibits WPE from using, and Matt demanded were changed).

[1] Taken from the complaint https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...

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nchmy 4 days ago | parent [-]

ps wordpress dot com is the most bastardized simulacra of wordpress in existence

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photomatt 4 days ago | parent [-]

It was pretty different in a way that brought millions of people into WordPress, but it has evolved in a way that makes a lot of sense to people, clarifying what WordPress is, what the host is, and what the application layers on top of it are. And the new AI / Telex / Studio stuff is super cool.

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nchmy 3 days ago | parent [-]

Why do you have to pay for using plugins on wp dot com, which are free everywhere else in wordpress, Matt?

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p3ob7o 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Everywhere else where you have to pay for hosting, you mean?

On WordPress.com, you can pay for hosting plans, some of which give access to plugins and themes, but you also have free hosting without.

Elsewhere, you pay for hosting; there's generally no free option. Then you get plugins and themes included with that.

In the end, to use WordPress with plugins and themes, you pay some amount to the company that hosts it for you.

Disclaimer: I work for Automattic, but the opinions here are my own.

	▲	nchmy 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Please see my response to Matt's sibling comment. If this is truly your own opinion, and you can't see that it is just laughably wrong, then you're definitely working in the right place!

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photomatt 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Please tell me where you can run arbitrary PHP code in the cloud for free, I'm curious to see how they manage that and what limits they put before they start charging.

We've invested a ton in products like WordPress Studio, which let you run unlimited local copies of WordPress with however many plugins, themes, etc you want.

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nchmy 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm talking about how from something like 2005-2017, you couldn't install plugins at all.

Then from 2017 until apparently the last couple months, you had to upgrade past the Free, Personal and Premium plans to the $25/mo Business plan in order to install plugins.

Now it looks like its just your free tier can't do it - I suppose that's fine. 20 years of providing a bastardized simulacra of wordpress was long enough!

All other hosts have always provided full-fledged wordpress with plugin installation with all plans

But, of course you knew all of that and were just trying to misdirect people, yet again. I now fully expect some half-truth pedantic response about a technicality about dates, plan names, or a niche host who also provides a simulacra.

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photomatt 2 days ago | parent [-]

As the lead of the software I do have an opinion about which functionality is core to the user experience and which isn't. The WP.com paid plans offered a ton, including unlimited traffic, 24/7 support, stats, multi-datacenter replication, and dozens of more features above what most paid WP hosting plans offer, but we reserved custom code at the higher-priced plans. Due to getting more efficient over the years, we can now offer it on all paid plans, but that wasn't economically feasible before. There are dozens of other WordPress Multi-site hosts like Edublogs that offer the same trade-off we used to, it's built into the core code. I'm sorry that wasn't a good fit for your needs, but it has worked well for millions of people over two decades.

Maybe you think Coca-cola should taste a certain way, and want to sell that to consumers, but without commercial rights to the trademark you can't do that under the Coca-cola brand, you have to call it something else.

	▲	nchmy 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		As you know, this discussion has nothing to do with the WordPress trademark (which, among plenty of other things, you lied about for many years) It has to do with you calling WP Engine a "hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress" for turning off post revisions, which are an extremely minor part of WordPress (and could be turned back on upon request). All while - rather than "reserv[ing] custom code at the higher-priced plans" (which is yet another baffling lie) - for the first 12+ years, custom code and plugins (the core of Wordpress and open-source) were completely unavailable[0]. And then for another 8 years it was only available on $25+ plans. So, I reiterate: WP dot com is/was the most hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WP anywhere. But, apparently by your logic, when you cheat the IRS via self-dealing and lie to the entire WordPress community about relinquishing control over WP, only to secretly take it back in the same day, that gives you the right to sell RC Cola as Coca Cola - causing endless confusion to newcomers about what Wordpress really is. It was "WordPress with an asterisk" [1] as you yourself recently put it - except there was never any asterisk anywhere, and especially so til 2017. You're really not good at this Matt. You should get off the internet. p.s. Lest you claim, like you have so many times when faced with criticism, that I am a paid shill for WP Engine: No one should use either of your services. [0]: https://wordpress.com/blog/2017/08/07/wordpress-com-business... [1]: https://ma.tt/2025/08/simplification

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gkbrk 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You can run arbitrary PHP code for free in Oracle's free tier.

https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/

	▲	photomatt 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Today I learned!

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echelon 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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developerDan 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The opinion that those who consume should contribute back is not wrong, and as an open source contributor I fully agree, but it should be understood that anything free is going to be taken. We are an imperfect people in an imperfect world, after all.

I don’t put old furniture on the curb with a FREE sign expecting someone to knock on my door and offer $100 for it. I expect it to be gone without a trace. If I want something, even if it’s 1% of the value, then I’ll have a yard sale. It’s no different here.

Licensing is a form of conveying expectations. Putting an MIT license in my repo conveys that I expect absolutely nothing in return, just like the free sign on the stuff I tossed out.

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acoustics 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> We're made to feel like we should open source things and not retain exclusive rights to commercialization.

Who is telling you that you have to write open source software? Millions of programmers around the world make a living writing software with much more restrictive licenses (including simply All Rights Reserved). I write proprietary code, and I don't feel any pressure to stop doing that. Somebody on the internet telling me that I should write open source software instead is not an issue. They can't stop me from making money writing code.

Edited to add: I don't own the rights to my code but I am fairly compensated for it. If I were to write code that I have direct ownership of, the above principles would still apply.

> CC-BY-SA-NC isn't OSI approved and you get told you're "not open source" if you try to use it or licenses like it.

CC-BY-SA-NC is indeed not open source, but that doesn't mean you can't use it.

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bigyabai 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You won't call them "thief", but I will.

Well, then we've found the problem. You ideologically disagree with the framing of free software. That's fine!

Millions of people use Linux every day, run iPhones with BSD code and run software made with open source libraries. They download Javascript resources and freely-licensed Unsplash JPEGs to populate a webpage interpreted with a KHTML fork. If you think they're stealing, that's an extremist ideology that is not reflected in the spirit of any open source project I'm aware of.

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echelon 4 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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duskwuff 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

>> KHTML fork.

> Embrace extend extinguish. Now Manifest v2 is gone.

You keep on hammering on this point and I don't think it makes sense the way you think it does. Manifest v2 (and extensions in general!) are a feature which Google created and added to Chrome entirely themselves. I'm not a fan of what they did in Mv3 either, but it's their feature, and it's their prerogative to change it. If you're arguing that something (the license?) should prevent them from making changes to their software which you don't like, whatever you're imagining has drifted rather far away from open source.

	▲	echelon 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm sorry this has meandered so much. Google is playing chess at a level where we mere mortals can only be bystanders. They can invest billions of dollars into a piece of software that the entire world benefits from. I wouldn't call it pure benevolence or charity, but I'll give them that. It's useful software that they didn't have to write or give away. The problem is that Google isn't one person. It's a collection of forces seeking to optimize the overall position and profitability of the company. Even if that means that they might impinge upon or even willfully pilfer from the broader commons. Chrome is now a central chess piece in controlling the web, advertising, and search. Maybe it didn't start that way, but it's what it has become - intentionally or not. And now that most people are using Chrome, Google is free to boil the frog, tighten the noose, etc. Their grip on the funnel is iron clad, and they can apparently operate monopolistically without interference from the DOJ. Chrome might be open, but you won't be able to afford to deviate from Google's choices. The engineering hurdles are too steep for small teams to overcome. And because of browser monoculture, the experience with other browsing technologies and platforms degrades. The result is that we're being herded like cattle. I don't think the folks at Google think of us this way, but that's how it is in practice. Behavior at scale to increase profits. Google gets to proudly proclaim that Chrome is "open source". But in reality the only force that can meaningfully steer the product - the entire web ecosystem at this point - is Google. And they use that power against us. Open source is a strategy for big tech. In the case of Matt vs WP engine, it's simply enabling a vulture company to dip into the tip jar without tipping out. My point is that "open source" isn't entirely pragmatic about users and freedom. In some very real cases it's inequitable and not sustainable. By empowering monopolizers, it's orthogonal to user benefit. Amazon gets to steal databases and make managed offerings that pull profit from the originators into AWS' coffers instead. Google gets to, well, own the web and search and everything. WP Engine gets to dip into Wordpress' decades of hard work. I don't see how the users benefit. Just the greedy growth minded profiteers. Users aren't even in the conversation. The conversation is entirely about who profits and controls. And that is, to me, what's fucked up about all of this.

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bigyabai 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Don't be too kind to the trillion dollar company.

They got to be worth a trillion dollars somehow. I hate Apple with the passion of a million suns; guess what? They sell something people want. They make money, they survived. Their copyright is preserved equally as well as the AS-IS terms of the BSD license. And despite being whipped like a dog, there are still multiple BSD OSes with modern software packaged for them.

> We let these giant companies use open source to make the internet and technology more centralized and less free.

Do "we"? I'm running Firefox right now, maybe you're on an iPad or some other platform that locked you down. But that's your problem, if it concerned you then you should have returned it to the Apple store.

People still have a free choice to run whatever software they want. Wordpress is not being made "less free" because hosting companies won't get out of bed to pay Matt's bills. If the project has to die to prove it, it will die as a free program. It will still be forkable and maintainable by the community because that was the intention and spirit of the project.

> Google is very good at this game.

No, the fed is just particularly bad at it.

Google's big problem is that they monopolize online advertising and the DOJ refuses to neuter them. If your free access to the internet gets tragically cut off by Apple's indignant software policies... not my problem, is it?

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echelon 4 days ago | parent [-]

I almost totally agree with you, with the exception that I think market distortion does impact non-users.

You can be a Firefox user, and your Firefox usage is impacted by the overwhelming market share capture of Chrome and Chromium browsers.

You can use Librem and be impacted by your government requiring software that will only run on iOS or Android. Or Chrome.

> DOJ refuses to neuter them

Yes, but don't give them the free pass. Even if a company's objective is to take as much of the pie as possible, Google and Apple actively employ lawyers to skirt the regulators.

	▲	bigyabai 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I expect my experience will degrade. The whole web's felt stale since Flash died, I doubt the next few years will feel any different. We're post-that, sadly. Apple and Google already got the pass, they won't be litigated in this admin unless they fail to kiss the ring. We have to live with these damages, the same way we've limped alongside a broken internet for the past decade. Its possible these abuses will be encoded in American identity for decades to come. The next step is surviving top-down control, and freely-licensed software will be the only alternative to the digital monoculture.

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unmole 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> We're made to feel like we should open source things and not retain exclusive rights to commercialization, because that's not open.

The overwhelming majority of software is not opensource. Somehow the people writing and presumably making a living from them get by just fine.

> And I'm sick of the "but actually his license enabled that" excuses. It's victim blaming.

Publishing code under an opensource licence and then going hysterical about people using that code as allowed by the licence is suggestive of a mental disorder.