Yesterday, in the WordCamp Q&A, Matt Mullenweg said a whole bunch of stuff about WP Engine and their owners, Silver Lake Capital. There are other threads for that discussion, but one of the things he mentioned is that WP Engine plays fast and loose with the WordPress trademark. He called them out for having confused people by sometimes calling themselves "WordPress Engine".
If they have done that, I'm not aware of it (my guess is that this is just what some of their clients say), but if they have, it's clearly in violation of the trademark terms. However, I don't understand how WordPress.com isn't abusing the trademark. The trademark policy states:
All other WordPress-related businesses or projects can use the WordPress name and logo to refer to and explain their services, but they cannot use them as part of a product, project, service, domain name, or company name and they cannot use them in any way that suggests an affiliation with or endorsement by the WordPress Foundation or the WordPress open source project.
The policy also specifically mentions Automattic as being in compliance, but it doesn't explain why/how. How does this work? This isn't an accusation, just an honest, curious question.
I have never heard or read of themselves being referred as “Wordpress Engine”
Just “WP Engine”.
But isn’t WordPress com and org the same entity?
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Any brand an use WP but you cannot use WordPress in the brand name or domain.
Shopify has the same thing with shopify. You cannot use shopify in the domain or brand name.
Also, WPcom is owned by WordPress. It’s like telling Google that it can’t call it’s maps app Google Maps because it says Google. It’s different when you own the brand name.
Automattic is the creator of both WordPresses.
WordPress.org is open source, there’s no money made on that project. Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic created the open source version of WordPress, which is the .org.
WordPress.com is the business end/version of that idea that sells stuff.
Matt Mullenweg co-founded (forked) WordPress, the open source software project, (wordpress dot org).
Matt Mullenweg founded Automattic, the for-profit company, and gave it exclusive rights to use WordPress trademark for commercial purposes, including for its wordpress dot com blog hosting product.
Matt Mullenweg also established WordPress Foundation, the non-profit foundation, and gave it WordPress trademark, but given that it’s all Matt anyway the distinction is rather meaningless.
It’s the second of these posts I see here today and again, people have no clue what they’re talking about. Even you all are newcomers do your due diligence and learn first before spreading wrong information.
Here’s the facts:
Matt Mullenweg owns Automattic.
Matt Mullenweg started the wporg project, the open source one.
Neither Matt Mullenweg nor Automattic own the wporg project.
Automattic owns wpcom. A for profit company who contributes many developers to wporg.
Matt Mullenweg is the BDFL of wporg.
The WordPress Foundation leads the wporg.
Matt Mullenweg launched WordPress in 2003. In 2005, he founded Automattic, to be able to dedicate himself to WP and related projects. In 2010, he founded the non-profit organization WordPress Foundation to give more transparency to the project. All WP’s intellectual property was transferred to the foundation and this includes the trademark.
According to the foundation’s website:
“The trademark usage policy was developed with the following goals in mind:
1. We’d like to make it easy for anyone to use the WordPress or WordCamp name or logo for community-oriented efforts that help spread and improve WordPress.
2. We’d like to make it clear how WordPress-related businesses and projects can (and cannot) use the WordPress or WordCamp name and logo.
3. We’d like to make it hard for anyone to use the WordPress or WordCamp name and logo to unfairly profit from, trick or confuse people who are looking for official WordPress or WordCamp resources.”
The WordPress.com service was created before the foundation as a way to finance Automattic’s work. And Automattic is the main funder of the WordPress Foundation.
Knowing this, it is reasonable to think that it is in the interest of the foundation to guarantee Automattic rights to use the WordPress brand in its service. The foundation has the right to choose this.
In the interest of the foundation, if WP Engine were a big partner in terms of contributing to the project, I think they might not object to the use of the brand. But maybe they are not being that big of a partner, profiting off of an open source project without helping as much as they could.
The amount of confusion *among professionals like us* over domains, ownership, etc., demonstrates why the similarity is ~~Automattic~~problematic.
And if having to explain the difference is a nuisance for us it’s profoundly annoying to have to explain to ordinary clients and users.
I mean, how many people have told you “I went to WordPress.com but couldn’t log in with the password you gave me?