'Automattic is Doing Open Source Dirty,' Ruby on Rails Creator Says 43
David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder and chief technology officer of Basecamp-maker 37signals, has criticized Automattic's demand for 8% of vendor WP Engine's revenues as a violation of open source principles and the GPL license. He argues this, among other things, undermines the clarity and certainty of open source licensing, threatening its integrity beyond WordPress. He writes: Ruby on Rails, the open-source web framework I created, has been used to create businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars combined. Some of those businesses express their gratitude and self-interest by supporting the framework with dedicated developers, membership of The Rails Foundation, or conference sponsorships. But many also do not! And that is absolutely their right, even if it occasionally irks a little.
That's the deal. That's open source. I give you a gift of code, you accept the terms of the license. There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations that might suddenly apply, if you strike it rich using the software. Then the license is meaningless, the clarity all muddled, and certainty lost.
Look, Automattic can change their license away from the GPL any time they wish. The new license will only apply to new code, though, and WP Engine, or anyone else, are eligible to fork the project. That's what happened with Redis after Redis Labs dropped their BSD license and went with a commercial source-available alternative. Valkey was forked from the last free Redis version, and now that's where anyone interested in an open-source Redis implementation is likely to go.
But I suspect Automattic wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to retain WordPress' shine of open source, but also be able to extract their pound of flesh from any competitor that might appear, whenever they see fit. Screw that.
That's the deal. That's open source. I give you a gift of code, you accept the terms of the license. There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations that might suddenly apply, if you strike it rich using the software. Then the license is meaningless, the clarity all muddled, and certainty lost.
Look, Automattic can change their license away from the GPL any time they wish. The new license will only apply to new code, though, and WP Engine, or anyone else, are eligible to fork the project. That's what happened with Redis after Redis Labs dropped their BSD license and went with a commercial source-available alternative. Valkey was forked from the last free Redis version, and now that's where anyone interested in an open-source Redis implementation is likely to go.
But I suspect Automattic wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to retain WordPress' shine of open source, but also be able to extract their pound of flesh from any competitor that might appear, whenever they see fit. Screw that.
If you want to exploit open-source then shaft it (Score:5, Insightful)
the best way if Google's way.
Just look at Android: when Google first released it, it was entirely open source. Manufacturers flocked to it, developers massively adopted it, and Google eventually gained a majority market share in the mobile device space.
Then, when their dominance was well established, Google slowly moved open-source code away from AOSP and into their very much closed-source Google Play Services framework.
And look at AOSP now: it's a shadow of its former self. The strictly open-source Android is more and more unusable as the real Android is more and more locked away in Google's proprietary and very sketchy stack that runs on top of it - exactly as they always intended. Yeah, AOSP is nominally open-soruce, but it's evermore irrelevant for real life usage. And Google is still actively working overtime to ensure it's getting worse and worse for deGoogled Android distros.
That's what silly Automattic should have done. Don't touch Rails: add proprietary shit on top of it and make sure it's incrementally impossible to do without.
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in my experience, Wordpress dot com the 'blog / website' host is a scam too, just bait and switch, the free accounts have 'free' themes that become 'obsolete' and 'unsupported' but you can always 'upgrade' for a fat fee, everything costs way more than it should and adsense revenue is a joke, wordpress and google make far far more off the content creators than the content creators ever do
welcome to classism and corporate exploitation
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However, if you start restricting redistribution and cranking
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That's a little inaccurate in a key way.
What RMS wanted was people who took things for free from him, give their changes back, free.
Someone asked him for the source to his project, because they thought they could make something cool with it, he released it as public domain so they could do so, and they wanted to sell the resulting product back to him.
He came up with GPL as a "Let's never do this again", and then a bunch of other open source licenses didn't get it and were just a thin coat of paint on public
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He came up with GPL as a "Let's never do this again", and then a bunch of other open source licenses didn't get it and were just a thin coat of paint on public domain.
There are also those who simply disagree with his terms and his methods in the GPL family. I'd personally rather leeching corporate users be able to use my code if it means a wider distribution, more mindshare, and wider overall implementation even if that means many of my code's derivatives are closed source. It's a value-judgement. The "right" license is the one that has the downstream effects you agree with as the author.
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Yeah, that's totally fair. I was being a bit ideological.
Re: If you want to exploit open-source then shaft (Score:2)
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"UNIX was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things, as that would also stop them from doing clever things."
Sure, some people won't do things you approve of if you use a license with easy-going derivative rules. However, it'll also not get included in some things which you would approve of. It's a judgement call.
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I agree. Personally, I don't consider the GPL "free" in any sense of that word, much less "freedom". If you "give" me something and with conditions on what I can do with it, it's not actually free at all.
Obviously this is a spectrum, but by this standard the GPL is one of the most unfree licenses in common use.
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The GPL does not solve the "issue" that these projects are complaining about.
For example, Mongos issue with cloud providers was that they were selling Mongo as a service - none of that violated the license, and it wouldnt violate the GPL either.
Same for Redis.
And the same goes here for Wordpress.
When I joined Slashdot back in 1999 or so, the mantra here for how to make money off of a GPL codebase was to charge for the support or other project-adjacent things - thats exactly what is going on in all these cas
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I guess part of FOSS is resenting that others get the same freedoms you do?
they don't resent other's freedoms, they just want money for their effort. they are entitled to try but ...
All open source ever was was entitlement to get stuff for free.
... this is just nonsense. opensource was, and is, about sharing code, contributing and preserving all those freedoms. opensource is altruistic in nature, but that doesn't exclude the possibility of making business too through added value, service or support. that has nothing to do with demanding fees or licenses, but well ...
That's always been RMS's intention,
stallman has always been activist level engaged with the preserving freedoms
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I guess part of FOSS is resenting that others get the same freedoms you do?
I don't know about that being a FOSS attribute, but it's certainly an attribute of political-minded non-programmers who hate license X in favor of license Y, but have never written any code and aren't running any FOSS projects.
All open source ever was was entitlement to get stuff for free.
Perhaps oversimplified in some cases, but a fair statement overall.
If you are the original creator of a work, you're entitled to license it as you wish
I completely agree.
Wow, welcome to the 20th century. Let's hope you don't speak for FOSS, you're decades behind the times.
I'm stating a fact. Just because both licenses have been around a while and this well-trod ground doesn't mean I don't get to express my own thoughts on it. If you don't like it, you're free to fuck
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There are lots of bad actors who take from FOSS software and give nothing back.
They are not bad actors. They are simply doing precisely what the software license permits. If you don't want people to do this with your software, then don't release it under a FOSS license.
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Well, changing the license terms after the fact is problematic. You have to make sure you own all the code and thus have the right to relicense it, and anyone who doesn't like the new license can simply fork the last-released free version.
My point is, if you don't want people using your software for free, then don't release it under a FOSS license in the first place. Once you do that, you've mostly lost control.
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> There are lots of bad actors who take from FOSS software and give nothing back.
No common FOSS license requires "giving anything back".
If you want guaranteed revenues, you need to use a commercial license.
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Re:If you want to exploit open-source then shaft i (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair to Google it wasn't Google pushing this, it was the users asking for it. Manufacturers using Google's provided OS were massively lagging rolling out fundamental updates. The result was early days of mass app incompatibilities as certain functionality required certain full OS versions which simply were not being rolled out.
I still remember the breaking point, it was a massive security issue. We discussed in detail here on Slashdot and criticised Google for making a system such that most users will never get the security issue patched. Then came the obvious solution: Distribute core components via the play store.
Is it perfect? No. But I am 100% onboard with the modern way of doing it. The AOSP wasn't worth the downside for those not interested in it, including me. Not everyone has the ability to run cracked software.
Incidentally 2 days ago I got Theft Detection added to my device. Samsung had no say in it, it was a feature rolled out via Play Services. If this were 2009 I would be waiting 2 years for a new phone before I got that feature Google made available to all.
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Re: If you want to exploit open-source then shaft (Score:1)
Errrmm, ... well AFAICT ... (Score:2)
... everything that Google does with software that matters is truly open source: V8, Blink, Flutter, Dart, Android Studio ( ok, that's also Jetbrains, but it is a good full blown IDE nonetheless), etc.
Yeah, Goggles Android is locked up in proprietary daemons, but it's trivial to get an open source alternative up and going. Volla is a good example.
Google services, yeah, they are proprietary. That's where Google earns it's money. That is IMHO the "genius" of Google. By and large they couldn't care less if the
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Can They Even Relicense? (Score:2)
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Depends on the terms under which they were given to the Wordpress Foundation. The trademarks were originally owned by Automattic. It's very likely they were handed over contractually with a license that had unrestricted use for Automattic.
Matt is fighting this war, not Automattic. He effectively still controls the trademarks, and since this is not Sony we're talking about it's unlikely that he will sue himself over a contract he devised.
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Depends on the terms under which they were given to the Wordpress Foundation. The trademarks were originally owned by Automattic. It's very likely they were handed over contractually with a license that had unrestricted use for Automattic.
Matt is fighting this war, not Automattic. He effectively still controls the trademarks, and since this is not Sony we're talking about it's unlikely that he will sue himself over a contract he devised.
Automattic is to Wordpress as Acquia [wikipedia.org] is to Drupal.
Matt Mullenweg is to Wordpress as Dries Buytaert is to Drupal. (for more detail read the post I wrote previously in this thread [slashdot.org])
All that said, Dries Buytaert owns the trademark to Drupal. The footer of every page on drupal.org reads, "Drupal is a registered trademark of Dries Buytaert." ...and I know of zero issues of anyone having with this situation, and no one is at war.
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AFAICT Dries has never once tried to stop anyone from advertising the fact that they sell Drupal hosting or services, even slightly, so I agree with your interpretation of the situation.
I was under the impression that you couldn't do that, anyway. If you are selling a product, can't you use that product's name as long as your use is not deceptive? Not necessarily any materials, logos etc., but the name itself?
Wrong and inconsistent. (Score:4, Informative)
"âoeRailsâ, âoeRuby on Railsâ, and the Rails logo are registered trademarks of David Heinemeier Hansson, but are under exclusive license to The Rails Foundation, which is responsible for administering their use and permission. You may not use these trademarks in a commercial setting to imply that your product or service is endorsed or associated with Ruby on Rails without permission. You may use these marks to refer to Ruby on Rails in a way where itâ(TM)s clear that youâ(TM)re simply referring to the project, not claiming endorsement or association." - https://rubyonrails.org/tradem... [rubyonrails.org]
He even goes on to give a not permitted example:
Naming your company or product after Ruby on Rails, like âoeThe Rails Consultantsâ or âoeThe Rails Web Serverâ.
The trademark violation is what Mullenweg has been talking about and is the basis of legal action. WP-engine has plethora of statements on their site implying that they are running Wordpress without abiding by the terms of the trademark agreement.
The gpl problem is a bit more nuanced. wpengine claims that their implementation is better than all the true wordpress platforms but if this isn't simply a lie their codebase should reflect that. See their "time to first byte" chart: https://wpengine.com/resources... [wpengine.com]
If David really thinks that trademarks are unimportant he should probably open his own up to a more permissive use, but having narrow allowed terms and allowing abusers to get away with undermining the mark is not just silly but likely opens him up to termination of the mark.
Re: Wrong and inconsistent. (Score:3)
The problem with your post is that, when WP Engine was created, Mullenweg via wordpress.org explicitly blessed the use of using names with WP in them. It has been a very common practice for commercial plugin developers and hosts.
Just a couple weeks ago Mullenweg changed that text to say the opposite without notifying anyone. I do not think that will hold up in court.
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It's likely that both Wordpress and "Rails" are overstating their ownership of particular marks related to trademark law.
You can look around wp-engine's website, one page I searched had 49 references to "Wordpress" and none of them explicitly disclaimed partnership with the foundation which owns the mark.
I'd agree, changes to the wordpress marks are only enforceable after the change, but it's not likely that wordpress can claim ownership of a mark as simple as WP anyway.
Open-source: Wordpress - Drupal /Automattic-Acquia (Score:2)
As a Drupal developer, this is my perspective of the situation:
Automattic is to Wordpress as Acquia [wikipedia.org] is to Drupal.
I don't know much about Matt Mullenweg, but as a Wordpress co-founder in this comparison he's more or less equal to Dries Buytaert [wikipedia.org], (also known as Drupal UserID 1, not unlike Linux Torvalds is with Linux and GIT, but within the Drupal Community). Dries Buytaert is also the CEO of Acquia, kinda like Matt Mullenweg's role at Automattic.
Acquia is the 800 pound gorilla in the Drupal space. They 'add
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Dries is the "Founder, Chief Technology & Strategy Officer" of Acquia, not the CEO.
https://www.acquia.com/about-us/team/dries-buytaert
not dirty (Score:3)
I don't think Automatic is doing something wrong here, they don't ask WP Engine to pay for the code, they ask to be paid for services (hosting of themes and plugins) and ask for their trademark to be used fairly. In the spirit of Open Source, WP Engine is 100% free to take the WordPress code, strip the trademarks, set their own add-on repo and offer the service without paying a dime to Automatic, but WP Engine want to act as freeloaders, make money and not contribute back.
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they ask to be paid for services (hosting of themes and plugins)
Not really. A flat 8% of WP-Engine's revenue would more than cover the costs of the bandwidth. Automattic wants profit without doing work, not a fair trade.
Everyone should just stop using anything derived from WordPress because everything of theirs sucks. Their templates suck. Their plugins suck. The people who make regular WordPress (not WP-Engine) sites suck at design. There are so many better ways to set up a blog, personal site, or whatever for free.
Re: not dirty (Score:4, Insightful)
You are confusing Automattic with wordpress.org. The plugin and theme repos come from wordpress.org and the WordPress Foundation has a mission statement that states that they exist to give WordPress, plugins, and themes away for free.
If the nonprofit side of WordPress works against that mission statement to enrich Automattic (especially given that Matt controls both) then there are major legal issues. It means they have lied to the IRS and are not, in fact, a nonprofit. The fact that Matt has personally attempted to leverage wp.org to extort a competitor for Automattic also means he could be facing serious penalties. Extortion is kind of a major crime, especially when it amounts to tens of millions of dollars.
It's open source, not steal and profit. (Score:2)
99.9% of all open-source projects aren't worth the compute power consumed to run them, but that
Absolutely agree with you! (Score:1)
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Casino recommendations (Score:1)