this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
270 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
60033 readers
2895 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No, they can't, because no, it isn't. That's what trademarks are for. You can't use a trademarked name to refer to your competing product.
Open source projects are generally permissive in terms of people repackaging their code for distribution for different platforms within reasonable guidelines, but even that is a sufficient change that they aren't obligated to allow their trademarks to be used that way.
It is no longer Wordpress once it's modified. That's what trademark is for.
I think we should agree to disagree that it was modified enough here.
There is no "enough". Any modification at all takes their permission to use their trademark.
Most allow you to do so within reasonable guidelines, but that only gives you the benefit of the doubt if it's ambiguous. As soon as they tell you that you don't have permission to use their trademark on your altered version, you can't use it.
But is gatekeeping the configuration files or wrapping around the software really modification?
I can't go and modify something and violate their trademarks in the process lol.
You can't, and I'm disagreeing that what they were doing counts as modification.
Did they change anything? If so, it's modification.
That is the question. I think this is all perfectly achievable by only writing new, separate software to selectively gatekeep the configuration files without changing the source code of WordPress itself. Like I said, not dedicating more resources to WordPress.org doesn't give WP Engine the moral high ground either, though.
To be honest it doesn't really matter if it's modified or an entirely different product offering. It seems it is trying to muddy the waters with the name WP.
IMO that part's entirely fine. After all, it is a webhosting engine for WordPress. Would you say the same about e.g. NameMC.com?