Here's what I predict WP Engine will do next week in response:
1. They will scrape the entire WordPress.org plugin registry (people are already circulating scrapers around Mastodon)
2. They will open their own separate plugin registry, with blackjack and hookers
3. They will update their mu-plugin to hook the WordPress autoupdater and point it to their own infrastructure on every site they host
They can do this because WordPress is GPL and so are all the plugins. GPL can't be revoked unless you fuck up a source release, which is genuinely hard to do in PHP. And WordPress is GPLv2+, meaning GPLv3 with its way more lenient revocation terms are available.
I assume at some point Automattic will insist that scraping WordPress.org is now illegal or something, and then every plugin author will have to go through an annoying process of claiming their WP Engine Plugin Registry entries and updating everything in two places, fracturing the community because of the FOSS world's most petty trademark fight.
1. They will scrape the entire WordPress.org plugin registry (people are already circulating scrapers around Mastodon)
2. They will open their own separate plugin registry, with blackjack and hookers
3. They will update their mu-plugin to hook the WordPress autoupdater and point it to their own infrastructure on every site they host
They can do this because WordPress is GPL and so are all the plugins. GPL can't be revoked unless you fuck up a source release, which is genuinely hard to do in PHP. And WordPress is GPLv2+, meaning GPLv3 with its way more lenient revocation terms are available.
I assume at some point Automattic will insist that scraping WordPress.org is now illegal or something, and then every plugin author will have to go through an annoying process of claiming their WP Engine Plugin Registry entries and updating everything in two places, fracturing the community because of the FOSS world's most petty trademark fight.