Tweets From Dustin Snider ![rw-book-cover](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1523160347997360133/g0atvHPO.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[@DustinSnider on Twitter]] - Full Title: Tweets From Dustin Snider - Category: #tweets - URL: https://twitter.com/DustinSnider ## Document Notes ## Highlights - Yeah so this is pretty interesting I’ve done some digging and talking to people and here’s what I’ve got and it’s not good news long term IMO. It appears the way Matt has structured things allows him to raise VC funds for his for profit efforts while directly leveraging and using the WordPress trademark for profit generating purposes of which he’s assigned to his said for profit entity, all of which I’m sure you know. As you also know the trademark originates from a foundation that he has effectively 100% control over, the foundations purpose appears to be purely a marketing, business, tax and public relation scheme. It serves no actual legitimate purpose other than to operate as a make shift shell company (all of this is in my personal opinion based on the research I’ve done for Matt’s attorneys reading this) with minimal tax benefits for “some” of the WordCamp and other related activities he/Automattic would still otherwise be engaging in from the for profit entity. He has effectively no legitimate or effective oversight in the foundation with complete control, then using that control in his personal conflicted interests, steering decisions solely for his for profit entities benefit. The proof of this is the terms by which Automattic is granted these so valuable trademark monetization rights by the foundation, how does the foundation not receive any % of these WP Engine style shakedown if it served as a legitimate purpose? Items get further complicated by the fact Matt then continues to retain personal ownership over the WordPress social handles and https://t.co/Y4rv9MDjta domains and infrastructure either personally or through his other personal company. These handles are of course in violation of the WordPress trademark of which is assigned to Automattic from the foundation but when did Matt’s personal company get trademark usage rights? Did it? The public statements from himself and others leads us to believe majority of services are being ran and operated by Automattic (of which they actually are), yet Matt retains personal ownership over these assets still, that Automattic pays to run? It’s somewhat purposely opaque here to what I believe is disguise a secondary layer of ownership and control over WordPress Matt has setup. Now all that to set the stage back to Automattic - profit is derived from https://t.co/Qs0dWfmIVC and other for profit WordPress businesses ventures and a few other VC investments. Matt has presented himself very carefully to his VC’s as to present as someone highly motivated by his care for the community and ecosystem and project/product as to in a way raise funds from VC’s who are willing to sign back majority of their voting rights back to him so as to insure he retains the control he needs to have as the father of wordpress sort to speak. This leaves him with a greater than 50% voting control at Automattic and if investors stepped in nonetheless he still retains full control over the foundation that grants them their trademark of which majority of profit is derived and the entire .org thus leaving them effectively destroyed as a business overnight. This man has engineered a system of control that I believe borders on illegal and a very very long and costly legal battle is about to take place. Think of Elon’s compensation package from Tesla and the reason that was such an issue for context and why this case ontop of the complex web of entities with no effective oversight aspect. This could be setting the stages for a lawsuit that will be studied by attorneys in law school moving forward and Matt’s posts, comments and more are going to significantly complicate this for him in a number of ways he might not realize. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/DustinSnider/status/1847185393520607512)) - This is apart of a larger collective effort that we're all hopeful leads to a properly governed Open Updates Foundation. We're hopeful we'll be ready to share full details on these efforts closer to the beginning of the week. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/DustinSnider/status/1850144975884837001)) - WordPress Mirror Update: 10+ highly experienced contributors, from core contributors to hosting companies to plugin/theme developers to agencies, professors and more, working on everything from governance to sustainability. We're hopeful to be deployed to [Cloudflare](https://twitter.com/Cloudflare) by end of the weekend, the mirror itself is complete totaling at 2.58TB. A drop in plugin allowing a WordPress installation to change its repository settings has also been developed and we're preparing to launch next week. ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/DustinSnider/status/1850144570756997490))