For many years, the official guidance on the trademark has explicitly been that WP was not the trademark and people should use that instead of WordPress. Tons and tons of people use WP in their businesses, domains, product names, etc.
Who are these confused consumers? The people who don’t know much anything about Wordpress except that they want it will end up at Wordpress.com. You have to go out of your way to find alternative hosting providers like WP Engine.
The “confused consumers” thing feels like a manufactured justification for whatever this spat is.
But WPEngine is toeing the line especially precariously.
The company is called WPEngine, sure, but their tagline says "Most trusted WordPress platform". Their plans are named "Essential WordPress", "Core WordPress", etc. Are those products they're selling, or just descriptions? There's enough gray area there to attract a lawyer's attention, which Mullenweg is clearly using to his advantage.
The proper response would be a suit to enforce a trademark, not an explosion of articles, interviews, shutdown of network access and demands for money paid to a private company in order to prevent the explosion.
> The proper response would be a suit to enforce a trademark
Which I believe was their legal response. The problem is it should have stopped there.
I'm sure Matt's lawyers aren't very happy with him at the moment. Legally, it's usually not advantageous to retaliate so strongly and publicly. It greatly muddies the legal waters.
Years ago, while working at a VC firm (in the office pool) my wife got to pick her own title. I convinced her briefly to go with business cards with the title: Floccinaucinihilipilificatrix
My career in tech has never suffered for not having a college degree.
I have lost jobs to people who had advanced degrees, but as far as I know I've never lost out on a job due to lack of a bachelor's.
When I'm hiring I care less about your degree than just about anything else. Having a degree definitely won't hurt you, but it's not nearly as much of a qualification in my industry as practical experience is.
That said, I've definitely taken college classes when they offered something I wanted to learn, and I would like to do more of that - not for the degree, but because learning stuff is cool.
I have done something very similar. Walked out of an interview (politely) due to how it was being conducted.
Employers forget that interviews are two-way, and that a talented potential employee is scoping you out to make a decision as well.
They are too often used to having all of the power in the negotiation, they completely don't get it when the time comes to interview someone who isn't desperate.
The ego blow is hard for them to take when you turn them down.
