Last week we noted that a post written on Automattic’s website by an associate general counsel at Automattic, appeared to have a gotten significant detail wrong. As the author claimed that a non-profit owns WordPress.org, despite the CEO of Automattic continually claiming he personally owns it. There is another detail that may not be right that was discussed in that.

In a post on The Repository, written by Rae Morey, noted the issue on the non-profit claimed to own WordPress, but went on to report this:

Peretz said this was accomplished by having Automattic turn over all rights to the WordPress marks to the WordPress Foundation and then simultaneously having the foundation license the commercial rights to the trademark back to Automattic.

That relates to claims made in Automattic’s post, including:

The right to use the WordPress marks for commercial purposes (e.g., selling software, hosting, and agency services) is owned by Automattic. Automattic, in its sole discretion, can sublicense the WordPress marks to others who wish to use them for commercial purposes. The concept of “sole discretion” also means that Automattic can refuse to license the marks to anyone it deems inappropriate.

And this:

the commercial rights to the marks back to Automattic.

And finally this:

For the licensing of the commercial use of the WordPress marks to Automattic, the consideration was Automattic turning over the entire trademarks to the WordPress Foundation.

The post doesn’t actually provide the license that Automattic has.

The Trademarks page on the WordPress Foundation website was recently updates to include this line:

If you would like to use the WordPress trademark commercially, please contact Automattic, they have the exclusive license. Their only sub-licensee is Newfold.

Matt Mullenweg has admitted that another recent changed was made by him, so this likely would have been a changed he made as well.

The WordPress Foundation’s website doesn’t provide a copy of any license they have issued. That is despite Matt Mullenweg having claimed that just last week that was been done with the licenses “has all been public.”

As we have noted before, the license that Automattic received it turns out is public, just buried in the United States Patent and Trademark Office website. You can view the PDF of that here. Here is the relevant legalese:

an exclusive, fully-paid, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sublicensable right and license to use and otherwise exploit the trademarks identified in Exhibit A attached hereto, and any and all related or similar names, marks, designs, domain names, and other rights (excluding www.wordpress.org, www.wordcamp.org and www.wordpressfoundation.org), along with all associated applications, registration and goodwill (the “Trademarks”), in connection with the hosting of blogs and web sites that utilize any version or component of the WordPress open source publishing platform product or open source successor of any of the foregoing on or in connection with www.wordpress.com and www.wordpress.tv (each and collectively, together with any subdomains of any of the foregoing, “Automattic Sites”), providing support for the Automattic Sites, and/or substantially similar uses in connection with the Automattic Sites.

That doesn’t appear to provide Automattic with all commercial rights.

In line with, Rae Morey noted in her post that WordPress Foundation has taken legal action against commercial use:

Confusingly, the foundation has previously taken legal action to protect the WordPress trademark for commercial purposes. In 2015, the foundation sued developer Jeff Yablon for trademark infringement who was using it

A core element of security is trust. The larger situation that is going on makes it hard to trust WordPress and trust in Automattic would be hard to justify at this time.