Tag Archives: wordpress trademark

WordPress Trademark now owned by WordPress Foundation

Posted on September 12, 2010 by in Articles

As announced by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, “Automattic has transferred the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to promoting and ensuring access to WordPress and related open source projects in perpetuity.”

This means that WordPress and its trademark is no longer owned by a company (Automattic) but will now be handled by the WordPress Foundation. This is actually great news for the WordPress community and is a step towards the continuity of the WordPress software. Great move by Matt and Automattic, this is why I love the WordPress Community and idolize Matt Mullenweg, I am excited to see him on WordCamp Philippines and congratulate him on this move.

From Matt Mullenweg:
“I know in my heart that this is the right thing for the entire WordPress community, and they followed me on that. It wasn’t easy, but things worth doing seldom are”

About Automattic
Automattic Inc. is a startup from a handful of people passionate about making the web a better place. So far we’re best known for our work on WordPress and other projects but we have a lot of other interesting things in the pipeline as well. We are strong believers in Open Source and the vast majority of our work is available under licenses like the GPL.

Automattic Projects:
- wordpress.com
- PollDaddy
- Akismet
- Gravatar
- wordpress.org
- bbPress

Do not use WordPress in Domain Names

Posted on September 3, 2010 by in Articles, WordPress Tips

Did you know that it is prohibited to use “wordpress” in a top level domain name?

From: http://wordpress.org/about/domains/
“For various reasons related to our WordPress trademark, we ask if you’re going to start a site about WordPress or related to it that you not use “WordPress” in the domain name. Try using “wp” instead, or another variation. We’re not lawyers, but very good ones tell us we have to do this to preserve our trademark. Also many users have told us they find it confusing.”

Using wordpress in subdomains is fine (Like this blog wordpress.gmtan.com), I actually bought a couple of domains already with wordpress in it before I read this but decided not to use them anymore or redirect them until they expire in order to show my support for WordPress.

I have seen many websites still using wordpress in the domain name and it is difficult for the the WordPress Founders to take action with these websites but we can do something to show our support for the WordPress community, I hope we can all follow this simple rule and not use any domain name with wordpress or show our support by not patronizing these websites.