This is 100% correct as a position of principle, but it's not a foregone conclusion that WPE was able to take the necessary steps here.
To be very specific about at least one of the issues:
* The URLs pointing to the WP plugin directory on wordpress.org are hardcoded into WordPress
* If WPE forks WordPress to fix that, and continues to say they host WordPress, IANAL but they probably have a trademark violation problem on their hands.
There are certainly workarounds which exist, but it's hard for us to conclude casually on Hacker News whether they can be deployed at WP Engine scale and in compliance with whatever agreements WP Engine is bound to.
So yeah you're right about what the right thing to do is. But frequently reality is not that simple. They needed time and maybe even assistance from wporg (in helping them to be free of wporg. errrr)
> * The URLs pointing to the WP plugin directory on wordpress.org are hardcoded into WordPress
But they can be changed via filters. I do that all the time to manage when certain request are being made (and making sure it's in a cron job and not a user-request).
WP Engine does run their own plugin in the instances they host, though I assume it's not obligatory. Still, every site I ever had to look at that was on WPE had it installed and enabled.
WP does come with its own CA certs, but that file could be appended (or replaced, again via filter) as well. Since they're comfortable changing things like the revision settings, I doubt this would be something they wouldn't do.
I'm not saying Matt is reasonable, but "it's not an easy thing to do" isn't true.
It's academic now, the mirroring has been a done deal since Oct 1. WPE operates their own mirror and API server now. Matt of course did not help at all in this effort.
To be very specific about at least one of the issues:
* The URLs pointing to the WP plugin directory on wordpress.org are hardcoded into WordPress
* If WPE forks WordPress to fix that, and continues to say they host WordPress, IANAL but they probably have a trademark violation problem on their hands.
There are certainly workarounds which exist, but it's hard for us to conclude casually on Hacker News whether they can be deployed at WP Engine scale and in compliance with whatever agreements WP Engine is bound to.
So yeah you're right about what the right thing to do is. But frequently reality is not that simple. They needed time and maybe even assistance from wporg (in helping them to be free of wporg. errrr)