We are pleased to announce that Automattic has made a remarkable and generous donation by transferring ownership of the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation. We’re honored to accept this donation, and to preserve and protect the trademark in the years ahead as a keystone part of the Foundation’s mission to ensure that WordPress is around and thrives for generations to come.
It is highly unusual (to say the least) for a company to give away a trademark worth millions, and this move by Automattic is extremely generous and community-minded.
Matt has posted about the decision to donate the trademark on his blog, and our official trademark policy is posted here on this site.
Thank you, Automattic! The Foundation will do its best to safeguard this legacy.
Great, also for readers who feel that they can use the WordPress word in their domain because the Tm is transferred are wrong. The policy still says – http://wordpress.org/about/domains/
Overall Congrats again for the change!
Congratulations on your bold and almost groundbreaking decision. Looks like the Automattic team has learnt a thing or too over time since the days of people creating “fake WordPress logos”, and is really starting to understand that to make a brand great you sometimes have to set it free. Well done!
This is a great and remarkable move by matt which will keep his name remembered thoroughly in the Golden History.
Methinks, the hidden meanings here are to save face. There was legal trouble for WordPress recently about some of the blogs it was carrying. This exchange of trademark, I think, was just a ploy to keep the name around. Otherwise, the whole site and all the blogs would be completely shut down.
No, it was always Matt’s intention for the trademark to be protected by a non-profit, it just took several years for it to all be worked out.
Great initiative by Matt to keep WordPress truly open source to the world.
It’s good for both WordPress community and Automattic, I think.
This is really awesome news. WordPress has become such a household name, even people with very less knowledge about web want a WordPress website. I really look forward to the years to come.
Congratulations 🙂
And, hats off to Automattic
En el Mundo hay personas generosas. Estamos segúros de que La Fundación hará bién su trabajo.
Excellent news! Keep up the good work 🙂
This leads me to think you guys are being sold out to Microsoft.
Hi Sajib. Nope, Automattic is not being sold to Microsoft, or anyone else. The creation of a non-profit foundation has been the plan for years, it just took that long for it to be finalized.
Amazing, congratulations!!! hope this will lead to a much better wordpress
Great news !!
Thats the beauty of the Open Source and people that are involved in it… they are always eager to give something back to the people that embraced their work !
Keep the legacy for the common good.
Excellent news! Congratulations 🙂
In other words. WordPress Rocks Hards!
This is definitely a commendable move by Automattic. Taking into consideration the fact mentioned in this post that the TM is worth a lot, commendable seems like a very small world. As a developer who uses WP as a framework, I wish to see WP becoming the de facto choice for a CMS.
That is amazing news, and shows the commitement of Matt to the open source community, and keeping wordpress running for some time.
I look forward to seeing the changes that wordpress implements, and can we hope that it will be a wordpress that is still productive and good as it has.