If you must pronounce them, all the characters I listed are, in fact, pronounceable (as you can verify by googling them & visiting their Wikitionary pages) since they aren't actually symbols but letters from the alphabets of different languages. :)
"Hey man, I pulled the latest changes and I'm getting sideways Lego brick is undefined, followed by cannot read properties of undefined when reading squiggly prongs."
The article explains it as a fork that just blindly copies the changes in the original source to avoid legal complications but not add any new technical value.
Does that mean they merge the actual code from upstream? If they do that, I wouldn't call that a fork. I'd call it a mirror. I'm not exactly sure how that provides any of the benefits the author suggests.
Do they look at the changelog of upstream and have engineers re-implement the same things only with original code? That seems like a significant waste of resources just to try to duplicate someone else's efforts.
I'd argue that what WPEngine sells (rents?) is perhaps closer to a "distro" in the Redhat/Ubuntu/Arch/whatever sense.
They use WordPress core the way Ubuntu uses the Linux kernel. They use the GPL themes/plugins the way they use all the gnu utils. They use paid/pro plugins and themes like Ubuntu uses restricted and multiverse repos. If they feel the need, they can customise the kernel/core within the restrictions and obligations of the GPL however they choose to.
And WPEngine then wrap WordPress core in a whole bunch of what they and their customers consider "value add". Easy and automated backup/restore, one click dev/staging versions of the site and the ability to promote those into production when desired, automated provisioning and renewal of ssl certs, curated plugin backlists, monitoring and affected customer notifications of security updates across 3rd party plugin/themes as well as core, platform level WordPress specific optimisation, managed OS and web server and database security patching and updates. And like RedHat, they provide a "single neck to tread on" when something goes badly wrong: a support department that's both experienced and capable of solving pretty much any WP disaster 24x7, with a platform that can quickly and easily use to provide the needed help, and a pre existing business/financial relationship so both sides of that disaster and recovery are at least partially coincident it'll be charged and paid fairly and promptly.
For every single one of our WP clients, all that value add is totally worth the price jump from $5/month on GoDaddy et al. to $25/month of WPEngine. And for us, WPEngine has a better offering for what we value than wordpress.com.
Are there any examples of people doing this and getting away with it?
There are words for what can happen if you copy source code you don't have a licence to and use it commercially, but they aren't "avoid legal complications".
I get the opposition to corporate branding in public spaces. But there’s also the complaint that corporations don’t contribute to the public good. I’m guessing David Teare didn’t want it named after him. You could have it named after a significant historical local figure but that still doesn’t address the issue of how to foster goodwill by demonstrating your company acts in ways that benefits the public good.
> how to foster goodwill by demonstrating your company acts in ways that benefits the public good
Can't you just have a sign there that mentions the generous donation? Maybe even a big sign? Multiple signs? Naming the park might even backfire and do the opposite of fostering goodwill. It’s dystopian.
> I get the opposition to corporate branding in public spaces. But there’s also the complaint that corporations don’t contribute to the public good.
I don't have an opinion about this particular park but usually what people ask for is to tax corporations and use the funds for public good. This means that the public gets to decide how the funds are used rather than the corporation.
Though my preferred economic arrangement is an economy comprised primarily of cooperatives, and perhaps some federation of cooperatives to decide on allocation of funds for public good.
> But there’s also the complaint that corporations don’t contribute to the public good.
Then there's the complaint that corporations will do things like spend X dollars on a park to show what great guys they are, and then engage in tax-dodging like registering their trademark to a foreign entity and coincidentally every year the "royalties" on the trademark just magically work out so the domestic company doesn't make any money...and they end up avoiding Y taxes, where Y is probably several orders of magnitude greater than X.
And then there's all the tax breaks companies get when they make noise about thinking of moving somewhere else.
I don't know if 1password does any of this, primarily because I can't find the slightest bit of tax information about 1password (or "Agilebits", the actual corporate name.)
Reliability hasn't changed significantly for server-grade kit for decades.
All Intel-compatible servers have been essentially perfectly compatible with each other for decades.
All major brands will keep selling server kit. It's not like you have to throw away your IBM brand Intel-based servers and replace them with ARM chips from some no-name vendor!
My point is that in next year and the year after, and the year after that IBM will sell you faster and faster servers. Also... bigger and bigger. At roughly the same price point. With largely (if not entirely) compatible management systems, drivers, etc...
Speaking of drivers: VMware and similar hypervisors have almost completely eliminated driver compatibility as a concern. Clusters can contain wildly different gear without issues.
There's a lack of understanding in the industry by older managers that gained their experience in the "before times" when even the firmware had to be consistent for a cluster of servers.
For example, the local budget airline Jetstar would buy used servers from Ebay.
Why?
Why not!
Why would you need "support" if a server dies? It is stateless (diskless!) and just 1% of your capacity! Just throw it out.
Why would you care about driver updates if all of your VMs are using emulated hypervisor drivers only?
Why would you care if a server is "used" if chips don't "wear out"?
It's not arbitrage because of the labor spent looking through ebay listings and dealing with surprises (broken hardware, incorrect listings etc.)
Also the machines have to go somewhere and that costs a lot because if someone can do it cheaper they'll just sell VPSs for cheaper than you can host them. Doing it cheaper means more compute per rack/watt which means newer hardware.
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4148-1.jpe...