I have no dog in this fight, but from the outside this is ludicrous behaviour.
Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of a for-profit WordPress hosting company, should not be using his position in the open-source WordPress project to attack another for-profit WordPress hosting company. Nothing could tank the reputation of the open-source WordPress project faster.
This only tanks the reputation of Mullenweg himself and his WordPress hosting company. WordPress powers about 40% of the web - it is too big to fail (as of now).
> This only tanks the reputation of Mullenweg himself and his WordPress hosting company.
I am only looking at this from the outside but given that Wordpress.org (not the wordpress hosting company wordpress.com) is involved here, it's clear that this dispute involves the Wordpress project itself and not just the commercial Automattic entity/Matt Mullenweg.
So Matt's mom confused WP Engine for official WordPress and Matt then decided that they are infringing on the WordPress trademark, by using "WP" and calling themselves "#1 platform for WordPress." Then, he threatened WP Engine to pay up or he will go to war against them, and now we are seeing what he meant by that.
Honestly, seems like pretty immature behavior, but it's entertaining at least.
His biggest beef with WP Engine is that their code is "bastardized" (???), because it doesn't enable revisions by default for their websites. That's one of the dumbest arguments I've heard. He's trying to convince us that only WP Engine is bad - and all other WP hosting companies are supposedly good.
Yep, it sounds like he is jealous/envious that they are making more off of WordPress hosting than Automattic. WordPress being open source makes this even more ridiculous, because he's complaining about modifications to open source software.
Yeah, I expected something more serious (like tracking usage analytics, scrapping data for some content generator or etc.) but it seems like the real problem is a minor function that {a lot} of users don't even know about?
while i understand the sentiment of wpengine not contributing back, if Mullenweg were serious about gaining support from the community he would give a date for people to migrate their systems off of WPEngine before they blocked it.
this just feels petty as hell and honestly makes me annoyed at him than anything, no warning whatsoever. nobody has time to just "migrate to pressable" on a whim. just be glad it's something not more critical than updating some plugins.
you also can't deny the obvious conflict of interest here where it feels like he's trying take a "competitor" down. sucks all around.
> while i understand the sentiment of wpengine not contributing back
To my understanding this isn't even particularly true - WPEngine have contributed significantly to events/sponsorships and with their own open source contributions. Matt's demand was allegedly instead for "tens of millions to his for-profit company Automattic".
Yeah this is my take as well. This feels like a mudsling fight and it’s messy. Whatever the .coms do is theirs, but the .org should not be in this one.
The statement at Wordpress.org reads like a very emotionally charged e-mail. While I am not in the know of the situation, it seems like a bit of terrible PR.
> WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred.
Wordpress people have been rewriting content without asking for permission FOREVER, potentially breaking code embedded in content. They rewrite (or perhaps stopped by now, I've moved on) Wordpress to WordPress.
and then Mullenweg's attack on WPEngine (and their PE owners) ramped up 0-60 in no time at all.
Like, is this just about support for the OSS project, and is there a conversation on the dev lists I've missed? Why now -- did WPEngine make a threat to fork the project? Is there a dispute around data access, now training data for AI is suddenly valuable? Etc.
I wonder what the fallout of this will be. If this results in a successful fork of wordpress with a registry independent from Wordpress.org that would be quite ironic.
To my understanding WP Engine already sponsor a dozen developers on the WordPress project, maintain their own open source projects, and host events.
Matt's demand was allegedly specifically for "tens of millions to his for-profit company Automattic" (i.e. WordPress.com, a for-profit competitor of WP Engine, not WordPress.org) for a trademark license.
Has WP Engine actually done anything wrong? Wordpress is released under GPLv2 which allows modification and commercial use. I don't see the justification for Automattic demanding royalties.
They are intending on enforcing this via trademarks and not code license. So the dispute is about "WP" and how "Wordpress" is used on the WP Engine website as a trademark.
The WordPress Foundation's trademark policy[0] seemed fairly clear that:
> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.
and
> a business related to WordPress themes can describe itself as “XYZ Themes, the world’s best WordPress themes,” but cannot call itself “The WordPress Theme Portal.”
To me it looks like a conflict of interests that Matt's using his role as the director of the non-profit to try to make a competitor pay his for-profit business (which it's worth disclosing that you are an employee of, edit: now disclosed) tens of millions of dollars.
Particuarly since WP Engine do already seem to contribute to the WordPress project/community/non-profit side, through events/sponsorships/open-source contributions. Even WordPress.org states "This organization contributes 5% of their resources to the WordPress project" under their "Five for the Future" program[1].
Readit News
Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of a for-profit WordPress hosting company, should not be using his position in the open-source WordPress project to attack another for-profit WordPress hosting company. Nothing could tank the reputation of the open-source WordPress project faster.
I am only looking at this from the outside but given that Wordpress.org (not the wordpress hosting company wordpress.com) is involved here, it's clear that this dispute involves the Wordpress project itself and not just the commercial Automattic entity/Matt Mullenweg.
Honestly, seems like pretty immature behavior, but it's entertaining at least.
this just feels petty as hell and honestly makes me annoyed at him than anything, no warning whatsoever. nobody has time to just "migrate to pressable" on a whim. just be glad it's something not more critical than updating some plugins.
you also can't deny the obvious conflict of interest here where it feels like he's trying take a "competitor" down. sucks all around.
To my understanding this isn't even particularly true - WPEngine have contributed significantly to events/sponsorships and with their own open source contributions. Matt's demand was allegedly instead for "tens of millions to his for-profit company Automattic".
https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/
https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/
> WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred.
Wordpress people have been rewriting content without asking for permission FOREVER, potentially breaking code embedded in content. They rewrite (or perhaps stopped by now, I've moved on) Wordpress to WordPress.
If I was a hosting service I would have that noise off by default too.
https://ma.tt/2024/09/are-investors-bad/
and then Mullenweg's attack on WPEngine (and their PE owners) ramped up 0-60 in no time at all.
Like, is this just about support for the OSS project, and is there a conversation on the dev lists I've missed? Why now -- did WPEngine make a threat to fork the project? Is there a dispute around data access, now training data for AI is suddenly valuable? Etc.
All seems so sudden and disproportionate.
WP/Matt’s actions would only make them fork faster, no?
Instead of forking, they could channel their resources to give back and that would be a good step to resolve this.
Disclaimer: I work at Automattic.
Matt's demand was allegedly specifically for "tens of millions to his for-profit company Automattic" (i.e. WordPress.com, a for-profit competitor of WP Engine, not WordPress.org) for a trademark license.
1. Fork and cherry-pick from upstream, don't accept contributions from outside. They need minimal changes.
2. Fork and maintain their fork independently, try to get community contributors too.
Using the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks outside of fair use is not.
Disclaimer: I work at Automattic.
> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.
and
> a business related to WordPress themes can describe itself as “XYZ Themes, the world’s best WordPress themes,” but cannot call itself “The WordPress Theme Portal.”
To me it looks like a conflict of interests that Matt's using his role as the director of the non-profit to try to make a competitor pay his for-profit business (which it's worth disclosing that you are an employee of, edit: now disclosed) tens of millions of dollars.
Particuarly since WP Engine do already seem to contribute to the WordPress project/community/non-profit side, through events/sponsorships/open-source contributions. Even WordPress.org states "This organization contributes 5% of their resources to the WordPress project" under their "Five for the Future" program[1].
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240901224354/https://wordpress...
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240524210250/https://wordpress...