Many of you ā perhaps most of you ā have been sitting on the sidelines while WordPress and WP Engine trade legal attacks on one another. Itās been widely covered as we watch it unfold in the open; ironically, in a sense.
These things can take twists and turns and it doesnāt help that this just so happens to be an emotionally charged topic in certain circles. WordPress is still the leading CMS after all these years and by a long shot. Many developers make their living in the WordPress ecosystem. All of those developers need hosting. WP Engine is still the leading WordPress-flavored host after many years. Many developers host their agencies there and use it to administrate their clientsā sites.
And I havenāt even gotten to the drama. Thatās not really the point. The point is that thereās a bunch of heated words flying around and it can be difficult to know where theyāre coming from, who they are aimed at, and most importantly, why theyāre being said in the first place. So, Iām going to round up a few key voices contributing to the discussion for the sake of context and to help catch up.
Editorās Note: Even though CSS-Tricks has no involvement with either company, I think itās mentioning that Automattic was a looooooong time sponsor. This site was also once hosted by Flywheel, a company acquired by WP Engine before we moved to Cloudways following the DigitalOcean acquisition. Me? My personal site runs on WP Engine, but Iām not precious about it having only been there one year.
Prelude to a tweet
We had fair warning that something was coming up when WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg sent this out over X:
I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company’s participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We’ll make sure it’s a big public deal andā¦
ā Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) September 19, 2024
Thereās the ammo: Donāt let private equity bully you into speaking up against the company you work for when its contributions to WordPress are on the slim side of things.
Private equity. Lack of participation in the WordPress community. Making a big public deal of it. Remember these things because this is one day beforeā¦
WordCamp US 2024
Matt spoke at WordCamp US (WCUS) 2024 in Portland, OR, last week. September 20 to be exact. Making big, bold statements at WCUS isnāt a new thing for Matt, as many of us still have āLearn JavaScript deeplyā tattooed on the brain from 2016.
Mattās statements this year were less inspirational (instructional?) as they took direct aim at WP Engine as part of a presentation on the merits of open-source collaboration. You can watch and listen to where the first jab was thrown roughly around the 10:05 marker of the recording.
Letās break down the deal. Matt begins by comparing the open-source contributions to WordPress from his company, Automattic, to those of WP Engine. These things are tracked on WordPress.org as part of a campaign called āFive for the Futureā thatās designed to give organizations an influential seat at the table to form the future of WordPress in exchange for open-source contributions back to the WordPress project. Automattic has a page totaling its contributions. So does WP Engine.
Before Matt reveals the numbers, he goes out of his way to call out the fact that both Automattic and WP Engine are large players in the neighborhood of $500 million dollars. Thatās the setup for Matt to demonstrate how relatively little WP Engine contributes to WordPress against Mattās own company. Granted, I neither have absolutely no clue what factors into contributions, nor how the pages are administrated or updated. But hereās what they showā¦
Quite the discrepancy! Iād imagine Automattic dwarfs every other company thatās pledged to the campaign. Maybe it would be better to compare the contributions of another non-Automattic pledge that has a fairly strong reputation for participating in WordPress community. 10up is one of the companies that comes straight to my mind and they are showing up for 191 hours per week, or roughly five times WP Engineās reported time. I get conflicting info on 10upās revenue, valuation, and size, so maybe the comparison isnāt fair. Or maybe it is fair because 10up is certainly smaller than WP Engine, and no estimate I saw was even close to the $500 million mark.
Whatever the case, bottom line: Matt calls out WP Engine for its lack of effort on a very public stage ā maybe the largest ā in WordPress Land. He doesnāt stop there, going on to namecheck Silver Lake, a ginormous private equity firm bankrolling the company. The insinuation is clear: thereās plenty of money and resources, so pony up.
Thatās bad enough for attendees to raise eyebrows, but it doesnāt end there. Matt encourages users and developers alike to vote with money by not purchasing hosting from WP Engine (11:31) and seems to suggest (23:05) that heāll provide financial support to any WP Engine employees who lose their jobs from speaking up against their employer.
I think I can get behind the general idea that some companies need a little prodding to pull their weight to something like the Five for the Future campaign. Encouraging developers to pull their projects from a company and employees to jeopardize their careers? Eek.
āWP Engine is not WordPressā
This is when I believe things got noisy. Itās one thing to strongarm a company (or its investors) into doing more for the community. But in a post on his personal blog the day after WCUS, Matt ups the ante alleging that āWP Engine isnāt WordPress.ā Youād think this is part of the tough-guy stance he had from the stage, but his argument is much different in this post. Notice itās about how WP Engine uses WordPress in its business rather than how much the company invests in it:
WordPress is a content management system, and the content isĀ sacred. Every change you make to every page, every post, is tracked in a revision system, just like the Wikipedia. This means if you make a mistake, you canĀ alwaysĀ undo it. It also means if youāre trying to figure out why something is on a page, you can see precisely the history and edits that led to it. These revisions are stored in our database. This is very important, itās at the core of the user promise of protecting your data, and itās why WordPress is architected and designed to never lose anything.
WP Engine turns this off.Ā They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of the changes in the database, and they donāt want to spend that to protect your content. It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content.
OK, gloves off. This is more personal. Itās no longer about community contributions but community trust and how WP Engine erodes trust by preventing WordPress users from accessing core WordPress features for their own profit.
Required reading
Thatās where Iād like to end this, at least for now. Several days have elapsed since Mattās blog post and there are many, many more words flying around from him, community members, other companies, and maybe even your Great Aunt. But if youāre looking for more signal than noise, Iāve rounded up a few choice selections that I feel contribute to the (heated) discussion.
Reddit: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP
Matt responds to the requisite calls for him to step down, starting with:
To be very clear, I was 100% cordial and polite to everyone at the booth, my message was:
* I know this isnāt about them, itās happening several levels above, itās even above their CEO, itās coming from their owner, Silver Lake and particularly their board member Lee Wittlinger.
* Several people inside WP Engine have been anonymously leaking information to me about their bad behavior, and I wanted to let them know if they were caught or faced retaliation that I would support them in every way possible, including covering their salaries until they found a new job.
* ThatĀ *if*Ā we had to take down the WP Engine booth and ban WP Engine that evening, my colleague ChloĆ© could print them all new personal badges if they still wanted to attend the conference personally, as they are community members, not just their company.
This was delivered calmly, and they said thank you, and their head of comms,Ā Lauren Cox, who was there asked that they have time to regroup and discuss.
Automatticās Actionable Misconduct Directed to WP Engine
WP Engine issues a cease and desist letter designed to stop Matt from disparaging them publicly. But hold up, because thereās another juicy claim in there:
In the days leading up to Mr. Mullenwegās September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, Automattic suddenly began demanding that WP Engine pay Automattic large sums of money, and if it didnāt, Automattic would wage a war against WP Engine.
And yes, they did issue it from their own siteās /wp-content directory. Thatās easy to lose, so Iāve downloaded it to link it for posterity.
Open Source, Trademarks, and WP Engine
Just today, Matt published a cease and desist letter to the Auttomatic blog where he alleges that WP Engineās commercial modifications to WordPress Core violate the WordPress trademark. Again, this has become about licensing, not contributions:
WP Engineās business model is based on extensive and unauthorized use of these trademarks in ways that mislead consumers into believing that WP Engine is synonymous with WordPress. Itās not.
This is trademark abuse, not fair competition.
This is no longer WordPress vs. WP Engine. Itās more like Automattic vs. WP Engine. But with Mattās name quite literally in the name Automattic, letās be real and call this Matt Mullenweg vs. WP Engine.
WP Tavern coverage
WP Tavern is still the closest thing we have to an official WordPress news outlet. Nevermind that itās funded and hired by Automattic (among others). I respect it, though I honestly have been less attentive to it since the team turned earlier this year. Itās still a great spot to catch up on the post-event coverage:
Highlights from Matt Mullenwegās Spiciest Word Camp Presentation at WordCamp US 2024 (Sep. 24)
Automattic Responds to WP Engineās Cease and Desist with Legal Action (Sep. 24)
Thereās another more recent WP Tavern article I want to call out because itās a huge development in this sagaā¦
WP Engine Banned from Using WordPress.org Resources
Dang. This is the point of no return. It not only affects WP Engine proper, but the Flywheel hosting it also owns.
WordPress.org has blocked WP Engine customers from updating and installing plugins and themes via WP Admin.Ā
I was able to update plugins on my site as recently as yesterday, but letās see as of this morning.
Aww, biscuits.
Maybe I can still see details about my installed pluginsā¦
Double biscuits!
This is a bad, bad situatiuon. I have thoughts about it and neither side looks good. Using real people with no dog in the fight to make a point is never gonna be a good look. Then again, both sides have valid points and I can see where theyāre coming from. I just hate to see it come to a head like this.
Catching Up on the WordPress š« WP Engine Sitch originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
āĀ
