Last week I reported (story #1) on the WordPress vs WP Engine beef. Here's a quick recap:
Matt Mullenweg, CEO / founder of Automattic (the makers of WordPress), called out WP Engine at the recent WordCamp US event for not contributing enough, in his opinion, to the WordPress open source project.
He went on to say that Silver Lake, the parent company of WP Engine, doesn't care about the WordPress ecosystem and only cares about making money. He encouraged WordPress users to switch hosts and get off WP Engine. Then he oddly praised Google and gave them a shout out right afterwards.
Here's what has happened since:
- On September 23rd, WP Engine sent a “cease and desist” letter to Automattic demanding that the company and its CEO Matt Mullenweg stop making and retract false, harmful and disparaging statements against WP Engine.
- A few hours later, Automattic responded with a “cease and desist” letter to WPEngine, demanding that the host stop “improperly using” the trademarked terms ‘WordPress' and ‘WooCommerce,' which it says causes confusion amongst consumers.
- Mullenweg wrote, “Automattic has tried for years to get WP Engine to obtain a commercial license for trademark use and contribute to the core software they rely on, but WP Engine has repeatedly declined to partner or contribute. If you gave $1 to the WordPress Foundation, you’d be a bigger donor than WP Engine.”
- It became public that Mullenweg demanded either 8% of WPEngine's $400M annual revenue to license the trademarks, or an equivalent amount of developer hours donated to The WordPress Foundation.
- On Sep 26th, in retaliation of the cease and desist letter, Mullenweg blocked access to the WordPress.org Plugin Repository, making it impossible for 1M+ WP Engine customers to update their websites.
- WP Engine subsequently found a workaround to enable customers to update plugins on their WordPress websites, and Automattic later temporarily lifted the block.
- The WordPress Foundation updated their trademark policy to include instructions on proper use of “WP” and specifically called out WP Engine on the page.
- On the evening of Sep 26th, Matt Mullenweg joined Michael (aka: theprimeagen) for a live video chat to answer questions about what's been going on. You can read transcripts from the videos in the comments section of that Reddit link, where I highlighted how hard Michael had to pull teeth to get Matt to answer the question — is any other company paying trademark licensing fees? Eventually it was revealed that Newfound Digital, which owns EIN hosts like Bluehost and HostGator, is the only other company to pay trademark licensing fees, but no-one knows how much.
- Joost de Valk, creator of Yoast SEO, published a blog post addressing inequality in compensation within the WordPress community and calling for transparency and governance.
The ongoing legal battle between WordPress and WP Engine has brought to light many things about how WordPress is governed. Many folks didn't realize how much control one person, Matt Mullenweg, has over The WordPress Foundation, Automattic, WordPress trademarks, and the development decisions of the WordPress the open source platform — as well as the inherent conflict of interest of having one person in charge of all four.
Things have since calmed down for the time being, but I'll keep you posted on future drama updates and how these actions affect the WordPress community.