This week, the community of WordPress, the world’s most popular website-building platform, found itself embroiled in a battle over ethical values. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg slammed WP Engine, calling it a “cancer” of the community.
Image source: Fikret tozak / unsplash.com
Mullenweg’s announcement kicked off a debate about how profit-oriented companies can or cannot use open source software, and whether they are required to contribute something to the projects they make money from. WP Engine is a company that provides hosting services for websites on the free and open WordPress platform. It was founded in 2010 and has now grown so much that it has become a competitor to the WordPress.com platform – now more than 200 thousand sites are hosted on WP Engine servers.
Mullenweg himself runs two different WordPress sites. This is the open source project WordPress.org, responsible for developing the WordPress CMS, and the WordPress.com service, which offers hosting sites on this platform – like WP Engine. Mullenweg runs Automattic, which owns WordPress.com. According to statistics, 43% of all websites are powered by WordPress, but there is no information on how many of them are hosted on WordPress.com or WP Engine. Automattic is making a large contribution to the development of the open source project—3,988 man-hours per week, according to Mullenweg.
WP Engine, in its own words, provides sponsorship to the project and encourages people to use WordPress, as well as hosts events, develops training resources, etc. In 2018, the hoster was acquired by private equity firm Silver Lake, and according to Mullenweg, it is a business that profits from open source code and gives nothing in return.
Last week, Mullenweg took the stage at the WordCamp conference, which is sponsored by WP Engine, and slammed the host: “The company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 million in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t care about your open source ideals – they just want return on capital. So at this point I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with their wallet. Who will you give your money to: someone who will nurture the ecosystem, or someone who will pump all the juices out of it until it dries up?”
Image source: Lavi Perchik / unsplash.com
His speech continued with a publication in which he recalled that WP Engine’s contribution to the open source project is limited to only 40 man-hours per week. It is worth noting that WP Engine does not violate the WordPress license, since it does not oblige anyone to give anything to the community. What makes the situation worse is that Mullenweg defends not only the ideals of open source, but also his own commercial company, which is a competitor to WP Engine. He also claimed that WP Engine requires a commercial license for the “unauthorized” use of the WordPress trademark, which is owned by the WordPress Foundation – and sent the company a cease-and-desist letter in an attempt to force it to pay money.
WP Engine did not remain silent. The company outlined its version of events: Automattic demanded a “very large sum” a few days before Mullenweg spoke at WordCamp on September 20 – otherwise he threatened to use a “nuclear scorched earth approach” against his opponent. There were calls and text messages from him, and WP Engine knew in advance about the content of the speech. “Mullenweg’s unspoken demand for WP Engine to be paid off by his for-profit company Automattic while publicly masquerading as an altruistic advocate for the WordPress community is a disgrace. WP Engine will not comply with these unconscionable demands, which not only harm WP Engine and its employees, but also threaten the entire WordPress community,” the company said in a statement.
The administration of WordPress.org has made it clear that it has subjected WP Engine to persecution not only for the fact that the company did not support the open source project, but also for allegedly misusing the WordPress trademark. However, the WordPress Foundation has only recently made changes to its trademark rules. While back on September 19, anyone could use the “WP” acronym “in any way they see fit,” the document now says, “If you wish to use the WordPress trademark for commercial purposes, please contact Automattic – they have an exclusive license.”
It got to the point that WP Engine cut off free access to the WordPress.org servers, which host platform updates and site templates. Two days later, Mullenweg temporarily lifted the block, but gave opponents until October 1 for WP Engine to launch their own mirror or resolve the dispute.
The incident caused mixed reactions from the public. On the one hand, people say, WP Engine really should have increased its contributions to the open source project, and the company’s use of the “WP” acronym may be misleading. But some in the WordPress community have called for Mullenweg to resign, accusing him of abusing his power over WordPress.org and WordPress.com. There is also an opinion that a fork of WordPress may appear as a result of the conflict, because there is no guarantee that Automattic will not try to take similar measures against any other organization.