Rob Watson – WPEngine vs WordPress: What Happened and What’s Next?

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION In this presentation, we covered the controversy around Matt Mullenweg’s controversial statements about and actions against WPEngine over their allegedly low contributions to WordPress source code and alleged misuse of the WordPress trademark. The very public feud has disparately impacted WP Engine-hosted customers and the open-source software community. It also affects novice WordPress users who are not well-versed in the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, trademark law, and the risks of choosing hosting companies that don’t play well with the open-source community. You’ll learn what you can do if you’re a WPEngine customer and if you host elsewhere, how to prepare a contingency strategy if your host is similarly targeted.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Rob Watson is the founder and co-host of the West Orlando WordPress meetup group. Since 1996 he has been creating websites for businesses and organizations small and large. In 2009 he founded Webidextrous.com as a freelance website design boutique. In 2015 he began to evolve it into a lean full-service web agency with a specialty in maintenance, security, and performance optimization of WordPress websites. Rob is also a space exploration enthusiast. He and his wife, Shannon, are parents to four children.

SUMMARY

In a recent West Orlando WordPress Meetup, co-organizer and host Tara Nelson welcomed attendees to an illuminating session led by Rob Watson, founder and co-host of the meetup group. The gathering focused on one of the most significant controversies currently rippling through the WordPress community – the ongoing dispute between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and hosting giant WP Engine, a conflict that has raised fundamental questions about the relationship between commercial entities and open-source software.

The Heart of the Dispute

At the core of this controversy lies a complex web of accusations from Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, who has publicly criticized WP Engine for what he perceives as insufficient contributions to the WordPress project. This criticism becomes particularly poignant given WP Engine’s substantial success in the WordPress hosting space, leading to discussions about the ethical obligations of companies that profit from open-source software.

Understanding the Technical Landscape

The presentation began with a clarification of several fundamental concepts crucial to understanding the dispute. Watson distinguished between WordPress.org, the open-source platform that powers millions of websites worldwide, and WordPress.com, the commercial hosting service. The discussion emphasized the significance of the General Public License (GPL), the legal framework that underpins WordPress’s open-source nature and influences how commercial entities can interact with the software.

The Trademark Tangle

The controversy extends beyond mere contribution issues into the legal area of trademark rights. This aspect of the dispute highlights the delicate balance that must be maintained between protecting intellectual property and fostering an open, collaborative development environment. The discussion revealed how trademark considerations can significantly impact the relationship between commercial entities and open-source projects.

Implications for the WordPress Community

The ripple effects of this dispute extend far beyond the immediate parties involved. Website owners, particularly those using WP Engine’s services, now face uncertainty about the future of their hosting arrangements. The controversy has sparked broader discussions about contingency planning and the importance of understanding the potential risks associated with depending on specific service providers in the WordPress ecosystem.

Looking Forward

As this situation continues to evolve, the WordPress community finds itself at a crucial juncture. Watson emphasized the importance of staying informed and engaged in discussions about WordPress’s future. This controversy serves as a reminder of the importance of active participation in open-source communities and the need for balanced relationships between commercial interests and community benefits.

Conclusion

The West Orlando WordPress Meetup session successfully illuminated the complexities of this ongoing controversy while emphasizing its significance for the entire WordPress ecosystem. As the situation develops, it becomes increasingly clear that the resolution of this dispute could have lasting implications for how open-source software projects and commercial entities interact in the future.

The presentation not only provided valuable insights into the current situation but also reinforced the importance of community engagement in shaping the future of WordPress. As stakeholders continue to navigate these challenging waters, the need for open dialogue and collaborative problem-solving becomes ever more apparent.

TRANSCRIPT

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Welcome everyone to the third Thursday Meetup of the West Orlando WordPress meetup group. I’m Tara Nelson, a co-organizer and host. West Orlando WordPress is an official WordPress Meetup Group affiliated with the WordPress Orlando in WordCampUS meetup groups. In this presentation we are going to cover the controversy around Matt Mullenweg’s controversial statements about and actions against WP Engine over their allegedly low contributions to WordPress source code and alleged misuse of the WordPress trademark. The very public Feud has had a desperate impact on WP Engine-hosted customers and on the open-source software Community. It is also affecting novice WordPress users who are not well-versed in the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org trademark law and the risk of choosing hosting companies that don’t play well with the open source Community. You’ll learn what you can do if you’re a WP Engine customer and if you host elsewhere how you can prepare a contingency strategy if your host is similarly targeted.

Rob Watson is the founder and co-host of the West Orlando Meetup Group our Meetup Group here. Since 1996 he has been creating websites for businesses in organizations small and large. In 2009 he founded webad extras.com as a freelance website design Boutique. In 2015 he began to evolve it into a lean full-service web agency with a specialty in maintenance security and performance optimization of WordPress websites. Rob is also a space exploration Enthusiast. He and his wife Shannon are parents to four children. At this point I’d like to invite everyone to mute their microphones and enjoy the presentation. Rob thank you so much for being our presenter this month the time is now yours.

All right thank you very much so good evening everyone. So today we’re going to address the recent and significant controversy in the WordPress ecosystem. As someone who’s been in web development for nearly three decades and working with WordPress for over 16 years I’ve seen my share of debates about software and open source but this one stands out as a significant one because of the huge impact it has on millions of website owners and billions of people around the world who visit those sites. Today’s Meetup is Matt Mullenweg versus WP Engine.

WordPress currently Powers about 40% of websites globally underscoring its importance in our industry and our Focus today is on the dispute between Matt Mullenweg a co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic and WP Engine a major player in WordPress hosting. Before we dive into this let’s establish some key concepts for anyone who is not familiar with them or who could use a refresher on this topic.

Open source software is a term that we need to know. It’s software whose source code is freely available for anyone to view modify and distribute and it’s developed collaboratively often in a community of volunteers and companies. The philosophy behind open source is to enable Innovation by allowing more than corporations to own and develop and distribute the software to everybody else. It’s kind of the Gutenberg Press of the information age. What helps drive that is the ganu or new general public license or GPL. It’s a specific open source license that ensures a particular open-source software remains free and open and so that any derivatives of that software are also released under that same license.

For example if you wrote a real estate marketing software under the GPL anybody could download a copy of it and make it do whatever they want as long as they release it back to the market with the same license so that others can also do the same and this is what is known as forking. WordPress is released under the GPL Public licensing and this means that anybody including everybody here on this call can use modify and distribute WordPress for free as long as you release it also under the GPL. You could literally take a copy of WordPress make it your own redistribute it sell it as long as whatever you make also goes back out to the community under the same terms.

WordPress.com and WordPress.org are often confused with each other. Word.org is the home of the open source WordPress software released under the GPL and WordPress.com is a commercial hosting service run by the company Automattic which is the company that Matt Mullenweg owns and operates. WordPress.com and its products and services and its plugins and themes and user data and privacy policies and The Branding and the trademarks are not necessarily subject to the GPL license. Automattic is a private type of company and WordPress.org is more of the open-source community.

In contrast, WP Engine represented by the robot on the right is one of the WordPress focused hosting companies among hundreds of other similar types of companies and it benefits from the GPL by being able to use and modify, and distribute WordPress freely as well. They are under the same terms like Automattic and its WordPress.com hosting service, they also can build their business around hosting and supporting WordPress without having to develop the core software from scratch. They can benefit from what the community has created they can also create host modify and Fork their own premium plugins without the GPL but they won’t be able to host those plugins on WordPress.org unless the plugins are GPL so those plugins have to be released out to the community.

Armed with the knowledge of those interactions between open source and Licensing and organizational structures we are now ready to jump into the recent controversy. The problem began months earlier actually but it became more public recently with Mullen wg’s blog post on ma.tt on September 17 2024. He criticized companies because they benefited from open source without adequate contributions. Matt specifically called out WP Engine as a prime example of taking without giving and of profiting immensely through extractive business practices according to him that don’t result in community contributed improvements to the software that they benefit from.

To put this into a non-technical framework imagine that you have a society where Farmers Open Source their seeds and they give them away for free restaurants take the seeds grow vegetables and fruit and use them in the dishes they sell to customers but instead of improving and remitting a portion of those seeds from the Harvest back to the farming Community to help it also improve they simply sell all the food they grow to get a higher return on Capital that’s the root of the criticism that Mullen WG has put into the public conversation.

This was followed by Mullen wg’s presentation at WordCampUS in 2024 where he quoted from his blog post and elaborated on those concerns and the directness of his approach caught a lot of us in the community off guard and divided hardcore WordPress professionals about whether this was the right move and I will share that the link to the YouTube to the live thing that he did so you’ll see at the end but I’m not really here to take sides I just want to help you understand the core issues.

Let’s kind of break those down. First there’s the matter of contributions to the WordPress Core Mullen wag is alleging that WP Engine’s contributions are too low compared to their Market position they are one of the biggest hosts out there they have a lot of name recognition and a lot of people turn to them because they recognize who they are and what they do because of the WordPress trademark. Leading into that we have trademark concerns. The use of the WordPress name comes with certain responsibilities and obligations and there are questions currently about WP Engine’s adherence to those guidelines and then last of all the involvement of private Equity WP Engine is owned by a company called Silverlake. Silver Lake has raised concerns about the balance between profit motives and open source principles with their actions in the marketplace according to Matt.

The situation kind of escalated quickly. WP Engine faced a temporary ban from WordPress.org resources and a significant move in our ecosystem. That’s nothing small both parties issued public statements and the community’s response was mixed and well passionate. WP Engine filed a lawsuit against Automattic and Automattic responded in kind with its own lawsuit. People left each company to work for the other some WP Engine employees leaked the contribution numbers and other problems as they saw them to Auttomatic and then took their offers to be employed at Automattic on the other side some Automattic employees were outraged at the way the situation was publicly handled and threatened to leave their valuable roles an Automattic offered alignment offer buyout packages to its employees 159 people took the offer but 91% of the remaining employees stayed and then today they offered a second buyout allowing them to resign in exchange for nine months of pay if they didn’t agree with M’s actions.

There’s still a lot of turmoil going on in both Automattic and WP Engine. Also this just happened a couple of days ago the gravity PDF plugin has announced that its free plugin will no longer be hosted on the WordPress.org plugin repository but will be directly distributed to users via Gravity pdf.com. WordPress.org also forked the free GPL Advanced custom Fields plugin very popular plugin that WP Engine was investing in and maintaining along with a premium version that was non-GPL. They have their Advanced custom Fields Pro and then the free version. The free version was hosted on WordPress.org and then the pro version was sold through the WP Engine ecosystem.

Then Automattic renamed it secure custom fields in the WordPress plugin repository but they didn’t reset the download count or the reviews which gives kind of a false impression about what that plugin is and how it developed. They were claiming to have fixed a long-standing security issue that had existed in advanced custom Fields some of that was debatable and then this was a big deal because it was always theorized that Automattic could do this to any plugin that they could effectively take credit for the work of other people but this was the first time it seems to have happened and so publicly.

Other plugin developers are now pretty fearful of drawing Matt’s and having their own plugins hijacked as well as evidenced by gravity PDF also bailing from WordPress.org and then there’s what quickly happened to secure custom Fields. While it’s called now secure custom Fields it very soon began to have vulnerabilities of its own and users who were not informed about the swap suddenly found themselves wondering what happened to their Advanced custom Fields without knowing what this new secure custom Fields plugin was all about. They’ve had to then swap back into their Advanced custom Fields by downloading a copy of it from WP Engine and basically installing it or sideloading it over the top of secure custom fields to start over again. Not a lot of data has been lost in this but it is a huge pain especially if you have 200 plus websites that you maintain.

The stakeholder impact has been not insignificant. It affects various groups differently. WP Engine customers already face uncertainty with getting updates since WordPress.org servers block WP Engine servers and a workaround was put in place but it’s not ideal and it is still subject to risks should WordPress.org take further punitive action against WP Engine. The broader WordPress Community is engaged in debates about open source ethics and responsibilities and people are calling out hypocrisy on both sides of the conflict there are discussions about forking WordPress as a whole and starting a new ecosystem independent of WordPress.org and Automattic and other hosting companies novice users might find themselves confused, especially given the existing complexity of understanding WordPress.org versus WordPress.com and the potential for confusing mix of fragmented software and service offerings.

The legal and ethical considerations here are also quite complex. For example Matt Mullenweg has actually recently asserted personal rights over the WordPress.org ecosystem and trademark. He further claims that WP Engine has created a hacked up bastardize simulacra his words of the open source code and thus is infringing on Automattics WordPress trademark rights but trademark law in open source context isn’t always that straightforward. Moreover this situation has sparked important discussions about the ethics of commercializing Open Source projects chiefly if one person is responsible for the direction and significance of any piece of Open Source software it is that software unconditionally open source or do users and companies that benefit from or need to prepare to act according to the expectations of the software’s initial Creator that’s still up in the air and is it ethical for companies to take more than they give can their participation in the open source Marketplace yielding a net benefit to the community by boosting the software’s popularity and not just hours of software development also be counted as a contribution many people would say yes.

Looking at the both sides of this it’s crucial that we kind of take both of those sides into play. On the one hand there are legitimate concerns about the commercialization of Open Source projects and we’ve seen examples like MySQL and or MySQL as some people pronounce it open Office elastic search and others where they were the increased commercial involvement led to changes in licensing or Community Dynamics but these cases highlight potential risks for WordPress such as reduced openness community alienation or fragmentation of the ecosystem.

On the other hand we have to recognize the importance of commercial involvement in open-source projects company like WP Engine play a vital role in WordPress’s successes and widespread adoption they provide professional-grade hosting invest in infrastructure and security and often serve as a bridge between WordPress and large Enterprises. Their marketing efforts expand WordPress’s reach and many core contributors are employed by these companies but there is no also no shortage of WordPress hosting companies who are more than willing to grab WP Engine’s market share by playing by M Mullen wag’s rules WP Engine could have avoided these issues by contributing more to the WordPress.org open source team’s efforts to improve the software and Matt could have looked further into the future at the likely impact his statements and actions would have and instead shaped his messaging to avoid alienating developers designers and site owners.

The challenge lies in Striking a balance we need to maintain the open source spirit and encourage contributions while also fostering a business-friendly environment that allows companies to sustainably offer services and to compete and innovate. What’s next well you still have choices for those using WP Engine it’s wise to review your options if your Automattic updates or one-click updates are blocked you can still download plugins and updates from open WordPress plugin repository they still work you just have to go through the extra step of downloading them and then you have to upload them to your site you can also consider moving your site to another of hundreds of WordPress hosting companies so there’s no shortage of options on that front.

For all WordPress users this serves as a reminder of the importance of having contingency plans in our everchanging Tech landscape. Be sure to have daily backups of your website hourly if you can and be ready to jump to another hosting company if your current hosting company is targeted by lawsuits or legal actions from WordPress.org and it also can’t hurt to have an audit plugin such as simple history so that you can see the changes that happen on your website due to all of these actions this happened to me the other day where the WooCommerce plugin itself the free one that is published for free just disappeared off of a website and when I looked into those logs I found that WP Engine had just oopsies automatically removed them so I had to go back and put it back in so that’s a good reason to have backups and also a history plugin.

Is this game over far from it. The playing field will continue to evolve as developers and hosting companies shift their business strategies to adapt to changes in what is still the most popular CMS in the world this dispute between major players in the WordPress ecosystem raises important questions about contribution trademark usage and the role of commercial entities in open source projects as members of this community we have all have a stake in the outcome and the future direction of WordPress.

The goal should be to create a win-win situation where companies can Thrive while supporting and enhancing the WordPress project this could involve clearer guidelines for commercial involvement recognition of various forms of contribution Beyond code an ongoing dialogue between Community leaders and Commercial entities. I encourage everyone to stay informed consider how you can contribute to the WordPress project and remember that our Collective efforts Drive the success of Open Source software the future of WordPress depends on our ability to navigate these complex issues collaboratively.

I thank you for your attention to this presentation and I hope that it has been useful to you.

All right that was awesome Rob thank you so much for that overview I definitely filled in some gaps in my knowledge with that whole controversy.

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