Interesting opinion piece by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols who I’ve been reading for decades regarding open source. Consequently, this is a WordPress blog run as a Docker container module with a MariaDB module to support it along with NginxProxyManager module to support easy certificate management and routing. What’s of interest is the valuations of the companies involved and the OCGFC investment funds behind them. And going a bit deeper, Mullenweg is incredibly connected to the OCGFC and has a supposed net worth of $400 million, and angling to become a billionaire member of the OCGFC it would appear. I would imagine he has some marching orders for this maneuver, and keeping the $7.5 billion valuation of his company well above that of his competitor that was maybe gaining too much traction? Also, sometimes these guys have to publicly humiliate themselves to prove loyalty in order to raise their station.
Mullenweg is a principal at angel investment firm Audrey Capital, which he co-founded in 2008 alongside Naveen Selvadurai and Audrey Kim.[46]
As of 2024, the company lists investments in companies such as CoinDesk, MakerBot, Sonos, SpaceX, Ring, as well as software companies including Calm, Chartbeat, DailyBurn, Memrise, Genius, Nord Security and Telegram. It has also funded startups that provide services to web developers including Creative Market, GitLab, NPM, SendGrid, Stripe and Typekit.[46] From 2017 to 2019, Mullenweg also served as a board member for GitLab.[47]
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/20/opinion_column_wordpress/
Forks at dawn…. but it’s not great sign for open source
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
(Opinion) I am so sick of this. I’ve been a happy WordPress user since it rolled out the door in 2003, and I kissed Vignette (since acquired by OpenText) goodbye. WordPress was just so much easier to use than the alternatives; it was open source; and it was free. It was such a win!
It is and remains such a no-brainer that today, WordPress powers nearly half of the internet’s websites. But, then, just this year, things went bad. Really, really bad.
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who founded and is the CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress, decided that WordPress hosting power WP Engine was a “cancer to WordPress.”
Excuse me?
There are oodles of web hosting companies that offer WordPress. There is also a small horde of developers and their businesses that make their living from offering pre-designed templates that control a site’s appearance and plugins, add-ons that extend WordPress sites’ functionality without needing to be a PHP programming pro. WordPress, like Linux, MySQL, and Apache, has created a whole ecosystem of open source products.
WP Engine is just one of many companies that has profited from WordPress. It’s arguably the most successful third-party WordPress company, with an estimated value of somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion. Automattic, which is worth north of $7.5 billion, though, is the undisputed heavyweight champ of WordPress.
So, what has WP Engine done that’s upset Mullenweg? Honestly, I don’t know.
Oh, I know what he says. If you’ve been paying attention to WordPress news, you know it too. But, to refresh your memory, it all began in September 2024 when Mullenweg publicly criticized WP Engine in his WordCamp keynote address, accusing the company of exploiting the WordPress name and ecosystem.
Really? In my mind, WordPress is the software WP Engine uses, and everyone knows WP Express is not WordPress. It’s like someone telling me that Red Hat Linux is Linux. No, no, it’s not. It’s a Linux distro. WP Engine is one of the hundreds of web hosting companies that offer WordPress hosting. I know some people make that kind of dumb mistake, but it’s still just a dumb mistake. WP Engine is not – sorry, Mullenweg – trying to pull the wool over customers’ eyes.
Oh, and Mullenweg also accused one of WP Engines’ backers, Silver Lake, a private equity firm, of hollowing out the WordPress open source community because they’re hell-bent on making money. Oh, and Automattic investors, Avant Global and BlackRock, aren’t there for the money? Please!
The Automattic CEO also argues that WP Engine’s decision to disable WordPress revisions by default reflects how WP Engine is no friend to its customers. “They are strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem, giving our users a crappier experience so they can make more money.” Really? You can always get it enabled, or if it bugs you that much, you can move to another WordPress hosting company that does have it on by default.
It’s not a big deal. Get over it already.
But, of course, it did become a big deal. The situation took a dramatic turn on September 25 when Mullenweg blocked WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org resources, effectively crippling functionality for millions of websites hosted by WP Engine. That went over well.
As the dispute went on, it inevitably went to the lawyers. We’re now seeing dueling lawsuits and cease-and-desist orders. This is yet another wake-up call for anyone who got into tech thinking they’d never ever needed to worry about the law.
The conflict took another contentious turn when Mullenweg announced that WordPress would be “forking” WP Engine’s popular Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin, renaming it Secure Custom Fields. This move was unprecedented in WordPress’s 21-year history, with no plugin ever being forcibly taken from its creator without consent.
Mullenweg justified the action by citing security concerns and the need to remove commercial upsells. I’m not sure anyone except he and his friends and family buy that.
The dispute has had far-reaching consequences within the WordPress ecosystem. At Automattic, 159 employees (8.4 percent of the workforce) accepted Mullenweg’s offer to leave with a severance package, expressing their disagreement with his handling of the situation.
The conflict is now spilling into community events, with WP Engine’s sponsorship of WordCamp Sydney revoked. Additionally, WordPress.org implemented a controversial login checkbox requiring users to confirm they were not affiliated with WP Engine, thus further isolating the hosting company from the community.
So far, Automattic is losing the early legal rounds. I can’t say this surprises me. Its arguments are, in this columnist’s opinion, weak. WP Engine secured a preliminary injunction against Automattic in December 2024. This is the biggest legal development to date. A California District Court judge ordered Automattic to cease blocking WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org resources and stop interfering with its plugins.
Of course, it’s not over yet — far from it. I see this battle going on well into 2025 and possibly for years after that. Heck, the 20-plus-year-old SCO/IBM Linux lawsuit is still staggering on like a zombie. No, really, it is, and here’s the court order to prove it.
Like that infamous lawsuit, the WordPress vs WP Engine conflict has raised serious questions about the nature of open source software and the power dynamics within such ecosystems. It has exposed the tension between the ideals of open source collaboration and the realities of commercial interests built upon these foundations. It has also highlighted the potential vulnerabilities of relying on centralized resources like WordPress.org, which can become chokepoints.
Mullenweg is demanding WP Engine give 8 percent of its gross revenue in exchange for using the WordPress trademark. What would then keep Automattic from demanding the same of anyone offering WordPress services? Not a darn thing.
Goodness knows we’ve seen many open source businesses turn their back on open source licenses to try to make more money in recent years. Mullenweg isn’t doing that, but Automattic is trying to use its trademarks in a similar manner.
In a leaked internal Automattic legal memo, the company’s then-chief legal officer, Paul Sieminski, argues that it is the only company allowed to use WordPress in its name and branding. For those of a legal bent, yes, the WordPress trademark actually belongs to the non-profit WordPress Foundation. Still, Sieminski argues that since Automattic holds WordPress’s exclusive commercial license, the company can threaten companies that use the WordPress trademark with cease and desist or Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDNDRP) letters if they don’t pay up. And, if that doesn’t work, Automattic would sic “nice and not nice lawyers and trademark enforcers” on the offending companies.
Why is Mullenweg really doing this? I don’t buy his excuses. Perhaps, when push comes to shove, it’s all about the money. Mullenweg is a millionaire, but it appears he’s not a billionaire. Could it be that petty? Could it be that stupid?
Of course, this is open source. If Mullenweg keeps on his course, people could always fork the program. I know people like me who’ve used WordPress for decades and are now wondering if they should look elsewhere. Indeed, WordPress has already been forked before. Oddly, Mullenweg wrote a blog proclaiming “Forking is Beautiful” in October, detailing previous and current WordPress forks. Of course, he also claims that WP Engine is a WordPress fork that he wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.”
He may have cause to regret that statement before the WordPress vs. WP Engine dispute is over. WordPress wouldn’t be the first, or last, open-source program whose leadership drove it into the rocks while a fork sailed on to a safe harbor.