Matt Mullenweg vs. WP Engine

There’s been quite a bit of drama between WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine in the last month.

I wouldn’t normally weigh in on weird behavior or squabbles between grown people, but this one is blowing up and affecting the WordPress community as a whole.

What’s Happening

The Speech

During WordCamp US on the 20th of September, Matt Mullenweg, a co-founder of WordPress, gave his keynote speech and criticized WP Engine for not contributing to the WordPress source and community and making billions of dollars off the back of open source.

He argued that Automattic (which is for-profit and he’s a major shareholder and CEO) gives back thousands of hours of code a month, while WP Engine removes basic functionality such as page revisions and hardly contributes. He called for a boycott of WP Engine.

Doubling Down

After a lot of hubbub online, Matt doubled down and expanded on his thoughts about WP Engine on the 21st of September saying:

What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for it.

Matt Mullenweg – WordPress.org

The article published above shows in WordPress dashboards everywhere including WP Engine customer dashboards which meant that WP Engine had to respond especially since the article also calls WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress”.

Cease & Desist

On the 23rd of September, WP Engine sent Automattic Inc. a cease and desist letter accusing Matt Mullenweg of trying to extort “tens of millions of dollars” from WP Engine on an ongoing basis claiming it was so WP Engine could use and “license” the trademark WordPress.

They shared screenshots of messages alleged to be from Matt, making threats that if they didn’t pay up, he would go “nuclear” on WP Engine and when they refused, that’s what he did. The letter in its entirety can be found here.

WP Engine Banned From WordPress.org

On the 25th of September WordPress.org banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources and wrote a pretty heated post about it on wordpress.org.

WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it, with them getting all of the profits and providing all of the services.

Matt Mullenweg – WordPress.org

Automattic Sends a Cease and Desist

On the 26th of September, Automattic Inc sent a cease and desist to WP Engine focusing on trademark violations including exhibits with screenshots of WP Engine where they used the trademark WordPress on their site and marketing. The full post, links to the letter, and screenshots are here.

WP Engine Repreive until October 1st

On the 27th of September, WP Engine was again allowed to access WordPress.org resources after a lot of backlash from customers who couldn’t update their sites. This reprieve was dated until the 1st of October.

October 2nd, 2024 – WP Engine Files A Lawsuit

WP Engine has filed a complaint against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. In their announcement post, they say:

Matt Mullenweg and Automattic’s self-proclaimed scorched earth campaign against WP Engine has harmed not just our company, but the entire WordPress ecosystem. The symbiotic relationship between WordPress, its community and the businesses that invest millions to support WordPress users, and advance the ecosystem, is based on trust in the promises of openness and freedom.

The complaint includes a lot of screenshots of various iterations of the WP Engine website and how the trademark WordPress has been used on those sites. You can read the full complaint here.

October 3rd, 2024 – Automattic Response

The response was also shared by WordPress Foundation social media. One commenter rightly asked why the WordPress Foundation is spamming about a lawsuit against a for-profit company Automattic.

Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which are gross mischaracterizations of reality—and reserve all of our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engine.

Read the full response here.

October 12th, 2024 – ACF Plugin Stolen

ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) is a hugely popular plugin that has a free and pro version. ACF free was hosted and updated from WordPress.org like most plugins. It was bought by WP Engine two years ago and has been updated frequently.

On October the 12th WordPress.org took control over the ACF plugin and removed all branding and Pro version information and renamed it to Secure Custom Fields.

Anyone running the free version who updated, got the new fork automatically. This action is NOT in the spirit of open source and forcing users to install plugins they didn’t ask for is dangerous and breaches the trust the community has in the org.

WP-Ensure customers are all OK as all customer sites been on ACF Pro for the last 5 years, but as a test, I updated ACF free on my personal blog and checked the code. Most of the changes are purely cosmetic, one small ‘security’ update but nothing major.

We were saddened and appalled by Matt Mullenweg’s actions this morning appropriating the Advanced Custom Fields plugin that our ACF team has been actively developing for the WordPress community since 2011.

Advancedcustomfields.com

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Issues on the Table

While people are griping back and forth, it’s hard to see the real issues clearly. Here are some of the important things that have come up.

Contributing

If you make money from open source projects, especially billions from it. You have an obligation to give back to the community and contribute as much as you can. WP Engine sponsors a lot of events because they have a lot of money, but they don’t contribute much to the source and you could argue that being visible and present by being a sponsor of WordCamps, etc, is a good way of advertising yourself, so it’s not altruistic.

The Trademark

WordPress is a trademark owned by the WordPress Foundation. “WP” is not and has always been free to use for everyone. Matt’s gripe about his mother being confused and thinking WP Engine is an official part of WordPress is too bad. I don’t think they were intentionally deceitful, WP just made sense for them (same as for my company).

My company name (and a lot of others) also includes WP because that’s how it started (although now it’s expanded to other CMS too). I also won’t get a trademark in the U.S.A. because I didn’t realize how close my name was to WP Engine. So trademarks are tricky and there are only so many letters in the alphabet. There are plenty of companies that use WP in their name or plugin names because it’s the clearest way to tell people what it’s for.

Revisions

I agree that WP Engine’s choice to remove revisions isn’t good. Any forms of backup are a good thing and it’s not enough to only have database backups.

Although if we want to talk about limiting features being against open source principles, WordPress.com is the king of limiting everything. You have to pay extra for almost anything you want to do in your installation. They have built their own management panel on top of actual WordPress and you can only install plugins on the higher tiers.

Sometimes a page will go wonky and you’ll have to track it back quite far (for example if you save a page that had an embed on it, but the user doesn’t have rights to embed that content, then it’ll be removed and it’s a pain to get back). Revisions are the best way to solve those problems and give the users themselves the power to fix their own pages and content.

The Real Issue

I think all those things have been in place for a long time and it’s weird timing that they are suddenly an issue.

I’m not a fan of WP Engine but if the screenshots they have published in their letter are genuine, Matt has lost the plot, because that’s blackmail. It turned my stomach seeing the final picture he allegedly sent just before going on stage and saying it wasn’t too late for WP Engine to pay up so he didn’t have to start his “scorched earth nuclear approach to WPE”.

Time will tell how it all unfolds, but for now, it’s probably best to leave it to the lawyers and hope the fallout to the WordPress community won’t be too severe.