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As a career WordPress developer, I fully support WordPress’s stance on this issue. It’s unreasonable for a company to siphon resources from a non-profit to fuel their own hosting business.
For smaller companies, lacking the ability to manage their own updates or CI/CD processes is understandable. But WPEngine is a large organization—they have the resources and capacity to handle these issues in-house. They could have easily avoided this situation without turning it into a turf war.
Edit: I see the WPEngine fans have arrived. Feel free to downvote, but that doesn’t make you right!
You also don’t get to randomly change license terms because you’re having a childish meltdown because someone earns money with an open source product while according to the terms of the license of the said product.
You also don’t steal code from a user of your platform and maliciously redirect to your fork.
This is not about WPE vs Matt’s lack of brain cells. This is also not about hardlining on what’s open source or not. But Matt needs to lose this fight, not only because of his decisions, but because if he wins, he not only successfully burned down WordPress, but the open source ecosystem as a whole.
If you publish something with a license that allows people to earn money without paying a share to you, don’t be butthurt if people won’t do that. And if you don’t want that - change the license properly and carry the consequences.
What on Earth are you on about? This has nothing to do with licensing. The issue is a business using another organization’s resources without paying for it, all while earning a profit for themselves.
This isn’t about open source, personal attacks, or “brain cells.” It’s about fairness and the responsible use of resources. WPEngine is a profitable company that has the means to manage its own infrastructure instead of relying on WordPress.org’s updates system. If you’re going to run a business that depends on open-source software, there’s an expectation of contributing back or, at the very least, not exploiting the resources of a non-profit.
So let’s focus on the actual problem: a large company exploiting a shared ecosystem to run a commercial service.
From what I gathered, it is absolutely a question of licensing.
Wordpress is gpl so anybody can host it and provide hosting for others. WPEngine does make money like that and that seemed to rub matt the wrong way.
So he requested more involvement from wpe, claiming they do none (factually false). Then they started trying to extort wpe using trademark as an excuse (even changing the trademark page to reflect their new stance), while also smearing them on the official channels of the project. I’m also skipping the childish behavior of blocking anybody that could be related to wpe from interacting on the official wp.org site, then using this self inflicted wound to say one of WPE plugin is insecure (because they couldn’t publish the update) and doing an hostile takeover of it.WPE is totally within their rights to use the wp software without giving a cent back to Matt. If WP wanted payment for the infrastructure they provide on the .org site, they can change the rules to require commercial entities to pay for it (which they totally could do, but that would hurt the other players in the ecosystem). If they had a (real) trademark issue it would have been resolved under closed doors by lawyers.
there’s an expectation of contributing back or, at the very least, not exploiting the resources of a non-profit.
No, there are no expectations of contributing. It would be worded in the license otherwise (the only expectation of giving back in the gpl is that you publish the changes you did to your users). And WordPress.org is not the non profit but is run by the for-profit company that Matt is the CEO of.
So let’s focus on the actual problem: a large company exploiting a shared ecosystem to run a commercial service.
Like automatic is doing with wordpress? Don’t they profit from other devs/companies publishing plugins for them to use on their platform? (Actually not opposed to that, that’s the game of open source, but it’s a bit hypocritical to only cry when it doesn’t serve them).
Edit: From your original comment:
They could have easily avoided this situation without turning it into a turf war.
Yes, then why did Matt turn this into a turf war? He totally expected the community to take his side and turned it into a shit slinging show for all of us to enjoy.
You do realize, mullenberg is also owner of automattic? A large WordPress hosting provider just like wpengine?
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/20/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/
He has some points, mullenberg, but the fact that he’s one of three really only active heads of WordPress.org and ceo of automattic, which has wpengine as its direct competitor, just tastes foul.
This has nothing to do with licensing. […] If you’re going to run a business that depends on open-source software, there’s an expectation of contributing back or, at the very least, not exploiting the resources of a non-profit.
Sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. It’s absolutely and only a licensing issue, and as a user of open source software you are obligated to do what the license states. WordPress is licensed under GPL, which explicitly allows software being run for any purposes, explicitly including commercial purposes. The giving back part would come into play if WPE would use WordPress as part of their own software - which they don’t.
WPE did what the license, and therefore Matt and Automattic allowed them to. Matt decided to try and literally extort money from them, before going on his fully fledged meltdown.
Whether WPEs business model is morally questionable is irrelevant. They did play by the rules. Matt did not.
And the situation is not new, as far as I remember redis was the last big player in that situation. But they also did play by the rules, they changed their license starting from a given version, made big hosters that made money by redis-as-a-service pay for using redis, and took the L like grown ups by losing their FOSS community and having valkey as a hard fork and direct competitor now. No drama, no meltdowns, no shit storms and no lawyers involved.
That’s how I see it exactly. Matt, as one of few people in the world with the voice and reach to do so, is trying to protect and help support the WordPress ecosystem.
Let’s not forget to follow the money, obviously WPE and Silver lake are going to do everything in their power to make him, and by association, anything he’s a part of, look like the bad guy.
Didn’t wordpress sell their stake in wp engine to silver lake?
Seems weird to get upset about it now
No need for WPE to do anything for him to look like the bad guy imho
Reasonable. I do disagree with the ACF redirect, but not cloning it. That was a dumb move. Also, could have been an open letter to the community or something, not the quick (seemingly) retaliatory moves
The ACF takeover is the cherry on top for me. Fork it all you want, but to force users to upgrade to your version looks bad on them. That’s literally a supply chain attack and they have shown to be willing to do whatever they want to their users.
While WP Engine is in the wrong ethically, it doesn’t make what Matt is doing right.
The issue is that Matt is showing that he can impose any rules he wants on anyone who he doesn’t agree with. It’s an authoritarian behavior that concerns everyone, not just WP Engine.
More importantly, it is petty and childish behavior as seen in his posts. How can anyone trust a man-child like that with an important piece of infrastructure.
He did all of this during the last day of a conference.
So rather than inspiring the WordPress community to push forward and do good things, he spent an hour just antagonizing and shaming companies that literally sponsored the conference.
This is like when Elon Musk cursed out advertisers on Twitter.
Sponsoring a conference is just buying an ad, not actually supporting anything
Can someone explain what this means? Isnt the whole wordpress stack open source? What relevance does this guy have?
Have the same question. It seems to be open source but if they wanted to they could make it closed source for sure…
They cannot make WordPress closed source because it’s released under the GPL, which means that any closed implementation cannot use this code.
With that said, the linked article is about access to wordpress.org, which is different from the source code of the project. I’m not entirely sure what this is about.
They can, but only if all contributors agree or their work is removed entirely, and only future releases (code released prior to that is still GPL).
This is basically about the infrastructure for plugin update checks and similar centralized services.
It’s like Nestle taking water and selling it for profit. Except, this watering hole was built and maintained by everyone. Now, we all have to do more work to build and maintain, so Nestle can take more water. Matt, the guy who kinda invited everyone to the watering hole, is like “they gotta help maintain this watering hole, obviously!”
I don’t know what the governance setup is like, but in theory the owners of the project can change the license to whatever they like at any time.
The catch is that this doesn’t affect old versions, which remain available under the old license. So they could make WP closed-source or make the license more restrictive, but WP-engine or any portion of the community could make a fork and maintain the open source version from there. It wouldn’t have the features added by the mainline WP project since the license change (and they’d likely have to change the branding), but that’s about all that would be lost.
Similar things have happened in the past: see OpenOffice becoming LibreOffice for example.
Nope. This is GPL. To change the license they would need entirely new code.
Nah wordpress would instantly die if it went closed source. So many businesses only function the way they do because wordpress is easily customizable.
It would just get forked by some big webhosting company.
Do you know about how Android is open source, but Google has moved a bunch of important functionality to Google Services which makes Android less desirable without them?
From my understanding it’s not nearly as bad as that with WordPress, but similar in that some functionality relies on non-open source stuff that this guy Matt and his company automatic control.
He’s mad that competitor company WP Engine doesn’t contribute back to the project, so he’s making a lot of noise and making moves to limit their access.
Mainly, .org can block anyone from updating their software(if they are set as the update provider on your Wordpress distribution) and accessing their addons repo( which is very essential to how some websites work)
Imo, the problem is that wpengine is a direct competitor to mullenberg’s own commercial exploitation of the open source stack WordPress. He also owns automattic, which offers WordPress hosting, just like wpengine. If you ask me, the owner of the open source stack shouldn’t also be able to dictate which other companies make money of it, when he does this himself with automattic, aka WordPress.com.
Then again I’m only involved through my profession. Privately I enjoy ghost.org.
Thanks for the downvote matt
There’s a strong current of people who believe the WP fight with WPEngine is bad on this guy’s behalf. He’s megalomaniacal, he’s being a spoiled rich guy, stuff like that.
Personally I don’t see it, but I may not know enough about it. But I see this as a part of that conversation. Someone’s arguing that fighting with a private corporate business whose model depends on exploiting the software they have no intention of supporting is outrageous and he’s Gone Too Far.
Matt has muddled the waters on open-source.
He owns a for-profit company, and has a lot of power on the non-profit open-source version. And he’s making decisions that affect both.
Open-source contributors who only want to help the nonprofit are now being forced to opting in/agreeing to be part of the lawsuit. Everything in the WP slack where volunteers participate is now part of legal evidence.
All of this only benefits Matt.
1/10th of his company resigned. Volunteers are pulled in and having to decide if contributing to open-source is worth all of this.
The WordPress codebase is open source, with Automatic being a major contributor. Automatic also offers WordPress hosting via their .org domain. WP Engine (WPE) is a separate company offering its own WordPress hosting and products like ACF, which enhance the WordPress ecosystem.
The issue between Automatic and WPE is that WPE relies on Automatic’s update servers to support their for-profit service. Given WPE’s scale, it’s questionable why they continue to do this, as many smaller companies set up their own servers for updates.
I work with WordPress and CI/CD systems, and even one man operations maintain independent build systems to avoid vendor dependencies. When updating, they use copies of original code hosted on private GitHub accounts and their servers rather than relying on external resources.
This matter should have been resolved in court. While Automatic’s actions have caused some backlash, they’re understandable as protective measures. WPE’s reliance on free resources without their own package/update servers is, frankly, inexcusable at their scale—it’s essential for customer support and product quality.
In short, this is about a competitor misusing free resources under “reasonable use” terms, facing consequences, and shifting blame rather than helping their disrupted users.
I currently have WP running on a VPS. It utilizes neither wordpress.org (nor wordpress.com) nor wpengine infrastructure. I’m not getting how this means they can do anything about that.
Edited to add - I did dig up this article which has helped me to understand the situation a bit better FWIW: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262232/matt-mullenweg-wordpress-org-wp-engine
He can’t. Mullenweg is just having a really bad, prolonged meltdown over a hosting company making (morally questionable, but legally clear) money and threatening to burn it all down.
It’s kinda funny because although I enjoy selfhosting, I wasn’t going to self-host wordpress until I saw how ridiculous the prices are through Wordpress.com for any actual functionality. I’ve got a decent VPS and have paid for a couple of key (to me) “premium” 3rd-party plugins and it’s still costing far less than it would have hosting it all through Wordpress.com. Their pricing seems frankly astronomical to me (or did when I was making my decision.)
I did dig up this article which has helped me to understand the situation a bit better FWIW: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262232/matt-mullenweg-wordpress-org-wp-engine
What’s your use case for WordPress? Anything you couldn’t just make in a short amount of time?
Although I am a geeky techy, I’m not a web developer, so I’m sure there are other ways to do what I do that would be easier for someone who was. I just have a basic blog and newsletter with signups, and an audience far, far smaller than the number of characters in this comment. :D (That’s OK though, I’m on an intentional slow growth curve.)
I don’t even go out of my way to drive people to it because in some ways I’m still deciding what I want to do with the space. The “premium” plugins I pay for are to help handle spambots and signups/newsletter stuff. (and there are free plugins to help with those if I really needed to stay free) Wordpress.com sends me “30% off ACT NOW” emails every so often for their hosted packages and it doesn’t even come close to competing. They want you to pony up $$ to get access to any worthwhile plugins at all from what I can tell, and I’m too much of a dyed in the wool Linuxy “you aren’t going to tell me what I can and can’t do” kind of guy to have any tolerance for that.
Edit: Just looked again now - $300/year to reach a tier that allows use of plugins. Nah.
Idk, with ai I made a static html site in about an hour today that looks somewhat decent. Just to play around a bit with Cursor / claude.ai. Hosted on cloudflare pages (free). pipeline from GitHub.
I’m not a developer either, but was fun. I can add more to it later.
Figured I don’t really want or need comments anyway So no need for a database or spambot detection :p
Totally fair, we all have our different usecases…
As far as I have been able to tell, it doesn’t. If you have your own infra it doesn’t affect you at all.
Even self hosting, thenplug ins directory and updates etc seem to be where they have stopped wp engine access. It is still open for other websites but could be cut off if they chose.
From what ive read, manual upload of a plugin still works, so its just removing convenience and auto update. I doubt its long before a fork or plug in offers identicsl functionality.
This is also about WP Engine access to upload their plugins and support their users on the centralized forums,…
Yes, I expect there eventually will be more than one forum and/or plugin repository, depending on where you use WordPress. Its not really WordPress providing the support, more the community, but they host it.
I think this whole spat is about wordpress.com not .org
Mullenweg has been blocking WP Engine hosting’s access to .org resources, and even stripping them of access to plugins they distribute there. Not the biggest fan of WP Engine from what I saw in their Advanced Custom Fields plugin buyout (they messed with the existing licensing and focused on monetizing the crap out of it), but things aren’t alright in the WP universe.
I specified org because that’s what’s in OP, but honestly my comment is the same either way. :D
Don’t wp updates and plugins only come from one of the 2? Anyway I’m pretty sure they’re just mad that wpengine uses bandwidth from the wp update infrastructure without paying instead of hosting their own update infrastructure, which basically means that selfhosters / individuals are not the target. That said it still sounds like the dude is being hella petty about it.
I agree, and after posting that I did dig up this article which helped me a little to understand FWIW: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262232/matt-mullenweg-wordpress-org-wp-engine
Where do you get your updates from? Theoretically they could change the license for newer versions or switched to a paid model or any number of things. Your only choice would be a fork or nothing, the latter which would suck if there’s a security hole. As others have mentioned look what happen with OpenOffice
What happened with OpenOffice? iirc Oracle bought them then made it open source and abandoned it, so it became LibreOffice, still free and awesome.
Your only choice would be a fork or nothing,
I’ve been down this road before, that doesn’t really scare me. Something this big, there will be a good fork if that happens.
Happily using LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice for like a decade now, and there’s also a reason I’ve got Jellyfin instead of Emby running on the server in the basement.
Still, good point, I was trying to figure out how his current, immediate meltdown was related to self-hosting generically, and it sounds like it’s not.
For background LWN has some articles on this https://lwn.net/Articles/993895/ and the other one linked as the first link in that one.
As someone who has no knowledge of the ecosystem: Why would people who self-host wordpress care about access to wordpress.org? Isn’t the point of self-hostung to use your own infrastructure?
The mechanisms built into Wordpress for auto-updates and plugin updates use that infrastructure.
