18 October, 2024
The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained
The world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. The core issue is the fight between WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress.
WordPress technology is open source and free, and it powers a huge chunk of the internet — around 40% of websites. Websites can host their own WordPress instance or use a solution provider like Automattic or WP Engine for a plug-and-play solution.
In mid-September, Mullenweg wrote a blog post calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” He criticized the host for disabling the ability for users to see and track the revision history for every post. Mullenweg believes this feature is at the “core of the user promise of protecting your data” and said that WP Engine turns it off by default to save money.
He also called out WP Engine investor Silver Lake and said they don’t contribute sufficiently to the open source project and that WP Engine’s use of the “WP” brand has confused customers into believing it is part of WordPress.
The legal battle
In reply, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic to withdraw their comments. It also said that its use of the WordPress trademark was covered under fair use.
The company claimed that Mullenweg had said he would take a “scorched earth nuclear approach” against WP Engine unless it agreed to pay “a significant percentage of its revenues for a license to the WordPress trademark.”
In response, Automattic sent its own cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine, saying that they had breached WordPress and WooCommerce trademark usage rules.
The WordPress Foundation also changed its Trademark Policy page and called out WP Engine, alleging the hosting service has confused users.
“The abbreviation ‘WP’ is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is ‘WordPress Engine’ and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress,” the updated page reads.
WP Engine ban, community impact, and trademark battle
Mullenweg then banned WP Engine from accessing the resources of WordPress.org. While elements like plug-ins and themes are under open source license, providers like WP Engine have to run a service to fetch them, which is not covered under the open source license.
This broke a lot of websites and prevented them from updating plug-ins and themes. It also left some of them open to security attacks. The community was not pleased with this approach of leaving small websites helpless.
In response to the incident, WP Engine said in a post that Mullenweg had misused his control of WordPress to interfere with WP Engine customers’ access to WordPress.org.
“Matt Mullenweg’s unprecedented and unwarranted action interferes with the normal operation of the entire WordPress ecosystem, impacting not just WP Engine and our customers, but all WordPress plugin developers and open source users who depend on WP Engine tools like ACF,” WP Engine said.
Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, has misused his control of WordPress to interfere with WP Engine customers’ access to https://t.co/ZpKb9q4jPh, asserting that he did so because WP Engine filed litigation against https://t.co/erlNmkIol2. This simply is not true. Our Cease &…
— WP Engine (@wpengine) September 26, 2024
On September 27, WordPress.org lifted the ban temporarily and allowed WP Engine to access resources on October 1.
Mullenweg wrote a blog post clarifying that the fight is only against WP Engine over trademarks. He said Automattic has been trying to broker a trademark licensing deal for a long time, but WP Engine’s only response has been to “string us along.”
The WordPress community and other projects feel this could also happen to them and want clarification from Automattic, which has an exclusive license to the WordPress trademark. The community is also asking about clear guidance around how they can and can’t use “WordPress.”
The WordPress Foundation, which owns the trademark, has also filed to trademark “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.” Developers and providers are worried that if these trademarks are granted, they could be used against them.
Developers have expressed concerns over relying on commercial open source products related to WordPress, especially when their access can go away quickly.
Open-source content management system Ghost’s founder John O’Nolan also weighed in on the issue and criticized control WordPress being with one person.
“The web needs more independent organizations, and it needs more diversity. 40% of the web and 80% of the CMS market should not be controlled by any one individual,” he said in an X post.
The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained
The world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. The core issue is the fight between WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress.
WordPress technology is open source and free, and it powers a huge chunk of the internet — around 40% of websites. Websites can host their own WordPress instance or use a solution provider like Automattic or WP Engine for a plug-and-play solution.
In mid-September, Mullenweg wrote a blog post calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” He criticized the host for disabling the ability for users to see and track the revision history for every post. Mullenweg believes this feature is at the “core of the user promise of protecting your data” and said that WP Engine turns it off by default to save money.
He also called out WP Engine investor Silver Lake and said they don’t contribute sufficiently to the open source project and that WP Engine’s use of the “WP” brand has confused customers into believing it is part of WordPress.
The legal battle
In reply, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic to withdraw their comments. It also said that its use of the WordPress trademark was covered under fair use.
The company claimed that Mullenweg had said he would take a “scorched earth nuclear approach” against WP Engine unless it agreed to pay “a significant percentage of its revenues for a license to the WordPress trademark.”
In response, Automattic sent its own cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine, saying that they had breached WordPress and WooCommerce trademark usage rules.
The WordPress Foundation also changed its Trademark Policy page and called out WP Engine, alleging the hosting service has confused users.
“The abbreviation ‘WP’ is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is ‘WordPress Engine’ and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress,” the updated page reads.
WP Engine ban, community impact, and trademark battle
Mullenweg then banned WP Engine from accessing the resources of WordPress.org. While elements like plug-ins and themes are under open source license, providers like WP Engine have to run a service to fetch them, which is not covered under the open source license.
This broke a lot of websites and prevented them from updating plug-ins and themes. It also left some of them open to security attacks. The community was not pleased with this approach of leaving small websites helpless.
In response to the incident, WP Engine said in a post that Mullenweg had misused his control of WordPress to interfere with WP Engine customers’ access to WordPress.org.
“Matt Mullenweg’s unprecedented and unwarranted action interferes with the normal operation of the entire WordPress ecosystem, impacting not just WP Engine and our customers, but all WordPress plugin developers and open source users who depend on WP Engine tools like ACF,” WP Engine said.
Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, has misused his control of WordPress to interfere with WP Engine customers’ access to https://t.co/ZpKb9q4jPh, asserting that he did so because WP Engine filed litigation against https://t.co/erlNmkIol2. This simply is not true. Our Cease &…
— WP Engine (@wpengine) September 26, 2024
Mullenweg wrote a blog post clarifying that the fight is only against WP Engine over trademarks. He said Automattic has been trying to broker a trademark licensing deal for a long time, but WP Engine’s only response has been to “string us along.”
The WordPress community and other projects feel this could also happen to them and want clarification from Automattic, which has an exclusive license to the WordPress trademark. The community is also asking about clear guidance around how they can and can’t use “WordPress.”
The WordPress Foundation, which owns the trademark, has also filed to trademark “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.” Developers and providers are worried that if these trademarks are granted, they could be used against them.
Developers have expressed concerns over relying on commercial open source products related to WordPress, especially when their access can go away quickly.
WordPress.org bans WP Engine, blocks it from accessing its resources
WordPress drama went up another notch on Wednesday after WordPress.org, the open-source web hosting software, banned hosting provider WP Engine from accessing its resources.
In a post on WordPress.org, WordPress co-creator and Automattic CEO, Matt Mullenweg, wrote that pending their legal claims, WP Engine will not have access to the platform’s resources, such as themes and plug-ins.
“WP Engine wants to control your WordPress experience, they need to run their own user login system, update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, job board, meetups, conferences, bug tracker, forums, Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcase. Their servers can no longer access our servers for free,” he said.
“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,” Mullenweg wrote.
As a result of this block, sites using WP Engine’s solutions cannot install plug-ins or update their themes.
Today in Matt destroys the WordPress community: you can't add plugins directly from the .org repo if you have a WP Engine site. And I can confirm that this is happening.https://t.co/vRd7jliVsM pic.twitter.com/9XGAtXhUoN
— Jacob Martella (@ViewFromTheBox) September 25, 2024
I want to share: https://t.co/CmCwbcxZfD has blocked @wpengine customers from updating and installing plugins and themes via WP Admin—disrupting essential work for #WordPress users, agencies, freelancers, and plugin developers.
Please read: https://t.co/cE45rmvnqW
— Brian Gardner (@bgardner) September 25, 2024
Not being able to do @WordPress updates because of the @photomatt/@wpengine fight is infuriating.
For a small nonprofit, being caught in the middle of this could be costly if we need to migrate our sites to a new host. That money/time should be used for our mission.
— Michael Geheren (@mgeheren) September 25, 2024
As several WordPress developers and advocates pointed out, the ban also prevents WP Engine customers from accessing security updates, leaving them vulnerable.
WP Engine acknowledged this issue and said the company is working on a fix.
“WordPress.org has blocked WP Engine customers from updating and installing plugins and themes via WP Admin. There is currently no impact on the performance, reliability, or security of your site, nor does it impact your ability to make updates to your code or content,” an update from WP Engine read.
The WP Engine vs Automattic fight
It’s important to understand that WordPress powers nearly 40% of the websites on the internet through different hosting providers, which include Mullenweg’s Automattic and WP Engine. Users can also take the open-source project and run the websites themselves, but a lot of people choose to go with plug-and-play solutions.
The fight began last week when Mullenweg criticized WP Engine publicly at a conference and on his blog for profiteering and called it a “cancer to WordPress.” He also alleged the company doesn’t contribute as much as Automattic does to the WordPress community despite both of them making about a half-a-billion dollars in revenue annually.
This spurred WP Engine to send a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic, asking them to withdraw their comments. The letter alleged that Mullenweg and Automattic had threatened to adopt a “scorched earth nuclear approach” if WP Engine did not comply and pay Automattic a percentage of its gross revenue.
In reply, Automattic sent its own cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine, alleging infringement of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Separately, the WordPress Foundation, a charity created by Mullenweg to maintain WordPress as an open source project, told TechCrunch that WP Engine has violated its trademarks.
“WP Engine has indeed breached the WordPress Trademark Policy. The Policy states that no one is allowed to use the WordPress trademarks as part of a product, project, service, domain name, or company name. WP Engine has repeatedly violated this policy and the Cease and Desist letter sent to them by Automattic provides examples of some of the many violations,” the foundation said in an email.
The policy was updated yesterday to include an example of WP Engine. Notably, the policy doesn’t cover “WP” as a trademark.
You can contact this reporter at [email protected] or on Signal: @ivan.42
Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch providers
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.”
Mullenweg criticized the company — which has been commercializing the open source WordPress project since 2010 — for profiteering without giving much back, while also disabling key features that make WordPress such a powerful platform in the first place.
For context, WordPress powers more than 40% of the web, and while any individual or company is free to take the open source project and run a website themselves, a number of businesses have sprung up to sell hosting services and technical expertise off the back of it. These include Automattic, which Mullenweg set up in 2005 to monetize the project he’d created two years previous; and WP Engine, a managed WordPress hosting provider that has raised nearly $300 million in funding over its 14-year history, the bulk of which came via a $250 million investment from private equity firm Silver Lake in 2018.
Speaking this week at WordCamp US 2024, a WordPress-focused conference held in Portland, Oregon, Mullenweg pulled no punches in his criticism of WP Engine. Taking to the stage, Mullenweg read out a post he had just published to his personal blog, where he points to the distinct “five for the future” investment pledges made by Automattic and WP Engine, with the former contributing 3,900 hours per week, and the latter contributing just 40 hours.
While he acknowledged that these figures are just a “proxy,” and might not be perfectly accurate, Mullenweg said that this disparity in contributions is notable, as both Automattic and WP Engine “are roughly the same size, with revenue in the ballpark of half-a-billion [dollars].”
Mullenweg has levelled criticism at at least one other big-name web host in the past, accusing GoDaddy of profiteering from the open source project without giving anything meaningful back — more specifically, he called GoDaddy a “parasitic company” and an “existential threat to WordPress’ future”.
In his latest offensive, Mullenweg didn’t stop at WP Engine, he extended his criticism to the company’s main investor.
“The company [WP Engine] is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management,” Mullenweg said. “Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your open source ideals, it just wants return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to go vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to — someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?”
In response to a question submitted by an audience member later, asking for clarity on whether Mullenweg was asking WordPress users to boycott WP Engine, he said that he hoped every WP Engine customer would watch his presentation, and when it comes to the time when they’re renewing their contracts, they should think about their next steps.
“There’s some really hungry other hosts — Hostinger, Bluehost Cloud, Pressable, etc, that would love to get that business,” Mullenweg said. “You might get faster performance even switching to someone else, and migrating has never been easier. That’s part of the idea of data liberation. It’s, like, one day of work to switch your site to something else, and I would highly encourage you to think about that when your contract renewal comes up, if you’re currently a customer with WP Engine.”
‘A cancer to WordPress’
In response to the brouhaha that followed the talk, Mullenweg published a follow up blog post, where he calls WP Engine a “cancer” to WordPress. “It’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread,” he wrote. “WP Engine is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate.”
Mullenweg said that WP Engine is profiting off the confusion that exists between the WordPress project and the commercial services company WP Engine.
“It has to be said and repeated: WP Engine is not WordPress,” Mullenweg wrote. “My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion.”
Mullenweg also said that WP Engine is actively selling an inferior product, because the core WordPress project stores every change that is made to allow users to revert their content to a previous version — something that WP Engine disables, as per its support page.
While customers can request that revisions be enabled, support only extends to three revisions, which are automatically deleted after 60 days. WP Engine recommends that customers use a “third-party editing system” if they need extensive revision management. The reason for this, according to Mullenweg, is simple — saving money.
“They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of the changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that to protect your content,” Mullenweg contends. “It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content. If you make a mistake, you have no way to get your content back, breaking the core promise of what WordPress does, which is manage and protect your content.”
TechCrunch has reached out to WP Engine for comment, and will update here when we hear back.