WordPress vs WP Engine: Mullenweg blocks plugin updates

"Please don't make me cheer for a private-equity operator like Silver Lake, Matt", Ruby-on-Rails author David Heinemeier Hansson concludes his urgent appeal to Matt Mullenweg –, speaking from the heart of a large part of the WordPress community.

It is currently divided: On the one side is Matt Mullenweg, co-founder and chief developer of the widely used web publishing system WordPress, who is currently fighting against the WordPress host WP Engine, demanding millions and using all means from public pressure to shutting down the servers. On the other side are WP Engine, which was acquired by the American technology investor Silver Lake in 2018, and parts of the WordPress community – who would like Mullenweg to finally put an end to the drama.

The main bone of contention here is the trademark rights to the "WordPress" brand. These are owned by Mullenweg's company Automattic, which also owns Tumblr, for example. Mullenweg also accuses the commercial provider WP Engine of undermining the open source WordPress because the company hardly contributes anything to the development of WordPress. You might think that something like this could be resolved; after all, WP Engine has been part of the WordPress ecosystem for more than a decade, and the hoster has used the brand and its associations for just as long. But in this case, things are different: Matt Mullenweg is taking a confrontational approach.

FOSS-friendly: In public

In recent weeks, Mullenweg has backed up demands that WP Engine should pay eight percent of its revenue each month for the trademark rights with high-profile measures. In communication with WP Engine, he threatened and delivered an accusatory keynote at the largest annual WordPress community event – after WP Engine failed to back down.

He later restricted the resources the company could obtain from the WordPress.org site, including updates to WP Engine's ACF plugin, which was used to secure hosted sites. The subsequent security concerns were so great that the plug-in had to be hosted on a separate site for a while. In the meantime, ACF has been redirected to a fork, to the SCF plug-in, which is not connected to WP Engine but is essentially the same, and which is maintained by Mullenweg's company Automattic.

On top of this came a forced installation of the new plugin on all sites that used ACF, which affected millions of users. Mullenweg justified the fork with the fact that WP Engine could no longer maintain the ACF plug-in – How could it? Developers of other plug-ins such as Gravity PDF and Display Post concluded that they would no longer use WordPress.org to update their plug-ins for the time being, but would host them on their own site like ACF.

Recently, an "official body" also banned WP Engine from participating in the WordCamp Sydney community event –. No employees would be permitted as organizers or speakers, and sponsorship is no longer permitted. WP Engine previously responded to Mullenweg's accusation of not supporting WordPress enough by referring to numerous sponsorship agreements in relation to such community events.

In a now-deleted tweet, WordCamp Sydney proved the hoster right: "They [WP Engine] have given so much to support the Aussie WP community over the past 10 years. It's not just about contributing dev back to core." Mullenweg had recently offered employees of his own company Automattic the opportunity to resign in exchange for a generous compensation payment if they had concerns about continuing to work for him due to the current situation. Currently 159 of the company's 1,200 employees have accepted the offer.

FOSS responsibility: loss of stability

However, Matt Mullenweg seems to be intent on setting a precedent with WP Engine. The commercial reusability of GPL-licensed software is currently not uncontroversial. This is why the author of the Ruby on Rails framework David Heinemeier Hansson, also a big name in the open source world alongside Mullenweg, has now spoken out. In a blog entry on October 13, however, he did not find comforting words for the FOSS defender, but rather words of warning.

While he admits at the outset that a "Benevolent Dictator for Life" has often been a catalyst for some of the most important open source developments in the past – and that Mullenweg has certainly earned this crown –, the role is no guarantee of infallibility. In particular, he found the disabling of updates for a relevant security plug-in and the subsequent redirection to a fork of his own company to be "unhinged". Mullenweg's encroachment is at odds with what free code and free software actually stand for.

Hansson justified his contribution to the debate with his concern for the open source ecosystem as a whole: "Using an open source project like WordPress as leverage in this contract dispute, and weaponizing its plugin registry, is an endangerment of an open source peace that has reigned decades [...]". He sees a turning point here that has not been seen since SCO v Linux around 2003 – and notes an explosion of uncertainty and concern in the OS world.

Elsewhere, the uncertainty that Hansson senses is already quite obvious: the WordPress community is seething. She therefore made her voice heard in the dedicated r/Wordpress subreddit, while the global IT coverage flushed more and more interested parties into the forum. The news of the shutdown of ACF updates coupled with initial reports of how the dispute was costing the customer base real hard cash and the moderators – one of whom was personally hired by Mullenweg – had their hands full to say the least.

A single moderator now remains for the subreddit, which has over 200,000 members. In his own words: "To be honest, I didn't want to be in this position. And to be honest, I don't feel like it anymore and I really don't want the job." In a small way, this ironically refers to the end that can also await ambitious OS projects – the last one turns out the light, but hopefully stays as long as the users still need the light.

(kki)