I wanted to share something I read about a few days ago and have been following closely. Since most of us are familiar with WordPress, I figured it’s worth talking about here.

 

There’s a major feud happening between WordPress and WP Engine. WP Engine is a big company with over 1,000 employees and a ton of clients, including businesses, schools, and charities. Recently, WordPress has banned WP Engine from using its resources, and this is causing serious problems for WP Engine and its customers. The ban stops them from getting updates to themes and plugins, leaving many sites vulnerable to security risks.

 

The tension goes back to some disagreements between WP Engine and Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress. He’s accused WP Engine of profiting from WordPress without giving back enough. WP Engine, in turn, says they’re being unfairly targeted, even sending a cease-and-desist letter to try to stop what they see as false claims. For now, WordPress has temporarily allowed WP Engine users access to resources again, but it’s unclear what will happen next.

 

It’s something to keep an eye on if you’re using WP Engine for your site or are just interested in how this all plays out.

 

Some interesting links:

 

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/01/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/

 

https://ma.tt/

 

https://journal.rmccue.io/431/wp-engine-must-win/

 

https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Complaint-WP-Engine-v-Automattic-et-al-with-Exhibit.pdf

 

https://pearsonified.com/truth-about-thesis-com/

Nobody in their right mind would fork WP as a start to a new application. I just can't see it as a viable path. [mention=79]Arantor[/mention] you are 100% correct in that its ecosystem is the only reason it's still a viable solution. Eventually someone will break through though. I truly think the application that empowers those that will provide that ecosystem with the best possible plugin workflow will most likely be the one that will achieve it with all other things roughly being equal.

ClassicPress did - and that's a clear demonstration of why you shouldn't. Forking was always the last point of refuge as a check and balance against a BDFL gone rogue, or other members of the community taking fundamental umbridge with the direction of the project and its leadership - and it immediately puts you at several disadvantages that are in no way immediately obvious.

 

I don't envisage that there will be a successful WP fork. The ecosystem is too big, the project too mature; where does a radical new fork even go? Any major changes of any value immediately break the ecosystem to some degree, and my view has long been: if you are going to fork, you need to not just subtly break the ABI but fundamentally break it and rebuild it back better for your purposes.

Not to mention the amount of technical debt you would inherit.

You're forking, that's immediately a given no matter what you fork and no matter how perfect it is (or isn't) before you start.

I might fork a component, but never an application. I would build my own. Period. No fork.

I might fork a component, but never an application. I would build my own. Period. No fork.

I’ve forked entire applications before. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

Matt is flexing again, and he is demonstrating how unhappy he is about being made to do things.

 

[ATTACH type=full" size="503x661]522[/ATTACH]

 

(Yes this is real.)

There is just a slight obligation vibe here...👀

Pineapple is actually pretty good on pizza.

Pineapple is actually pretty good on pizza.

Whether it is or not is kinda irrelevant - it’s not a detail that you should have to explicitly agree to, to be able to log into the support community for the world’s most popular CMS…

Whether it is or not is kinda irrelevant - it’s not a detail that you should have to explicitly agree to, to be able to log into the support community for the world’s most popular CMS…

Oh, I know. Was just having a bit of fun.

 

Anyways, this action by Matt (and we all know that Matt is behind it) is extremely petty and very unprofessional for a system used by 40% of websites on the internet. I'm really hoping that this brings about more actions against Matt during the actual court case.

Of course it’s Matt, he’s the sole arbiter of w.org - it can’t be anyone else.

 

And while it’s notionally harmless, it’s a flex I don’t imagine the court will look so favourably on.

Oh Matt, you really are the gift that keeps on giving.

 

So earlier in the week he called a shutdown on parts of wordpress.org - no new plugin reviews, no new theme reviews, limited support etc. citing that the maintainers deserve a holiday break. But this also came with an ominous note about hoping he finds the energy to continue in 2025, prompting some to debate if in fact he's not going to reopen things fully in 2025.

 

And then,

 

Yes, this is Matt - either actually him, or his Reddit account has been hacked, but this isn't likely - flat out suggesting he's going to cause drama in 2025.

 

This is how empires fall, people.

His responses have been on the "I'm the victim here guys" tone, trying to portray this nice guy persona. I'm really hoping in that after the court case is done that he goes into the pre-economic Matt or even gets booted off the "board". I put board within quotes as he pretty much controls it all.

The board is effectively him, but when this gets going, it’s really going to get cooking because the dealings of the Foundation have been implied to be Matt verging on lying to the IRS.

 

Remember: Joker will happily go after anyone in Gotham, just to get Bats’ attention, but even he by his own admission isn’t crazy enough to taunt the IRS.

I'm gonna get a few hours sleep before I pull the trigger but this might be the best news I've seen all year.

I get the sentiment but I would not be so quick to wish ill on the people this will really affect, which is a much larger and much more numerous group than you might realise.

 

First up, WP’s demise would affect every user who just wants a small site to work, who does nothing more than install a theme and a couple of plugins and gets on with their day. They don’t care how the software works, they just want a simple and good enough solution - and the competition, hilariously, fails to understand what makes WP compelling to users.

 

It doesn’t matter if it’s the CMS in Woltlab, or it’s Drupal, Silverstripe, CraftCMS, etc, they all fail at getting the user in and creating content easily. Oh, don’t get me wrong, these platforms are powerful but to a first time user they’re flat out daunting, in a way WP never was. (The fact WP does less, overtly, out of the box is relevant here.)

 

I rather suspect a number of people in this boat would just give up rather than try to go through the hassle of finding an alternative. Which, like it or not, would be a loss to the world - the great joy of WP is that it gave just about anyone an on-ramp into making their own space to have their say.

 

But the road to alternatives is an interesting one. WooCommerce users will likely enrich Shopify first and foremost because Drupal Commerce is no competition. Those who truly, desperately, want their own self-hosted storefront will likely end up gravitating to Magento and, frankly, I’m not sure that’s better for the world. It’s certainly not safer, and it won’t be an improvement for their sanity assuming they even get it installed.

 

The road to a mature WP replacement that people will actually use is not 6 months away, not with any framework that currently exists (short of treating something like Craft as a framework), because it’s not just about the CMS core, it’s about the ecosystem. It’s about having a CMS that can do the things, whether core or plug-in, it’s about having the rich functionality achievable with WordPress today. It’s also about having the buy-in from people that the platform isn’t going away overnight, or that there won’t be another better one on 6 months. It’s about that there’s people having the willingness to invest in the platform and prove it is suitable for sites. WP, for better or worse, powers not only the hobbyist who just wants a little blog, it powers things like the official site of the US White House, it powers parts of the US gov’s online estate.

 

These people are not going to trust an upstart any time soon. The lead time for that sort of crowd to adopt a new platform is at minimum 5 years. That’s 5 years of runway a platform has to build to prove it’ll stand the test of time. Minimum.

 

And that’s before we even talk about the reputational damage being done here. Putting aside Matt’s ego, this whole drama damages all of us in the open source space. Because now this has happened, any project with any serious plans for adoption not only needs to prove itself in terms of legitimacy (which for corporate use has always been a tricky one as corps like to have someone they can beat over the head with respect to liability), but now they have to prove the project leadership won’t pull a Matt and screw around the user base. And it isn’t even going to be a case of “well we never did before”, Matt’s actions have spotlighted the shortcomings of the BDFL model that I’ve always seen as the only viable way for open source to function. (Anything beyond a BDFL or small team of decision makers inevitably descends into design by committee hell.)

 

Unless projects can actively demonstrate a leadership team and model that instils confidence, they have a problem with widespread adoption. You may be of the opinion that “so what if companies don’t use the product” - but a CMS more than any needs to demonstrate a willingness for users to use it. To be taken seriously it needs to be able to be suitable for enterprise use on some level even if not marketed to that user base.

 

Worse, Matt’s actions have demonstrated the risks of using commercialised GPL, in stealing and republishing a paid plugin. This has always been on the table as a risk - always - but Matt had always demonstrated before that he was willing to let the ecosystem exist because it was good for WP to have a premium ecosystem. It demonstrates that people are willing to invest in the platform, and to a point where they have skin in the game.

 

This, however, will make people think twice. It doesn’t matter about the nuance of the licence, being MIT or BSD to GPL, though: the entire “open source” movement is now tainted, and while it will recover, it’s not clear what damage this is going to be in the fullness of time.

Oh, there is no wishing ill on anyone. Would never do that. I wish better for the OSS community overall.

Oh, there is no wishing ill on anyone. Would never do that. I wish better for the OSS community overall.

Then there is literally no way to take the above Reddit as good news, because it isn’t.

 

The first point is interesting but ultimately a damp squib IMO.

 

The second is vastly more important. Yes, WP is a Matt project first and foremost. You can't not price this in with your equations in terms of whether you choose to use WP or not. The problem is, Matt's - if I can be blunt about this - a bit of a dick. He has an ego that demands stroking, he has a level of pettiness that is rarely seen and he has demonstrated a level of petulance and spite in recent times that do not endear him to his would-be customers.

 

It's also become more clear that what he wants out of WP is not in line with what the community want, and the community are just unpaid labour for him. It's fine if the community are getting what they want out of it but it's become increasingly clear that's not necessarily the case.

Wordpress has brought in a new attorney or an addition to the current legal team.[ATTACH type=full]1182[/ATTACH]

I wonder why he is changing lawyers...

A new class action lawsuit has been filed on Automatic.

 

 

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.445022/gov.uscourts.cand.445022.1.0.pdf

The court schedule for Automatic vs Wp engine is now available.[ATTACH type=full]1295[/ATTACH]