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Latest in the WP Engine Dispute and Lawsuit

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 26, 2024,

updated Sep 29, 2024

Tedium ☛ WordPress Vs. WP Engine? It Doesn’t Matter. It’s Bad For The Internet.

Back in February, amid a separate controversy largely focused on Tumblr, trans users, and AI scraping, I posed this question about WordPress provider Automattic and CEO Matt Mullenweg’s leadership: “Do we have to worry about the future of WordPress?”

I think it’s safe to say that the answer to that question is yes. So much has happened in the past five days that it’s hard to wrap one’s head around it all, but the long story short of it is this: Mullenweg, and by extension Automattic, is upset with one of the biggest vendors in the space, WP Engine.

Now, to be clear, I initially heard about Mullenweg’s criticisms of WP Engine at the recent WordCamp event in Portland, Oregon, and found myself nodding along to some degree. My initial comments were more supportive of Matt’s POV because I don’t like WP Engine very much. The fact is, WP Engine is one of those very large providers that is so dominant in its subsector that they do things like squeeze their customers. And I don’t like it when providers squeeze.

The Register UK ☛ WordPress.org denies service to WP Engine

WordPress is an open source CMS which is extensible using plugins. Its home is WordPress.org, which also hosts resources such as themes and plugins for the CMS. A vast ecosystem of plugins exists from numerous suppliers, but WordPress.org is the main source.

Many WordPress users rely on several plugins. Preventing WP Engine users from accessing plugin updates is therefore serious, as it could mean users can't update plugins that have security issues, or other fixes.

Ruben Schade ☛ There’s something about Matt

Well, I got that wrong! What a difference a decade makes.

WordPress ☛ WP Engine is banned from WordPress.org

Pending their legal claims and litigation against WordPress.org, WP Engine no longer has free access to WordPress.org's resources.

Update

Outline/timeline:

My Thoughts on the WordPress Drama

I wrote about Matt's post the other day, but things have escalated significantly since then. Like, SIGNIFICANTLY. Here's my thoughts...

Ok, if you're not up to date with all the WordPress drama, here's a very quick catch up with what's been going on, along with some links for further reading:

One more:

The core thing that makes WordPress, WordPress isn’t what you think

Cut to hundreds of millions of WordPress users going “WordPress has revision history?”

The latest update:

WP Engine Reprieve

I’ve heard from WP Engine customers that they are frustrated that WP Engine hasn’t been able to make updates, plugin directory, theme directory, and Openverse work on their sites. It saddens me that they’ve been negatively impacted by Silver Lake‘s commercial decisions.

Some analysis:

Transparency, Contribution, and the Future of WordPress

There’s nothing wrong with making business deals to promote each other’s stuff. However, most members of our community (including me up until 2021) are not aware of those deals. There’s inequality in information, which makes it hard for community members to understand the decisions that big companies make — decisions concerning contributing to WordPress, for example. If we were more transparent about how money flows, it would be a little bit easier to understand.