Over the previous a number of weeks, WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg has made one factor exceedingly clear: he’s in command of WordPress’ future.
Mullenweg heads up WordPress.com and its guardian firm, Automattic. He owns the WordPress.org mission, and he even leads the nonprofit basis that controls the WordPress trademark. To the surface observer, these may seem like impartial organizations, all individually designed across the WordPress open-source mission. However as he wages a battle in opposition to WP Engine, a third-party WordPress internet hosting service, Mullenweg has muddied the boundaries between three important entities that lead a sprawling ecosystem powering nearly half of the online.
To Mullenweg, that’s all wonderful — so long as it helps the well being of WordPress long-term.
“WordPress.org simply belongs to me personally,” Mullenweg mentioned throughout an interview with The Verge. WordPress.org exists outdoors the industrial realm of Automattic, as a standalone publishing platform that provides free entry to its open-source code that individuals can use to create their very own web sites. But it surely’s not a impartial, impartial arbiter of the ecosystem. “In my function as proudly owning WordPress.org, I don’t wish to promote an organization, which is A: legally threatening me and B: utilizing the WordPress trademark. That’s a part of why we reduce off entry from the servers.”
“That’s true: we’re pressuring them”
Mullenweg’s feud with WP Engine followers out in just a few completely different instructions. He’s criticized WP Engine for not placing sufficient money and time into growing the open-source WordPress ecosystem, saying that when you gave $1 to the WordPress Basis, “you’d be a much bigger donor than WP Engine.” And Mullenweg has introduced up the chance that WP Engine “hacked” the Computerized-owned WooCommerce plug-in to gather commissions meant for Automattic, which WP Engine has denied. From these arguments, the struggle seems to be one over what’s and isn’t applicable within the open-source software program world.
However Mullenweg has since sidelined these arguments to make the case that WP Engine — and its “hacked up, bastardized simulacra” of the WordPress open-source code, as he describes it — is infringing on Automattic’s trademark: WordPress.
“The analogy I made is that they received Al Capone for taxes,” Mullenweg says. “So, if an organization was making half a billion {dollars} from WordPress and contributing again about $100,000 a 12 months, sure, I’d be attempting to get them to contribute extra.” WP Engine competes immediately with the internet hosting providers provided by Automattic and WordPress.com, and Mullenweg argues one of many causes for its success is the usage of “WordPress” throughout its web site. “That’s why we’re utilizing that authorized avenue to essentially, yeah, strain them. That’s true: we’re pressuring them.”
Mullenweg started his public strain marketing campaign throughout a WordPress convention final month, telling folks to “vote together with your pockets” and cease supporting WP Engine. He later known as the service a “most cancers” to the WordPress ecosystem. Mullenweg finally blocked WP Engine from WordPress.org’s servers, leaving WP Engine’s clients unable to put in themes, plug-ins, and updates.
The choice to chop off WP Engine additionally put different WordPress tasks in a precarious place. WordPress is open-source and free to make use of, with no mandate to provide again. However Mullenweg has made it clear that there’s some bar that profitable tasks should meet to remain off Automattic’s radar.
“I fortunately present WordPress.org providers to actually each different host,” Mullenweg says. There may be “no requirement to provide again. WordPress will probably be open-source perpetually and ever, and so there’ll by no means be any authorized requirement to provide again.” However WordPress does nonetheless “request” that corporations contribute one thing. “It’s higher for WordPress if they offer again.”
For WP Engine, what it comes all the way down to is that this: Mullenweg needs the corporate to contribute to WordPress, whether or not it’s by paying to license the WordPress trademark or by pitching into the open-source WordPress mission.
Despite the fact that the WordPress Basis controls the platform’s trademark, the industrial rights for that trademark are licensed to Automattic. Meaning Automattic can cost different corporations for utilizing the WordPress trademark for industrial functions — and that’s the place Mullenweg has been capable of exert strain on WP Engine.
“What they’re doing is just not okay. It’s not that they’re calling it WP; it’s that they’re utilizing the WordPress trademark in complicated methods,” Mullenweg mentioned. He cited the “frantic adjustments” he claims WP Engine made to its web site to take away mentions of “WordPress” after the dispute started. Beneath the WordPress Basis’s trademark insurance policies, corporations can use the WordPress title and brand to “consult with and clarify their providers.”
The inspiration says the “WP” abbreviation isn’t lined by its logos, however the tips had been lately tweaked to say that corporations ought to cease utilizing the abbreviation in “a approach that confuses folks.” Throughout The Verge’s interview, Mullenweg confirmed he modified the muse’s trademark insurance policies to incorporate a “dig at WP Engine.” The coverage now says WP Engine “by no means as soon as even donated to the WordPress Basis, regardless of making billions of income on high of WordPress.”
This week, Automattic revealed its proposed resolution to the dispute: a seven-year deal that may require WP Engine to pay an 8 p.c charge on all income to both use the WordPress and Automattic’s WooCommerce logos or to compensate workers who would contribute to the WordPress open-source mission. The deal was provided in late September, however Mullenweg says it’s off the desk as a consequence of “WP Engine’s conduct, deception, and incompetence.”
The dispute culminated in a lawsuit, by which WP Engine accuses Automattic and Mullenweg of extortion. WP Engine alleges that Mullenweg mentioned he would proceed with a “scorched earth nuclear method” after the 2 failed to come back to an settlement. “When WPE refused to capitulate to Automattic’s astronomical and extortionate financial calls for, Mullenweg made good on his threats,” WP Engine claims. “The specter of ‘conflict’ was a multi-front assault, a part of an overarching scheme to extract payouts from WPE.”
Within the lawsuit, WP Engine claims Mullenweg is trying to “capitalize on the chaos he brought on” by promoting a deal to modify to Pressable — one other WordPress host owned by Automattic. The submitting additionally features a purported job provide from Mullenweg to WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner saying that if she declines to affix Automattic, he’d inform the CEO of Silver Lake — the non-public fairness agency that owns WP Engine.
WordPress govt director Josepha Haden Chomphosy has since left Automattic, together with greater than 150 different workers who accepted Mullenweg’s provide to depart for $30,000 or six months of pay, whichever is larger, in the event that they didn’t help his struggle in opposition to WP Engine.
Extra importantly, WP Engine’s lawsuit raises issues about company overreach, alleging Mullenweg’s actions mirror “a transparent abuse of his conflicting roles” on the WordPress Basis, Automattic, and the open-source WordPress mission. In a press release on Thursday, Automattic known as the lawsuit “baseless,” including that it denies WP Engine’s allegations, “that are gross mischaracterizations of actuality.”
Nevertheless the authorized case could pan out, it’s grow to be clear that Mullenweg does management WordPress.org. However his struggle with WP Engine has solely made the border between WordPress and Automattic murkier, casting a shadow of uncertainty over the open supply group that’s lengthy backed him. That appears to be a threat Automattic is keen to take so long as WordPress comes out on high.
