You may have seen a headline or two about WordPress lately, but probably didn’t pay too much attention. And for many of you, that is the correct response – at least for now. If you’re not sure what this is about, it’s probably not impacting you and you don’t need to worry, but maybe run through this check before you go.
For the rest of you still reading, you wanna know what’s up. Maybe you read a bit more than the headline and have questions. Maybe you have a site on WPEngine and you’re seeing a lot of emails from the company that have you concerned. Maybe you just like gossip. If that’s you, read on.
The Background
In mid-September, Matt Mullenweg, the co-creator of WordPress and CEO of the WordPress.com platform Automattic, made some comments at a WordPress event. His comments specifically targeted the company WPEngine, stating that by using “WP” in their name the company was implying that it was an “official” WordPress product. Further, he was unhappy that the company was capitalizing off that name without contributing back to the core WordPress community and development. WordPress is an open source tool, meaning that its core code is free for anyone to install and use, however it does rely on the contributions of the community to continue feature and security development.
The situation devolved surprisingly quickly. Mullenweg expressed demands that WPEngine either contribute more, or pay 8% of of its revenue to compensate. WPEngine declined to make those contributions. Mullenweg and/or wordpress.org restricted access to WPEngine staff and affiliates. Lawsuits were (and continue to be) exchanged. Unpleasant tweets and passive-aggressive blog posts abound.
What are the concerns?
At this point it may seem like a dust-up best observed at a distance, and for the most part that’s true. However, there are a few points of concern that should be monitored.
1. Restricted access to wordpress.org
One of the main tools for success with WordPress is access to the WordPress repository of themes and plugins at wordpress.org. The WordPress tool is largely successful because it has solved distribution of code, including updates, in a simple and accessible way.
The steps Mullenweg and/or wordpress.org has taken (it’s not always clear who is speaking for wordpress.org) includes restricting access to repositories by WPEngine staff and affiliates, and subsequently, taking over and renaming the tools that were distributed in the wordpress.org repository by WPEngine. There are several of these plugins, the most notable and recognizable being ACF (Advanced Custom Fields).
There are excellent questions about the legality of such a move, to say nothing of its fairness and the potential confusion for users. Other developers are quite rightly concerned that any code they create and distribute through the wordpress.org repository may face a similar fate.
2. Is it really open source?
WordPress has ostensibly been open source since its beginning. The project has been built that way, and its free licensing is included in the core of every install. The project is managed by the WordPress Foundation, which also owns the WordPress trademark and is made up of three board members, one of them being Matt Mullenweg.
Recent legal filings have uncovered, however, that wordpress.org is solely owned by Matt Mullenweg. (This was news to pretty much everyone in the community.) At its core, that means that he can (legally?) refuse access to the wordpress.org repo to anyone he wants. Since the core WordPress files are also hosted there he could also potentially restrict access to the entire platform.
3. Is my site, or are the tools I use, at risk?
Understandably, this is the main concern that most folks have: how will this affect me and my business?
The areas of the WordPress ecosystem most likely to feel impacts right now are:
- Those who have a website(s) hosted on WPEngine.
Despite WPEngine’s efforts, some access changes and other impacts have caused sites to be slow or down at times over the past few months. There’s good reason to be concerned that they may have difficulty resourcing a fight against Matt Mullenweg while also delivering a quality product (more on this below). - Those using ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) or one of the other plugins impacted by the wordpress.org distribution changes. See a list.
Since the original developers are no longer contributing to these tools as they’re being delivered by wordpress.org, users should examine the future updates, and ensure the plugin is still under active development. Most of these developers are providing alternate ways to deliver updates to their plugins, but this will be more challenging and time consuming without the native wordpress.org update delivery process. - Those who do development on the platform and a seeking support from official WordPress channels including Slack or Github.
Despite Mullenweg doing a lot of grandstanding about how many people support him, there has been quite an exodus of resources and leadership from the WordPress open source community, including core contributors. In the short term, this means it may be hard to get answers or support for issues. In the longer term, this means less development and fewer new features, at best. At worst it could mean security issues and stagnating code base.
My $.02
I don’t like either side.
I have never been a fan of WPEngine. I don’t care for their user experience, as I find it unnecessarily confusing and I dislike their practice of disabling revisions. While I don’t necessarily think “WPEngine” is implying a connection with WordPress I also have never seen them contributing beyond the tools they develop and sell themselves. I definitely think they could be contributing more to the community.
However, I also think Matt Mullenweg has lost the thread on this one. Whatever good will he might have had (and it was preciously little before this) has truly been lost with his heavy-handed attempts to bring the community to his side, his takeover of WPEngine (and other) software, and his intensely cringe-worthy commentary on his blog and Twitter.
And it is the latter part that has me more worried long-term. Mullenweg has alienated a good portion of the WordPress community and – especially with the news that wordpress.org belongs to Mullenweg – it feels less likely that people will be willing to continue to something open source with a less-than-open leader at the helm. To be clear, WordPress won’t stop being popular overnight, but it would be easy to look back and see this as the beginning of a decline.
I do think there are too many people in the WordPress community to let this be the end. “Too big to fail” has bad connotations but WordPress truly has a big – and big-hearted – community. The good news about open source is that it can be “forked”, or split off and built into something new. This has been tried with WordPress in the past but unsuccessfully. There will be several major pieces required before it could work, including strong leadership, funding, and a software delivery solution that rivals wordpress.org. However, I strongly believe that while “WordPress” may have challenges ahead, it will continue to evolve and be a viable web solution for many years to come.
For more information
If you want to read a detailed history on this dispute, check out this TechCrunch article, which is continuing to add updates as things evolve. The site https://mattisnotwp.com is another good resource that also includes information on impacted plugins and themes.
