- Joined
- Dec 3, 2023
A quick who's who.
Matt Mullenweg (www.ma.tt) is a co-founder of wordpress. As wordpress has gradually grown to be used by millions of websites around the world, and indeed being used for 43% of websites (archive), Matt has leveraged his position to create secondary business to grow and profit from the work gone into wordpress.
1. Wordpress.org. Matt owns and is the dictator of wordpress.org. Wordpress.org is free for anyone to to use but you need to find a host to use with it. Wordpress.org has the wordpress foundation, of which people are employed (by Automattic) and then assigned to work here. Importantly, Matt isn't shy of saying "Wordpress.org belongs to him" (archive). Lastly, the wordpress foundation owns the WordPress trademark. The Foundation has granted Automattic exclusive rights to exploit that license commercially. Not just to use the trademark in its own business activities... but to sub-license it to third parties for profit.
2. Wordpress.com is the "managed wordpress" arm of wordpress. In short, you pay them to host your site and you get much, much more power over what you can do with your site. Wordpress has a vast library of plugins and themes, both paid and free, any of which can be installed so long as you're on a paid plan. Automattic owns wordpress.com.
3. Automattic (automattic.com) is the parent company of wordpress.com, the money maker. Matt is the CEO at automattic. Automattic also own several huge plugins, such as Woocommerce, the defacto e-commerce plugin for wordpress.
If it sounds confusing that's because it is, people have been confused and misled for over 20 years. So much so that the permanent sticky in the wordpress subreddit is to also answer this question.
WP Engine sell Wordpress hosting, (archive) and as such are a competitor to wordpress.com. They place(d) a heavy emphasis on good customer support, technical knowledge and being developer-friendly.
WP Engine also have an aggressive approach to marketing, offered extremely generous affiliate rewards etc. A few years ago they got bought our by Silver Lake capital (archive) - a hyper rich investment firm. While I haven't used wordpress in a few years, the last time I did was with WP Engine and their support really was quite good however, while reading all this drama I was disappointed to learn that quite a lot of people were complaining that this has deteriorated in the years since - likely a result of being bought out and an investment firms need for profits above all else but I digress. My general point here is that WP Engine offered a "boutique" wordpress hosting service, and they charged more than everyone else. Despite this, because of their focus on brilliant customer support - they made a name for themselves as probably the best wordpress host in the business.
WP Engine grew for years off their name and now they're quite big with revenue almost approaching that of Automattic itself.
Forenote: please pay note to the domains as I mention them. It's very easy to confuse wordpress.com with wordpress.org. Quick rule of thumb: wordpress.com = paid. wordpress.org = free download but you either host it yourself or pay someone else to.
Wordpress is open source, anyone can use it. Anyone can host it and sell hosting for it. There is nothing to compel anyone or any thing to "give back", though if you've built a business on selling wordpress hosting, it's generally in your own best interest to contribute back and help grow the core product. Thousands of people have contributed to wordpress over the last 20 years, numerous wordpress hosts have contributed in their own ways. Some more than others, some not at all.
With that out of the way.
Matt has insecurity issues. Every now and again he has these schizo episodes, the one that comes to mind immediately is the time he chased off a tranny for posting porn to tumblr (based) but it backfired on him because it's 2024 and you can't do that shit matt, naughty (archive). He's also called Godaddy a cancer to wordpress (archive), later on this will prove more than ironic. He's also made weird and snide remarks about people he's worked with in the past. In short, nothing terrible, but enough to make you remember that something doesn't smell quite right with Matt. I should note here that Blackrock (yes, the largest investment/asset management firm in the world) has a stake in Automattic (archive) - more on this later.
There's more to this than just wordpress though, there's plugins. Automattic owns the largest ecommerce plugin named woocommerce. This is basically the defacto business tool for wordpress. This is serious, big business. WP Engine also own a few plugins, notably ACF (advanced custom fields) which is very, very popular among developers and wordpress power users. It's pretty adored and like another user commented on reddit, it's argaubly the jewel in WP Engines crown.
In early October matt's menstrual cycle misfired or something and he decided WP Engine needs to die. Why? Well in Matts own words there are a few reasons:
1. WP Engine doesn't contribute enough back to wordpress itself
2. WP Engine were infringing on a trademark by using the term "Wordpress hosting", or "Managed wordpress" or something along those lines. Notably, WP Engine later revised the wording on their site to rectify this.
3. According to Matt (archive), people were starting to think that WP Engine was wordpress itself. Wordpress engine. This has merit, though it should be noted too that WP isn't trademarked and is free to use. Like in #2, wordpress.org later changed their wording on this once the war started. I'll elaborate a bit more on this later too, it gets very....petty.
Matt claims that WP Engine were only contributing 40 hours a week to wordpress development. Whether this is true or not is anyones guess. Nobody can force WP Engine to contribute at all but it can also be argued that if you're generating upwards of 400million p/a, then you probably should contribute more. Automattic on the other hand had a system in place for their employees where 5% of their time was to be devoted to either developing wordpress core, or advancing it in some way. No matter what way you look at it, true or not, this is pretty admirable. Don't forget though that while wordpress is open source, Automattic stand to profit from their contributions to wordpress core so while they are giving back, they profit from it too. Conversely, WP Engine will profit from these contributions too.
Trademark and name confusion:
In Matts own words, even his own mother thought WP Engine was wordpress. Maybe this spurred him to start all this mess but who knows. Wordpress is a massive part of the internet, there are many, MANY companies that offer wordpress hosting. From namecheap, to godaddy, to basically everyone that offers ANY type of hosting - Amazon, google etc.
So what did Matt do?
Here's a timeline that may be off in parts but it's how I understood it so you'll have to either take my word or read up yourselves (the wordpress subreddit has a lot of info)
Wordpress has a convention called Wordcamp. It's a yearly thing where enthusiasts, developers and businesses that use wordpress meet up, share ideas, network and all that boring shit. Matt usually gives a talk. Matt spent a good portion of his talk (youtube video of the talk), basically talking shit about WP Engine, calling them "a cancer to wordpress" and in no uncertain terms, advising people to move away from them. WP Engine always have a booth at these conventions and at this specific one, had forked out for the afterparty for all the attendees plus paid for one of the special booth things so it's pretty humurous really.
Things escalated quite quickly after this. Allegedly, Matt had several phone calls with people at WP Engine demanding some kind of licensing agreement and a portion of revenue. 8% of total revenue to be precise.
This was quickly followed up by several pieces on the wordpress.com blog: https://wordpress.org/news/
When wordpress publishes these posts, they show up in the admin panel for every single wordpress install. So to cut to the chase, WP Engine customers were logging in to find these news pieces staring them in the face. WP Engine disabled this on their customers sites quickly afterwards which to be honest, is kinda fucked up too - WP Engine unfortunately, does have a history of this though.
Moving on, as you can see in the time of the postings above, this was quickly followed by banning WP Engine (and it's customers) from accessing the wordpress.org plugin & theme repository. This cannot be understated - wordpress has a stigma attached that it's frequently vulnerable, often ran by hobbyists so not updated (etc) and this leads to a lot of wordpress sites getting hacked and defaced.
So WP Engines developer accounts at wordpress.org were banned, and their customers were unable to update any themes, plugins or even wordpress itself. Quickly afterwards, Automattic made a "responsible disclosure" (archive) to WP Engine that there was a critical vulnerability in ACF (archive) and they expect it fixed within 30 days, lest it be made public which is normal procedure for reporting vulnerabilities. Keep in mind that WP Engine cannot update the plugin, they no longer have access. To cut to the point, now those at risk are not just WP Engine customers, but users of ACF which will number in the hundreds of thousands (archive)
WP Engine eventually responded, I'll just screencap the tweets. Note the dates:
Cease and desist here - https://wpengine.com/wp-content/upl...ic-and-Request-to-Preserve-Documents-Sent.pdf
Throughout this Matt has faced a lot of internal backlast at Automattic. So much so in fact, that he offered anyone that didn't agree with his leadership to leave amicably with either 30k, or 2 months wages, whichever is higher. Not a bad deal to be fair. Quite tellingly though, 8.4% of the Automattic workforce decided to take the offer.
Moving on, WP Engine was blocked and they needed to sort out their own shit to rival and replace what wordpress.org offered. They eventually did after a day or two, likely by either proxying the wordpress.org repository or by mirroring it themselves. Either way, they had a fix in place. Wordpress stated afterwards the block is removed, WP Engine claim they're still blocked - who knows.
This is where we're at currently. The atmosphere around this whole thing has blown up in Matts face. Even reddit has turned against him. Essentially, he's proven that he can and will, act of his own free will with the power wordpress holds. Not just towards anyone in specific, but unconcerned and innocent customers be damned. Matts shown himself to be a dictator and it's hard to see how this proceeds without Matt relinquishing his positions (IMO).
Notes:
I'll edit this post with links archives and screencaps but for now you can find everything here:
https://ma.tt/ (he's written several pieces)
https://wordpress.org/news/ (again, several pieces)
https://old.reddit.com/r/wordpress (literally ~20 threads and 2 megathreads just about this topic spanning the last 7 days.
reddit megathread one:
reddit megathread two:
edit: dear friend of the farms, esteemed matthew prince of course chimes in with "help"
Matt Mullenweg (www.ma.tt) is a co-founder of wordpress. As wordpress has gradually grown to be used by millions of websites around the world, and indeed being used for 43% of websites (archive), Matt has leveraged his position to create secondary business to grow and profit from the work gone into wordpress.
1. Wordpress.org. Matt owns and is the dictator of wordpress.org. Wordpress.org is free for anyone to to use but you need to find a host to use with it. Wordpress.org has the wordpress foundation, of which people are employed (by Automattic) and then assigned to work here. Importantly, Matt isn't shy of saying "Wordpress.org belongs to him" (archive). Lastly, the wordpress foundation owns the WordPress trademark. The Foundation has granted Automattic exclusive rights to exploit that license commercially. Not just to use the trademark in its own business activities... but to sub-license it to third parties for profit.
2. Wordpress.com is the "managed wordpress" arm of wordpress. In short, you pay them to host your site and you get much, much more power over what you can do with your site. Wordpress has a vast library of plugins and themes, both paid and free, any of which can be installed so long as you're on a paid plan. Automattic owns wordpress.com.
3. Automattic (automattic.com) is the parent company of wordpress.com, the money maker. Matt is the CEO at automattic. Automattic also own several huge plugins, such as Woocommerce, the defacto e-commerce plugin for wordpress.
If it sounds confusing that's because it is, people have been confused and misled for over 20 years. So much so that the permanent sticky in the wordpress subreddit is to also answer this question.
WP Engine sell Wordpress hosting, (archive) and as such are a competitor to wordpress.com. They place(d) a heavy emphasis on good customer support, technical knowledge and being developer-friendly.
WP Engine also have an aggressive approach to marketing, offered extremely generous affiliate rewards etc. A few years ago they got bought our by Silver Lake capital (archive) - a hyper rich investment firm. While I haven't used wordpress in a few years, the last time I did was with WP Engine and their support really was quite good however, while reading all this drama I was disappointed to learn that quite a lot of people were complaining that this has deteriorated in the years since - likely a result of being bought out and an investment firms need for profits above all else but I digress. My general point here is that WP Engine offered a "boutique" wordpress hosting service, and they charged more than everyone else. Despite this, because of their focus on brilliant customer support - they made a name for themselves as probably the best wordpress host in the business.
WP Engine grew for years off their name and now they're quite big with revenue almost approaching that of Automattic itself.
Forenote: please pay note to the domains as I mention them. It's very easy to confuse wordpress.com with wordpress.org. Quick rule of thumb: wordpress.com = paid. wordpress.org = free download but you either host it yourself or pay someone else to.
Wordpress is open source, anyone can use it. Anyone can host it and sell hosting for it. There is nothing to compel anyone or any thing to "give back", though if you've built a business on selling wordpress hosting, it's generally in your own best interest to contribute back and help grow the core product. Thousands of people have contributed to wordpress over the last 20 years, numerous wordpress hosts have contributed in their own ways. Some more than others, some not at all.
With that out of the way.
Matt has insecurity issues. Every now and again he has these schizo episodes, the one that comes to mind immediately is the time he chased off a tranny for posting porn to tumblr (based) but it backfired on him because it's 2024 and you can't do that shit matt, naughty (archive). He's also called Godaddy a cancer to wordpress (archive), later on this will prove more than ironic. He's also made weird and snide remarks about people he's worked with in the past. In short, nothing terrible, but enough to make you remember that something doesn't smell quite right with Matt. I should note here that Blackrock (yes, the largest investment/asset management firm in the world) has a stake in Automattic (archive) - more on this later.
There's more to this than just wordpress though, there's plugins. Automattic owns the largest ecommerce plugin named woocommerce. This is basically the defacto business tool for wordpress. This is serious, big business. WP Engine also own a few plugins, notably ACF (advanced custom fields) which is very, very popular among developers and wordpress power users. It's pretty adored and like another user commented on reddit, it's argaubly the jewel in WP Engines crown.
In early October matt's menstrual cycle misfired or something and he decided WP Engine needs to die. Why? Well in Matts own words there are a few reasons:
1. WP Engine doesn't contribute enough back to wordpress itself
2. WP Engine were infringing on a trademark by using the term "Wordpress hosting", or "Managed wordpress" or something along those lines. Notably, WP Engine later revised the wording on their site to rectify this.
3. According to Matt (archive), people were starting to think that WP Engine was wordpress itself. Wordpress engine. This has merit, though it should be noted too that WP isn't trademarked and is free to use. Like in #2, wordpress.org later changed their wording on this once the war started. I'll elaborate a bit more on this later too, it gets very....petty.
Matt claims that WP Engine were only contributing 40 hours a week to wordpress development. Whether this is true or not is anyones guess. Nobody can force WP Engine to contribute at all but it can also be argued that if you're generating upwards of 400million p/a, then you probably should contribute more. Automattic on the other hand had a system in place for their employees where 5% of their time was to be devoted to either developing wordpress core, or advancing it in some way. No matter what way you look at it, true or not, this is pretty admirable. Don't forget though that while wordpress is open source, Automattic stand to profit from their contributions to wordpress core so while they are giving back, they profit from it too. Conversely, WP Engine will profit from these contributions too.
Trademark and name confusion:
In Matts own words, even his own mother thought WP Engine was wordpress. Maybe this spurred him to start all this mess but who knows. Wordpress is a massive part of the internet, there are many, MANY companies that offer wordpress hosting. From namecheap, to godaddy, to basically everyone that offers ANY type of hosting - Amazon, google etc.
So what did Matt do?
Here's a timeline that may be off in parts but it's how I understood it so you'll have to either take my word or read up yourselves (the wordpress subreddit has a lot of info)
Wordpress has a convention called Wordcamp. It's a yearly thing where enthusiasts, developers and businesses that use wordpress meet up, share ideas, network and all that boring shit. Matt usually gives a talk. Matt spent a good portion of his talk (youtube video of the talk), basically talking shit about WP Engine, calling them "a cancer to wordpress" and in no uncertain terms, advising people to move away from them. WP Engine always have a booth at these conventions and at this specific one, had forked out for the afterparty for all the attendees plus paid for one of the special booth things so it's pretty humurous really.
Things escalated quite quickly after this. Allegedly, Matt had several phone calls with people at WP Engine demanding some kind of licensing agreement and a portion of revenue. 8% of total revenue to be precise.
This was quickly followed up by several pieces on the wordpress.com blog: https://wordpress.org/news/
When wordpress publishes these posts, they show up in the admin panel for every single wordpress install. So to cut to the chase, WP Engine customers were logging in to find these news pieces staring them in the face. WP Engine disabled this on their customers sites quickly afterwards which to be honest, is kinda fucked up too - WP Engine unfortunately, does have a history of this though.
Moving on, as you can see in the time of the postings above, this was quickly followed by banning WP Engine (and it's customers) from accessing the wordpress.org plugin & theme repository. This cannot be understated - wordpress has a stigma attached that it's frequently vulnerable, often ran by hobbyists so not updated (etc) and this leads to a lot of wordpress sites getting hacked and defaced.
So WP Engines developer accounts at wordpress.org were banned, and their customers were unable to update any themes, plugins or even wordpress itself. Quickly afterwards, Automattic made a "responsible disclosure" (archive) to WP Engine that there was a critical vulnerability in ACF (archive) and they expect it fixed within 30 days, lest it be made public which is normal procedure for reporting vulnerabilities. Keep in mind that WP Engine cannot update the plugin, they no longer have access. To cut to the point, now those at risk are not just WP Engine customers, but users of ACF which will number in the hundreds of thousands (archive)
WP Engine eventually responded, I'll just screencap the tweets. Note the dates:
Cease and desist here - https://wpengine.com/wp-content/upl...ic-and-Request-to-Preserve-Documents-Sent.pdf
Throughout this Matt has faced a lot of internal backlast at Automattic. So much so in fact, that he offered anyone that didn't agree with his leadership to leave amicably with either 30k, or 2 months wages, whichever is higher. Not a bad deal to be fair. Quite tellingly though, 8.4% of the Automattic workforce decided to take the offer.
Moving on, WP Engine was blocked and they needed to sort out their own shit to rival and replace what wordpress.org offered. They eventually did after a day or two, likely by either proxying the wordpress.org repository or by mirroring it themselves. Either way, they had a fix in place. Wordpress stated afterwards the block is removed, WP Engine claim they're still blocked - who knows.
This is where we're at currently. The atmosphere around this whole thing has blown up in Matts face. Even reddit has turned against him. Essentially, he's proven that he can and will, act of his own free will with the power wordpress holds. Not just towards anyone in specific, but unconcerned and innocent customers be damned. Matts shown himself to be a dictator and it's hard to see how this proceeds without Matt relinquishing his positions (IMO).
Notes:
I'll edit this post with links archives and screencaps but for now you can find everything here:
https://ma.tt/ (he's written several pieces)
https://wordpress.org/news/ (again, several pieces)
https://old.reddit.com/r/wordpress (literally ~20 threads and 2 megathreads just about this topic spanning the last 7 days.
reddit megathread one:
reddit megathread two:
edit: dear friend of the farms, esteemed matthew prince of course chimes in with "help"
Last edited:
