The wordpress community is entering it's second or third week of carnage. Matt Mullenweg, a co-founder (and current dictator) of wordpress has been launching an unending tirade of accusations towards WP Engine, a competitor to Matts business in the hosted wordpress scene. Matt runs Automattic which owns wordpress.com, pressable, woocommerce, WPVIP and various other businesses that monetise wordpress to the tune of ~700mill p/a.
This allegedly started months and months ago when Matt wanted WP Engine to contribute back more towards wordpress. This dragged on and ended up with Matt delivering an ultimatum - 8% of gross revenue or he'll deliver a talk at Wordcamp (comic-con for wordpress) about WP Engine and their practices. They didn't take the offer, so he followed through and delivered his talk, calling them such things as "a cancer on wordpress" and calling for people to vote with their wallets and change host.
Since then, Matt has:
1. Banned WP Engine, and all their customers from accessing the plugins and themes repository at wordpress.org
2. Banned all WP Engine employees from wordpress.org, meaning they can no longer update the plugins & themes that they maintain for the wordpress community
3. Disclosed publicly that a WP Engine plugin (ACF) had a vulnerability and users weren't safe. Meanwhile, WP Engine couldn't update the plugin seeing as, you know, banned.
4. Added a checkbox on the wordpress login page indicating that you must agree "you are not directly affiliated with WP Engine"
5. Gone on several livestreams and podcasts, including giving himself
a fucking nosebleed during one without even realising.
6. Made numerous manic tweets daily, both on his own photomatt account and via the official wordpress account.
7. Offered his own employees either 30k, or 6 months wages if they choose to leave over his decision making. (~10% of the company ended up taking the offer)
8. Taken over a WP Engine plugin inside wordpress.org - ACF (advanced custom fields) was renamed to SCF (secure custom fields) and is now integrated into wordpress core.
Both sides have issued cease and desists at each other, with WP Engine following up with legal action. Matt's been screaming into the void on hacker news, reddit, twitter - several twitter accounts and just generally, acting like an unhinged lunatic.
Come take a peek at one man fighting back against venture capital in open source and somehow, making everyone side with venture capital.
