Over the last few weeks, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg has made one thing abundantly clear: he is responsible for the future of WordPress.
Mullenweg leads WordPress.com and its parent company Automattic. He is the owner of the WordPress.org project and even heads the charitable foundation that controls the WordPress brand. To the outside observer, these might appear to be independent organizations, each designed separately around the open source WordPress project. But as he wages a battle against WP Engine, a third-party WordPress hosting service, Mullenweg has blurred the lines between three essential entities that lead a sprawling ecosystem that powers nearly half of the web.
For Mullenweg, this is all fine – as long as it supports the long-term health of WordPress.
“WordPress.org is just mine personally,” Mullenweg said during an interview with The edge. WordPress.org exists outside of Automattic's commercial arm as a standalone publishing platform that provides free access to its open source code that allows users to build their own websites. But it is not a neutral, independent arbiter of the ecosystem. “In my role as owner of WordPress.org, I do not want to promote a company that A: legally threatens me and B: uses the WordPress brand. This is one of the reasons why we have blocked access to the servers.”
“That’s right: we’re putting pressure on it”
Mullenweg's feud with WP Engine is spreading in several directions. He criticized WP Engine for not investing enough time and money into developing the open source WordPress ecosystem, saying that if you donated a dollar to the WordPress Foundation, “you would be a bigger donor than WP Engine.” And Mullenweg raised the possibility that WP Engine “hacked” Automatic’s WooCommerce plugin to collect commissions intended for Automattic, which WP Engine has denied. What is clear from these arguments is that the battle is over what is appropriate and what is not in the world of open source software.
But Mullenweg has since brushed aside those arguments, arguing that WP Engine – and its “chopped up, bastardized simulacra” of WordPress open source code, as he describes it – violates Automattic's trademark: WordPress.
“The analogy I made is that they got Al Capone because of taxes,” Mullenweg says. “So if a company was making half a billion dollars from WordPress and paying back about $100,000 a year, I would try to get them to contribute more.” WP Engine competes directly with hosting services from Automattic and WordPress.com, and Mullenweg argues that one of the reasons for his success is the use of “WordPress” on his website. “That's why we're using this legal avenue to really put pressure on them. That’s right: we’re putting pressure on you.”
Mullenweg launched his public pressure campaign last month during a WordPress conference, urging people to “vote with their wallets” and stop supporting WP Engine. He later described the service as a “cancer” for the WordPress ecosystem. Mullenweg eventually blocked WP Engine from WordPress.org's servers, preventing WP Engine's customers from installing themes, plugins, and updates.
The decision to abolish WP Engine also put other WordPress projects in a precarious position. WordPress is open source and can be used free of charge, there is no right of return. But Mullenweg made it clear that there is a hurdle that successful projects must meet in order to stay off Automattic's radar.
“I’m happy to make WordPress.org services available to literally any other host,” says Mullenweg. There is “no obligation to give anything back. WordPress will forever and ever be open source and therefore there will never be a legal obligation to give back.” But WordPress still “requires” companies to contribute something. “It’s better for WordPress if they give something back.”
For WP Engine, it comes down to this: Mullenweg wants the company to contribute to WordPress, whether by paying to license the WordPress brand or by contributing to the open source WordPress project.
Although the WordPress Foundation controls the platform's trademark, the commercial rights for this trademark are licensed to Automattic. This means Automattic can charge other companies for commercial use of the WordPress brand – and this is where Mullenweg was able to put pressure on WP Engine.
“What they are doing is not right. It's not that they call it WP; It’s because they use the WordPress brand in a confusing way,” Mullenweg said. He pointed to the “hectic changes” he said WP Engine made to its website to remove mentions of “WordPress” after the dispute began. According to the WordPress Foundation's brand guidelines, companies can use the WordPress name and logo to “refer to and explain their services.”
The foundation says the abbreviation “WP” is not covered by its trademarks, but guidelines were recently adjusted to say companies should no longer use the abbreviation in “a way that confuses people.” While The edgeIn his interview, Mullenweg confirmed that he had changed the foundation's brand guidelines to include an “attack on WP Engine.” The policy now states that WP Engine “has never donated to the WordPress Foundation once, despite generating billions in revenue in addition to WordPress.”
This week, Automattic released its proposed solution to the dispute: a seven-year deal that would require WP Engine to pay an 8 percent fee on all revenue to either use the WordPress and Automattic WooCommerce brands or to compensate employees who would contribute to WordPress Open- Source Project. The deal was offered in late September, but Mullenweg says it's off the table due to “WP Engine's conduct, deception and incompetence.”
The dispute culminated in a lawsuit in which WP Engine accused Automattic and Mullenweg of extortion. WP Engine claims Mullenweg said he would proceed with a “scorched earth nuclear approach” after the two failed to reach an agreement. “When WPE refused to capitulate to Automattic’s astronomical and extortionate demands for money, Mullenweg followed through on his threats,” claims WP Engine. “The threat of war became an attack on multiple fronts, part of an overarching plan to extort payouts from WPE.”
In the lawsuit, WP Engine claims Mullenweg is trying to “capitalize on the chaos he created” by promoting a deal to move to Pressable – another WordPress host owned by Automattic. The filing also includes a purported job offer from Mullenweg to WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner, saying he would tell the CEO of Silver Lake — the private equity firm that owns WP Engine — if she refused to join Automattic.
WordPress CEO Josepha Haden Chomphosy has since left Automattic, along with more than 150 other employees who accepted Mullenweg's offer to leave for $30,000 or six months' salary, whichever is greater, if they fight his fight against WP Engine does not support.
More importantly, WP Engine's lawsuit raises concerns about corporate overreach, alleging that Mullenweg's actions “reflect a clear abuse of his conflicting roles” at the WordPress Foundation, Automattic, and the open source WordPress Project. In a statement Thursday, Automattic called the lawsuit “baseless” and added that it rejects WP Engine's claims, “which are gross misrepresentations of reality.”
Whatever the outcome of the legal case, it has become clear that Mullenweg does Control WordPress.org. But its battle with WP Engine has only made the line between WordPress and Automattic more unclear and cast a shadow of uncertainty over the open source community that has long supported it. That seems to be a risk Automattic is willing to take as long as WordPress stays ahead.