Timeline of the WordPress Drama

Over the past few weeks the WordPress community has gone through some corporate drama, starting with extortion-like messages and slander, escalating to cease and deists letters, and finally ending in a lawsuit. As I’ve closely followed the unraveling, I want to document a more detailed timeline and update it, as more data comes in. I try to keep my personal views and comments at the end of the article, but it’s clear that there will be some bias in the reporting.

tl;dr After Matt Mullenweg, BDFL of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, has dragged WP Engine publicly through the mud for not paying a ludicrous amount of money or contributing (enough) to the open source project, WP Engine is suing Automattic and Matt Mullenweg, while Automattic claims misuse of WordPress trademarks.

Stakeholders

A very brief overview of the different stakeholders in this whole drama, as to reduce confusion later on and because it is a bit tricky. I hope to expand this a bit more at a later point.

• WordPress.org
  • Home of the open source software WordPress and the plugin and theme repositories
  • Owned by Matt Mullenweg
  • Operated by Matt Mullenweg & Automattic
• WordPress.com
  • WordPress hosting company
  • Owned & operated by Automattic
• WordPress Foundation
  • Non-profit foundation to be the holder of the WordPress trademark
  • Board members include Matt Mullenweg
• Automattic
  • For-profit company operating WordPress.com and other WordPress related products
  • CEO: Matt Mullenweg
  • Former investor of WP Engine
• WP Engine
  • WordPress hosting company
  • CEO: Heather Brunner
• Silver Lake
  • Private Equity company
  • Majority shareholder of WP Engine
• BlackRock
  • Asset management company
  • One of the investors of Automattic

Timeline

2005

Automattic is founded. (Source: Wikipedia)

2010

WP Engine is founded. (Source: WP Engine)

2011

Automattic makes a substantial investment into WP Engine. (Sources: TechCrunch / WP Tavern)

2018

Private equity company Silver Lake invests $250 millions into WP Engine. (Source: Bloomberg)

Automattic stops being an investor of WP Engine. (Source: Hacker News)

July 12, 2024

The WordPress Foundation applies to be granted the trademarks “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress”. (Source: Project DMC)

September 20, 2024

Matt Mullenweg sends extortion-like messages shortly before his talk, mentioning to go “scorched earth nuclear” if the demands are not met. (Source: WP Engine)

Matt Mullenweg gives a talk at WordComp US with strong words against WP Engine and Silver Lake. (Source: YouTube)

September 21, 2024

Matt Mullenweg posts the article “WP Engine is not WordPress” on WordPress.org, which is shown on every WordPress installation (including WP Engine’s), given the News widget in the admin dashboard is enabled. In the article Matt calls WP Engine “a cancer to WordPress”. (Source: WordPress)

September 22, 2024

Rodrigo Ghedin writes “Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP”. (Source: Ghedin)

September 23, 2024

WP Engine sends a Cease and Desists letter to Automattic, to stop “false, misleading and disparaging statements”. (Source: WP Engine)

Automattic replies with their own Cease and Desists letter to WP Engine, to “immediately stop all unauthorized use of their trademarks”. (Source: Automattic)

September 24, 2024

The WordPress trademark policy is updated and explicitly mentions “WP Engine” as a negative example. (Source: Old, New, Diff)

September 25, 2024

WordPress.org actively blocks WP Engine from accessing the WordPress.org resources, including critical security updates of WordPress itself, plugins and themes. (Source: WordPress / WP Engine)

Additionally WP Engine employee accounts are disabled, which prevents updates to WP Engine’s plugins such as ACF. (Source: ACF / Twitter)

Dave Martin, former product designer at Automattic, writes “My thoughts on Matt’s Comments”. (Source: Dave Martin)

Pressable, a company purchased by Automattic, uses the situation to scoop WP Engine customers. (Source: Twitter / Pressable)

September 26, 2024

ThePrimagen (aka Prime) holds a spontaneous live interview with Matt Mullenweg. (Source: YouTube)

Ryan McCue writes “WP Engine Must Win”. (Source: Pre-Thought Listen)

September 27, 2024

WordPress temporarily lifts the WordPress.org ban for WP Engine under threat of enforcing the blockage again on the 1st of October. (Source: WordPress / Hacker News)

Josh Collinsworth writes “If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed”. (Source: Josh Collinsworth)

September 28, 2024

Theo (aka t3.gg) does an in-person interview with Matt Mullenweg, which was initiated by Matt. (Source: YouTube)

October 1, 2024

WP Engine is being blocked again by WordPress.org, it appears however, that WP Engine has successfully implemented a workaround. (Source: WP Engine)

CEO of Cloudflare offers to host WordPress.org for free. (Source: Twitter)

October 2, 2024

WP Engine files a lawsuit against Automattic as a company and Matt Mullenweg as an individual. (Source: WP Engine / Hacker News)

Automattic makes employees who don’t align with Matt Mullenweg’s vision a buyout offer of $30k or 6 months salary, whichever is higher. (Source: Twitter / Matt)

October 3, 2024

Automattic publishes a brief response to the lawsuit denying everything. (Source: Automattic)

159 employees (8.4% of the ~1700 employees) have take up the buyout and left Automattic. (Source: Twitter / Matt / TechCrunch)

Executive Director Josepha Haden leaves Automattic. (Source: Josepha / Twitter)

Matt Mullenweg states: “Automattic employs ~100 people that work full-time on WordPress.org. I can appoint them into positions on WordPress.org, if I think that’s appropriate.”. (Source: Hacker News)

Former Automattic employee was threated with legal action for talking about the buyout deal online. (Source: Medium)

October 4, 2024

Jeffrey Zeldman writes “I stayed.”. Zeldman is part of Automattic’s advisory board. (Source: Zeldman / Twitter)

Naoko Takano writes: “Leaving Automattic”. (Source: Naoko)

October 5, 2024

Matt Mullenweg asks for alternatives to ACF, mockingly hinting that many people will soon be looking for an alternative. (Source: Twitter)

Automattic discloses a vulnerability in ACF, but announces it publicly in violation of Intigriti’s Code of Conduct. (Source: Twitter)

Matt Mullenweg joins an Automattic alumni Slack instance and offers to pay for Slack. Whether this is to gain access to the Slack history or out pure altruistic motives, is left as an exercise to the reader. (Source: Twitter)

October 6, 2024

Interesting perspective on trademark law by a lawyer. (Source: WP and Legal Stuff)

Kaelon writes “I exit Founders for a living.” highlighting tendencies he has seen with many founders over the years. (Source: Twitter)

October 7, 2024

Automattic publishes the term sheet provided to WP Engine and a timeline of the trademark discussion leading up to WordCamp US this year. (Source: Automattic / Automattic)

October 8, 2024

Mary Hubbard (re)joins Automattic as Executive Director of WordPress.org. (Source: WordPress / Twitter)

David Heinemeier Hansson writes “Automattic is doing open source dirty”. (Source: Hey)

AspirePress publishes “A vision for AspirePress and a community-run .org mirror” (Source: AspirePress)

October 9, 2024

The WordPress.org login page was changed to require an acknowledgement, that you’re not affiliated with WP Engine. A link titled “WP Engine has filed a massive lawsuit” was briefly shown, but has since been removed. (Source: Reddit / Imgur / Twitter / Twitter)

People are getting banned from the WordPress Slack, for questioning the added login checkbox. (Source: Twitter)

Megan writes “Leaving WordPress (.org or WPF, still unsure which one)”. (Source: Megabyterose)

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Will be updated, as the drama continues…

Personal Comments

I’m deeply saddened to see a such a well-known open source project being destroyed from the inside out and that by the founder and BDFL of the project.

Separation of Concerns

The reason this could escalate as it has, is because of Matt Mullenweg being at the center of all of WordPress. He’s the BDFL of the open source project. He personally owns WordPress.org. He’s the main board member of the WordPress Foundation. He’s the CEO of Automattic, which owns WordPress.com and has an exclusive right to the WordPress trademark.

It might have played out differently, if Matt would have been able to clearly separate the different roles and entities. Misappropriating WordPress.org resources for Automattic and his personal gain to slander against WP Engine. At the same time using ~100 employees of Automattic to maintain WordPress.org, which should be an independent platform for the open source project and not an extension of Automattic. And then “donating” the trademark of WordPress to the WordPress Foundation, while on the same day giving Automattic the exclusive right to the trademark, essentially nullifying the whole point of moving the trademark in the first place.

Matt Mullenweg has fully blurred the lines between WordPress.org, the open source project, Automattic, and the foundation.

Open Source & Investors

I have previously written about FOSS & Funding and remain convinced of my position with regards to that topic. If you pick a permissive license, one that specifically allows the free use and distribution, one that doesn’t make any demands beyond publishing any modifications, then you have no grounds whatsoever to demand payment or contributions to the project. It doesn’t matter at all, how much other companies and other projects have been giving back and been contributing. The open source project profits from the permissive license. It attracts people and receives contributions, because people know that their work will remain free and accessible, and thus the project becomes more popular. More popular projects are picked up by commercial entities, who will likely make money from using the software.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

This doesn’t mean, that I’m all for private equity companies, which hollow out existing products and leech off of free stuff. I’m fully onboard that this is an ethical topic and that companies should invest and payback for all of the free software they’re profiting from. However, there’s a big gap between what one “should do” and what one “has to do” and it seems to me, that a lot of people are somehow unable to keep the two separated.

Trademark Issue

Matt Mullenweg and Automattic take the alleged trademark violation as the primary focus in this whole drama. Seeing the attacks by Matt Mullenweg towards WP Engine and reading about how the trademark was celebratorily moved to the foundation and very quietly moved back to Automattic the same day, it feels like the trademark issue is much more a front than anything else.

There are hundreds or thousands of tiny to large companies that provide WordPress hosting, plugin development or consulting around WordPress. A lot of them use “WP” in their name, because the trademark had always explicitly allowed for that. Most of them will also use “WordPress” in various ways, to highlight their offered services. Yet, WP Engine should somehow be the only company in the world, in violation of the WordPress trademark?

Going after a single company with 8% revenue demands on the basis of trademark, after Automattic themselves had been an investor of WP Engine for many years, having not enforced the trademark claims for many, many year, having gotten new trademarks just months earlier, and targeting your (likely) biggest competitor, smells really bad.

Of course I’m not a lawyer, but if Matt Mullenweg had strong legal grounds for the trademark issue on its own, he wouldn’t had to go and drag WP Engine through the dirt online. A simple cease and desist letter with escalation to court should’ve then been the first and only steps to take. Personally, I think Matt knows that his trademark claims have no, to little merit and thus tried to extort WP Engine, then force them in a public slander campaign, but in doing so lost a lot of trust and support.

This whole topic is clearly not just about trademarks, but a way to hurt the competition and likely some personal grouches that Matt holds.

Reflecting on my BDFL Role for SFML

The WordPress drama has given me a lot of pause, given my own BDFL role for SFML. How can I ensure that SFML succeeds, even if I turn “evil” or grow distant from the community?

Laurent, the author of SFML, has managed to find successors by giving power to the community members, who wanted to see change, and then slowly over time, he let others sit in the driver seat. I seems to me that this is the way to go, once you notice a certain resistance from the community and realize that you’re the person in the way. It’s certainly not an easy step, since you give up part of your own creation and have the risk of other butchering your baby.

At the same time, I also see that SFML is a lot different than WordPress. We don’t have commercial entities that build and maintain SFML, but it’s currently all done in our free time and with lots of contributions from the community. As such there isn’t a conflict of interest to begin with.

I have planned to go over all they “keys” to all the “castles” I currently hold and ensure, that I’m not the only holder of those keys. This doesn’t just help with reducing the risk of “evil me” taking over, but would also help in case something ever happen to me.

Positive Outcomes

I believe that we as an open source community can learn from this situation and hope that we can use it in positive ways to better our own (niche) ecosystems.

I’d like to see repository projects like WordPress.org to make themselves redundant in both meanings of the word. Providing options so others can host their own repositories and distributing the load and governance.

Seeing other, more modern projects getting new traffic, both in contributions and user base, is a good thing, as more competition generally leads to better products, for both developers and customers.

Finally, there is still a glimmer of hope, that Matt Mullenweg realizes, that he’s in the way and finally sets up a proper governance structure for WordPress and WordPress.org.