Regardless of the legal merits of what Automattic is asking of WP Engine, this whole episode has really made me look at Matt in a different way. He seems like an angry, petulant kid instead of a Forbes list CEO. Every time something like this happens he immediately switches into victim mode: oh, they made me do it, I had no choice. And yet he always has better options, he just never takes them. The following is just my opinion based on all the discussions to date and the two cease and desist letters. If anything isn't accurate, let me know and I'll fix it. I'm not a lawyer, but:
1) he alledgedly tried to extract money with a supposed trademark claim (according to the WPE C&D letter) out of WP Engine using his keynote address as leverage at WCUS, completely disrespecting all the hard work the organizers did, WP Engine due to being a 75k sponsor, and all the WP Engine employees who were there. Sponsors have to go through the WordPress Foundation, so everyone involved knew they would be there. Then to claim the reason you are kicking them out is because of a trademark violation you likely knew about before the conference, if true, is laughable.
2) he then writes a pseudo hit piece against WP Engine and puts it on WordPress.org, seemingly because he knows it’ll be sucked into the admin of WordPress sites, including those in WP Engine. Can you imagine if Audi managed to have all the BMW radios suddenly play anti BMW messages and what a legal shit storm you’d be in if you did that?
3) he then comes on here and writes a few comments trying to point out his side of things. When people are genuinely not happy with his responses, he calls everyone Reddit trolls, likely WPE employees or something to that effect.
4) during all of this, it’s discovered that the WordPress foundation has applied for the trademarks to Hosted WordPress and Managed WordPress, something Matt never alluded to in any of his talks. It seems the best case scenario here is WordPress wants to use these trademarks to force the 8% out of WP Engine. The worse case scenario is they may want to attempt to extract this amount from all providers in the space. I have no issue with wanting these companies to contribute more to WordPress, I just think doing a mafia style shakedown isn’t the way to get it done.
5) last night he was going off on Twitter saying WP Engine “hacked” the admin so it no longer shows his post and acting like it’s a major issue. Well you know, I wouldn’t really want messaging against my own company showing up in my own admin either, so what did he expect. Calling it some hack just plays into some weird narrative about how wronged he has been, even though this “hack” is a a simple WordPress filter that many people use on their websites to do the same.
6) the actual cease and desist filed by Automattic seems like all smoke and no fire. Out of 460 million or so WordPress sites in the world (along with their owners), they have presented about 6 or 7 random examples of people confusing the two.
7) Once again, Matt seems completely oblivious to any of the feedback he’s getting from the community and simply doubling down on his narrative. I haven’t seen him answer a single negative tweet about this and is instead focused on retweeting the one or two people with 50 followers who say they are behind him. How can you say you represent the community when you don’t even acknowledge the concerns of a sizeable portion of it?
I feel like I’m watching Thelma and Louise at this point, and we are nearing the end with Matt getting in the car with the WordPress community in the other seat. He seems hell bent on driving the entire thing off a cliff just to settle some weird personal conflict with the WP Engine investor group.
The guy has done a lot for WordPress and the WordPress community. He revolutionized the internet, and I don’t think he gets enough credit for that. I tip my hat to the guy and all the Automatticians who work tirelessly to improve WordPress. But this path he’s set everyone on seems like captain Ahab going after a whale, and I’m worried it’s going to end up the same way. Even if the goal was reasonable, trying to get corporations like WP Engine to contribute more, the way he's done it seems so horrible for the community, and he's coming across as a huge bully. Every single person I know who is heavily invested in WordPress and has contributed code via plugins, themes, or core commits, have all been unanimous in saying to me privately that they are extremely worried this is going to permanently fracture the community.
TLDR: Everyone appreciates what Matt has done for the community, but it seems like he may have gone too far down the wrong road with this approach.
I agree. It makes me concerned for the future of WordPress. It’s like he regrets making WordPress open source, and now is trying retroactively monetize more of it.
“He seems like an angry, petulant kid instead of a Forbes list CEO” – isn’t that what a Forbes list CEO is?
It is certainly worrisome. The board of Automattic needs to either reign him in or relieve him of his duties. This is not how you treat sponsors, companies, and people invested in a community. It’s hard enough to convince small business owners that WordPress is the way to go over Wix and SquareSpace. If they see this behavior and the drama it has created, it’s only going to be more difficult to convince them that open source is a far better direction than proprietary website builders. I’m actually considering exploring other open source CMS systems. I used to use CMS Made Simple, before I switched to WordPress a decade ago, and I may have to give it another look.
Yes.
He’s been doing stuff like this well over a decade. It’s tiring and looks bad.
WPengine is a great host and doesn’t owe them anything. But it would be nice if they did offer contributions from a morality standpoint.
He should worry more about why classic editor is the most downloaded plug-in. Gutenberg ain’t it.
Also, WPengine still offers ACF for free. That alone is a huge benefit to the community since it is not native in a standard WP install.
Matt made an absolutely boneheaded statement and an absolutely boneheaded time. Really bad optics.
If I were WPE, I’d offer their customers ACF Pro with every yearly hosting contract.
It was bad enough dealing with the “Using official WordPress project social media accounts to stump for a crowdfunding campaign he liked” situation, let alone the Tumblr meltdown, but this entire debacle is reading more and more that he _absolutely_ should not be steering the ship still. Dredging deep into the *Elon Musk School of CEO Tantrums* is not going to instill confidence into people like me who make a living off supporting WordPress.
100% agree, and well written.
One thing I find interesting is that as far as I know Godaddy is in Automatic’s good books yet contributions and sponsoring aside, the harm that Godaddy’s hosting does to WordPress’s reputation I would argue far outways any contribution that they make. On the flip side, while I think WP Engine is pretty average hosting, its hard to argue that they do any damage to WordPress’s reputation, and if anything, make a positive construction to people’s perceptions of WordPress. WP Engine also makes a heap of useful WordPress plugins that mostly have free versions on the WordPress Plugin Directory.
I don’t think he was ever a true CEO in the first place.
Automattics best product is WooCommerce which they bought. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the classic editor got 10 million more downloads in the next few years.
I agree that he is displaying the communication skills of a child. Next he’ll go all Elon and offer to solve all the internet problem cause only he can do it. Ugh
While I agree that is isn’t good for the community it isn’t because the “outside” world hears about this. They don’t even realize nor care. But what is does so is highlight his unwillingness to listen to the community, the same community who transformed his blog into a much bigger platform. The community that built almost every conceivable plugin!
This happened before but as such a small scale that many dint realize it. The ClassicPress Foundation.
I do hope that he gets removed from the board of the WordPress Foundation, but I doubt it. He steers this ship however Ahab-like he wants to.
Trademarking a description (like managed WordPress) is going to have far-reaching implications if he succeeds. Not only in the WordPress world. And none of it will be good for the community who, like many of us offer WordPress services – many even managed WordPress services. It’ll need rules and either he can enforce them which means we’re all affected or he wont be able to and it’s just making him and WordPress look less professional.
I think his current behavior makes many rethink why they should-be building in react, vue, etc, php or look at other frameworks and therefore not growing the adoption/use of WordPress. This isn’t because if this threatening stance, but that it highlights his unwillingness to listen to issues that have plagued WordPress for years (backend and architecture). But thats too much for this post.
Maybe he should invest his millions into ensuring WordPress get into the future. Maybe its Automattic’s money is too much? I mean they just keep buying up companies and bleeding the little guys (see recent Jetpack changes). But we know that his type of development leaves a lot of constructions sites behind. Like decades long.
So, popcorn anyone? Some of it may leave a sour taste in your mouth though….
Personally, I’m not a fan of WPE, but I lay responsibility for this debacle squarely on Matt. I hope he fixes it soon, but so far he seems committed to doubling down. That’s unfortunate.
On point 5, Matt Mullenweg personally controls what gets shown in the News feed in the admin. Unsurprisingly, [respected members of the community have suggested focusing on actual news instead of his personal opinions](https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5445). It’s a real problem that the WP Tavern is included in it, when its authors have consistently failed to note Matt Mullenweg’s ownership of that when covering him or related subjects, including the current situation. Presumably, Matt Mullenweg is the one dictating that they don’t disclose that. Meanwhile, news outlets independent of him are excluded.
Maybe more web hosts should take action, so that it isn’t shown unless it is reformed.
I honestly do not see this, at it’s core, about WordPress.
**It’s about Matt.**
Matt *co-founded* WordPress – remember that. If Mike Little had not responded that one day who knows where we would be.
The heart of a multi-install is not WordPress – it is WordPressMu. Matt did not start that. Automattic HAD to buy a web host to be able to offer plugins, external themes on the scale they do.
*Wordpress.com is NOT WordPress*. It’s a chopped down, pared back effort to extract money to get close to – but never equal to – core WordPress.
Automattic pours thousands of hours into WordPress because if they did not it would sink. It has a huge community but that does not guarantee development.
Matt drove Gutenberg. (insert your own reasons).
For various reasons, including the MovableType licensing, the fact WordPress was part of cPanel and more, it got big.
WordPress is the result of millions of hours of work by core devs, theme devs, plugin devs, support contributions.
Who gets to bask in all that? Matt.
Tumblr became available and Automattic bought it. (I heard that the purchase was such a disaster that the Automattic Board forbade any new acquisitions for some time.) Soon it will be “powered by WordPress”
Matt has, for YEARS, wanted to buy Blogger. This despite Google fucking over Automattic with ad revenue at least twice pre-2010. For years he has also coveted certain bloggers and Daring Fireball is top of that tree. (Fun fact – John Dvorak uses WordPress. I installed it for him). If Google do sell, and Matt converts the backend then he will proclaim it from the rooftops (well, x, fb, insta, wporg….)
Remember also that two years ago Matt stopped all plugin developers from getting any stats from wordpress.org. But HE can see them and hey, plugins are GPL so he can do what he wants.
Matt wants to have all the cake and eat it all too.
He wants to be the web. Ego ego ego.
Disclaimer: Ex-Automattic, now using ClassicPress.
WordPress’s main issue is that they are both a “service” and a “product”, but not necessarily both those things together at any given time, as it depends on the consumer. This is where it gets murky being that their product (the CMS), by itself, is primarily associated with being open-source. One can counter-argue that WordPress engages in deceptive practices by confusing the general consumer public with their .org vs .com sites. Thus, WordPress making claims about other companies confusing the public can backfire on them, if enough proof exists.
I think regardless who or what is at fault in this messy drama, it’s not exactly putting WordPress in some kind of positive light overall. There’s an old European/Polish saying, “When two people fight, the third one always gets the profit.” If a large CMS, like WP, gets embroiled in a large scandal to lose trust, it can make room for other competitors to jump in and profit off any lingering consumer fear/worries.
In any case, It will be interesting to see how their recent trademark application filings will fare through the application process. I get the feeling they’ll get denied due to a long history of those popularly-used, two-word phrases, but I’m no lawyer.
As we know, WP Engine isn’t the only large company (outside of WordPress) providing managed/hosted WP solutions. There’s Cloudways, GoDaddy, Bluehost, SiteGround, and the list infinitely goes on. Then of course, there’s the thousands of developers and designers on these boards and elsewhere that use those same phrases to advertise such services, too.
I’m actually not so much concerned with WP Engine as I am with the small players that may get inadvertently affected. You can’t pick and choose who to restrict (whether it’s one or several companies) and entirely neglect thousands of other entities in the process.
I’m not an IP lawyer and can’t speak to the intricacies of the law, but I’m not even sure that matters.
I’m much more concerned about the message this sends about the stability of the ecosystem. One of WP’s big selling points has always been stability and backwards compatibility — it’s always done a fine job not making breaking changes.
That leaves a lot of gaps, simple common things like content types, fields and forms that require additional (often paid) plugins or a working knowledge of PHP and plenty of time. This work gets shuffled off to plugins in favor of block editors and all sorts of UI whizzbangery — instead of devoting more of those thousands of hours and millions of dollars into core functionality that every other CMS has out of the box.
That’s not bad on it’s own, you know this going in and just budget those plugins.
When the CEO of Automattic and open source WP lead goes out of his way to publicly damn the maker of a plugin many developers depend on, who happens to own a competing hosting provider, I start to lose confidence. He may well have a case, I dunno, he lost me with the presentation and my lingering impression is one of vindictiveness and immaturity.
When a benevolent dictator for life transforms into a chaos agent I start to look for a fallback plan.
Looks like a load of users with @wpengine emails have been removed by Matt from the make wordpress slack in the last 24 hours. He’s now actively stopping them from contributing.
For trivia he did reply to one of my tweets [https://x.com/photomatt/status/1837800253342335024](https://x.com/photomatt/status/1837800253342335024)
In a typical fashion by stating that everything he complains about in WP Engine (confusing branding, “removing” core functionality) is perfectly fine when HIS hosting does it. 😬
Honestly, this is a fun distraction for a week, but it will run out in a usual fashion – some people dealing with damage in his wake and zero consequences for him. We are just along for the ride and with WP’s mass and inertia it will go on for a good while longer.
Extremely disappointed. This community deserves more. As someone who has been involved with WordPress since before it was called that, it worries me about the state of the project going forward as long as Matt is at the head of it.
I would need to have a much higher opinion of Matt to be disappointed by him. This is who he is.
WordPress wouldn’t be what it is without him, but that doesn’t mean it’d be worse.
He needs to run his companies and remove himself from leadership of .org, but he never will.
The sad thing is – on a couple of points of all this nonsense he’s right — private equity IS horrible for tech, and companies like WPEngine SHOULD be contributing more hours back to the project directly.
That doesn’t mean they should need to pay off A8C, which is what this is all really about.
I’ve been worried about the WordPress ecosystem for a while now, since Automattic started saying they ARE WordPress, which I guess is in some ways true now? That copyright makes me sad.
Let’s see: a company that’s been buying up plugins and raising the prices (pushing some of my clients right out of WordPress)… With a history of privacy violations and changing the new plugin view to prioritize their own plugins… And misleading notifications causing newbies to spend money they don’t need to or to get sent up in places they didn’t intend…
Sounds like other successful big companies. Just doesn’t sound like what I love of WordPress. I went to a developer friend a few weeks ago for alternative CMS solutions because I have hundreds of clients that I don’t know how much longer will be happy with WordPress.
The developer said: WordPress is still open source. This’ll all sort itself out. It isn’t like Automattic can trademark WordPress.
Then this happened. And I’m still looking at alternatives, dreading changing because I love WordPress. But I really worry that Automattic is going to destroy it.
I’ve been over Matt since he talked about pushing even more of WP out to client side JS.
But I’ve also been over WPengine forever. Buying ACF, and then doing cartwheels with functionality out of license is annoying. Particularly for local development projects that aren’t in production. I’m just not the WPE fan boy that others seem to be.
Just reading the title in my notifications I really thought someone was coming at me here and wasn’t sure what I had done.
Its funny once they invested in it
My favorite thing about this is how eager he was to run his mouth and how quickly he hid behind the “Now that legal is involved I can’t say much”. WTF did you think was going to happen? You started this bonfire, you owe it to the community to speak up. Instead, he is going to hide behind lawyers while he gets his ass beat by PE lawyers that eat this shit for breakfast. Meanwhile, the whole community wants some answers and there will be none until this is settled in court years from now.
I said it in another thread but he has single-handedly undone years of WordPress reputation, and trust in the platform and made sure that another generation of builders are fleeing from this shit show.
I still don’t get what started all of this. I know WPE has for some time been trying to corner the WP world, but it seems petty on all accounts.
Matt should resign in shame, but won’t. He can’t be forced to resign from the foundation, its just him and two yes men. the only way forward is to jettison wordpress.
It’s an ego war. Period.
We all should collectively sue Matt
I don’t think I want to make WP sites anymore
Can I even use the word WP!!
I would rather open a falafel restaurant.
I hate the direction that WP is going, and i assume he is to blame for it. Why is the CMS so old and why do we not have essential features like meta fields? Oh, but we get a music block for Gutenberg instead? Didnt know, because i dont use Gutenberg, just like the many million people who actively download a plugin just to remove it…….
he’s too immature to be a good businessman.
How are the messages Matt sent to WP Engine before his keynote speech **not** clear-cut textbook examples of criminal extortion?
He has been a source of frustration and drama for a while now
Wow old WP developer here, came up on my reddit feed. I do bespoke PHP software now.
Seems pretty toxic to me. Does WP still work on old php? One thing that had been illuminating to me as I have developed is how it held its self back supporting so much infrastructure.
It used to have a open source cool feel to it back in like 2010 to like 2016 when I was developing sites on it. It had evolved to be used as a CMS not just a hacked blog when acf and custom post types became a thing. Back then it was wordpress drupal and Joomla were the players.
Seems like it’s just gotten to big and the wheels are falling off now it’s driving billions of dollars worth of websites.
What are the TinyMCE guys saying about all this madness? They always seemed like a nice bunch.
It’s a shame. Hopefully it might pave the way for some of the other great php cmses out there that don’t really shine.