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For obvious reasons, it's time for a megathread – please post all comments, links, memes, whatever in this thread.
Any new posts relating to this topic will be removed (unless approved by the mods).
Here's a few recent posts in case you've missed them:
Statement from WP Engine a few mintues ago: [https://x.com/wpengine/status/1839246341660119287](https://x.com/wpengine/status/1839246341660119287)
>*Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, has misused his control of WordPress to interfere with WP Engine customers’ access to* [*http://WordPress.org*](https://t.co/VBY7VYgqzY)*, asserting that he did so because WP Engine filed litigation against* [*http://Wordpress.org*](https://t.co/Boiq7UES2h)*. This simply is not true. Our Cease & Desist letter was a letter – not a lawsuit – and was directed at Automattic for Matt’s pattern of serious and repeated misconduct – behavior that must stop for the health and stability of the entire community. Matt Mullenweg’s unprecedented and unwarranted action interferes with the normal operation of the entire WordPress ecosystem, impacting not just WP Engine and our customers, but all WordPress plugin developers and open-source users who depend on WP Engine tools like ACF. We are taking immediate steps to remediate the impact of this action. We remain steadfastly committed to supporting WP Engine customers, users, and the entire WordPress community.*
I have not worked in the web hosting world for a very longtime so sorry if I sound clueless here but: I thought WordPress to the web was a similar thing to Linux to computers: an open source community maintained solution. I guess I’m not understanding why it seems like one person/entity has this much control over it? Could they do what they did to WPEngine to other hosting providers?
First its WP Engine and now I wonder who will be next. The spirit of open source has been violated along with what are supposed to the principles of the WordPress Foundation.
>From wordpressfoundation.org:
The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the software projects we support. People and businesses may come and go, so it is important to ensure that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base, that we may create a **stable platform for web publishing for generations to come**. As part of this mission, the Foundation will be responsible for protecting the WordPress, WordCamp, and related trademarks. A 501(c)3 non-profit organization, the WordPress Foundation pursues a charter to educate the public about WordPress and related open source software.
>—
In order to serve the public good, all of the software and projects we promote should support the following goals:
>The software should be licensed under the [GNU Public License](http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html).
>The software should be freely available to anyone to use for any purpose, and without permission.
>The software should be open to modifications.
>Any modifications should be freely distributable at no cost and without permission from its creators.
>The software should provide a framework for translation to make it globally accessible to speakers of all languages.
>The software should provide a framework for extensions so modifications and enhancements can be made without modifying core code.
Matt is behaving like a complete idiot and [WP Engine needs to win this fight](https://journal.rmccue.io/431/wp-engine-must-win/) in order for WP to be survive.
Matt Mullenweg needs to go as CEO of Automattic, and he should not be the public face of WordPress any longer.
Wow this went bigger and bigger and bigger!
This is incredibly worrisome, not just for companies and developers but for customers, too.
Apparently, if you’re using WordPress, a single person can pull the plug on your business overnight. Without any warning or notice.
Imagine being a WP Engine customer, and I imagine many smaller companies have a plan there, but discovering you can no longer add or update plugins through your dashboard.
That’s crippling to some users. Functionality, performance, security: you’re now in uncharted territory. You decided to go with WP Engine a few years ago because they seemed like a solid WordPress host? Well, Matt Mullenweg has decided today that you’re going to pay for that.
Mind-boggling stuff.
In an ever-evolving web dev landscape, WordPress used to be a safe haven. Hell, we’ve convinced many a customer that the open-source benefits were worth it in pitches against Webflow or Framer to name just two. “You’re in charge. You own your data and you decide.”
As of today, that’s no longer true.
You and your customers can be held hostage by a single WordPress stakeholder. At the very top.
The only question is who’s next.
My thoughts on this:
– Matt seems mentally unwell and needs an intervention – he’s overcooked, in debt, dying or going through a midlife crisis, his behavior is incredibly irresponsible and running it for everyone
– the “enshitification” of WP Engine has them approaching bargain basement shared hosting levels of service but for premium pricing – we’re using them today and it’s awful, Matt’s actions might have poisoned the well for those of us trying to actively leave the platform…
Other thoughts:
– ACF should be part of the core, then WordPress Engine will have “given back” and Matt will stop, right?
– Block editor is ok, if used properly then you don’t need a theme builder
Word of the Day is: Simulacra
A simulacrum is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god.Wikipedia
The Inspiration:
[https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/](https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/)
#WordPress #Simulacra #Mattmullenweg
Let’s see if the moderators delete this one.
I sent Matt a message via his website contact form last night and he responded in the middle of the night, saying:
“if WP Engine had a trademark license, they’d be fine. Every other host in the world is fine. It’s just WP Engine.”
Someone make that make sense, because I can’t.
Looks to me overall like Matt has a lot to stand on in terms of proof of what he said.
People calling blackmail also seem to be wrong as it seems the payments that were demanded were demanded for being allowed to continue their WordPress related branding.
Matt did go about it like a douche however, but I don’t think WPEngine has that much to stand on legally.
WP Engine is one of the few companies in the position to make a successful fork of WordPress because they in theory have some of the required capital and internal development talent to achieve it.
I would love it if WPE commits the ACF dev team to forking WordPress and integrating ACF into the core, maybe rename it to “OpenPress” or “ContentPress”. Integrate wpgraphql into the core and use their capital to create the open source CMS that developers actually love using. Preferably with actual database optimisation. With a more mature file structure which shouldn’t allow any users to write fucking php code into a browser window, we could leave behind versioning in CSS comments. Get rid of plugins that don’t clean up the db entries after deletion. Bake in inertia.js and let devs use whatever frontend framework they want. Ensure compatibility with something like Medusa.js so it has a viable alternative to WooCommerce.
Then in the licensing agreement, add a clause that you are required to tell Matt to go fuck himself at least once a year.
I’m starting to wonder if Matt is having some mental health issues.
Why do all these ultra-rich folks become Bond villains?
Do you think a hard fork is coming?
My “piece of the pie” is the tiniest of all, but I still changed my references on my website from “WordPress” to “a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress or Drupal.”
I don’t host on WPE but if Matt succeeds he won’t stop there. We all need to be aware.
wish you would have shared some links from the other side of the argument so this subreddit isn’t just a massive echo chamber.
Anyone remember when Matt bought a domain for $100,000 just to [spite someone](https://pearsonified.com/truth-about-thesis-com/), years after their feud?
This “CEO” is the pettiest, most insecure, part of the WordPress community.
I always thought wordpress was an open source program anyone could use free and people writing it were sort of helping a noble non profit cause. But is it just a tool to dupe people into free labor writing a hive mind product for Matt’s company and the volunteers have been conned? And why was WP Engine supposed to pay Automattic rather than the “non profit” entity?
I feel like I was a naive fool about what wordpress.org actually is. I hope I’m wrong and there is just temporarily insane behavior or something happening and the board reins him in.
Mullenweg is our Elon Musk, is he?
Realizing that we have to update core and plugins 50+ sites manually at the end of the month now is very very frustrating. As a smaller agency, we were already experiencing capacity struggles.
Mullenwanker is putting websites running on WP Engine and the users in danger by preventing WP Engine users from updating core, plugins, and themes. There are security vulnerabilities at least once a week.
OK, so where do we go now? You obviously can’t use WP Engine today if you have a site to build on a deadline. Where is the next best place to build it?
They are blocking Flywheel too which was acquired by WPEngine. This is screwing with many, many clients of ours – the REST API to Zapier was blocked too.
WordPress has been going downhill since the late 2000s, and their decisions with their software has pretty much killed my desire to blog because blogging just isn’t fun anymore.
WordPress rose to prominence on the back of a community releasing quality plugins and themes as FOSS, and they were clean additions to any site — with blogging being the core focus.
Then something happened and it seemed as though the bulk of what made WordPress, the software, great stagnated, frozen in time, while features like FSE and Gutenberg become the sole focus.
Likewise, themes and plugins become less amazing contributions to the community and more products that each want a subscription to stop nagging you.
Even Jetpack, which once seemed like an amazing little group of tools, is now a nightmare of upsell techniques and tool after tool that requires my visitors giving up a teensy bit of privacy in the name of using this or that doodad. And now it has AI baked in? It’s bad enough every other site that shows up in search engines seems run be AI generated garbage, but WordPress/Automatic want to encourage it??
Themes seem only to be interested in having great business-oriented home pages, and beautiful and unique blog and entry pages are nowhere to be found nowadays. (And if they are, they want your firstborn on an annual basis.)
All of it comes together and just feels like complete enshittification.
WordPress and blogging were once a countercultural thing — giving a voice to ordinary people in a way that democratized the web.
And just like what happened with America after it democratized, eventually capitalism took over. Yeah, the base software is free, but the moment you want to use it and customize it, suddenly every little thing is a subscription or expensive lump sum upsell. Everything’s an ad. Everything’s a trial product.
And what doesn’t outright ask for money up front instead asks for your users’ info (does Automattic needs my visitors’ info on every visit? No, and so Jetpack is a hard no for me).
And now Matt’s pissed that a company used their FOSS how they want?
I dunno… this all feels awful.
I miss when FOSS felt like a subversion of the big guys like Microsoft or Adobe…
I’ll say that the thing is, is that this hijacked WordCamp, and many of the other speakers had a ton of great talks and things that will go overlooked, all because people will start questiong using WordPress in the first place.
From WordCamp we saw:
– how Time magazine (one of the first big name companies to use wordpress (since about 2014) has changed their model over the years. They also talked about how [Fox corp was making a blockchain plugin to verify content](https://www.foxcorporation.com/news/corp-press-releases/2024/fox-announces-time-as-its-first-publishing-partner-on-verify-protocol/)!
– We saw how applications can be made in the health space with uber for nurses with small WordPress teams and using a hybrid headless, as well as traditional server approach at the same time (this will start happening more and more)
– We saw what actually happened during all those bugs for 6.4 when a WP release almosthad to role back..
and a many more awesome presentations!
Then we saw Matt go into demon mode, or uhh nuclear mode, and make everyone question their WP choice/career…..
I still don’t understand what the beef is. What is it that WP Engine is doing that is different than what Matt’s own hosting services are doing? Don’t they both limit default wordpress features depending on the plan you have?
If they’re using the name WP Engine, then they aren’t violating any trademarks, correct?
Thank you to WPE for getting a proxy up and restoring the performance to my admin panel.
I will say again posts/pages and site were fine. It was anything that tried to call WordPress.org
I think it’s like “tax the rich” concept.
ORG is asking the RICH to contribute more for the welfare of the general user.
RICH will always find some loophole in the FOSS system.
[https://central.wordcamp.org/global-community-sponsors/](https://central.wordcamp.org/global-community-sponsors/)
It’s questionable at best when CEOs express public opinions about other companies they do business with at an event like this. It’s downright irresponsible to *cancel all service immediately* just because you don’t understand how trademark, open source and community works. Hundreds, if not thousands, of hosts made Billions of dollars on the backs of products like Linux and Apache, how many hours do you think they spent putting research and investment back into them?
Now I’m stuck manually updating plugins and core for my clients because of this petulant child. Fuck you, Matt.
We currently host around 150 sites on WP Engine. I asked support about our automatic plugin updates. This was the response I got:
>In our contract with you for our WP Engine sites, we have automatic plugin updates included. We do not have the manpower to update the plugins on all our sites. Are you telling me that we will now have to update plugins manually and you will no longer be doing this? On Flywheel we pay per site for these updates, is the same true over there?
>All I need is a yes or no. Will you, WP Engine, continue to update plugins on our behalf on all our sites?
>?
>Laura
>We completely understand any and all frustrations here. Unfortunately, due to how sensitive this issue is, we are not at liberty to discuss this further. With that said, when we do have more information we will be sure to post this on [wpenginestatus.com](http://wpenginestatus.com) ([http://wpenginestatus.com/](http://wpenginestatus.com/))
Basically they just said “You can manually download plugins and install them to update. Which obviously is not possible for us lol
Is it working for anyone else? Seems fine now, has WP Engine added some kind of proxy?
Can someone explain to me how Matt has the authority to remove access to WordPress.org?