September 20th, 2024, Matt Mullenweg concluded WordCamp Us with his regularly scheduled keynote speech, but this year was different. Instead of rolling out and announcing new features, builders, or versions of the open source software, he instead turned to a cultural issue growing inside the WordPress community.
Lacking Open-Source Participation
Very few platforms/CMS have achieved what WordPress has since it’s inception. Powering about 40% of the websites in the world, WordPress has become the go-to for most agencies, designers, and developers when choosing a content management system. This success, of course, comes with challenges, and WordPress is not immune to the challenge that plagues all open source programs; the line between community-driven development/progress and commercial exploitation. This was brought into sharp focus when Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic and co-creator of WordPress called our WP Engine and their owners for not contributing to the environment of community, but still taking advantage of the growth of the platform and called the hosting company a “cancer to WordPress.
The language used by Mullenweg during his keynote speech may seem harsh, but it should be noted that he spoke very fondly and kindly of the employees who work at WP Engine and his passion was directed towards the owners and investors in the company that were mandating efficiency over collaboration on the open source platform.
During his keynote at WordCamp US 2024 Portland, Matt Mullenweg describes Ecosystem Thinking has four parts:
Learn
Evolve
Teach
Nourish
WP Engine has profited enormously from WordPress and it being open source while apparently contributing very little to the advancement of the platform and it’s development. WP Engine has grown into a company valued in the hundreds of millions and has significant investments/backing from the private equity group Silver Lake, with which Mullenweg has the biggest beef with. WP Engine’s contributions to WordPress, Mullenweg pointed out, which are measured by the “Five For The Future” initiative are LESS THAN 1% of Automattic, a company owned and operated by Mullenweg and a direct competitor is many services to WP Engine.
Mullenweg used the analogy of the Tragedy of the Commons during his speech to illustrate the point that if nobody in the community, or more accurately, if not everybody in the community contributes to the health of the shared resource it very quickly becomes abused and won’t produce for anybody who uses it. He also went on to say that it isn’t exactly fair that Automattic has to fight “with one arm tied behind it’s back” while WP Engine doesn’t have to contribute. Meaning that Automattic dedicates significant time and resources on contributing to to WordPress, which could have been spent like WP Engine on advertising, marketing, etc. Thus his repeated referral to WP Engine and Silver Lake as a “parasite”and “parasitic” to the WordPress community and saying:
“There are companies that participate in the Learn/Evolve/Teach/Nourish loop like a FernGully rainforest, and there are those who treat Open Source simply as a resource to extract from its natural surroundings, like oil from the ground.”
Potentially Misleading Branding & Marketing
Mullenweg continued with more issues he has with WP Engine and Silver Lake. A critical point made is the way WP Engine markets and brands itself as if it were synonymous with WordPress an mentioned that “even my mother” was confused about the relationship between the two. Many consumers don’t realize that WP Engine is a third-party hosting company and not affiliated or an official branch of the WordPress project. This branding can create the impression that WP Engines services are integral to WordPres, where in fact, they actively disable core features like post revision to save on costs.
Mullenweg voiced his opinion during his speech and in his most recent blog post “WP Engine is not WordPress” where he elaborates:
“WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred. Every change you make to every page, every post, is tracked in a revision system, just like the Wikipedia. This means if you make a mistake, you can always undo it. It also means if you’re trying to figure out why something is on a page, you can see precisely the history and edits that led to it. These revisions are stored in our database.
This is very important, it’s at the core of the user promise of protecting your data, and it’s why WordPress is architected and designed to never lose anything.
WP Engine turns this off. They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of the changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that to protect your content. It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content. If you make a mistake, you have no way to get your content back, breaking the core promise of what WordPress does, which is manage and protect your content.”
Mullenweg also referred to WP Engine as a “cancer” to WordPress in this post. He warned, “It’s crucial to remember that if left unchecked, cancer spreads. WP Engine is establishing a harmful precedent that others may view as acceptable to imitate.”
“Vote With Your Wallets”
Mullenweg urged community members and contributors to “vote with their wallets” towards the end of his speech and before taking questions. His message was clear, support companies that contribute to the ecosystem rather than those that drain resources without replenishing them. Companies like Automattic, Hostinger, and Pressable all participate in the ecosystem and give back to WordPress, helping to ensure that it remains a viable Common for all to use for many generations to come.
It cannot be ignored, the potential conflict of interests. WP Engine is a direct competitor to Pressable and WordPress.com, both owned by Matt Mullenweg or his companies. This is where the reporting stops and my op-ed begins. I believe he has every right to voice this opinion and I think he is right in doing so. The WordPress platform and program only exists because of contributors that volunteer their time, energy and resources to making sure that it stays up-to-date and competitive.
We have already seen a significant number of website owners and agencies making the switch and migrating from WP Engine to Pressable. Big Red Jelly offers FREE migration services of sites from WP Engine to our partner program with Pressable.
