Highlights
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2024-11-08 08:01 But there has been quite a bit of controversy lately around what has been happening with WordPress, and a fight in particular that one of WordPress’s founders, Matt Mullenweg, has been engaging in with a company called WP Engine.
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2024-11-08 08:08 So WordPress, many people believed, was owned by the WordPress foundation, like a nonprofit that people thought owns like the trademark and the WordPress.org domain where your own WordPress installation asks for plugin updates. This is where you can find all the plugins and all this stuff people thought, okay, the WordPress foundation is what governs this infrastructure for the common good, if you want to call it that, like this open source project and like they provide the infrastructure for the source code hosting.
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2024-11-08 08:08 Then there is Automattic. Automattic is a company owned by Matt Mullenweg. Matt Mullenweg is one of the founders of WordPress, of the WordPress Open Source Project, which again, like, we don’t want to get into the code so much.
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2024-11-08 08:09 And then his company Automattic, that runs WordPress.com where you can pay to have your WordPress hosted for you. Like you don’t even have to rent a web space and domain whatever. You just go to WordPress.com say, Hey, I want this domain registered for me. Run the thing, do the thing. I just want a window where I can type shit and it’s supposed to appear, which is a very convenient offer.
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2024-11-08 08:12 For a long time. Everyone was kind of fine or felt like everyone was fine. Like WordPress was checking along, like updates every few months, new features, whatever, blah, blah, blah. Automatic made a lot of money. WP Engine made a lot of money. But for some reason, and we don’t know why, in September, Matt Mullenwick was no longer okay with this.
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2024-11-08 08:11 Matt Mullenwick basically sent over WP Engine a demand for money. The argument was they weren’t contributing enough to WordPress, which I think might be true.
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2024-11-08 08:13 the open source project, WordPress.org not WordPress.com, which is the commercial entity run by Automattic where you can host your website. Yes. Like his surface level argument was I’m putting all these hours of Automatic employees into the open source project to make this better. That you profit off and you are not giving back. Like you’re not contributing as much as I am. Which again might be true. WP Engine is owned by like a private equity firm. They are not in it for the good of everyone. Like they want to get out as much money as possible. Okay, that’s how companies work today.
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2024-11-08 08:15 Well, Matt Mullenweg speaks at big WordPress conferences. So he was basically threatening WP Engine with like scorched earth tactics, say, okay, you’re going to do this or I’m going to shit talk you on every stage I can get to. And that’s what he did. He called them a cancer to the. WordPress ecosystem, including the stages that WP Engine is funding for him to fiat.
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2024-11-08 08:18 And like, there’s so many companies that have WP whatever as the name and that make money off of the WordPress of their WordPress services, whatever it is, like building plugins, building themes, there’s so much going on. But he picked them for some reason, probably because they’re the biggest company. Like also fun fact, Automattic used to be invested in WP Engine Wild. They sold their stake to the private entity people. So it’s a confusing mess.