The War in WordPress

Disclaimer: This post is my own thoughts and ideas. I did not receive any information outside of what is public knowledge. They are in no way connected to WordPress, Automattic, Audrey Capital, WPEngine, or any other entity. I am not a lawyer, nor do I practice law. Opinions are my own.

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In my 14 years of working in WordPress, I never once really feared for its future. That was until this past week. Since leaving WCUS in Portland, my stress level has been high with thinking about the future, my career, and the WordPress Community in general.

I think we are caught up for now… I debated for a long time to say anything publicly. Before when it was more of Matt vs Silver Lake, I was completely okay with staying out of it. Now though with seeing people outside of the WordPress Community and outside of being “privileged” of seeing the events unfold now have their websites being blocked from getting any security updates for anything that is housed within the WordPress.org repositories, it is time to share my voice.

I had seen Matt’s post that he put up after Contributors Day the following morning. I could understand his frustration with thinking that WPEngine should contribute more than they do. That was one thing that bugged me about a former agency I had worked for. The agency made a ton of money off of building websites on WordPress and enjoyed all of my connections I have in the WordPress Community but would never chip in to pay for any of the expenses occurred at WordCamps to build those relationships and to hone our skills better let alone actually contribute back the Open Source project.

This year at WCUS I was an organizer on the photography team. Part of my assignments was to take pictures of Matt before and as he walked onto the stage. Little did I know at the time I was standing over talking to Mo and Matt before he went on stage that he was also texting the people over at WPEngine their “last chance” as he put it before the proverbial poop hit the fan. Imagine my surprise when I was reading through WPEngine’s Cease and Desist letter and came across a screenshot of the text that he sent with the picture of the people waiting for Matt to go on stage that I stood beside him when he took it!

I could even agree with Matt with people getting confused thinking that WPEngine is “WordPress Engine” which would be owned by WordPress/Automattic. I have actually witnessed this happening to people. I have had people convinced they hosted on “WordPress” so I would think they had a WordPress.com business account to find out later that their site was on WPEngine. It did not happen much in my almost decade in a half but it has happened.

I said at the after social event to mark my words WPEngine or SilverLake will file a suit against Matt and this will get ugly. People with money will always get the lawyers involved and make a whole ordeal about it.

At this time I do believe that most people were pretty sympathetic to Matt’s stance against WPEngine even if they did not agree and/or like how he went about it. At that time the Community was under the impression this was mostly aimed at SilverLake and how they are not good for Open Source.

Then the mud started flinging. The following morning Matt wrote a piece on the WordPress.org blog about WPEngine is not WordPress. If you are still following at home, first the issue was with contributing, then it became about the trademarks/confusion, and now in the post on the org news blog, it is being brought up that WPEngine has “modified” core so that one can only keep up to 3 revisions of any post/page/custom post type. WPEngine sent a Cease and Desist letter to Matt on Monday stating their side of the events.

Automattic also sent their own Cease and Desist to WPEngine stating the trademark violations for WordPress and WooCommerce.

WPEngine removed the “News & Events” widget from their code base so that people who are hosted on WPEngine and Flywheel could not see a link that went to the WPEngine is not WordPress post.

In retaliation, Matt banned WPEngine and Flywheel sites to be able to call WordPress.org servers to be able to download or update core, themes and/or plugins. This sent a lot of people into a frenzy. Rightfully so, as now there is a lot more people in the crossfire

Then on Thursday Matt does an interview with ThePrimeagen on Twitch. You can find the replay on YouTube. This is where it comes out that not only did WPEngine have the “trademark issues” with WordPress but they are also “stealing” from WooCommerce with their managed Woo Hosting. Now while I did not know first hand any of this back when Matt did his “Q & A”, I did say that night at the After Social to a few friends that there was something more that we were missing and I bet it had to do with their Stripe Connect integration.

On Friday, Matt did take off the block for the WPEngine sites until Tuesday (October 1) so they can get their whatever figured out. While that is a very short amount of time, at least they can get their sites updated and have a little time to decide on what their next move is.

My Thoughts on the Whole Ordeal

First off this whole mess freaking sucks! I feel completely horrible for the Automatticians, WPEngine & Flywheel employees, and every website owner going through this. This site was on WPEngine up until 2 days ago but I moved it before publishing this post.

I do see both sides of the debate. Fortunately and unfortunately my brain is really good at seeing both sides of a discussion. Which usually puts me right in the middle and having both sides angry with me. Everyone is having very strong opinions on both sides and the strife that is happening is taking a big toll on everyone.

I understand the want to make sure everyone who is making money from WordPress to give back to the project. I think that if Stripe has a partnership with Automattic for WooCommerce there should be a bit more predefined president between them that these fights between hosts can stop. I do not think this should be held against the hosts as they were only doing what most would do when seeing an opportunity. I do see where WPEngine execs feel like they were also being unfairly pressured.

I do not think that employees of any of the companies involved in this should be getting some of the hateraid I have seen on Twitter. I could be mistaken (it has happened once or twice in my life) but I do not think that any WPEngine employee could cancel the cease and desist and sign any legal paperwork for WPEngine and go over Heather Brunner’s head. Don’t get me wrong, I do have some mad love for many of the WPEngine employees, but I would bet dollars to donuts he does not have that level of authority in his job description.

I do hope that for the community they come to a peaceful and quick resolve as there is so much collateral damage happening. I do not think that will happen though. I think this wil drag out until a judge or jury calls it or one side runs out of money. I think there will be so much litigation happening that it very well could destroy our amazing community.

The Future of Five for the Future of WordPress

We are at a huge crossroads for what will happen to WordPress and its community. I am still very hopeful for the best as that is the way I roll. It really depends on how this plays out. If Matt/Automattic does win everything, I wholeheartedly believe this could jeopardize the relationships between the WordPress Foundation, Automattic, and every outside hosting company. I think that would break the trust as well between Matt and the community and I really hate to see that happen. Even though it has already happened. If WPEngine wins, I fear that the “Open Source” of WordPress could become a thing of the past. Automattic could start locking things down, charging, and it could destroy the community. There is definitely no clear cut win out of this situation.

I do believe that now is the time for some governance. There needs to be a board of people who are a mix from Automattic, the larger companies who make money exclusively on WordPress, and community contributors from around the world who can come together with Matt and Josepha to have a round table discussions and rulings of what is best for the project. It should be a mixture of people from around the world and of different levels in WordPress. I do not think it should be the same people “it always is” when having the community summits and things like that as there should be a mixture of opinions. It should also be people who can remain respectful when sharing differing opinions but also have the ability to say something that others may disagree with. This “board” should be at minimum 12 people but at most 25 people and there should be tenures for them where we are putting new people in the seats every few years (other than like maybe 4-5 of them being the heads of the top companies/foundation that must be included. We could even have the community to vote on the people to join the board and maybe make it a part of State of the Word or something like that.

No matter what, we have hit a time where WordPress should be more than just one person and for there to be a true democracy in WordPress.

Again, these are only my thoughts and opinions. Some of which I have expressed privately and publicly. As this progresses on, please remember to have grace with your fellow WordPressers. We are all in this together.