WordPress vs. WP Engine: The Conflict Explained

It’s finally the weekend, and here’s your “Niche Nugget”—a monthly digest bringing you the latest in SEO and creator news, along with insights from across the industry.

What’s been happening? What does it all mean? We’ve got you covered.

This September, there’s one hot topic everyone’s discussing:

WordPress vs. WP Engine. Who are you rooting for?

The Inside Scoop

There’s been some upheaval in the WordPress community. Here’s what’s going on…

Earlier this month, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg published a blog post titled “WP Engine is not WordPress”. In it, he labeled WP Engine, a WordPress hosting platform, as a “cancer to WordPress”.

Mullenweg listed several reasons for his strong dislike of WP Engine, including what he perceives as their infringement on the WordPress trademark and profiting from the confusion. He also criticized WP Engine for disabling content revisions to save money, which he believes violates WordPress’s top commitment to its users—protecting their data.

But the main bone of contention comes down to time and money.

WP Engine recently reached $400 million in annual revenue from hosting WordPress sites but contributes nothing back to the project and only dedicates 40 hours a week to WordPress Core development (for comparison, Automattic, Mullenweg’s company of similar size, contributes 3,915 hours a week).

So how did WP Engine respond to these accusations?

They sent Mullenweg and his company Automattic a cease-and-desist letter. It’s worth reading as it alleges that Mullenweg demanded they start paying large sums of money to his for-profit company Automattic or he would “go to war” against them.

Mullenweg responded with his own cease-and-desist letter, claiming WP Engine has been infringing on WordPress’s trademark.

He didn’t stop there, either. He decided to take drastic measures and ban WP Engine from using WordPress and its resources.

At the same time, Pressable, a hosting company owned by Mullenweg’s company Automattic, has begun marketing to WP Engine customers, offering to migrate them over for free and pay the remaining contract value.

Takeaway

There are many opinions on who’s right and who’s wrong in this situation.

As with most dramas, there are shades of gray… but for me, this is mostly black and white.

Is WP Engine completely innocent? Of course not.

Year after year, they’ve failed to meaningfully support the core of their nearly half a billion dollar company and, in the process, they’ve unnecessarily made powerful enemies.

Ethics aside, that’s just bad business.

But legally, does WP Engine seem to be in the wrong? They don’t appear to be.

The abbreviation ‘WP’ is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, and there is no agreement or requirement for WP Engine to donate time and money to WordPress Core.

You might think they should (as I do), but there’s nothing legally forcing them to do so.

On the other side, you have Mullenweg weaponizing WordPress access while actively poaching WP Engine customers with his own company Pressable.

And yes, I get it.

Mullenweg is upset and has every right to be. He’s invested his life into this project and genuinely feels that WP Engine is an extractive leech.

But this isn’t the solution.

In the end, it only hurts innocent customers and severely damages his credibility and the credibility of one of the most powerful and useful open-source projects out there.

Governance and Open Source

Setting aside right and wrong, the most interesting question in this whole story that everyone seems to be missing is:

How could the WordPress Foundation board be set up in such a way that just one person could unilaterally make a decision like this?

Everyone’s blaming Mullenweg for this decision, but is he truly the only one to blame?

From the most recent WordPress Foundation nonprofit tax “Form 990”, it indicates there are 3 independent voting members of the governing body.

The form later reveals those 3 members to be Matt Mullenweg, Mark Ghosh, and Chele Chiavacci Farley.

Ghosh is known for creating one of the most popular WordPress blogs called ‘Weblogtoolscollection’, which started back in 2004, and he stepped away from it in 2013. He was offered an early job at Mullenweg’s company Automattic but turned it down, a decision he later regretted. Since then, he’s been somewhat of a ghost.

Farley, on the other hand, graduated from Stanford University with two engineering degrees and has a strong finance background, having worked at UBS Capital, Goldman Sachs, and Mistral Capital International. More recently, she’s run as a Republican candidate for public office twice in New York state, losing both times.

The form also suggests there is no meaningful difference between their voting rights.

Translation? Mullenweg is getting a lot of criticism for this decision (and rightfully so), but Ghosh and Farley deserve equal scrutiny.

Big picture, and this one controversy aside—it seems utterly insane to me that an open-source software powering over 40% of the web only requires 3 votes to selectively ban access to their resources.

Between this and the ongoing OpenAI/Sam Altman saga, 2024 is shaping up to be a year where we’re all reminded of the importance of strong governance on a board.

It’s also a reminder that hearing words like “open-source” and “nonprofit” tells you nothing about platform risk.

That wraps up September. See you in October!