This whole bit of drama really makes me glad I never invested time/energy in WordPress. It's like Real Housewives of Computer Nerds level of whining, and feels just as fake. Regardless of right/wrong, the whole thing has just turned into a 80s made for TV type of situation. There was a much better way at handling this, but somebody had access to social media and the wheels promptly fell off.
> Real Housewives of Computer Nerds
OK you've convinced me to get invested in this.
I'm accepting scripts for this unscripted series now. We're still trying to get someone credible attached so we can get it green lit.
The nice thing is it's GPL, so the founder/owner can't just take his ball and go home. It's also widely-used/important enough that it will get forked if leadership problems start to make it unusable for too many people.
The problem though, for people who want to use WordPress, is that WP sites fundamentally rely on wordpress.org for downloading and installing plugins and themes, and critically for security updates to plugins and themes. (You can install/update manually, but the standard admin dashbord is set up to make wordpress.org integration by far the best way to do so.)
Yeah, you've got your GPL copy of all the source code. But next week's discovery of vulnerabilities in whatever random plugin gets to be this weeks news means you need to download/install the updated version. Which canonically is found at wordpress.org. We host a couple of dozen sites on WPEngine (and have done for about a decade, very happily with the price, features, and service). Our internal business continuity planning is now investigating ClassicPress, keeping an eye on comms from WPEngine to see what their path forward in terms of keeping WP sites updated without wordpress.org access, and questioning whether it's time to stop using WordPress at all. We already have a few sites that use WP as the admin/publishing tool, and generate the site as static html for hosting via S3/CloudFront - we may make that our standard deployment bit if we had to move all our WP sites off WPE, we may as well investigate other newer tools.
We are certainly having conversations right now with potential new clients warning them of the drama in the WordPress ownership/ecosystem, and advising considering alternative options or at least waiting until the dust settles on Matt's current ill advised crusade.
Isn't that essentially what caused this kerfuffle? Someone forked it and the original guy got upset about the how/why of the fork?
It’s more that WP Engine is successful and hasn’t meaningfully contributed back to the Wordpress project.
Which I can sympathise with. But this isn’t what open source is about both legally and morally. And there are better ways to achieve this goal than by making a mockery of the Wordpress foundation and harming end users.
No, no fork at all. There may be a fork though because of how erratically the founder is behaving
but what's better alternative aside from rolling your own CMS?
I personally think that the best alternative is statamic. I've built two large sites with it without touching a line of PHP. No themes or crazy plugin dependencies in the manner of Wordpress, so its a roll everything yourself type deal, but the data model building GUI is excellent. Not super interested in selling/explaining it, but certainly I would look into it as a viable alternative - it works how I think CMS's should work, incredibly refreshing after building websites for 20 odd years.
There’s a million standalone CMS’s (headless) and standalone site builders (ranging from pure technical to no-code to no-design) and even sitebuilders with robust CMS’s attached these days (eg. Webflow).
There’s zero reason to use Wordpress in 2024 imo.
> There’s zero reason to use Wordpress IMO in 2024.
Many folk, companies don't have the resources nor skillset to set up a LAMP equivalent for such.
If you want to be the next wonder-host for $CMS be my guest. I recommend Kirby. No database required and only uses text files for its backend.
don't write off those that setup a WAMP and then make it public facing. the time to get a LAMP setup running is pretty close to <1min after a simple double-click on an installer. getting a sane/secure LAMP setup running is an entirely different story that you did not specify as being a qualification.
What I was implying was the cost of services, who are you going to host with?
Cost of maintaining, whos going to keep up with latest CVEs?
Cost of domain, registrars, SSL certificates.
Cost of all adds up. A non-tech IT business has minimal resources for all of that. They want "pay $, click, it works". Not a dedicated IT worker to serve all of above.
If you take say a tutor, a bassist, they don't want all that overhead. They want a platform where they can advertise their tutoring costs, a contact form and be done with it. WP isn't ideal but it works.
For someone who can host WAMP/LAMP, fine. But for the average folk, it's not. There was a reason why WP gained popularity to begin with and it was because it was easy to adapt and junior PHP developers were plentiful, just as junior python developers are now.
There really aren't one-to-one replacements for WordPress and the whole ecosystem that comes with it.
I've actually been pretty happy with Pocketbase, though it really straddles the line of rolling your own CMS. You aren't technically writing the db wrapper or visual editor itself, but any functionality you need beyond authentication is up to you to build.
Depends on what exactly you're getting out of Wordpress and what you dislike about wordpress. But Ghost, Strapi, Payload, and Craft are all really good CMS.
When it comes to e-commerce, Shopify. Or if open source and control is important to you, Saleor.
the only winning move is not to play
the funny thing is, to the vast majority of people that use WP, they won't even care if even know about all of the drama. even people that took some sort of WP bootcamp and earn a living managing other people's WP site probably are blissfully ignorant of this drama.
the people that might have some actual interest are the devs that create the various plugins/templates. but as someone else mentioned, if everything goes nuclear and everyone loses their damn minds, a more sane party can just fork the thing and call it something totally different without using the terms like "word" or "press".
I've used Vitepress for little blogs before. Git is the CMS. GitHub will even host it for free.
I cannot believe how much money people are will to pay for blog hosting.
I am pretty sure the core business of wordpress hosting services isn't blog anymore but all purpose brand/companies websites.
The title literally made me laugh out loud. What drama! What intrigue! Can't wait to see what happens next.
Honestly, I have no horse in the race, so to speak. I think the people responsible for Wordpress code still suck because they still, in 2024, want the software itself to be able to write to where the software itself lives and runs, which is just bananas. It violates the first two rules of anything and everything on the web that I learned in the '90s:
* do not allow writing to anywhere that's executable
* do not allow execution anywhere that's writable
Yea, Wordpress has always been a nightmare... But it makes things so convenient and that's what most people care about.
I can't speak to the merits or rightful grievances of Wordpress.org or Wordpress.com in this, but it is clear that Matt is fucking unhinged.
Looks like the word "denounce" is not used in the right sense here, at least based on what I know, and on a quick google, although it may have another meaning that matches what was intended by the writer of the article.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/denounce
Maybe the word should be : renounce?
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/renounce
Closer, but--since were already in nerdy nitpick mode here--"renounce" is like "quit" and suggests a distinct change of states. Many users will be technically incapable of "renouncing" WP Engine because they were never linked to it in the first place.
I’m a fan of “repudiate”. It’s got heft to it, like an antique pocket watch.
It does have a nice gravitas to it, however I think "repudiating something" suggests a kind of vocal and intentional opposition, as opposed to allowing for a kind of disinterested neutrality.
While Wordpress.org would probably like its visitors to oppose or criticize WP Engine, you don't have to do that to get past the logon page, being uninvolved is sufficient.
> The checkbox on the login page for WordPress.org asks users to confirm, “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.”
I think the word "disavow" is almost a perfect fit here, as in "the logon page requires users to disavow WP Engine".
> [Disavow:] to say that you know nothing about something, or that you have no responsibility for or connection with something
Should be "renounce" presumably.
Do you want antitrust investigations? Because this is how you get antitrust investigations.
Wordpress is nearly half of the Internet. There’s a pretty compelling argument that Matt is using his market power to prevent competition in violation of the Sherman act.
> Last week, Mullenweg announced that he’d given Automattic employees a buyout package, and 159 employees, or roughly 8.4 percent of staff, took the offer. “I feel much lighter,” he wrote.
Wow, that's telling. 8.4% of his company decided he was acting in enough bad faith to quit without another job lined up in this economy? And he takes it as a good sign? Wow...
> 8.4% of his company decided he was acting in enough bad faith
No, they just took the offer. Some probably for that reason, some for other. You'd need to interview them to know their actual views.
And I very much doubt the other 91.6% are onboard with his actions. People just need their income.
Also if you are on a work visa you will be deported if you leave your job and don’t find anything in the couple of months after. Devastating if you’re a young family.
I'm sure WP Engine will be happy to take them in.
But why is this all blowing up now ?
Private equity (SilverLake) bought WP Engine in 2018 and presumably the company has not been paying a trademark licensing fee far longer.
Turning everything into an ideological battle is so exhausting, why is crap like this still happening.
“WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it"
Does anyone know what the context about this is? What did WP-Engine change which Matt disliked?
As I understand they were disabling page revision history (but would enable it if you asked) and only because they had some other proprietary to wp-engine method of versioning and rollbacks but this seems like a massive overreaction to that.
It's about revision history, as Matt laid out here: https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/
However, disabling revision history is a setting offered as part of WordPress: https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/revisions/#revis...
I'd argue that WordPress.com, the paid hosting platform that Automattic operates, is more of a "hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code". By default you can only load a subset of themes or plugins and only if you choose the Business plan or higher. This seems like a bigger issue than having revisions turned off with a WordPress-provided setting.
It also seems a bit rich to be offering a product using the GPL license and then being upset that people make changes to it?
WordPress doesn't like products/orgs that offer services related to WordPress using "WP" in their name to imply affiliation with WordPress. WordPress has recently updated their terms of use to reflect this.
Matt is also on record criticizing WP Engine for never having donated to the WordPress Foundation.
This is all coming to light after the breakdown of licensing negotiations between Automattic and WPEngine
EDIT: https://www.therepository.email/mullenweg-threatens-corporat...
This is a bit of after the fact complaining. Matt invested in WPEngine for many years and it was a-okay then for them to use WP, and in fact WP's own terms said WP was a free to use term for everyone. That was only changed when the legal squabbles started.
The main legal issues are around using "WordPress" and "WooCommerce"
> WordPress has recently updated their terms of use to reflect this.
That’s… a very odd way of portraying this.
The policy, for like a decade, was:
“The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1foknoq/the_word...
Sure, allow me to clarify.
Matt voices a number of grievances including WP Engine's changes to WordPress, their use of the term "WP", their donation/sponsorships, and more. At first glance they all seem a bit silly.
The important context, in my opinion, is that this comes after the breakdown of a licensing agreement between WP Engine and Automattic, an agreement that would've seen tens of millions of dollars paid to Automattic by WP Engine for a license that WP Engine does not think they need.
To put a point on it, none of the things WP Engine is accused of doing were problematic before the breakdown of licensing negotiations or the filing of WP Engine's lawsuit.
But they explicitly say, and have for years, that “WP” can be used by anyone for any purpose.
You can’t turn around and try to enforce that.
> Matt is also on record criticizing WP Engine for never having donated to the WordPress Foundation.
Donate, perhaps. Sponsor? The Foundation event where Matt "went nuclear" last month was sponsored by WP Engine to the tune of $75,000. And was one of many donations this year.
(Adding insult to injury, the "independent" Foundation banned WP Engine from attending the event they were sponsoring... because they were in dispute with Automattic.)
Per https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/ and https://x.com/photomatt/status/1838502185879167069
I believe that WPEngine disabling the admin news feed that displayed his posts directly to WPEngine's customers was the tipping point for calling it a hacked up, bastardized simulacra
That was after he made a personal post hating on WPEngine show up on all dashboard of all WPEngine customers.
I read the revisions are often turned off as they cause major issues with database performance. It is a standard feature of wordpress too but them turning it off by default triggered matt
I run a couple of WP instances on a shared hosting service (not WPEngine), and honestly I have no need for the admin news feed. If I knew how to turn it off I would.
That is a weird thing to get upset about.
Honestly this seems like Matt just wants WP Engine to give him a ton of money, and when they refused his extortion he threw a temper tantrum and abused his dual lead as head of Wordpress.com (the commercial wordpress) and Wordpress.org (the supposedly independent foundation). The lawsuit that WPEngine filed against Automatic and Matt specifically is a hell of a read.
https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Complaint-WP...
So what happens if you are not affiliated when you log in while also clicking the "remember me" option, but later become affiliated? Seems like there's a loophole available for those inclined in being subversive
Decades ago Automattic was shopping around for webhosting space and talked to the company I worked at. I feel like I dodged a bullet long ago with this.
I spoke to matt and he seemed nice enough to me so for me its weird to see such a radical stance from him on something like this
I'm sorry. His facial expressions and ways he answers questions paint a very shady picture when he talks on this topic.
He sounds like a multi faceted person to me
Everybody sounds insane when they let themselves get involved in internet flame wars.
He's the Elon Musk of PHP.
Email the mods a link to your comment and they'll make it right; otherwise they may never see it.
This is a great test to see if there is an actual WordPress open source contributor community beyond Automattic.
If no viable fork of WordPress arises out of this drama then it just goes to show that it is actually a product fully controlled by Automattic and WordPress.com and everyone else involved is just spineless with no real power or contribution.
When a single identity can dictate terms of an open source product with no genuine conversation or compromise, then it may as well be a closed source commercial product.
> “WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it,
That just reads like petty tyrantry to me. Stop me if I'm wrong here but isn't wordpress itself just some PHP on top of a database? The value that he's gatekeeping here is actually the contributions of _other open source developers_?
Stop me if I'm wrong but isn't this the pot calling the kettle black?
By his logic, WordPress itself, being a fork, is bastardized version of the original.
Technically, Facebook is just some PHP on top of a database :)
Yep. And the value they have is _your data_. It'd be a similar situation if Zuckerberg was playing "fealty games" with who could and couldn't get an API key.