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What happened? What's it all mean? We've got you covered.

There's only one crispy nugget everyone's talking about in September 👨‍🍳:

• WordPress vs. WP Engine. Who you got?

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WordPress vs. WP Engine

Lowdown

There's drama in WordPress land. Here's the lowdown...

Earlier this month WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg published a blog post titled "WP Engine is not WordPress". In the post he called WP Engine (a WordPress hosting platform) a "cancer to WordPress".

Mullenweg cites a few reasons for why he pretty much hates WP Engine including how he believes they are infringing on the WordPress trademark and profiting off the confusion and how WP Engine disabled content revisions to save money, which Mullenweg believes violates WordPress' number one commitment to it's users - protecting their data.

But the biggest reason for the hate comes down to time and money.

WP Engine recently reached $400 million in annual revenue hosting WordPress sites but contributes $0 back in donations to the project and contributes only 40 hours a week to WordPress Core development (for comparison, Mullenweg's company Automattic which is of similar size contributes 3,915 hours a week).

So how did WP Engine respond to all this hate?

They decided to send Mullenweg and his company Automattic a cease-and-desist. It's worth reading because in it, WP Engine alleges Mullenweg demanded they start paying Mullenweg's for-profit company Automattic huge sums of money or he'd "go to war" against them.

Mullenweg responded with his own cease-and-desist claiming WP Engine has been infringing on WordPress' trademark.

But he didn't stop there. He decided to go nuclear and ban WP Engine from using WordPress and it's resources.

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

Takeaway

There are plenty of opinions out there regarding who's right and who's wrong here.

And as with most dramas, there are some shades of gray...but this is mostly black and white for me.

Is WP Engine completely innocent? Of course not.

Year after year they've failed to meaningfully support the beating heart of their nearly half a billion dollar company and in the process they've unnecessarily created power enemies.

Ethics aside, that's just bad business.

But is WP Engine legally 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 may think they should (as I do), but there is nothing in place legally forcing them to do so.

Meanwhile, on the other side you have Mullenweg weaponizing WordPress access while at the same time actively poaching WP Engine customers with his own company Pressable.

And look, I get it.

Mullenweg is pissed off and has every right to be. He's put his life into this project and as far as I can tell he truly feels that WP Engine is an extractive leech.

But this isn't the answer.

In the end it only hurts innocent customers and deeply damages his credibility and the credibility of one of the most powerful and useful open-source projects running.

Right vs. wrong aside though, easily the most interesting question to me in this whole story that everyone seems to be missing is this:

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?

It appears not.

From the most recent WordPress Foundation nonprofit tax "Form 990”, it's indicated that 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' started all the way back in 2004, which he stepped away from in 2013. He was actually offered an early job at Mullenweg's company Automattic, but turned it down. A decision he stated he later ​regretted​. Since then he's been a bit of ghost.​
• Farley on the other hand graduated from Stanford University with two engineering degrees, and has a deep 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 the state of New York, losing both times.

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

Translation? Mullenweg is getting a ton of sh*t for this decision (and rightly so), but Ghosh and Farley deserve equal criticism.

Big picture and this one controversy aside - it seems totally insane to me that an open-source software that powers more than 40% of the web only requires 3 votes to selectively ban access to their resources.

Between this and the OpenAI / Sam Altman never ending saga, 2024 is shaping up to be the year we all get reminded of the importance of a strong board with sound governance.

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

That's a wrap on September. See you in October!

-Keith