The soundtrack for this blog post is the Ted Dibiase Million Dollar Man Theme Song (youtube)
WordPress – real name, no gimmicks 🙄
First, let me say that I’m thankful for WordPress.
I’d also like to say that I agree with Matt on predatory practices of “big money” in order to further their bottom lines.
I have posted my public respect for him and his decisions both in open source and business (link).
This is not an attack on him or WordPress, the open source software that this website and my entire professional development career have been built on.
This is not an attack at all.
What I would like is for this to be a discussion starter.
What I would like to do is point out a few things I’ve noticed during the fallout of “the talk” and related outbursts Matt Mullenweg gave at #WCUS
And to start it all off, I want to ask a question:
What the fuck is WordPress?
If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going
In order to discuss the difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com, we just need to check out when each of them were started.
WordPress.org the open source content management system was first released on May 27, 2003 – Wikipedia
WordPress.com the secure managed WordPress hosting platform was first released to the public on November 21, 2005 – Wikipedia
So the open source, free for anyone software was released 2+ years before the hosted solution.
So WordPress is software, right?
Then why are so many people confused over what it is when you search Google for it?
“WordPress.com VS” results in a LOT of content to compare dot com to dot org, but you know what’s missing?
Absolutely any type of focus on WordPress VS WP Engine.
Actually, if you search for “wordpress.com vs wp engine” there is only 1 result that shows up (link), while “wordpress.org vs wp engine” returns 0 results.
And if you search for “WordPress VS WP Engine” (in quotes) you’ll see a lot of articles comparing their respective hosting offerings – and nothing related to people not knowing if WP Engine is WordPress (reference).
So, what is WordPress?
WordPress is open source software.
But thanks to Matt creating The WordPress Foundation, giving the “WordPress” trademark to it and then giving himself a license to use it (ref), WordPress is also a managed WordPress hosting company.
Please don’t mention it though because he’ll just point out he’s one of three people on the board of The WordPress Foundation (source)
One of the others is a woman who has a pinned tweet from in 2020 thanking Donald Trump for his endorsement he gave to her running for office (spoiler alert, she lost … twice).
And the third is a man who hasn’t tweeted, blogged or (as far as I can tell) been around since 2013.
Surely these two people are active enough in the foundation and focused enough on the sanctity of our software that they’re working hard behind the scenes this whole time and we just don’t know it …
Why WP Engine and why now?
The problem used to be Chris Pearson and Thesis, where Matt Mullenweg and him publicly battled over GPL licensing years before Matt spending ~100K on the thesis.com domain to seemingly spite him (source)
Then more recently, GoDaddy was the existential threat to the WordPress ecosystem (reference) which I also discussed on Twitter while Matt targeted a GoDaddy (Pagely) employee, telling him essentially to fuck off if he wasn’t going to donate back to the project.
The reason he did that?
Jeff simply asked about whether Automattic’s Newspack platform had all open source components or some proprietary elements.
Now we’re seeing Matt target another VC funded mega host in a public manner, using both the WordPress Foundation (WordCamp) and the wordpress.org platform to voice his opinions.
We’re supposed to look at this from an open source founder fighting a mega corporation lens, which I like and stand with.
But we’re supposed to completely ignore the fact that the same founder runs a mega corporation that took $288M in funding from VC firms like BlackRock (yes, that BlackRock) and directly profits from the work open source community does for the WordPress CMS.
It should be noted that Automattic invested in WP Engine in 2011, sold their stake in 2018 (source) as what looks to be part of a buyback from WP Engine’s VC investment from Silver Lake, Matt praised them in 2020 for Genesis playing a role in being Gutenberg-first (source) and now hates them and calls them “a cancer to WordPress” (source).
If Silver Lake is as predatory as described, it raises the question of why Matt chose to sell his stake rather than continue to influence from within?
What if WP Engine just does as they’re asked?
When watching the action unfold on Twitter this weekend, I noticed Matt say something in passing in a tweet and it took a while before I finally figured out what it was that bothered me about it.
“we do donate to a number of other projects when we’re asked like PHP foundation, but would love to do more there” – link
emphasis mine.
So this tells me two things:
- They do not regularly donate to PHP which WordPress is built on
- They do donate if they’re asked to.
Is the issue here that Matt asked WP Engine to give more to the WordPress project but they didn’t comply like he says that he does when asked?
Looking over the history of controversial and sometimes childish outbursts that at times get deleted, it’s entirely possible that Matt is just mad he’s not being listened to, like a parent upset they’re not being taken serious enough.
And if we’re demonizing WP Engine for limiting what you can do with your WordPress website (revisions), when are we gonna demonize Automattic for doing the exact same thing (plugins, different dashboard experience, etc)?
Or do we not get to do that because they’re the ones who gave us WordPress?
Or did they?
Or maybe we need to demonize Kinsta, Pressable and all other opinionated WordPress hosts because they don’t just give you a blank sandbox to play in, limit which plugins (features) they allow, etc?
And why has the demonization only started now and not around or before the $250M investment from Silver Lake to WP Engine in 2018?
Who is responsible for WordPress’ growth?
While we’re discussing all of this current drama, there’s one thing that has been loosely talked about and that’s who is responsible for the massive adoption of WordPress as a content management system.
“Parading as an open source / “The Commons” evangelist while simultaneously being a business owner profiting off the work of the community doesn’t do you, the project or the community any justice.” (source)
Matt is quick to point out the fact that Automattic gives back more to the WordPress project than any other company (source).
Does this mean Automattic, and by extension Matt Mullenweg, gives more to the growth of WordPress than anyone else?
Why are we glossing over the freelancers and agency owners who built countless websites for family, friends and customers who would have otherwise never built a website on WordPress and reduced the reach that WordPress currently has?
Why are we glossing over the tutorial writers, video creators, tutors, podcasters and bloggers who relentlessly made content to promote WordPress and how to use it when the general user didn’t know know it existed, let alone how to use it?
Why are we glossing over the builders who helped grow WordPress into what it is, like Brian Gardner and Adii Pienaar who created the WordPress premium theme market.
The same market that helped push WordPress forward while the people building products made lucrative amounts of money from the source code they sold on top of the WordPress code base.
Was it only ok because a single person or small team were the ones making money by providing premium solutions to problems that users of the WordPress software have?
As Matt pointed out in 2020, “If companies taking or growing share don’t contribute the same amount as Automattic back into the commons, WP will suffer and slow down.” – source
So it IS about how much Automattic does compared to everyone else, both big and small.
It seems like Automattic (Matt) didn’t have a problem with WooThemes and their WooCommerce product when they bought them out.
WooCommerce was a fork of another WordPress plugin that wouldn’t agree on a sale price to WooThemes. Then WooThemes hired developers of the previous plugin which caused controversy at the time.
That plugin (WooCommerce) then got bought by Automattic in order to “help democratize commerce online”, but like all other acquisitions, they’re using it to try and move the Automattic bottom line.
And fast forwarding to today, that’s the bottom line of a venture backed company who’s owner is now publicly using the WordPress open source platform to berate another venture backed company he deems as predatory.
Both the WordCamp talk itself and the blog post published to the wordpress.org blog clearly show that Matt does not understand where the line in the sand is drawn between the company and the open source software.
Or maybe he does and just doesn’t care? 🤔
So WTF is WordPress?
WordPress is a clusterfuck. Always has been, and likely always will be.
WordPress is a cool community of people from around the world who tend to all agree on the open source nature of the CMS that we love.
WordPress is a tool that can be used to document your life, publish your novels, centralize all of your social media content, showcase your designs, photography, and so much more.
But WordPress is also a source of income that can be used to provide a good life for yourself and your family, both as an individual and as a company.
WordPress is all of that and so much more.
Community Vibes
In another example of the level of professionalism we’re working with, Matt posted a “community vibes check” to see what everyone thought about WP Engine continuing to sponsor events if “they don’t change”.
Based on the results of the poll that Matt posted, the WordPress community vibes are saying that we’re ok with WP Engine still being a sponsor at the next WordCamp.
And while we’re on that subject, why would Matt say “I’m happy to refund @wpengine their 75k sponsorship of #WCUS” (source) instead of actually refunding their blood money and cutting all ties entirely?
Why would he even entertain the idea of them sponsoring the event again next year at all?
Can anyone verify the Silver Lake investment into WP Engine didn’t buy out the Automattic stake? And if it actually did, why was their money and influence ok at that time, but not now?
It’s not hard to say “fuck your money” in the face of a shitty company you don’t morally agree with – I’ve done it, ask around.
Why would he direct criticism toward workers at the WP Engine booth who are not directly responsible for the decisions of the “cancer” we know as Silver Lake?
“Own your content” was meant to be a selling point for the person who writes it and uses an Automattic sponsored product to post it – not the company who runs WordPress.com, bought Tumblr then looks to be selling both sites data to OpenAI (source)
We will only share public content that’s hosted on WordPress.com and Tumblr, and only from sites that haven’t opted out. (source)
WTF is WordPress?
WordPress is complicated, but it’s worth fighting for.
Featured Image by Naji Habib from Pixabay
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