Mullenweg threatens corporate takeover of WP Engine

This is a pretty one-sided summary of the situation and, despite citing the Theo Browne interview, leaves out from it that WPE and WordPress and Automattic have apparently been in protracted negotiations about this for over a year. Users are understandably shocked by this outcome, but it seems implausible to claim that WPE was.

I think it's also useful to note that Mullenweg wasn't demanding 8% of WPE's revenue, but rather an allocation of WPE revenue to WordPress ecosystem development (by staff members on WPE's own team), with the revenue to Automattic (or whoever, I forget) as an in-kind payment option.† That is a much more reasonable-sounding ask than simply forking over cash to Mullenweg's own business.

I'm not following this closely enough to vouch for the way Mullenweg is handling any of this (though: at this point I assume/hope he has counsel reviewing what he's saying!) but it would be weird to me at this point to see WPE cast as the "good guys" here. This seems like another one of those "it's just a bunch of guys" scenarios.

† This is according to Mullenweg, of course, but he had Theo Browne reading emails to WPE off his laptop during the interview to back the claim up.

I wonder what would happen if WP Engine suddenly decided "Hey, we're going to rename the business, stop using the trademarks, fork WordPress, and start a new thing with our existing customers."

Would it take off? Would it tank? I believe WordPress is GPL, so I don't see why they couldn't (as long as they could legally fork or counter things like WooCommerce, that is).

It's a bit different from the situation with OpenTofu and similar since WP Engine would only need to keep their existing, highly invested customers to get a good start. The rest is a matter of marketing.

T'will be interesting to see how this ends.

(Note: I'm not saying that there is or is not merit to Mullenweg's or WP Engine's position. I haven't studied the situation enough to have an informed opinion there.)

I have used WordPress in the past for various projects, and have upgraded it for customers far more than I would like to recount, but all of this is making me not want to use WordPress for anything moving forward.

This does not feel like a stable foundation/platform to build a future on.

> “I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly decide to do this,” he said. “I was taken advantage of for so many years"

Mullenweg has a current net worth of approximately $400 million (source https://andsimple.co/cases/matt-mullenweg-net-worth/)

> WP Engine removed the news widget from its users’ dashboards on September 24, reportedly breaking thousands of sites in the process

Is the "breaking thousands of sites" claim supported by any actual evidence, or is this just something Matt said?

He's going to need at least a couple billion dollars. I cant imagine Silver Lake would accept any Automattic stock in the deal. It'd have to be all cash.

It's like if someone rewrote Eⅼоn Мuѕk in PHP.

The saddest aspect of this situation is that I believe Mullenweg truly wants more people to participate in and benefit from open source software.

But by dragging thousands of developers into a pissing match and unilaterally breaking the update process for 1.5M sites without warning, he’s making the case that WordPress is unstable.

Leadership matters. I hope WordPress gets the chance to find new leaders before it dies a slow death. The web needs WordPress to be great and right now it isn’t.

> When asked what his legal counsel has advised regarding his speaking out publicly, Mullenweg told The Repository, “When you’re right, you can talk. When you’re wrong, [the lawyers] tell you to shut up. My lawyers are fine, they’re like, ‘go for it!’”

Every time he posts or speaks, he does more damage to his reputation and that of WordPress. His lawyers have probably told him to shut up, but he seems like he’d make a miserable know-it-all client.

It never was about trademarks ....

Don Mullenweg is going to make them an offer they can't refuse.

> Mullenweg told The Repository, “When you’re right, you can talk. When you’re wrong, [the lawyers] tell you to shut up. My lawyers are fine, they’re like, ‘go for it!’”

Lol.

That sounds like something no lawyer has ever said.

This is what happens when you raise billions in VC money.

I wish he'd just do whatever he's going to do already. Dudes just coming off as having a bit of a manic one at this point.

Two things that are true:

- Big businesses built off the back of an open source software should absolutely chuck a bit back to said software

- Matt is messing with peoples' bread and butter to win his little slap fight which is a complete dickhead move.

Searched the USPTO trademark site, no trademark for "WP" registered by the WordPress Foundation.

WP is GPLv2. Is WP Engine distributing their modifications without releasing their changes?

No trademark issue, license seems fine. From what I can tell this is nothing.

If I understand correctly, Automattic and WP Engine generate approximately the same revenue?

The creator of WordPress would undoubtedly be extremely disappointed… they should have achieved much greater success.

Eleventy v3.0.0 was just released, time to migrate your website, improve performance and make it easier to upgrade. And the best part: no plugin vulnerabilities.

Am I stupid or could WPE "simply" had a clone/copy/mirror of the necessary WP.org things? eg: how Linode has for Debian mirrors?