Matt Mullenweg and WordPress Controversy | Explained

The story so far: Since September 21, the dispute between Matt Mullenweg, a technologist at the WordPress community center, and a company called WP Engine quickly turned into a crisis for millions of WordPress users around the world. WordPress reportedly powers over 40% of all websites on the Internet, or several million, so policies that affect users’ ability to access core software features can have a far-reaching impact. The dispute allegedly concerns trademark infringement, but also concerns open source software development policies, trademark enforcement and role transparency.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is the name of the software that you can use to build a website, blog or e-commerce portal on the Internet. Its competitors include Ghost, Drupal and Wix. WordPress is an oft-cited example of open source software, created by volunteer developers who contribute/or improve its code, test the software on new platforms and fix bugs, create themes and plugins that extend WordPress’s functionality beyond its core features, and routinely perform camps, workshops and conferences to popularize its adoption across various companies and use cases. It is released under the GPL license.

You can use WordPress in two ways. Self-hosted means copies of WordPress that users can download for free from WordPress.org and use on sites hosted on their own servers. This is the open source version. Hosted edition refers to platforms or services where a third party manages your website’s WordPress configuration and infrastructure in exchange for a fee. WP Engine is one such provider.

Matt Mullenweg is the founder and CEO of Automattic, a for-profit company that manufactures and distributes numerous digital products. One of them is WordPress.com, a hosted WordPress offering.

Automattic is also a major contributor to open source WordPress (3,988 hours per week). It is not directly affiliated with WordPress.org or the WordPress Foundation. That said, Mullenweg personally owns WordPress.org.

In addition to WordPress.com, Automattic also owns WordPress VIP (targeted at developers supporting large, high-traffic websites) and Pressable, all of which offer the same services to different market segments.

How did the dispute start?

On September 21, Mullenweg published a post on WordPress.org in which he accused WP Engine of being a “cancer” to the WordPress community. His anger was directed at a core feature of WordPress: the ability to record all changes a user makes to content created on WordPress. WP Engine has disabled this feature, stating that each change adds to the site’s database, which becomes heavy over time and slows down the site. Instead, WP Engine asked its users to contact support staff if they wanted to enable version control for individual sites. Mullenweg charged that WP Engine is therefore not WordPress.

He also alleged that WP Engine benefits from free access to WordPress without contributing to the development of WordPress itself. WP Engine helps users set up new WordPress sites by automatically connecting to WordPress.org, downloading a copy of WordPress, and installing it. It also offers tools that regularly check for WordPress updates and update their users’ websites one by one. WordPress.org recommends these updates to keep your websites secure. WordPress sites also have access to a plugin directory hosted on WordPress.org. Plugins are “smaller” pieces of software created by the WordPress community; users can freely install plug-ins to extend the functionality of their websites in specific ways.

After Mullenweg’s post appeared, WP Engine’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist (C&D) letter to Automattic on September 23, asking Mullenweg to stop disparaging WP Engine. Later that day, Automattic’s lawyers responded with a letter from C&D to WP Engine, alleging that the latter had violated the former’s trademark policy.

What is the problem with trademark?

According to Automattic’s C&D letter, WP Engine’s use of the “WP” label in its name has caused consumers to equate WP Engine with WordPress itself – a continuation of something Mullenweg mentioned in his September 21 post. This part of the dispute focuses on whether Automattic had a trademark on the “WP” label.

In its C&D letter, WP Engine responded by quoting a line from the WordPress Foundation’s website about its “Trademark Policy.” The line read: “The abbreviation “WP” is not trademarked by WordPress and you are free to use it any way you see fit. However, at some point after September 21, a line on the page was changed to: “The abbreviation ‘WP’ is not trademarked by WordPress, but please do not use it in a way that confuses people.” Based on the previous wording, WP Engine has stated that it complies with trademark law.

WP Engine also said in its letter that it has been using the “WP” label for “over a decade.” U.S. trademark law requires trademark owners to be alert for potentially infringing uses and take sanctioning actions. If they don’t do this, they may lose their trademark. In this regard, WP Engine’s argument is that it was able to use the “WP” label for many years without calling for punitive action from Automattic.

How did the dispute develop?

WP Engine’s letter regarding C&D dated September 23 contained a significant allegation. On September 20, Mullenweg delivered the keynote address at WordCamp US, the annual WordPress conference. According to WP Engine’s C&D letter, Mullenweg allegedly sent a message to WP Engine’s CEO requesting that the company donate a portion of its revenue to Automattic as a refund for WordPress development one minute before he was scheduled to deliver the keynote. The C&D letter included screenshots of Mullwenweg’s messages. These messages stated that if WP Engine did not agree to the sender’s demands, the sender would adopt a “nuclear scorched earth approach” towards WP Engine. The letter described these demands as “astronomical and excessive.”

Automattic C&D’s letter did not mention any of these issues and instead focused on WP Engine’s alleged infringement of the WordPress trademark.

On September 24, in response to a user’s post on Reddit, Mullenweg wrote: “(WP Engine) had the opportunity to license the WordPress trademark for 8% of its revenue, which could be provided either as payments or to people (Five for the Future pledges .org ) or any combination of the above.” Five for the Future is a program developed on WordPress.org, thanks to which organizations using WordPress can help by committing some of their resources to its development.

The next day, Mullenweg banned WP Engine from direct access to updates and plugins hosted on WordPress.org.

What were the effects of the ban?

The unprecedented ban prevented several million WordPress sites from accessing the resources they needed to function normally. In his post, Mullenweg wrote that if WP Engine “wanted to control your WordPress experience” by turning off version control, it could also independently develop and run various other resources that the WordPress ecosystem used for free, including updates, a bug tracker, and user authentication system.

Public sentiment, especially in the WordPress user community, was already negative towards Mullenweg after his post on September 21; the ban of September 25 tightened it. On popular public forums where industry observers and insiders alike gather, including Reddit and Hacker News, users focused as much on the ban’s consequences – the scale of which they did not question – as on Mullenweg’s motivations.

One of the sticking points was private capital. Mullenweg wrote on September 21 that WP Engine had decided not to pay for larger databases to include version controls to lower costs and increase margins for private equity owners. Since 2018, a private equity firm called Silver Lake has controlled WP Engine, and both Mullenweg and Automattic mentioned the company by name in posts on September 25 and 26, respectively.

Another popular topic of debate was the confusion surrounding Mullenweg’s role in the WordPress ecosystem. According to the “Trademark Policy” page on the WordPress Foundation website, the “WP” label is licensed for commercial use to two companies: Automattic and Newfold (another company like WP Engine that provides WordPress hosting services). Mullenweg interpreted this to mean that he believed all other companies using the “WP” label in a confusing or misleading way owed the WordPress Foundation money.

If WP Engine is required to pay a trademark license fee, this will be the Foundation’s responsibility – while the C&D letter regarding trademark misuse was issued by an unrelated entity, Automattic. Many developers also interpreted Mullenweg’s decision to ban WP Engine from WordPress.org as signifying an overthrow of the open source WordPress community’s equal opportunity structure in favor of Automattic’s CEO’s proposal to resolve a dispute centered largely on himself. Some even called for Mullenweg to step down as WordPress development leader.

They also alleged that Mullenweg had a conflict of interest because WP Engine directly competed with Automattic’s WordPress.com, WordPress VIP and Pressable hosting products.

On the other hand, another section of developers and users stated that WP Engine made a mistake by not contributing to the WordPress community despite high revenues and that they are benefiting from the confusion among the public that WP Engine is related to WordPress itself.

What’s next?

The GPL license under which WordPress is available does not oblige WP Engine to contribute to the development of WordPress. At the same time, Mullenweg maintains that WP Engine is not authorized to access WordPress.org and that such access is guaranteed for services that benefit the WordPress community. “This isn’t a money grab: it’s an expectation that any company making hundreds of millions of dollars from an open source project should give back, and if they don’t, they can’t use its trademarks,” he said. he said Edge.

On September 27, Mullenweg published another post on WordPress.org, stating that he had restored WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org resources until 12:00 UTC on October 1. He added that WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner, Silver Lake managing director Lee Wittlinger and WP Engine management were guilty of putting “their customers, not me,” at risk.

The C&D letters themselves do not constitute a legal dispute at this stage; this will happen if and when lawyers for either side take the case to court. Meanwhile, the WordPress Foundation filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on July 12 to register trademarks for the terms “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.” This fact in the current context has sown greater uncertainty among independent hosting providers who feared incurring Automattic’s ire.

How TechCrunch reported: “The WordPress community and other projects believe this may happen to them as well and want clarification from Automattic, which holds the exclusive license to the WordPress trademark. The community is also asking for clear guidelines on how they can and cannot use “WordPress.”