Transcription

The things people are saying about the guy behind WordPress right now are absolutely brutal. He has main character syndrome, a cancer to his own community. Matt has the legal acumen of a pissed off preteen who thought he was clever. Naming his company Automattic really says it all. Automattic is doing open source dirty. It's sad to watch really. The internet really seems to hate this guy right now. Which is ironic because it's his own tool that's responsible for over 40% of the websites on the internet. But is he really a tyrannical leader who's losing his mind? Or is he actually an open source freedom fighter battling evil private equity firms to make the world a better place? In today's video, you decide. We'll look at a timeline of the recent WordPress drama which began to spiral out of control a couple weeks ago when Automattic, the owner of the WordPress trademark, requested millions of dollars from WP Engine, one of the most popular WordPress hosting platforms. That's led to a bunch of mean tweets and lawsuits. But the drama hit new heights yesterday with the most controversial checkbox ever implemented on a website. What the hell is going on with WordPress? It is October 11, 2024, and you're watching The Code Report. If you're a JavaScript developer, it may come as a shock to you that nearly half the websites on the internet run WordPress, an open source tool built on PHP and jQuery and easily the most successful website builder of all time. Because why write code when you can just put a bunch of plugins together like Lego bricks? The main reason WordPress is so prolific is that it has a massive ecosystem of themes and plugins that allow both programmers and non-programmers to build almost anything. I've deployed many WordPress sites for clients in the past, and simply hosting WordPress sites is a multi-billion dollar industry. WordPress itself is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which means you're free to modify and use it commercially as long as derivative works have the same license. But that doesn't include the WordPress logo and name trademarks, which require permission from the WordPress Foundation to be used in any project or product. But what you should know is that the WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization created by Matt Mullenweg. Now one curious detail is that up until about two weeks ago, it said the abbreviation WP is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. But that line was recently updated to say now you can't use it if it confuses people and then proceeds to trash WP Engine. You can find it on WordPress.org, which differs from WordPress.com, the commercial arm of WordPress which provides hosting services, which itself is owned by Automattic, a multi-billion dollar company where Matt Mullenweg is the CEO. You would think that WordPress.com is the default host everyone goes with, but there's this other highly successful company out there called WP Engine. It makes hundreds of millions of dollars hosting WordPress and is backed by private equity firm Silverlake, where the main goal is to provide a return on capital. And that means they put far less effort contributing back to the non-profit arm of WordPress, at least compared to Automattic. And one important fact to know here is that Automattic was an investor and part owner of WP Engine until it sold to Silverlake in 2018. There's likely bad blood between the two companies going back years, but the main catalyst for the recent drama happened on September 20th, when Automattic sent this trademark license agreement to WP Engine. It's basically a ransom note demanding that they pay Automattic a royalty of 8% of its gross revenue on a monthly basis, which in this case would be millions of dollars per month. The reason Mullenweg was so pissed was A, that WP Engine profits off of WordPress and doesn't give back, B, they improperly use the trademark, like their payment plans which look like official WordPress products, and C, they quote strip mine the WordPress ecosystem, giving users a crappier experience. In other words, they don't want them forking and remarketing their open source plugins like WooCommerce. Now as you might imagine, WP Engine didn't sign the term sheet. What's crazy though is that the very next day on September 21st, Matt Mullenweg goes on stage at the WorldCamp US conference and calls WP Engine quote a cancer to WordPress. How private equity can hollow out and destroy open source communities. Very interesting timing for that presentation, but things are about to get a lot crazier. If you're just hearing about this situation though, you really should be on daily.dev, the sponsor of today's video. Not only is it a great place to level up your programming skills by keeping up to date on all the latest and greatest content out there, but you can also find out what real developers think about controversial issues like this WordPress drama. When you're part of the controversy.dev squad, you'll never miss a big story. Then you can discuss these topics and network with like-minded developers instead of arguing with a bunch of anonymous bots on Reddit. As a developer, the amount of information you need to keep up on is absurd. Instead of dumpster diving across the internet, just go to daily.dev to get all the information that matters in one place. It's completely free and you can use my invite link to sign up. But now back to WordPress. WordPress.org also made a blog post called WP Engine is not WordPress, which reiterates that they don't give enough back and describes how they turn off features like revisions to save money on their backend infrastructure. Two days later on September 23rd, WP Engine claps back with a seasoned assist which accuses Mullenweg of making salacious and outrageous statements. That same day, Automatic claps back on their clapback with its own seasoned assist, telling WP Engine to stop the unauthorized use of their trademarks. At this point, it's just been a bunch of legal shit talking. But then two days later on September 25th, WP Engine gets banned from WordPress.org. That's a big deal because it means the WordPress installs on their platform can no longer get updates or add plugins from the .org repo, thus having a direct impact on WordPress developers and end users. And that's kind of crazy considering that Mullenweg is offering a competing platform with WordPress.com. And he also went to his blog and said quote, WP Engine is free to offer their own hacked up bastardized simulerica of WordPress's GPL code to their customers and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it. That's harsh, but Mullenweg does have a good number of supporters online. If you don't agree with him, Automatic even offered a severance package to employees who wanted to leave, offering $30,000 or six months pay. And 159 employees took that deal, or 8.4% of the entire staff. Now after the initial ban, Mullenweg went on a media tour where he argued his position on the Primogen and Theo streams. He's fighting a battle in the court of public opinion, but I can't imagine his lawyers advised him to do that because then immediately after, WP Engine filed a lawsuit, and it even cited those stream appearances. Inside the lawsuit, there's all kinds of claims like computer fraud and abuse act violations, attempted extortion, unfair competition, liable and slander, and many other claims. But then things got even more nutty when the WordPress.org login added this new checkbox that said I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise. You'll want to talk to your lawyer before you check that because it has a CSS class of LoginLawsuit, and you can't even log into WordPress without checking it. That forced WP Engine to come out and clarify that their customers and users are not affiliates. All this nonsense has people talking about forking WordPress, but the entire thing is a great example of how there are no good guys in war. Are you on the team of the petty megalomaniac CEO who's willing to burn down his entire community to prove a point, or are you on the team of the parasitic freeloading private equity firm whose only guiding principle is financial gain? There's only one loser in this war, and that's the WordPress user. This has been The Code Report, thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one.