Regardless of whether you like Mullenweg’s choices or not, he’s right

The WP Engine drama is divisive but also necessary for the future of Wordpress – here’s why


Matt Mullenweg ruffled more than a few feathers in the WordPress community over the past two weeks, getting into a rather public fight with services provider WP Engine, but there’s more to this story that’s potentially of interest to millions of people around the world. (Image: Wikipedia)


One would have to live under a rock to not have come across a single story about the Matt Mullenweg-WP Engine clash over the past few days. This has shocked not just the WordPress community (a sizeable one in its own right) but the open-source, media and tech communities too because… you know: WordPress. Almost half of the Web is powered by it, this very website is built on it and quite a few other websites you’re visiting every day may be too – so what happens at the top of the WordPress tower could affect hundreds of thousands of people who depend on WordPress every day to run their businesses. In other words: this is a big deal.

It is also a much bigger deal than most people probably realize.

See, it’s not just that Automattic (the company owned by Mullenweg that manages the commercial aspect of WordPress) and WP Engine (one of the most successful WordPress hosting providers in the world) are at each other’s throats and now officially engaged in a legal battle.

It’s not that this has been going on, in an embarrassingly public fashion, for two weeks now (The Verge just published a good article following the timeline of all events along with Mullenweg’s position). It’s not that this clash was the reason why almost 160 Automattic employees, including its executive director, chose to quit.

No, it’s not just that. More to the point, it’s that criticizing WP Engine and the way it handles WordPress – in the way it trades on it, implements it and contributes to it – Mullenweg essentially poses a number of questions regarding modern open source software: what it means in theory, what it could mean in realistic, practical terms and how its custodians might opt to fund its development moving forward.

The problem with open-source WordPress: it’s too important

Truth is, after one reads and watches more than a dozen stories and videos on the matter, there’s a feeling that (a) there’s been a lot more going on between Mullenweg and WP Engine behind the scenes for a long time and that (b) for Matt this got personal at some point, which is never a good idea when it comes to business disputes. That’s clearly why Mullenweg made certain moves and resorted to certain measures that proved to be highly controversial, that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and, ultimately, led to an exodus of some Automattic employees a few days ago.

The above interview of Mullenweg to dev YouTuber Theo provides context for a lot of things and it’s worth a watch (as is this one to tech YouTube channel The Prime Time). Regardless of the WP Engine situation, the common takeaway between the two is this: the man responsible for the future of WordPress believes that large companies like WP Engine, which greatly benefit from the WordPress product and ecosystem as a whole, should be contributing to the efforts necessary for its development and maintenance. To what degree and how is obviously something that needs to be discussed and agreed upon, but they should certainly end up contributing more than what most of them do now.

While Mullenweg recognizes that WP Engine or any other such company does not have to do that (since WordPress itself is open-source software), it ought to give back to this project in some way since that would be beneficial to its customers too. Giving back may mean work time, licensing fees, direct donations, revenue cuts etc. but the main point is this: even if WordPress itself is free for everyone, companies whose business model is so heavily based on this product and ecosystem should lend a helping hand in improving it.

On that, I personally believe that Mullenweg is right.

WordPress powers more than 43% of the Web right now, so how this turn of events will affect individuals and businesses depending on it in various ways is rather important. (Image: Souvik Banerjee, Unsplash)


Before everyone starts yelling “But OPEN-SOURCE!!1!11!!!”: yours truly totally gets it. The very nature of open-source software means that nobody owes anyone anything for using said software as they see fit, because no one individual or entity actually owns it. Since it’s open-source, it’s also not tied to revenue or sales targets, so its maintenance and development are not supported in typical “payroll” fashion – which is why volunteer or third-party sponsored work is so important for this type of software. It is the beauty and the problem of open-source we’re all familiar with: anyone can make money from it without ever actually giving anything back in return.

Automattic and the WordPress Foundation (a for-profit and a non-profit respectively) do employ people, but two things have become clear as of late. One, that the full-time employees of these two companies are not nearly enough to do the necessary work of supporting and developing something as demanding as WordPress all by themselves, so they heavily rely on the work of volunteers or sponsored contributors. Two, that the number of these volunteers or contributors has been in decline over the last few years, leaving most of the work to Automattic and the WordPress Foundation (hence the slowing down of WordPress in terms of exciting new features and innovation).

The reality of it all comes down to this: WordPress is an open-source project, yes, but it has evolved into something so important to so many people and so many businesses, that it can’t rely on volunteer or randomly sponsored work for much longer. Not to the degree it currently does, not indefinitely. It just can’t and, in many important ways, it shouldn’t. It’s not sustainable long-term. What’s more, WordPress is the kind of open-source software that would greatly benefit from more hands on deck in order to deliver high-quality results in terms of security, functionality and usability.

Mullenweg’s choices and actions have divided opinion as of late, but if the future of WordPress is to be assured, some uncomfortable decisions may need to be made at some point. (Image: WordPress.com)


Simply put: if WordPress is to continue growing, it needs to be funded in a more dependable way. As anyone in the WordPress community already knows, there’s been a lot of grumbling on the Web over the last three years about this CMS not evolving significantly, not becoming more accessible to more people fast enough, not innovating nearly as much as it should. This is a matter of resources (among other things).

So yes, regardless of what anyone thinks of Matt Mullenweg, his methods and choices, the man is right: maybe the time has come to discuss how companies like WP Engine can meaningfully contribute to WordPress. How they can give back to the product they greatly profit from.

An obvious, controversial but long-term solution to a serious problem

Before the conversation of how big WordPress businesses may contribute to this CMS can be had, though, it would be better if the WP Engine situation is resolved – if nothing else, so as to not negatively affect a discussion as necessary as this one. If I were in Matt’s shoes, I would not pursue the WP Engine matter further. It’s clear that this company does not intend to contribute to WordPress in a meaningful way and that – especially after all that’s happened – it’s not interested in working with Mullenweg on anything. All this drama now just makes Automattic and WordPress look bad from a PR standpoint, which is not to anyone’s best interest.

WordPress has grown so much over the last two decades that it’s now a really, really bad idea to rely on volunteers, sporadically sponsored contributors and a small number of employees to continue maintaining and developing this CMS further every year. (Image: Pixabay)


What I would do instead is propose a plan to have all companies that greatly benefit from WordPress give something back in return, based on their financial ability to do so. This would obviously only make sense for companies that make a lot of money on products and services built around WordPress – say, more than 100 or 150 or 200 million $US, for argument’s sake – and it would definitely not be something as exorbitant as the 8% of revenue Mullenweg was asking of WP Engine (more like 0.3% to 0.5% tops). But it would be something. Something of value. Put together, quite a few such somethings from a number of contributing companies would greatly help accelerate WordPress development and allow the WordPress ecosystem to expand further.

Also, just as Matt said, it does not have to be money per se, paid to Automattic or the WordPress Foundation. Personally, I very much like the idea of each of these companies generously compensating their employees for the extra time they put in the development of WordPress, like he initially proposed to WP Engine – or even have a few employees on board doing work for WordPress core, official plug-ins and themes that will eventually circle back to better products for these companies, their clients and the WP community as a whole.

Again, before people start screaming “No WordPress tax!!111!!!”, insisting on how all of this is not in line with the spirit of open-source at all, yours truly gets it: no, it isn’t. It’s not ideal. But projects as important as WordPress need to be run in a way that’s stable, financially healthy and sustainable. Companies that do have the means to contribute – based on all the revenue they generate around WordPress – only stand to gain from a better-maintained, meaningfully-evolving WordPress platform. It is that simple.

The WordPress ecosystem has evolved into an absolutely huge market of products and services over the years, so it makes sense for the most successful companies operating in that ecosystem to contribute to it in a meaningful way long-term. (Image: WordPress.com)


Does yours truly write all this out of personal interest? Of course he does. He wants to see WordPress thrive. It’s been his Web platform of choice for almost two decades after all. Would he rather belong to a WordPress ecosystem where more companies and individuals contribute to this project? You bet. Is this related to the whole Mullenweg-WP Engine situation? Frankly, no. I’ve always felt that, although somebody is not obliged to give back to a product or service or anything that he/she/they is using for free (let alone making money from it), if he/she/they can contribute to that in some way, then he/she/they probably should. No matter how small the contribution, it’s just the right thing to do.

Having said that, I freely admit that I’ve not significantly contributed to WordPress over the years. That is, other than by beating the drum for it at every chance, by getting clients or colleagues on board – building websites for the former and educating them on its use or helping the latter leverage it respectively – by purchasing themes or plug-ins on a regular basis or even by writing about it occasionally. Others have done a lot more, which is why I’ll be pursuing a “give-something-back” WordPress project of my own in 2025.

In the meantime, though, the future of the most popular CMS on the planet is in the hands of other people and it will be extremely interesting to see how all this plays out. Open-source software as huge as WordPress needs all the support it can get based on scale and importance alone. Here’s hope that, from here on out, the people who make things happen will make the kind of decisions that make sense for everyone.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Kostas Farkonas

Veteran reporter and business consultant with over 30 years of industry experience in various media and roles, focusing on consumer tech and services, modern entertainment and digital culture.

Veteran reporter and business consultant with over 30 years of industry experience in various media and roles, focusing on consumer tech and services, modern entertainment and digital culture.