WordPress Is On Dangerous Ground

This is my first post in a long time, as you can tell. One of the reasons I'm writing an entry is due to what's been going on in the WordPress world. In case you've been living under a rock, there is currently a big public battle going on between Matt Mullenweg, the company he runs, 'Automattic', and a rival called WP Engine.

I can only speculate as to the real reasons for this public spat. On its surface, one side claims it's about a trademark dispute. But based on the actions of that same side, it seems to be some poorly thought out plan to exert more control over the community, and to attempt to extract revenue out of hosting providers in the WordPress sphere under the guise of a trademark license.

Many members of the WordPress community, myself included, feel that recent actions taken by Matt and Automattic have been been unethical and against the very principles of open-source itself. As a previous plugin author that once had over five million downloads of one of my plugins, I was completely shocked that WordPress would usurp someone else's plugin and call it a fork (without changing the slug). In addition, many of the communications from the official WordPress channels have shown complete contempt for the very community it claims to represent.

My modus operandi is pretty simple - I believe what's fair and true for one person or group should be fair and true for any other group or individual. That's it. I believe if we have rules and guidelines that they should apply to everyone, and not just be enforced selectively.

That's why I don't think it's right that someone can go up on stage at WordCamp US and disparage a $75,000 sponsor, when any other member of that same community would have likely received a ban for that same episode. I don't think it's fair to provide WordPress.org services to some users, and not to others due to a business disagreement (especially since there are literally 1500 hardcoded references in the WordPress source code pointing to WordPress.org). If the WordPress.org services are to be pay to play, that's fine, simply set a price so we can all pay and continue to use it. Or transfer it all to the Foundation and do a proper fundraising campaign so businesses help pay for it. But no business or individual should ever have to worry about accessing the WordPress.org site, especially one who is allegedly on the receiving end of an extortion campaign. If we are to believe that WordPress.org isn't a critical part of using WordPress, then Automattic should set about removing all 1500 instances of it within the code and simply have configurable update services.

I have been pretty vocal on X over the last few weeks due to all of this, partially to support the many community members who have been ostracized for expressing displeasure, and partially to continue to help advocate for the community that did so much to help me over the last 15 years. It's been extremely hard to watch members of the community, many of whom I've had beers with or been at WordCamps with, be selectively discarded for having opposing viewpoints. I have personally been blocked on X/Twitter by Matt, Automattic, and by the WordPress account itself. Sadly, it's become somewhat of a badge of honour, meaning at least we went out standing up for what we believed in instead of staying silent.

With that in mind, I've been personally saddened that many of the more popular plugin authors (many of which I traded emails with and calls back in the day) have refused to publicly have a stance on this, probably hoping that this will all go away soon and they can just get back to business as usual. These are trusted members of the community whose opinions and guidance would be appreciated at a time like this. And yet, their deafening silence has reverberated through the fractured community.

I do not believe this is the time for silence in the WordPress community. It's fine to not take a side, but it's not fine to act like nothing is happening. Not while contributors are quitting, members on Slack are getting banned, community members on X are getting blocked, and the official WordPress accounts continue to talk down to their followers. Everybody should be speaking up now and advocating for what they believe in.

WordPress isn't a spring chicken anymore - it's been around over 20 years now, and powers 43% of the web. The codebase and the community owes much of its success to the thousands of core, plugin, and theme contributors who submitted their work for free onto what is now apparently Matt's personal website. I'd tried to do my part to contribute the success of WordPress in the early days, helping in the following ways:

• I co-organized and ran three separate WordCamps in the Vancouver area. I quit hosting WordCamps when the Foundation took them over and imposed limits which made running not-for-profit future events like WordCamp Whistler #2 completely impossible.
• In the early days, I helped sponsor many WordCamp events around the world, the majority of which I never even attended
• I co-developed several popular plugins, one of which for a time provided the default mobile experience on WordPress.com. Several plugin contributors on X (including the author of WPGraphQL) recently told me that my plugin code was their first real introduction to the WordPress plugin ecosystem, and that they learned a lot from it - that was great to hear.
• I did the first few iterations of the profiles.wordpress.org site, the first on bbPress, and the second on BuddyPress

As such, I'm saddened by what has been taking place and what's apparently happened to WordPress, primarily through the actions of its apparently not-so-benevolent dictator. What separated WordPress from many of the various options in the early days was the vibrant and helpful community. When the people in charge of the project show outright contempt and hostility towards many members of that same community - in many cases simply for disagreeing with current actions and policies - that's a huge problem.

It's clear we have all come to a very visible branch in the road, one which may ultimately lead in other directions within WordPress, and for some people, outside of it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if one or more WordPress forks emerge shortly, along with other plugin/theme repositories and third-party update servers. Of course, the people in charge say they are absolutely fine with this option, and apparently are even encouraging it - but I suspect if and when a fork or update repository emerges with a substantial backing, we will see a very public reversal of that encouragement.

While I still intend to do what I can to help the WordPress community recover from the current fracturing, I'm also no longer motivated to keep promoting or using WordPress.

And that's why for the first time since 2006, this website no longer runs WordPress.