What happens when one of the creators of one of the largest open source projects in the world goes on a public confrontation? That's exactly what's happening in the WordPress community right now. Following a controversial statement by Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, the discussion behind the scenes is simmering and threatens to change the balance within the ecosystem.
Following his In-Person Q&A at WordCamp US 2024 and the publication of a blog post by Matt Mullenweg, in which he described WP Engine as a “cancer for WordPress”, the discussion within the WordPress community is in full swing. In his “In-Person Q&A”, Mullenweg made it clear that this escalation did not come out of nowhere, but is the result of years of (in his view) fruitless negotiations. A key issue: the unbalanced involvement in the WordPress ecosystem between WP Engine and Automattic, Mullenweg's own company.
The conflict centers on the “Five for the Future” initiative, which aims for a fair contribution to the open source project. Here it becomes clear that WP Engine contributes far less to WordPress than Automattic. The figures speak for themselves: the official “Five for the Future” page clearly shows the disparity in contributions.
In a next step, WordPress.org finally blocked automatic updates for customer instances hosted by WP Engine. This means that site operators who rely on WP Engine will no longer receive security and feature updates - a radical cut for the affected customers.
Mullenweg's actions have joined the many discussions about the “health” of the FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) ecosystem, but the direct intervention in the operations of a major hosting provider is unprecedented. The impact on the WordPress community and ecosystem could be profound, especially if other large companies take the lockdown as a warning signal. Tensions in the open source world continue to escalate, and it remains to be seen whether this heralds a new era of accountability and transparency in how large companies work with open source projects.
