In Defense of WP Engine  ## Metadata - Author: [[Dropbox]] - Full Title: In Defense of WP Engine - Category: #articles - Summary: Shared with Dropbox - URL: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z7x212vz1m6ehwi8kxytu/In-Defense-of-WP-Engine.docx?rlkey=8c831ipvwhn0g5733gn0o7hxo&e=1&st=29cd8z8v&dl=0 Browse files faster in the Dropbox app 1. In Defense of WP EngineI have been watching the WordPress drama unfold and want to be transparent that I am not an unbiased bystander. I will do my best to preface everything I am about to write with some personal information. I have been a professional developer for a couple of years now and have been building WordPress websites for fun and hobbies since the early 2010’s. I have been an avid user and promoter of WP Engine and their platforms / services since roughly 2014 when I graduated college and started seeing what the professional WordPress development agencies in my area of Cincinnati were using. I have also hostedboth WordPress and non-WordPress websites with dozens of the other hosting providers including most of thebig names ones you expect and lots of little startup projects trying to carve out their niche along the way. If you know me personally, and I don’t know why you would since I don’t have a large social following or any sort of platform that people care to listen to me speak, I am a staunchleftist. To call me dissatisfied with much of our capitalist society would be putting it lightly, and yet, here I find myself,tweeting away the same arguments in defense of WP Engine over and over. I honestly don’t like that in writing this I find myself aligned with Silver Lake and Private Equity interests, buttoparaphrase Roosevelt, “...to cross the bridge I would hold hands with the devil.”The WordPress CommunityI want to take a moment and write about the WordPress community. As I have watched Matt’s actions the past couple of weeksand followed the discourse across various platforms,I saw a lot people from outside the WordPress community covering this news story. I appreciate the awareness they have brought on the issue and discussion they have encouraged.The WordPresscommunity, like most digital products,is vast and diverse. Due to its popularity the name is known from small mom and pop shops looking for a website, all the way to large corporations and government entities. The ease of installation, adoption by some of the largest hosting companies, and insanely large library of themes and plugins has been growing for yearsmaking it accessible to literally anyone that can read a blog tutorial or follow a 5-minuteYouTubevideo. 2. It’s amazing documentation and resources along with its popularity made it a very easy entry to web development for many developers, myself included, and its scalability and capabilities to grow to conquer the largest of business objectives has likelymade WordPress one of the most unique and diverse set of communitiesI know of.I know people that have worked in WordPress for over a decade and havebarely written any code. They have a tool available to build and design entire websites and the resources available to them mean they rarely need to write anything custom. I also know developers who cringe at the thought of page builders, using prebuiltthemes, or managing a site that has dozens if not hundreds of plugins. The beauty of WordPress , although it often is looked down on as a development toolin many circles, is that foryears it has served a massive community from no-code, to low code to code it all yourself. It was a product that empowered users, developers, and businesses by opening the World Wide Web to many people. Individuals could quickly manage blogs, publish content and swap the design of the site.Businesses felt empowered to fill the gaps that users experienced and stretched WordPress’capabilities well past a simple blog CMS. Individuals and groups of people started businesses investing into the WordPress eco system. They invested in Plugins and Themes, many of them free and a growing number of them with paid options for advanced configurations. They built their livelihoods on solving problems for one of the largest web platforms over the past 20 years. These people that invested their lives and livelihoods into WordPress are the ones that were hurt and are continuing to be hurtby the actions of the leadership of this community.Whatever the future outcome of the pending legal battle may be, these members of the community were offered as a sacrifice for it. No amount of arguing WP Engine was in the ‘wrong’ or Matt was in the ‘right’justifies the actions that were taken that disrupted the websites, sales pipelines, product development, contributions, organization of eventsor any other way that a member of this community participated.If you fall into that category, or maybe one I missed, I am going to say to you what Matt should have said. “I’m Sorry”. You deserve better. You deserve to put your trust in a platform and community that supports you and thinks of how its actions will affect you. 3. The PrecursorAt the end of September 2024 Matt stepped on stageandset the community ablaze with some very bold statements. Statements he would like for usto believe are philanthropic and for the good of the community. What he failed to mention before igniting a civil war and in my opinion destroying the entire foundation of Open-Sourcesoftware was that he had failed to negotiate a revenue sharing deal from WP Engine. I use the word “negotiate” and “deal” liberallyherebecause according to WP Engines Cease and Desist Letterand their Lawsuit, Matt was basically trying to extort them for 8% of the gross revenue and strong arm them into providing what would be an insane amount of business financial information for a competitor to have to share. I encourage everyone to read the cease and desist. I know it is 98 pages but if it helps there are a lot of photos! I realize that this is WP Engines version of events, but it has largely been the only version of events the community has seen receipts for. Matt has repeatedly lied, omitted, and changed the details of his storyand the reason for his actions. I am honestly exhausted from chasing goal posts which is what motivated me to write this.I would love for Matt to share any evidence he may have contrary to what WP Engine has provided but I suspect he cannot or will not and we will have to see what shakes out in discovery.Barring Matt actually providing receipts for some of thethings he has claimed he has proven himself tobe an unreliable narratorof the situation. He has claimed thatnegotiations havebeen ongoingfor much longer than there are paper trails presented so far. He left out the details of harassing WP Engine executives and threatening tohurt their career prospects. He left out the creepy stalker texts leading all the way up to the moment he took the stage.Nearly every reason Matt gives for why he is acting the way he is acting is easy dismissible or duplicitous.In fact,I would need many more pages to try and address all of the errors, omissions and double speak over the past few weeks, and that is exactly what I want to try and capture.Contributing to WordPressMatt wrote a blog post titled “WordCamp US & EcosystemThinking”which was published on September 17, 2024. I loathe to link to it and provide him with any more exposure but since I am referring toit, it feels only fair.In this blog post he attacks Silver Lake and accuses them of fracking every bit of value out of the WordPress eco system while praising Open Source ideology. The problem with attacking WP Engine for their contributions to WordPress is insanely simple, THEY DON’T HAVE TO. Full... Fucking.... Stop! This is the license Mattreleased WordPress on, he 4. doesn’t get to specify criteria for open source. In fact, in this exact same blog post heridiculed Meta for doing this exact same thing.“Yet, even now, false prophets like Meta are trying to co-opt it. Llama, its “open source” AI model, is free to use—at least until “monthly active users of the products or services made available by or for Licensee, orLicensee’s affiliates, is greater than 700 million monthly active users in the preceding calendar month.” Seriously.”So why isitthat Meta gets labeled a false prophet of open source while Mattgetsto dictate hours of contribution? Why does Matt get to decide that WordPress is open source until you pass X Millions of dollars in revenue, and then a company should pay 8% of their revenue or contribute that numberof hours to project? Why is heincapable of holding himselfto the same standardheexpectsof others in the Open Source community? Wouldn’t this make Matta false prophet just like Meta?Inevitably, this obsessionabout contributions always leads to bickering about whetherWP Engine should contribute more to the project, and honestly maybe they should, but that isn’t the license WordPress was releasedunder. Mattcould have argued and presented a case to the community about why OS needs to change to financially support it,topresent a new licenseand way forwardthat encourages companies to invest in the technologies they build their success on, but hedidn’t. Mattwanted money. “But he offered them the ability to contribute hours” I can hear the twitter trolls responding. Yeah, contribute hours to a project he controls the absolute direction of through an amalgamation of WordPress[.com], WordPress[.org], Automattic, and even his Personal name Matt Mullenwegwhich he admitted owns the .org domain. In reality, Idon’t think Mattactually wantsto talk about WP Engine’s contributions, because when he isn’t the one promoting the five for the future pledge as a measuring stick, WP Engine doesn’t look nearly as much likethe boogie man Matt paints them out to be. I won’treally get into defending WP Engines’ contributionsto the community, their complaint highlights some of what they have done.Whether or not that is enough is irrelevant when the threshold for anythingbut moral indignation is 0.Despite however you view WP Engine, and the perspective Mattwould like for us to view them from,they continue to growrapidly. Matt says he wants the community to vote with their dollars, I would say that they are. 5. WP ConfusionMatt doesn’t seem to think it is that clearthough, in his post WP Engine is not WordPresshe uses the confusion his mother as an example of how consumers are too dumb to know whether or not WP Engine is officially related to WordPress.Heconveniently leaves outthat WP is not part of the trademark, nor is WP Engine the only platform or product using WP in the name,and that he has since revised what the WordPress organization says about the use WP. Matt claims that they need a trademark license to continue their business. Honestly of all the excusesMatt makesfor the harm he caused the community,the trademark violations may be his most legitimate excuse. Which he knows and admitted in an interview with Theo saying that he cant force WP Engine to contribute so he is using the trademark violations as a way to “Capone” them into compliance. I am not a lawyer, though it was always one of my dream jobs, I will let those more well versed in Trademark law decide whether WP Engine is actually in violation. Matt by his own admission has not filed any lawsuits to enforce his trademark violation claim. He sent a cease and desist and WP Engine complied by adjusting their content and how they use the name WordPress even though there are a lot of questions about whether his trademark claim is even defendable, who owns the right to enforce it, and was it even legally transferred to Automatticfrom the WordPress foundationsince the foundation did not report any valuable amount of revenue from the sale and neither did Matt personally. What I can tell you is thataccording to WP Engine’s filingMatt and the AutoAmalgamationsigned off on WP Engines compliance to trademark adherencein the fine print of the WordCamp sponsorshipsfor years leading up to his recent claims. Automatticand Matthad absolutely no problem with WP Engines wording for years whiletheyinvested in them, partially owned them, and profited from them. Automattic profited from the relationship all the way up until they sold their stake to the Private Equity company they are now painting as the bad guy in this story, Silver Lake. Big Bad Private EquityThis one is going to be quick and easy. Matt is a hypocrite and any moral outrage he seems to have with Private Equity and investment in companies is nothing more than theater to manipulate public sentiment after failing to allegedly extort WP Engine. If Matt cared about the dangers of PE Automatticwouldn’t have sold to Silver Lake. He wouldn’t have taken investments fromBlackRock, Tiger Global Managementor any of the other major investors in Automattic.Mattagain wants to hold others to a higher standard than he holds himself and the AutoAmalgamation. 6. Leave Out All The RestHonestly, im tired of writing this article. So much new stuff to consider and re-evaluate every single day as Matt continues his temper tantrum trampling over the community he is claiming to protect.Iam going to just dump a few more bullet points to wrap this up:-Trademark violations have a legal process to resolve them. That legal process does not involve intentionally cutting off a competitors access to an open source project without a court process.-Matt claims that the infrastructurefor the WordPress update system is expensive and WP Engine should run their own. Refuses to provide any sort of evidence of how expensive it is after questions begin to arise about who actually covers the cost between the AutoAmalgamation’s.-Matts complaint about WP Engine modifying WordPress code for their platform needs are completely invalid, WP Engine is allowed to modify WordPress and WooCommerce however they see fit. The revision’s system being disabledcomplaint is a joke of an example. -They have every right to change the WooCommerce stripeattribution and don’t owe Automattic a dime.-Matt manufactured a situation where ACF was unable to update a security issue on their plugin. He seized a plugin and renamed itfrom an active plugin development company for the first time in WordPress history.-He incorrectly claims that he “forked”their repo, but in reality he hijacked the slugs, reviews and performed one of the largest supply chain attacks in modern history. He injected haphazard code into potentially millions of sites under the guise of security. Automattic employees likely assisted him in this.-Matt and his lawyer are unable to keep the AutoAmalgamation narrative and which company is what straight during a hacker news discussion.-I am so sick of hearing about Matt’s philanthropy, on multiple occasions Matt brings up how much he gives, how much he donates, how he gives to employees, etc as a defense of his character. I hope the donations help him sleep at night, it doesn’t change anything about his actual character and how he has responded to this event or how he has treated valued members of this community who dare cross him.I guess if I must have a closing to this long ass post it is that I am tired of being told to direct my anger at WP Engine, an unlikely ally right now,from someone who at 7. every turn has lied and tried to manipulate the community into believing he is some altruistic white knight of open source. It is disgusting to see so many people championing Matt’s actions as virtuous because he is “sticking it to private equity”. Matt is not a champion of open sourceand the only people Matt has managed to stick it to are the people that trusted him to operate the project in good faith and make decisionsthat protect and grow ALL of the community. Matt has objectively failed at that. At the helm of WordPress he chose to sacrifice business owners, agencies, developers and millions of individual usersandcant even be honest asto why. He absolutely should resign, but we know he wont. His actions have shown that he is incapable of that level self-reflection.Given that wrestling the keys of WordPress free from the Mad King are likely legally impossible,the only real questionsthat remain arewhat do we want to do about it? Are we prepared to rebuildas a communityabsent those that want to stayfor the new era of WordPress?, In Defense of WP Engine, Dropbox, 01jaaj58ek6cnsa32gjg9112ed.