It will be interesting to see what questions Automattic’s CEO and WordPress’s co-founder gets asked about the current brouhaha with WP Engine that has to potential to affect 43% of the world’s websites.
You might not have heard, but Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress — the latter being the worlds most used content management platform — is scheduled to be interviewed on Saturday morning in a livestreamed “fireside chat” before a live audience. It’s going to happen during the last day of the Nerdearla open-source conference in Mexico City.
Because the event is in Spanish it isn’t being publicized as much as it should on this side of the border, but the chat will be conducted in English and translated for Spanish-speaking attendees.
If you’ve been following the brouhaha between Mullenweg and WP Engine, you’ll probably want to dial in. Earlier this week when I talked with Ariel Jolo, Nerdearla’s founder and main spokesperson, he said that he would be conducting the interview and that it would be “the highlight of the event.” What they’re going to talk about, I don’t know, but I’m crossing fingers and toes hoping to hear something about the ongoing fiasco that has Mullenweg looking more like Steve Ballmer or Larry Ellison than an open-source hero.
Automattic develops WordPress, which besides being the most popular CMS is also copyleft open source, licensed under the GPL. If you want to use it, Automattic will at no charge supply you with a hosted version as a subdomain (wordpress.com/yourdomainname/) or you can download it and run it yourself. It’s what runs FOSS Force, as well as something like 43% of all the world’s websites according to W3Techs, an organization that tracks the technologies used online.
In addition to letting Automattic host for you or hosting yourself, there are plenty of companies that specialize in hosting ready-to-run out-of-the-box WordPress installations that are only waiting to be connected with your domain name. One of these companies is WP Engine, which by some estimates commands something like 32% of the WordPress hosting market, and which W3Techs says is the largest WordPress hosting company.
A couple of months ago, back in September or so, Mullenweg launched a war with WP Engine which seems to have started over a trademark dispute that nobody but Mullenweg thinks exists (over the “misleading” use of “WP”, which has been done since WordPress started about 20 years ago by thousands of WP plugins — meaning it’s way too late to be starting that battle). Since then, Mullenweg has expanded his list of complaints to include everything and the kitchen sink.
Here’s a list of stuff that’s at play, according to CMSWire:
“The conflict between WordPress and WP Engine traces back to disagreements over trademarks, site limitations and ownership of key functionalities. Tensions escalated over WP Engine’s use of WordPress branding and Mullenweg’s concerns about perceived overreach by the managed hosting provider. The legal dispute initially centered on WP Engine’s handling of post-revision tracking—a feature that Mullenweg argued infringed on core WordPress functionality, leading to accusations of violation of open-source principles.”
Along the way Automattic/WordPress has done things like temporarily blocking WP Engine sites from being able to update their plugins — basically making their sites security risks — and forcibly forking and rewriting at least one WP Engine maintained plugin. In September, shortly after Mullenweg fired his first volley, WP Engine sued Mullenweg. Since then, it’s been reported that Mullenweg’s indicated he’ll make all of WP Engine’s problems go away if it agrees to pay something like $32 million annually for a trademark license.
If the livestreamed interview happens as planned, I expect that what we’ll hear from Mullenweg is that he’s David facing Goliath and will paint himself as a defender of open source. If so, don’t believe a word of it. It’s more like he’s acting like a capitalist owner of some proprietary software that’s just found a client to be out-of-compliance after an audit.
Here’s how open-source pundit Steven Vaughan-Nichols put it nearly a month ago:
“Indeed, the more you look into this conflict, the clearer it becomes that this is no battle between a spunky old-school, open-source leader against a big bad commercial company and more a conflict between a capitalist who wants a bigger share of the WordPress pie and a company that had been doing quite well from the status quo.”
We might not hear from Mullenweg at all, however. For a brief time last week a similar presentation was in the works at All Things Open in Raleigh, which for unknown reasons was pulled before it was formally announced. The same could still happen here, although it’s getting a little late for him to back out now.
Mullenweg’s online chat is scheduled to take place on Saturday at 11:30 AM. You can livestream it for free, but first you’ll have to register.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
