For a mediocre CMS system, WordPress sure punches above its weight…when it comes to drama, that is.

You’ve been following the story here and elsewhere:

• Mullenweg, Former Part Owner of WP-Engine, and His WordPress Checkbox of Doom
• Automattic’s $32 Million Annual Demand: The High Stakes of Using the WordPress Trademark
• WordPress v. WP-Engine Thermonuclear War, and Every Linux Box is About to be Hacked

The standout moment in still Mullenweg reading an anti-WP-Engine screed to a jazz accompaniment.

He followed up by creating a site allegedly tracking how many sites have “left WP Engine and found a new home since Sep 21, 2024”.  Hilariously, Attomatic crows about 35,510 defctors (as of this writing) people who’ve left WP-Engine…as if that’s some kind of big number.

He also cut WP-Engine off from some Attomatic services, but a court slapped him across the face and told him to knock it off.  He quit the community Slack in a huff as a way of…something.

I mean, there’s jumping the shark…and then there’s jumping sharks with freakin’ lasers on their heads.

The Latest

So after all these screeching, a couple community members started talking about maybe forking WordPress.  They’re not the first – people have been forking the hell out of it for a decade or more.  But now there’s fresh community impetus.  You have a madman at the wheel, so people are putting some serious thought behind finding new leadership.

In response, Mullenweg yesterday wrote the most passive-aggressive, sarcasm-laden, manboy-screaming-for-attention post you’ve ever read.

Just to align reality for a sec: Mullenweg is a multi, multi, multi-millionaire.  He also used to own part of WP-Engine before selling it for millions.

In the post, he calls out a couple contributors, Joost de Valk and Karim (last name? not stated) in the most tacky way possible.  Joost worked for Automattic, and Mullenweg says

I think we would both agree in those 5 months he was not effective at leading the marketing team or doing the work.

Well that’s certainly catty.  Karim is dismissed as someone who “leads a small WordPress agency…and employs ~50 people” while contrasted with the army of thousands Mullenweg commands…though they’re jumping ship as fast as they can.  8% of them resigned after his jazz screed.

Now read some of these teenage comments:

However in Joost and Karim’s new project, they don’t need to follow our process or put in the hours to prove their worth within the WordPress.org ecosystem, they can just lead by example by shipping code and product to people that they can use, evaluate, and test out for themselves. If they need financial or hosting support is sounds like WP Engine wants to support their fork…

He also threatens to stop working on the WP core to match what he perceives as WP-Engine’s lack of contributions:

In the meantime, on top of my day job running a 1,700+ person company with 25+ products, which I typically work 60-80 hours a week on, I’ll find time on nights and weekends to work on WordPress 6.8 and beyond. Myself and other “non-sponsored” contributors have been doing this a long time and while we may need to reduce scope a bit I think we can put out a solid release in March.

What We All Hope Will Happen

Here is what should happen with WordPress:

• A new fork is created and it gains traction.
• The services that Automattic provides are replicated onto free platforms.  Really, it’s downloading the plugins…and the world is lousy with downloading platforms.  You don’t need Automattic to download npm packages or Debian updates.
• Mullenweg loses his fortune in a crypto scam, gets a job flipping hamburgers, and learns some humility.

We’ll see.

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.