As you’ve probably heard, Matt Mullenweg – WordPress’s embattled leader – doesn’t like WPEngine.

His main complaint is that WPEngine is using open source software (WordPress) in a completely legal way to make money, and Mullenweg isn’t getting a cut.  There’s a lot of lunatic prose he’s written about this – and even read to a jazz accompaniment – but fundamentally WPEngine is not doing anything illegal or wrong.

Mullenweg attempted to extort a large payment from them, even pressuring them to write checks in the hours leading up to his recent keynote and saying he wouldn’t go thermonuclear if they’d just pay up.

WPEngine didn’t, so Mullenweb retaliated by cutting off access to community plugins and other resources.

Don’t Forget This Key Point

Something I hadn’t heard before was posted by David Hansson of Ruby on Rails fame:

It’s even more outrageous that Automattic has chosen trademarks as their method to get their “Al Capone” when up until 2018 they were part owners of WP Engine before selling their stake to Silver Lake!

So when you read Mullenweg crying in his coffee about evil greedy companies like Silver Lake, remember that.

The Checkbox

If you try to login to WordPress.org – which is pretty much essential if you’re developing for the platform – you’re met with a new checkbox. It reads: “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.”

Well, what does that mean?  Which of these situations are covered:

• You work for WP Engine
• You have a site on WP Engine
• You work for a company that has a client that has a site on WP Engine
• You bought a WP Engine plugin
• At some point in the past you bought a WP Engine plugin
• Your wife works at a parking garage where WP Engine people park and she validates their stub

Don’t ask Mullenweg.  If you do ask for clarification, the following will happen:

1. You’ll be told to talk to a lawyer.  This is a specious answer because a lawyer can’t answer this question.  And of course, you may not be able to afford one.
2. If you continue to press the issue, you’ll be banned from the company’s Slack.  (Example)

Mullenweg later clarified that he wouldn’t take GitHub pull requests as an alternative.  You need to attest.

And Align

If you’re a WordPress employee, you were given the choice to leave if you didn’t like Mullenweg’s direction.  159 people immediately chose to do that and took 6 months’ severance with them.

Naturally, Mullenweg viewed this as a positive.

Advanced Custom Misery

Oh, but it gets better.

WPEngine published a plugin called Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) which supplies a lot of functionality that’s missing in WordPress.  It’s very popular and there is an ACF Pro as well, which is a paid add-on.

In September, Mullenweg began to muse publicly if perhaps WordPress should “roll ACF functionality into core” – in other words, eliminate this profit center for WPEngine.

Next, he announced that they had informed WPEngine of a “critical bug” in ACF.  Mullenweg trumpeted this very loudly, but it turned out the “critical” was not so critical.  More along the lines of “if you have been given Administrator access to a site, and the site is running multi-site, and it’s the fourth Tuesday of November when Jupiter and Mars are in alignment, you might be able to exceed your authority” kind of thing.

Not long after, WordPress announced the Secure Custom Fields (SCF) plugin.

When Will It End?

You’d think multi-gazillionaire Mullenweg would have enough on his plate, but this war shows no signs of stopping.  It’s all a huge net negative for WordPress’s users, of course, as the infrastructure is now fragmented and many developers have stopped contributing – or can’t contribute because of Mullenweg’s new legal requirements.

Have you checked the box?

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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