WP Engine is not WordPress

According to Matt, it is not about the money:

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I haven't seen this whole discussion, only the above screenshot which is being shared.

The bots and trolls are also very active in this space.
 
Automattic is a competitor with WPEngine. Wordpress.com is a competitor with WPEngine. Wordpress.org and the Wordpress Foundation IS NOT a competitor with WPEngine.

There is a dispute between Automattic and WPEngine. The resources of Wordpress.org and the Wordpress Foundation should not be leverage in this dispute.

The fact that those boundaries are crossed means that anyone who is in competition with Automattic might have any and all ecosystems that Matt has any control over leveraged against them if they upset Matt or Automattic in any way.

It is very poor taste and changes the perspective of the product. Instead of a professional entity who will engage professionally it is now a form of leverage that a single person could wield against anyone who crosses them.

To be clear these same exact actions can be taken against anyone who insults one individual. This look is embarrassing.
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@Thor

For people like me who are heavily invested in the WordPress ecosystem, this is troubling. WordPress which has two arms, one Foundational and the other Commercial, is abusive. They act as they are the community, against the community.

This is bigger than WP Engine.

Some have sided with 'WordPress' and others have sided with 'WP Engine'.

Just my opinion.
 
Fulcrum29 said:
@Thor

For people like me who are heavily invested in the WordPress ecosystem, this is troubling. WordPress which has two arms, one Foundational and the other Commercial, is abusive. They act as they are the community, against the community.

This is bigger than WP Engine.

Some have sided with 'WordPress' and others have sided with 'WP Engine'.

Just my opinion.
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The issue is Matt. He needs to be removed.
 
Thor said:
The issue is Matt. He needs to be removed.
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Matt received strong community support until WP Engine was blocked. WP Engine deployed a proxy, but some things are still blocked. Since then, this whole cause has been under scrutiny.
 
Fulcrum29 said:
Matt received strong community support
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Which was a mistake. He has a history of abusing power. This is nothing new, but now it is playing out in the court of public opinion which is good.
 
WordPress.(org) published this little over an hour ago. Take note that WP Engine already implemented a proxy as a contingency.

wordpress.org

WP Engine Reprieve

I’ve heard from WP Engine customers that they are frustrated that WP Engine hasn’t been able to make updates, plugin directory, theme directory, and Openverse work on their sites. It sa…
wordpress.org wordpress.org

WP Engine Reprieve​


I’ve heard from WP Engine customers that they are frustrated that WP Engine hasn’t been able to make updates, plugin directory, theme directory, and Openverse work on their sites. It saddens me that they’ve been negatively impacted by Silver Lake‘s commercial decisions.

On WP Engine’s homepage, they promise “Unmatched performance, automated updates, and bulletproof security ensure your sites thrive.”

WP Engine was well aware that we could remove access when they chose to ignore our efforts to resolve our differences and enter into a commercial licensing agreement. Heather Brunner, Lee Wittlinger, and their Board chose to take this risk. WPE was also aware that they were placing this risk directly on WPE customers. You could assume that WPE has a workaround ready, or they were simply reckless in supporting their customers. Silver Lake and WP Engine put their customers at risk, not me.

We have lifted the blocks of their servers from accessing ours, until October 1, UTC 00:00. Hopefully this helps them spin up their mirrors of all of WordPress.org’s resources that they were using for free while not paying, and making legal threats against us.
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Matt is the bully in the WordPress yard, also,

https://twitter.com/x/status/1839780429060288683

That's not true, every other WP host in the world has been just fine through this. Silver Lake is the only entity we have beef with.
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"we"

lol @ reprieve, is WordPress.(org) some WWW conqueror or what?
 
Allegedly this interview with Matt talking about the situation, are changing people to side over to Matt's side. I haven't watched it, yet. I have read the summaries.

 
I listened a bit, and apparently hiding, well removing, the Wordpress Events and News widget in the dashboard is changing the code. This can be hidden as an option, but you can also remove it to block associated external requests.

This has to be allowed?

Matt has a huge issue with WP Engine customising WordPress and WooCommerce code. I get it, the changes they make are overall changes to every instance hosted on WP Engine. There are other hosts with these optimisations too.

I can't get my head wrapped around this. Other than the trademarks, everything else seems personal. How this is going, could potentially not end with WP Engine.

Anyhow, until the next update.
 
Fulcrum29 said:
I listened a bit,

I can't get my head wrapped around this.
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I am leaning towards Matt, but he could have answered some of those questions better.

He claims that he was communicating with WPE on this matter for while now, then reads meeting dates off his diary - no receipts, as in actual emails or communications to show.

He did state that this can be resolved by them either paying up OR beefing up their hour contributions to Wordpress:
Automattic sponsors 117 contributors for a total of 3,988 hours per week across 22 teams.
WP Engine sponsors 11 contributors for a total of 40 hours per week across 5 teams.

The initial blocking of WPE's access to the update servers also makes sense to an extent (although it looked bad in the eyes of the community). WPE is making bank but do not maintain their own repositories or whatever, instead relying on Wordpress?
 
ld13 said:
I am leaning towards Matt, but he could have answered some of those questions better.

He claims that he was communicating with WPE on this matter for while now, then reads meeting dates off his diary - no receipts, as in actual emails or communications to show.

He did state that this can be resolved by them either paying up OR beefing up their hour contributions to Wordpress:
Automattic sponsors 117 contributors for a total of 3,988 hours per week across 22 teams.
WP Engine sponsors 11 contributors for a total of 40 hours per week across 5 teams.

The initial blocking of WPE's access to the update servers also makes sense to an extent (although it looked bad in the eyes of the community). WPE is making bank but do not maintain their own repositories or whatever, instead relying on Wordpress?
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I agree with you. His request for giving back 8% of the revenue,, whether through paying a license fee to hire more engineers at WordPress.org or by contributing the equivalent in development hours using their own team, seems quite reasonable.

What concerns me is where the line is drawn for WordPress hosts? at what point do they need to start giving back, and how much is expected?

It appears to me his main issue is with companies and specifically WPE modifying core parts of WordPress without contributing back. I assume WordPress hosts that offer plans with unmodified WordPress installations are and will be in the clear, for now.

Let’s see how this pans out.
 
Adenoid Hynkel said:
What concerns me is where the line is drawn for WordPress hosts? at what point do they need to start giving back, and how much is expected?

It appears to me his main issue is with companies and specifically WPE modifying core parts of WordPress without contributing back. I assume WordPress hosts that offer plans with unmodified WordPress installations are and will be in the clear, for now.

Let’s see how this pans out.
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It makes no 'sense' to go after the hosts too hard, especially if these hosts reduce their use of the word Wordpress, making it clear that they are not Wordpress. He claims that there are already agreements in place with those that licence the use of the name so it would make sense for them to knock on the door of the big names that don't, in order to protect the use of the name to some extent.

If they push this too hard they will become Adobe in the eyes of the community and become just as much of a cancer to Wordpress as they claim WPE to be.

All parties involved need to step back a bit and make their intentions clear,
Matt: I want WPE to contribute more. The update servers costs money and WPE is using up 8% of the total resources. That ain't free.
WPE: We want to continue reducing costs by using the Wordpress update CDNs and limiting revisions.
 
Here are some good thoughts:

joost.blog

Transparency, Contribution, and the Future of WordPress

When we sold Yoast to Newfold in 2021, I quickly learned we had been incredibly naive. While at Yoast, I hadn’t realized how many deals were made between big companies to promote their products. This was my first realization that not all companies thought and worked like we had been doing. I did...
joost.blog joost.blog

/Cough, Yoast also has some past controversies, but the above said by Joost de Valk is valid.
 
ld13 said:
I am leaning towards Matt, but he could have answered some of those questions better.

He claims that he was communicating with WPE on this matter for while now, then reads meeting dates off his diary - no receipts, as in actual emails or communications to show.

He did state that this can be resolved by them either paying up OR beefing up their hour contributions to Wordpress:
Automattic sponsors 117 contributors for a total of 3,988 hours per week across 22 teams.
WP Engine sponsors 11 contributors for a total of 40 hours per week across 5 teams.

The initial blocking of WPE's access to the update servers also makes sense to an extent (although it looked bad in the eyes of the community). WPE is making bank but do not maintain their own repositories or whatever, instead relying on Wordpress?
Click to expand...

The only group I am leaning towards are the users. Though I don't support WP Engine directly, I do support an industry that is built on the CMS which is WordPress. I don't want this potentially spilled over to other hosts. WP Engine loses, others could also lose at some point in time.

I would have been much more open to Matt's cause on a Foundational basis, but lines are blurred with them/him also having a commercial arm.

The more I look at this, all these entities whether it is Automattic or any other large host which sells with WP there are strings connecting investors. At one time, Silver Lake also had a stake in GoDaddy. Some Silver Lake investments are non-disclosed.

From how I looked at this, there does seem to be an investment group, involving many parties, who want to move WordPress into an enclosed ecosystem. These ecosystems provide the ability to exercise control and generate recurring revenue, among numerous other interests. This is a move championed by commercial driven lobbies in the digital era, and it is not unique to what some label as capitalism.

As I said in the very beginning, those who commercialise WordPress should contribute, and it does not have to be money, but those proceeds should go to the Foundation, and not a commercial arm.

This is where I support De Valk's view:

No taxation without representation​

If we require everyone to contribute, we can call that taxation. It’s not as bad a word to me as to some other people, I think, but I do know that with taxation should also come representation.

In my opinion, we all should get a say in how we spend those contributions. I understand that core contributors are very important, but so are the organizers of our (flagship) events, the leadership of hosting companies, etc. We need to find a way to have a group of people who represent the community and the contributing corporations.

Just like in a democracy. Because, after all, isn’t WordPress all about democratizing?

Now I don’t mean to say that Matt should no longer be project leader. I just think that we should more transparently discuss with a “board” of some sorts, about the roadmap and the future of WordPress as many people and companies depend on it. I think this could actually help Matt, as I do understand that it’s very lonely at the top.

With such a group, we could also discuss how to better highlight companies that are contributing and how to encourage others to do so.
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Taxation though is the wrong word. There needs to be independent governance to promote the community's best interests.

WordPress's largest stakeholders are the community, not its Automattic investors and partners, but the community doesn't know whose arm is being served.

WP Engine should only continue using "WP", and should host their own repositories. Properties they own like ACF should be contributed to the WordPress community.

For ordinary hosts who are not enterprising with WordPress, and allow their users to install their own WordPress instances, single or multisite, could continue as is. It should be up to users to contribute to WordPress, not everyone can contribute or is even aware what to contribute.

A lot more can be said, but I don't wish anyone who has a business built with WordPress or a blogger who uses WordPress being harmed in this process. The same with a web host who allows their users to install WordPress.
 
Fulcrum29 said:
I listened a bit, and apparently hiding, well removing, the Wordpress Events and News widget in the dashboard is changing the code. This can be hidden as an option, but you can also remove it to block associated external requests.

This has to be allowed?

Matt has a huge issue with WP Engine customising WordPress and WooCommerce code. I get it, the changes they make are overall changes to every instance hosted on WP Engine. There are other hosts with these optimisations too.

I can't get my head wrapped around this. Other than the trademarks, everything else seems personal. How this is going, could potentially not end with WP Engine.

Anyhow, until the next update.
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Problem is those changes don't seem to worry the people using WP engine. If they were user damaging changes, then why would WP engine be so successful?

A lot of these open source projects are very protective over the trademarks over their software.
 
konfab said:
Problem is those changes don't seem to worry the people using WP engine.
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No, but as a hosting service which specialises in WP managed hosting they do have limitations. For some use cases you can't use WP Engine, but that a person will know when evaluating their hosting options. Not only does WP Engine limit things like post revisions which WordPress.(com) also did, but they also have a plugin and theme whitelist which WordPress.(com) also have. So...

WP Engine has their own caching plugins, etc, but some are allowed. It is a compatibility thing. Just like WordPress has their Jetpack suite which everyone loves to use /cough

For the above reasons, I don't consider any. There are better WP hosts.

I can go on.

konfab said:
If they were user damaging changes, then why would WP engine be so successful?
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Matt said:

WP Engine is not WordPress – WordPress News

wordpress.org wordpress.org

It has to be said and repeated: WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion. WP Engine needs a trademark license to continue their business.
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You know, her son did not build WP Engine, he helped build WordPress. WP Engine does buy Google Ads by the loads though.

konfab said:
A lot of these open source projects are very protective over the trademarks over their software.
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Sure, but WordPress.(org), WordPress Foundation and Automattic are the same. It is understandable that among them that they own trademarks, but there are words like "Managed WordPress" and "Hosted WordPress", which they can't reasonably own that they do want to own.

Is the WordPress Community still a community or are they a product? The product is blurred, what is GPL, what is commercial?

Years ago there was the thesis.(com) drama too. WordPress has a theme and plugin hard on. WooCommerce has started to move on marketplaces like Envato.

I remember when multisite started to be adopted. So many licenses were reneged on because there was money to be made.

Competition is growing, today there are many WordPress alternatives, some commercialised. This is how Matt views WP Engine, they are Automattic's competition.

When it comes to contribution, it is important to know that not all Automattic contributions are Automattic contributions. To quote Joost de Valk:

So I agree with Matt that big WordPress companies should have to contribute — preferably a lot, just like Automattic and some others do. But I would like to do that more openly: let everybody see how the money flows.

Currently the way it works is that the money for trademark deals flows to Automattic, but we don’t know how much of the contributions Automattic does are paid for by Newfold, whom we now all know are paying for the use of the trademark. Maybe the money should go directly into the foundation? If not, I think we should at least see how many of the hours contributed by Automattic are actually contributed by Newfold.
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Yes, WP Engine does not contribute remotely close to what 'Automattic' contributes, but they own plugins like ACF a whole lot specialised WordPress instances use. As some say, WP Engine did not contribute ACF, they acquired it. Yeah... like Automattic acquired WooCommerce. So I can go on again.

The community is a product. Personally, I would wish the WordPress Foundation to be independent.
 
WP Engine has started to remove all WordPress.(org) and Automattic trademarks, also added a website disclaimer:

WP Engine is a proud member and supporter of the community of WordPress® users. The WordPress® trademark is the intellectual property of the WordPress Foundation, and the Woo® and WooCommerce® trademarks are the intellectual property of WooCommerce, Inc. Uses of the WordPress®, Woo®, and WooCommerce® names in this website are for identification purposes only and do not imply an endorsement by WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc. WP Engine is not endorsed or owned by, or affiliated with, the WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc.
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It is a good start, but it is advisable that other hosts not under the "WordPress" canopy now does the same.
 
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