Throughout the history, mankind has fought battles over battles to gain the most desirous state of their existence i.e. POWER!. Power has enabled its custodians to hold on to resources that are crucial for their survival. The chronicles do explain though that Power always look for more Power!
Likewise, we are witnessing a highly uptight battleground in the tech world, more specifically the WordPress Community. It is currently embroiled in a significant controversy due to a clash between WordPress founder & Automattic CEO, Matt Mullenweg, and WP Engine, a hosting company for WordPress-powered sites.
The Contextual Details of the Conflict
It all started when Matt wrote in one of his blogs, “WP Engine is not WordPress” on 21st September 2024 where he claimed that WP Engine is misusing the trademark owned by Automattic, which is WordPress and WooCommerce to sell their hosting and other products. He openly remarked that WP Engine is not WordPress but they are using the trademarks & intellectual properties in a way that creates this false belief that WordPress is owned by WP Engine.
He also claimed that WP Engine is not providing the same user experience that is the core strength of what WordPress offers. They have disabled the revision history of posts and pages to avoid paying more to store it on their servers. He says, it is a breach of the promise they have with their users of managing & protecting their data. He said it is WP’s core feature and claimed that WP Engine is providing a cheaper, chopped up version of WordPress. Matt unleashes his annoyance by calling them Cancer that will continue to spread, if not stopped.
WP Engine has completely denied all the allegations and further apprised that Automattic CEO has harassed them by demanding a large sum of money, about 8% of their profits to avoid the controversy and public debate. They claimed that Matt threatened them by saying he will take the “scorched earth nuclear approach” against them. He did and served a Cease & Desist letter to demand an immediate stop on using the trademark or give them the share of their revenue derived from their brand, claiming they rightly deserve it.
The conflict escalated and WP Engine also issued a Cease & Desist Letter, followed by a law suit to Automattic for misusing their powers, to establish anti-competitive practices which are totally against the open source ethos of WordPress.
Market Sentiments and Winner’s Takeaway!
Every battle has an underdog that wins the sentiments of the market and then the top dog, a powerful contender who has everything on its side. The community responded exactly the way it should, by assuming that if WP Engine wins, they will put the trademark issues to rest for good. For WP Engine, they are out to save the open source users on a global scale.
On the other hand, if Automattic wins, Matt will come up with more and more trademark claims on other companies. This is what they all fear. Well rightly so, Automattic is also applying for trademarks like “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress”, if they get them, the Power will have more Power and the monotony in the market will be grander.
Hence, a large majority has taken sides of WPE. Even within the organization, 159 employees of Automattic resigned at the back of Matt’s decisions to fight with WP Engine. The whole community on social media platforms stood behind WPE, even Matt’s own poll gave him the fact check that people aren’t happy.
It is not a coincidence, it is how the minds have shaped over centuries. Everyone wants the giants to go down on their knees.
The After Affects & the Future
As an open source platform, WordPress is powering more than 43% of global website owners. They are either using an instance of WordPress or using a WordPress based hosting company such as WP- Engine. Matt propagates the democratic use of the open source platform and invite anyone and everyone to use it. Automattic has built an empire over this open source and is currently valued in billions. WordPress has the power to disrupt a smaller company like WP Engine but they would do it at the cost of their reputation of becoming power hungry mongers who can’t assimilate another company using their open source effectively and making more than 400 million a year.
In my opinion, they may be justified in claiming that any company/organization using the open source platform should give back to the creators by sharing the revenues. However it is not an obligation to them and certainly do not deserve to be served a cease and desist letter.
If Automattic wants to have a share in the revenues of other companies who are using his open source platform, they should adopt a process that is industry wide and can be applied to all the WP hosting companies.
The WP Engine, as a responsible organization, has the option to settle it by offering something in return for the greater good of their business and user base. They can devise an agreement that suits both the companies and do not create such a ruffle in the community. But in an attempt to save the world, they want to fight it till the end.
The future does look interesting though. As they say, everything happens for a reason, there is an increased need of an alternate platform to WordPress that offers all the similar features and has the ability to break the monotony in the CMS industry. Although a huge ask but maybe, another platform like WordPress will be in the making and just maybe a bigger, better and more powerful CMS system emerges on the global scale. With artificial intelligence, a very nifty tool to speed up
development, someone is able to generate the right amount of funding to build BetterPress or FurtherPress (names coined by the writer) in no time. Dream On!
The Fact Check!
No matter what opinions we hold, the power of WordPress is unbeatable at this point. WordPress is Here to Stay!
Call it world domination but WordPress has gained an unprecedented mileage in the industry. It is a kingdom in which it has its own market places, craftsmen a.k.a. developers and thousands of companies making themes and plugins for them. For anyone to beat the kingdom, they need a few decades to generate the interest of geniuses and masterminds and then few more to engage customers who don’t want to switch from WordPress and WooCommerce.
References
Cease & Desist from WP Engine to Automattic
