The chaos at WordPress revolves around a clash of egos

Millions of websites worldwide are unable to update thanks to an ongoing dispute that has bubbled over between a core backbone of the internet and a popular hosting platform that brings it to many users.

On Wednesday, Matt Mullenweg, an entrepreneur who developed WordPress and founded Automattic, a provider of free WordPress, shut off access to WP Engine, a platform that many users deploy in order to host their WordPress sites. The reason: a dispute over the extent to which Mullenweg believes the latter leeches off the former.

“Matt has absolute power in the WP ecosystem,” Jono Alderson, an independent technical SEO consultant, tells Fast Company. While Alderson says WordPress’s software is open-source, in reality large parts of it are under Mullenweg’s control. “It doesn’t matter if it’s trademark, ego, or something else entirely—if Matt decides something, for better or worse, we’re all beholden to his decisions.”

The dispute predates this week, but came to a head this month when Mullenweg called WP Engine, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in investment since its founding in 2010 ,“a cancer to WordPress”.

Mullenweg alleges that WP Engine brands itself as an offshoot of WordPress (and makes a lot of money from that affiliation), all while actually contributing a tiny amount of labor to its upkeep. By way of evidence that there’s brand confusion, Mullenweg has said his own mother has incorrectly believed WP Engine is a WordPress product.

In response, WP Engine sent a cease and desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic in which the firm alleged Mullenweg effectively held up WP Engine to ransom or would “embark on a self-described ‘scorched earth nuclear approach’”. Lawyers for WP Engine claim Mullenweg covertly demanded the company pay Automattic “tens of millions”.

Automattic fired back with its own cease and desist letter, alleging that WP Engine had piggybacked on its trademarks. “WP Engine has developed a business generating annual revenues of over $400 million, which has been based entirely on extensive and unauthorized uses of our Client’s trademarks,” lawyers for Automattic wrote.

In an outspoken blog post this week to accompany the decision to ban WP Engine, Mullenweg wrote: “Why should WordPress.org provide these services to WP Engine for free, given their attacks on us?” Pressable, a WP Engine competitor Mullenweg runs, has offered to buy out WP Engine customers’ contracts and cover the cost of cancellation.

In response, WP Engine said: “Matt Mullenweg’s unprecedented and unwarranted action interferes with the normal operation of the entire WordPress ecosystem, impacting not just WP Engine and our customers, but all WordPress plugin developers and open-source users.”

This is a dispute between two deeply embattled and antagonistic parties—so much so that WordPress recently updated its trademark verbiage to take a swipe at WP Engine. But WordPress powers around 43.5% of all websites online, according to W3techs, which tracks the web. In other words, this squabble matters.

Tommy Vacek, a former WP Engine employee, posted on X: “in this case, Matt is completely wrong. He is having a personal meltdown that is now affecting users of WordPress. Another user, Matt Ronge, wrote: “Automattic blocking WP Engine customers from updating their plugins is deeply hostile. Fine, sue each other into oblivion, but don’t interfere with customers.”

On the other hand, some Automattic employees have come out publicly to defend Mullenweg’s actions, and to say that WP Engine ought to support the WordPress project more. “My belief is that Matt Mullenweg is taking a public stand, acting in good faith, to defend the future sustainability and well-being of the WordPress commons,” wrote Dave Martin, who has worked with the company for more than a decade.

But at the end of the day, the risk of interfering with customers’ ability to host their websites is what has people worried most about the ongoing spat. “I think this is a negative vibe that we could well have done without,” Joost de Valk, an investor at Dutch firm Emilia Capital and a self-professed WordPress aficionado, tells Fast Company.

“Matt’s dispute with WP Engine is harming real businesses and individuals, many of which have no awareness or interest in the matter,” says Alderson, the SEO consultant. “What happens next could reshape the underlying fabric of the web, shuffle billions of dollars of investment, and alter the balance of power on the internet.”