The WordPress drama could have major implications for the internet

The WordPress situation has soured in the past several weeks, as a dispute spirals out of control between founder Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, a platform that many users deploy in order to host their WordPress sites.

In late September, Mullenweg shut off access to WP Engine, alleging the company had extracted value from WordPress (which was created as an open source project) to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in investment—all without giving back to the community, and creating confusion by what Mullenweg alleges was breaching WordPress’s trademarks. The WordPress trademark is held by the WordPress Foundation, which Mullenweg is a board member of but doesn’t entirely control. Automattic is a for-profit WordPress host of similar scale as WP Engine, and the two are in fact direct competitors. (Full disclosure: WordPress hosts Fast Company’s website.)

Last month, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic alleging Mullenweg had “threatened” that WP Engine must pay Automattic a “very large sum of money” or face his “scorched earth nuclear approach” to WP Engine. Automattic followed up with their own cease-and-desist letter that same day, demanding that WP Engine stop violating their trademark and IP.

While some have sympathy with Mullenweg’s initial claim that WP Engine has built a fortune off the back of an open source project, many have taken umbrage with the way Mullenweg has gone about arguing his case, including snowballing the dispute into a broader one that could have huge implications. After all, WordPress powers around 43.5% of all websites online, according to W3techs.

Now, more than 150 employees have left WordPress’s parent company Automattic (nearly 10% of the workforce) after Mullenweg offered buyouts to anyone who disagreed with his approach with WP Engine. Meanwhile, anyone logging into WordPress.com, Automattic’s commercial hosting service, must now state whether they are affiliated with WP Engine, and Mullenweg has assumed control of the WordPress plugin directory’s presence for a popular plugin under the ownership of WP Engine since June 2022 without the original developers’ permission. (Mullenweg has cited guidelines that plugin makers agreed to as justification for why he “forked” the plugin, or chose to create a separate version for further development independent of the original.)

As a result, some are questioning whether WordPress can survive in its current form. “Matt’s recent actions have unequivocally harmed WordPress, as well as the broader open-source ecosystem,” says Jono Alderson, an independent technical SEO consultant. Alderson was banned from the WordPress community Slack for questioning why the company added a checkbox to WordPress.com’s login page requiring people to say they had no affiliation with WP Engine. Some users were concerned about why the checkbox had been added, and whether their responses could be used in legal action against them—something Mullenweg has not clearly answered. In messages on the WordPress Slack that were then shared on social media, Mullenweg says “It’s up to you whether to check the box or not.” In later posts, he advises people asking for clarity to “Please consult an attorney.”

The situation highlights the risk of allowing one individual total control over something as vital as WordPress is to modern digital life. “It’s hard to believe that one man’s crusade—justified or otherwise—might threaten the stability of nearly half the internet,” says Alderson.

Mullenweg declined to comment on the record to Fast Company. An Automattic spokesperson said: “There is no expectation that everyone to agree [sic] with the actions taken to protect the WordPress brand, including Automattic colleagues.”

The spokesperson added that, as an act of goodwill, the company “offered all employees the opportunity to resign from the company with a substantial monetary payment, and so no one felt as though they had to choose between their convictions and livelihoods.”

Alderson, the SEO consultant, worries that Mullenweg is trying to use WordPress’ impressive standing to bully individuals into submission. “People are afraid to speak up, for fear of retribution,” says Alderson. “Everyone’s worried that they might be the next to be banned, attacked, or railroaded—and there’s no court of appeal, no public recourse, and no end in sight.”

For some, Mullenweg’s public sparring—and the personal nature of the spat—calls to mind another entrepreneur. “It’s very Musk-y,” says Kellie Peterson, who worked as head of domains at Automattic from November 2016 to February 2023.

But while Elon Musk’s actions and words are generally picked up and lambasted by the media, Mullenweg’s activities with WordPress have remained comparatively undercovered. “Musk is very well known and draws clicks,” says Peterson. “[Mullenweg] isn’t as well known, yet. But while Musk can bloviate with the best of them, he can’t directly cause disruption to a business unless that business is run on [X].” But Mullwenweg has a wider reach thanks to his control of the WordPress ecosystem, argues Peterson, and that makes his unpredictability dangerous. In the same way that recent research suggests people believe their social media experience on X is worse thanks to Elon Musk, and therefore use the network less, there’s a worry in some quarters that Mullenweg’s behavior is going to terminally lower confidence in WordPress.

That concern can be seen in conversations around the subject, including a Reddit thread where a majority of posters say they’re not currently affected by the dispute with WP Engine—but are worried about what’s to come if the quarrel continues.

“He’s either not listening, or just doesn’t care,” Alderson adds. “And there’s nothing that anyone can do about that.”