WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg bans WP Engine, sparks an
uproar
This decision has ignited a firestorm of speculation and debate, with supporters praising the move, while critics say it's a heavy-handed abuse of power.
In a shocking move that's sending ripples through the tech world, Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, has just banned WP Engine, one of the world's largest WordPress hosting services, from the WordPress ecosystem.
This decision has ignited a firestorm of speculation and debate, with supporters praising the move, while critics decry it as a heavy-handed abuse of power.
What's going on? And why should indie hackers care about this tech giant showdown?
The drama, explained
Several days ago, Mullenweg published a post titled: WP Engine is not WordPress. In the post, Mullenweg calls WP Engine a "cancer" to WordPress:
“They are strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem, giving our users a crappier experience so they can make more money. What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for it.”
"WP Engine," he said, "needs a trademark license to continue their business."
Needless to say, these accusations didn't sit well with WP Engine.
The company sent a cease and desist to Automattic and published it for all to see. I'm not a lawyer, but the letter essentially accuses of Mullenweg of extorting WP Engine, threatening to ban them from the WordPress ecosystem unless they fork over large sums of cash.
For his part, Mullenweg has admitted on Reddit that WP Engine was asked to pay 8% of their revenue, which is nothing to snort at, considering that WP Engine makes over $400 million a year with their WordPress hosting service.
Mullenweg also moved to ban WP Engine from the WordPress ecosystem. It's estimated that 2% of all websites use WP Engine, and their owners are already feeling the effects:
In a follow-up post on Friday, Mullenweg temporarily lifted the ban, saying, “I’ve heard from WP Engine customers that they are frustrated… It saddens me that they’ve been negatively impacted by Silver Lake‘s commercial decisions.” (Silver Lake is a major investor in WP Engine.)
He gave WP Engine until October 1st to create “mirrors” — aka copies — of WordPress.org's resources before reinstating the ban.
In essence, Mullenweg's latest message can be interpreted as a final warning: WP Engine must become independent of WordPress.org's free services or face permanent disconnection after the deadline.
How does all this WordPress stuff work?
WordPress is the world's largest content management system. It's absurdly popular. As of 2024, over 470 million websites run on top of WordPress. That's over 40% of active websites!
In addition to being one of the co-founders of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic. Automattic is a for-profit company that owns WordPress.com, a service for hosting websites built on WordPress.
On the other side of the conflict we have WP Engine, which is also a service for people to host their WordPress websites. (Do you see a potential conflict of interest here?)
WP Engine was founded by Jason Cohen, one of the world's most successful indie founders:
Jason has bootstrapped multiple businesses to over $1M in revenue.
He's appeared on the Indie Hackers podcast, given a legendary talk at MicroConf, and even done an AMA here for the IH community.
Long story short, Jason is a legend in the indie hacker community. So it's no surprise that when he decided to stop bootstrapping and go for broke with WP Engine, it was a huge success.
Here's Jason's take on the issue:
Who's right and who's wrong here?
As I mentioned earlier, Automattic is a for-profit entity that runs WordPress.com and competes with WP Engine.
On the other hand, WordPress.org and the WordPress Foundation which "owns" WordPress, is a nonprofit company and is not a competitor with WP Engine.
But both are controlled by Matt Mullenweg.
By banning WP Engine from the WordPress ecosystem, and allegedly asking WP Engine to pay money to his company Automattic, Mullenweg seems to be abusing the powers of a nonprofit in order to benefit his for-profit interest.
And this has been the most common sentiment among founders and onlookers alike.
Theo Browne, the founder of Ping Labs, said that, "WordPress will never die, but today they killed the trust their community had in them."
John O'Nolan, the founder of Ghost, told WP Engine founder Jason Cohen, "You don't deserve any of this, and in my mind it appears to be a fairly obvious attempt at extortion. Not the first, and unless something changes, probably not the last."
Nathan Barry, the CEO of ConvertKit, also offered words of sympathy to WP Engine, saying, "Sorry you're under attack like this. We're happy @wpengine customers over here!"
Others have argued that WP Engine deserves this in a way, because they've made minimal contributes back to WordPress, despite making millions from its platform.
However, WordPress is open-source software with a GPL license, meaning you can use the software for commercial purposes without any requirement or expectation to donate back to the project or platform.
In addition, the WordPress Foundation's trademark policy explicitly states that the abbreviation "WP" is not covered by the WordPress trademark. So it's difficult to agree that WP Engine is clearly in the wrong there, either.
The fact of the matter is that Matt Mullenweg controls not just Automattic, but also seemingly the WordPress Foundation and WordPress.org, too. So it's difficult for anyone building on WordPress right now to have confidence they can trust in its ostensibly open source nature.
If you have a dispute with the for-profit Automattic or with Mullenweg personally, how can you now trust that he won't use the WordPress Foundation's substantial powers to hinder or harm you?
It's understandable that most people aren't taking Mullenweg's side in this issue, and may have a lack of trust going forward.
What does this mean for indie hackers?
Building on other people's platforms comes with a risk.
We've seen countless examples of a third-party service building a "feature" of a platform, and then the platform killing off the service by adding that same feature to their own platform.
This situation is a bit different, though. This is about an open-source platform changing its policies to outright restrict who can access its themes, plugins, updates, and ecosystem as a whole.
Does this mean that founders shouldn't build on top of third-party platforms?
Not at all. There are dozens if not hundreds of products in our Products database that are built on top of other platforms (Shopify Apps, Chrome Extensions, etc.) that are doing well. And obviously many tens of thousands of other businesses manage to do so, too.
However, it's important to understand the risks, especially if you get big enough to motivate others to paint a target on your back.
And if you're risking it all to build on WordPress, make sure your service providers aren't on the wrong side of Matt Mullenweg.
We can't know Matt Mullenweg's true motives but even if they're pure and he's genuinely just concerned about not wanting people to confused WordPress with WP Engine he's playing this situation in the worst possible way from a PR perspective.
WP Engine is a massively successful business that hasn't contributed to core WordPress. Obviously they weren't legally required to, but it seems like Mullenweg could have leveraged the goodwill WordPress has built up over the years to make WP Engine seem like an ungrateful bully? But instead he's leveraging the resources of the foundation, which technically should have no dog in this fight between WP Engine and Automattic.
This situation between Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine is a significant moment for the WordPress community and beyond. Mullenweg’s decision to ban WP Engine raises questions about the balance of power in the open-source ecosystem, especially since he controls both Automattic and the WordPress Foundation. Critics argue that this is a blatant abuse of power, particularly given Automattic's for-profit status.
For indie hackers, this drama serves as a cautionary tale about building on third-party platforms. While many have successfully done so, the risk of conflict with platform owners can jeopardize your business. It’s vital to consider the potential implications of your dependencies, especially as your venture grows. Trust and transparency are essential in these relationships, and this incident highlights the importance of being aware of who controls the tools you rely on.
The last 3 paragraphs of this article may suffice to conclude what's really happening, if there are tens of thousands other business doing well to build something on other's platform but WPEngine fate is seems to be an anomaly?
Maybe WPEngine really didn't contribute enough to make sure they're not on the wrong side of Matt. The vibe and motivation to give back are so strong on Make WordPress platform.
Unfortunately, there are many unnecessary features, and the developments have increased WordPress problems. WordPress is now like an Android system.
WP Engines are so ridiculously overpriced. That’s why you don’t use dedicated engines; you use your own hosting.
Thank you for this summary and context
People jump to conclusion quickly and over-react. First of all, you can still go to WordPress.org and update using the classic way before the repository came in. Second, he has the right to block access to the server he is paying for. WPEngine is using WordPress.org resources, and project for free without giving anything back to the community. Automattic is spending millions on core contributions, how is it fair that WPEngine is making millions from these contributions without contributing themselves to improve core.
The thing is Wordpress could have legally done this year's ago. It's in the licence that ships with every version of WordPress that I know of.
Concerns from the past:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-question-on-gpl-licensing-and-the-current-wordpress-debacle/3355
I am on the side of the affected ones. All those startups making a constant effort to bring their solution to the market that now have to potentially migrate their website. Matt should carefully weigh his decisions keeping in mind the WP community, not only his benefits. I hope they can arrive at a good solution for everyone.
Dick move by WordPress.
100% on WP Engine's side here. Comes off as Matt throwing a tantrum. Which is weird, because by all accounts I've heard he's usually a pretty reasonable and level-headed guy.
But nothing about this is helpful for anyone but him?
As someone who just finished building a WordPress plugin, this is super, super concerning, and shortsighted by WordPress to be honest. It's one thing to have a tiff with the leadership of another giant company. It's another thing to mess with the livelihoods of small businesses and indie developers. Hopefully this is resolved soon, or it might be time to get off WP for good.