The dispute between Automattic and WP Engine ends with the resignation of almost 160 employees of the owner of WordPress

A total of 159 Automattic employees have left their jobs in exchange for compensation valued at about 30,000 dollars (about 27,350 euros at the current exchange rate) in the midst of a dispute against WP Engine, which the owner of WordPress accuses of profiting to the detriment of its open source ecosystem.

WordPress is a content management system (CMS), published under the open source general public license and which divides its service into WordPress.org and WordPress.com. The first domain is open source and has been developed by the WordPress volunteer community since 2003.

On the contrary, WordPress.com is a commercial service that belongs to Automattic, a company founded in 2005 that offers hosting, domain, maintenance and support services for WordPress with different pricing plans.

WP Engine is another third-party hosting firm founded in 2010 that offers websites based on this content manager and, although not linked to the original project, has access to platform resources, such as themes and plugins.

ECONOMIC INTERESTS

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg published a letter on his blog a few days ago, in which he reflected on the current meaning of the decentralized software model and determined that some corporations were “misleadingly” claiming to be open source for the purposes of marketing despite not being. For this reason, firms like Meta or WP Engine would be harming this ecosystem to profit.

In this sense, remember that WP Engine is controlled by Silver Lake, “a private equity firm with 102 billion dollars (about 93 billion euros) in assets” that is primarily interested in “a return on capital” and not in maintaining “the open source ideals of WordPress.”

Furthermore, the CEO, who also narrated this letter at the annual WorldCamps US 2024 conference on September 20, announced that, according to his calculations and despite having a similar size and income, WP Engine did not dedicate time to the project either: it only contributed 47 hours per week, compared to the more than 3,786 hours that Automattic invested.

With this, he encouraged members of the WordPress community to evaluate “who they are giving their money to” and change their web hosting provider to others that seek to nourish the ecosystem, such as Hostinger, 10up y Awesome Motive.

“You can achieve faster performance even by changing providers, and migrating has never been so easy,” he added, while accusing those responsible for this other hosting company of being “scammers.” “We have to be wary of those who want to squeeze the juice out of our creations,” he stressed.

Shortly after, he noted in another blog post that WP Engine was “a cancer on WordPress” and that it was setting a poor standard by disabling some platform features. “What WP Engine offers is not WordPress. It is something chopped, hacked, dismembered to make it look like WordPress, but in reality it is a cheap imitation and they charge more for it,” he said.

In response to these accusations, the hosting service issued a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic on September 24, demanding both the firm and Mullenweg to stop “making false, harmful and derogatory statements” and to retract them. of them.

In this, WP Engine also indicated that the CEO of WordPress had threatened to start a smear campaign if WP Engine did not agree to pay him “tens of millions of dollars” by September 20. Faced with the supplier’s refusal, he opened WordCamp 2024 with a series of “false” statements that disparaged the firm to its employees and clients. Calling his attitude “shameful,” The accommodation service stressed that it would not agree to Mullenweg’s “excessive demands.”

The next day, Automattic sent WP Engine its own cease-and-desist order, noting that the vendor was “inappropriately” using the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks, among others, as well as violating its customers’ intellectual property rights.

In the letter, the firm also alleged that WP Engine had generated more than $400 million (about €365 million at the current exchange rate) in revenue thanks to the unauthorized use of its WordPress trademark. It also demanded compensation from its competitor for the profits obtained from the use of its trademarks.

NO RESOLUTION

Despite expressing his intention to “reach an amicable resolution,” on September 25, Automattic’s CEO banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources, including themes, patterns, and plugins. With this action, Automattic prevented clients of this service from updating their websites and accessing these tools for free and securely.

This veto was brief, as two days later the firm lifted it after receiving criticism from WP Engine clients, who had been “negatively affected” by Silver Lake’s business decisions. This is how Automattic held this company responsible for what happened, because the supplier “knew perfectly” that could remove access to their service by “ignoring” their “efforts” to resolve their differences and sign a commercial agreement. This blockade, however, was resumed on October 1 at 02:00 in the morning (mainland Spain).

This, after announcing a proposal sent to WP Engine dated September 20, in which the company led by Mullenweg requested payment of 8 percent of its gross monthly income as compensation for ‘royalties’ generated by the use of WordPress and WooCommerce. Alternatively, it offered the option for its competitor to dedicate 8% of its revenue in the form of salaries for WP employees who develop functions and features of the service, a job that WordPress.org would be in charge of directing.

After nearly two weeks of clashes between the two companies, WP Engine filed a lawsuit against Automattic and Mullenweg on October 2, accusing them of “abuse of power, extortion and greed” and insisting that the WordPress co-founder has “incessantly misrepresented the facts.” , with posts on blogs, X, Reddit, and appearances on multiple YouTube channels.”

EXODUS IN AUTOMATTIC

As a result of this conflict, WordPress has modified its trademark policy and has stressed that “the WP abbreviation is not included” among them and that, despite being officially related to its community, WP Engine “He has never donated to the foundation.”

Likewise, Mullenweg announced that, due to this confrontation with WP Engine, within the company there had been “a parallel debate and process”, which showed that some of the Automattic workers did not agree with him or with the actions of the company.

For this reason, it offered compensation for those who did not wish to continue providing their services there. Those who resigned before 10:00 p.m. (mainland Spain) that day were entitled to compensation of $30,000 or six months of salary – the greater amount, depending on the job category -, with the condition of losing the opportunity to be rehired. A total of 159 Automattic employees accepted the proposal.

The CEO, who has acknowledged that “every resignation hurts a little”, has thanked all the people who accepted the offer (8.4% of the company63.5% of them men and the vast majority dedicated to areas such as Ecosystem or Cosmos, which manages ‘apps’ CloudUp and Tumblr) and those who have chosen to stay.