I've been trying to wrap my head around why this feels so wrong. If the project had been run like this from the beginning, in an opinionated way that prioritizes what the few creators of the project think are important, then that's one thing. But it seems like Wordpress has generally been the stable, boring, slow-moving project that isn't run like a personal fiefdom, and Mullenweg is trying to force it from the one model to the other. I haven't used Wordpress in years, and this drama makes me never want to use it again.
Initially, I was taking the side of WP.org and Automattic; however, I changed my mind completely once they took over the “Advanced Custom Fields” plugin, and replaced it with another plugin that broke people's websites. So Matt weaponized the WP package repository, and stole the users of a well-maintained package, making WP site admins work over the weekend to fix the breakage.
This isn't opinionated, this is theft.
If the project had been run like this since the beginning, it wouldn't be where it is today. Automattic is a rich company partially due to the community around WordPress, and the trust that community has had in the governance of the project.
> replaced it with another plugin that broke people's websites
What makes you think it broke someone’s website? AFAIK they just patched the security issue that wp engine team couldn’t patch because they were locked out from pushing to repo?
Firstly, the security patch was already published by the ACF team, and that wasn't the code that was pushed. This was a package takeover, slug, reviews, users, everything:
People woke up to their website being updated to “Secure Custom Fields”, an alternative (or a fork) that's not fully compatible. Here's one such report from HN:
It reminds me of Reddit cracking down on 3rd party apps or Twitter changing that policy and a whole lot more once Musk took over. The problem isn't necessarily the actions or policies in a vacuum. There are legitimate benefits to these approaches. The problem is it feels like these communities were built up around certain practices and there was no reason to expect those practices to change. So when there is a big change that only happens after a platform has already reached near monopoly status, it feels like a bait and switch to users because many people would have never signed up for a platform with those policies in the first place.
> Mullenweg is trying to force it from the one model to the other
There are proper ways to do that, changing the license in a next version for example is how I think it should have been done in the first place. I've said it before here but this has all the markings of being extremely petty and Mullenweg not happy with their own licensing model.
> There are proper ways to do that, changing the license in a next version
All the projects doing that will soon discover that they were popular mostly because of the Open-Source licensing. Once that changes, the popularity, and goodwill go down, for the simple reason that trust gets breached and forks happen. Open-Source is essentially about the freedom to fork, and that's precisely what happens when governance fails.
Some of them will backtrack on that decision, but it will be too late; like ElasticSearch recently changing again to AGPL, except now the question is why would people choose it over the more trustworthy, open and secure OpenSearch.
There's nothing wrong with building proprietary software, but there is something wrong with pulling a bait-and-switch, betraying your community that invested in your product because of its Open-Source nature.
Matt surely knows that, and also, changing the license of WordPress is probably not possible due to them not having the full copyright. WordPress is not really theirs, despite all their contributions. Which is why this will not end well for Automattic.
Can Matt do that though? I don't _think_ WordPress has a copyright assignment agreement for contributors? So neither Matt nor Automattic nor wordpress.org nor The WordPress Foundation can choose to re-license future versions of the GPL2 or newer codebase without agreement from _all_ the contributors who retain the copyright in their part of the code.
There is no chance the license changes. Matt has been a very, very vocal supporter of GPL.
This self-described war he’s going on is all about commercial trademarks, and other hosting companies having more commercial success than Automattic in the ecosystem while contributing fewer developers and less money to the project.
Now, he’s taken it to a very extreme extent, and I fully disagree with his approach, but the core issues (for him) have nothing to do with GPL and how the WP project is governed. Those has even the same for decades, and he’s not trying to change them.
He’s just being very self-destructed because it turns out the community has no interest in some kind of “war” that gets long term contributors locked out of the ecosystem. He was expecting more people to be on his side, and frankly now seems to be lashing out (by blocking people) when that didn’t happen
None of that means he’s trying to change the governance model or license.
> This self-described war he’s going on is all about commercial trademarks, and other hosting companies having more commercial success than Automattic in the ecosystem while contributing fewer developers and less money to the project.
I don't really buy that, there is no obligation for anyone to contribute to the project at all under the GPL license so he can feel whatever he want's about it but it's irrelevant.
Also as for the trademark issue, in an older version of their trademark stated "The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, meaning people may use as they see fit. "
You can't retroactively change it once you see other people making more money than you. That's not how trademarks work.
In 2021 Automattic, the company that effectively owns Wordpress, has a valuation of $7.5 billion in 2021, and revenue of $750M in 2024. It's big money.
I'm probably wrong here, but my tinfoil hat take is that Matt has seen how well Taylor Otwell is doing with Laravel and he wants a piece of that cake. Granted they're doing pretty good with wordpress.com hosting, but they'd have so much more money if they licenced plugins and features the way Laravel does.
