The fight between Automattic and WP Engine threatens to tear apart the WordPress community. I recently wrote on LinkedIn that like our politically polarized climate, the WordPress drama is resulting in people justifying all sorts of wrongs because they are in the “right” camp.
These wrongs are now impacting us regardless of which camp we find ourselves in.
I present a proposal for both parties to consider in order to rectify some wrongs and move us forward. If I were to sit down with both parties, I would propose “Seven points for Sanity”:
Seven for Sanity
- Drop the lawsuits: In good faith, both parties will agree to drop all lawsuits against each other. Automattic would also drop all attempts to legally trademark terms like “Managed WordPress” or “Hosted WordPress”, as those terms only describe the services provided by hosting providers. Each party will absorb whatever legal fees incurred by this dispute.
- Stop the smear: Both parties will agree to no longer blog, tweet, post, or disseminate any negative information intended to taint public opinion of the other party, regardless of whether the information may be factually true or legally protected speech.
- Unlock and uncheck: Both parties will agree to not lock either out of any software or services. In other words, WordPress.org will not lock out users based on any affiliation with WP Engine and will remove the recently added login checkbox requiring acknowledgement of disaffiliation.
- Stop the plugin steal: WordPress.org will stop all future development of the “forked” Secure Custom Fields and reinstate the original Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), along with previous reviews and development history. The “forked” Secure Custom Fields would remain on the WordPress.org plugin directory, but be considered a new plugin starting with reviews only from its release date of October 7, 2024 forward. That way, if developers want to truly fork a commercial-free version of ACF, they’ve got one ready to go, but the original ACF remains for WordPress users.
- Explicitly require developer contribution: Automattic will publicly update its policy regarding sponsorships of WordPress events such as WordCamps, requiring a pledge of 5% of their developer hours (for a limited time commitment) toward WordPress core according to the Five for the Future guidelines. If Automattic happens to be the only organization that meets that pledge, good for them. If WP Engine, or GoDaddy or any other organization meets that pledge, then they will recognized for their contribution. But the standard would be universal for all sponsors, allowing any organization to get recognition for their contribution.
- Clarify trademark usage: The WordPress Foundation (WPF) will revise their recent revision of the WordPress trademark usage policy to remove negative language about WP Engine. They will also clarify using of “WP” in whether it is legally copyrighted or not, and clarify that misuse of legal trademarks will result in legal action.
- Publish licensing program: Automattic will create a publicly-visible professional licensing program1 for companies to use the WordPress trademark in their business name, service marks or logos. This would be available for any organization to seek participation in, regardless of the organization’s financial backing, provided they pay Automattic whatever fees they set. Automattic would then publicly grant a 12-month grace period for organizations to either financially participate in the licensing program or remedy any trademark violations. After the grace period, Automattic would then pursue legal action against any trademark infringement, regardless of the entity’s size or financial backing. In my opinion, by creating a publicly-visible trademark licensing program available to anyone and a generous grace period, Automattic would ensure good will among organizations and developers in the WordPress community, while also protecting their trademark from long-term misuse.
Why this fight matters to me
I’ve been a WordPress user for over a decade. For the last four years I’ve been a plugin developer and participant in the Sacramento WordPress Meetup. I’ve been pro-WordPress and pro-Gutenberg for some time now. I like and use JetPack by Automattic. I also like and use Local WP, currently managed by WP Engine.
There’s enough vitriol on Twitter/X regarding #WordPressDRAMA to power a SpaceX rocket to the moon and back. WP Engine isn’t completely evil, since they provide us Local WP for free. And we wouldn’t have WordPress without Matt Mullenweg, so he deserves credit and respect. He’s no Dr. Evil, although I suppose Dr. Evil might have done something like…
Want to read more about this? Check these out:
- Timeline of the WordPress drama
- Articles from WP Tavern (owned by Matt Mullenweg, but I think their coverage is mostly fair):
- ACF has been hijacked
- WPF’s site says “If you would like to use the WordPress trademark commercially, please contact Automattic, they have the exclusive license.” Automattic has a Trademark Policy page but it doesn’t have anything to do with the WordPress trademark. ↩︎
- Misleading title, as it is WordPress.org that is banning/blocking ACF updates. This article was published before ACF was forked, renamed, modified with some security fixes, stripped of upsell functionality, then deployed to WordPress.org to replace the original ACF plugin, while keeping the previous reviews and development history. ↩︎