Why the CEO of WordPress is breaking the Internet

The company that invented blogging is about to self-destruct. Last month, the drama inside WordPress.com spilled into the public domain, causing chaos for a large part of the internet that relies on its open technology.

WordPress.com is a content management system that allows people with no coding experience to run a website. It is very popular, hosting 43% of all websites in the world, including those from NASA, the White House, and Harvard University. It is often held up as a shining example of OG’s promise to democratize the internet by allowing developers to collaborate, learn, use and distribute software openly.

It is also facing total bankruptcy resulting from a power struggle between its founder and its biggest competitor, a struggle that has the potential to destroy—or at least meaningfully transform—the resources of internet.

Meet Matt Mullenweg

He is the founder and co-owner of WordPress.com, Automattic, an online service that users pay to serve ads, manage security, and do other back-end site management. internet. With a value of $7.5 billion in 2021, Automattic has one competitor, called WP Engine (WPE). And in September, Mullenweg followed up:

• He called it a “cancer on WordPress,” and accused the company of draining hundreds of millions of dollars from his platform.
• After exchanging cease and desist letters with WPE, Mullenweg blocked WPE from accessing WordPress.com, a move that made many websites unusable and vulnerable to cyberattacks. (WordPress.com temporarily lifted the ban for four days before returning it.)

On October 3, WPE sued Automattic and Mullenweg, alleging abuse of power. WPE asserts that Automattic and Mullenweg, by removing WPE’s access, reneged on their promises to run open source WordPress projects without restrictions. That same day, 159 employees left WordPress.com after Mullenweg offered anyone who disagreed with his decisions to take a severance package and leave. Of that group, 80% had worked on Automattic/WordPress.

The open source war

At the heart of the internet beef is that Automattic/Mullenweg sees WPE as a leech: WPE profits from WordPress.com’s technology but does not contribute to its research and development, according to a blog post written by Mullenweg.

• Dealing with “confusion” over that WordPress.com indeed that is, Mullenweg suggested changes to the trademark.
• He said that using “WP” in its name confuses people, allowing WPE to make “billions of money on top of WordPress.”
• Because of this, Automattic/Mullenweg asked WPE to donate 8% of its annual revenue.

Such a request, which was part of a larger non-negotiable standard set out by Automattic, prompted scrutiny from prominent programmers. David Hansson, creator of the influential Ruby on Rails web platform, called it “a violation of the general open concept.”

Mullenweg’s take on the open source WordPress platform has sparked outrage among some software developers, who fear their sites could be taken away at any moment. Automattic continues to change its trademark rules, and the developer community has yet to receive a clarification on whether they can use the word “WordPress” or not.

In a statement, Automattic said it reserves the right to assert its trademark to eliminate confusion and that it remains committed to supporting developers.

Expand: Mullenweg’s complaints are similar to other open platforms that have been scrapped by large AI systems for training. Reddit, for example, started charging for access to its application programming interface (API) last year, which resulted in a huge backlash from Redditors who found the decision to be against the rules. open source. Mullenweg, and Automattic, are faced with the same idea: allow other organizations, such as WPE, to profit from the open-source nature of WordPress, or change the control model to only help the developer, says the goal its original. The future of 43% of the internet is at risk.— CC