Talking Point – Airing dirty linen in public - WordPress versus WP Engine

Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee – could this be the fight of the century for technology?

For the last month or so what could end up being the tech fight of the century has been raging between WordPress and WP Engine.

The Contestants

In one corner we have WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, and in the other corner we have WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress technology.

WordPress is an open-source technology and is free. It powers around 40% of websites on the internet. WordPress websites can host their own WordPress instance or use an external solution provider such as WP Engine or Automattic for a ‘plug and play’ solution.

Round One

Mullenberg wrote a blog post in September 2024 where he called WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress”. In his blog, he criticized WP Engine for disabling the ability for users to see and track the revision history for every post, believing that this feature was at the core of the user promise of protecting data. He also claimed that WP Engine turned it off by default to save money.

In addition, not content with these comments, Mullenberg also called out WP Engine investor, Silver Lake, saying they didn’t contribute sufficiently to the open-source project. He also said that customers were confused by the ‘WP’ used in WP Engine’s brand, believing it to be part of WordPress.

Round Two

WP Engine responded with a ‘cease and desist’ letter to Mullenweg and Automattic and asked them to withdraw their comments. They also said its use of the WordPress trademark was covered under fair use.

WP Engine went on to claim that Mullenweg had threatened to take a ‘scorched earth nuclear approach’ against them unless they agreed to pay ‘a significant percentage of its revenues for a licence to the WordPress trademark’.

Round Three

Not to be outdone by WP Engine’s letter writing, Automattic duly sent them a ‘cease and desist’ letter. The WordPress Foundation duly changed its Trademark Policy page and again called out WP Engine, alleging it confused users.

“The abbreviation ‘WP’ is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is ‘WordPress Engine’ and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress,” the updated page reads.

Round Four

A sledging session then occurred, along with Mullenweg banning WP Engine from accessing the resources of WordPress.org. This ban meant that while plug-ins and themes are under open-source licence, providers like WP Engine have to provide a service to fetch them, and this is not covered under the open-source licence. The consequences were a lot of broken websites which were unable to update plug-ins and themes, resulting in some of them being open to security attacks. Needless to say, the community was a trifle unhappy with this approach, which left small websites helpless.

The slanging match continued with WP Engine saying in a blog post that Mullenweg was misusing his control of WordPress to interfere with WP Engine’s customers’ access to the mothership, WordPress.org.

“Matt Mullenweg’s unprecedented and unwarranted action interferes with the normal operation of the entire WordPress ecosystem, impacting not just WP Engine and our customers, but all WordPress plugin developers and open-source users who depend on WP Engine tools like ACF,” WP Engine said.

In late September WordPress.org lifted the ban for three days which allowed WP Engine to access resources for three days. Around the same time Mullenweg wrote a blog post clarifying that the fight was only against WP Engine over trademarks which Automattic had been trying to broker a deal over for a long time, only to have WP Engine string them along.

The day before the temporary access was due to end the hosting company updated its website’s footer to clarify it wasn’t directly affiliated with the WordPress Foundation or owned the WordPress Trademark.

“WP Engine is a proud member and supporter of the community of WordPress® users. The WordPress® trademark is the intellectual property of the WordPress Foundation, and the Woo® and WooCommerce® trademarks are the intellectual property of WooCommerce, Inc. Uses of the WordPress®, Woo®, and WooCommerce® names in this website are for identification purposes only and do not imply an endorsement by WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc. WP Engine is not endorsed or owned by, or affiliated with, the WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc.”

Round Five

WP Engine also changed the name of its plans – Essential WordPress, Core WordPress and Enterprise WordPress became Essential, Core, and Enterprise. They said they changed these terms to moot Automattic’s claims.

“We, like the rest of the WordPress community, use the WordPress mark to describe our business. Automattic’s suggestion that WPE needs a license to do that is simply wrong, and reflects a misunderstanding of trademark law. To moot its claimed concerns, we have eliminated the few examples Automattic gave in its September 23rd letter to us,” a company spokesperson from WP Engine told TechCrunch.

WP Engine posted on X on 1 October that it had successfully deployed its own solution for updating plug-ins and themes.

Two weeks later, on 15 October, it was reported that Automattic had planned to define trademarks since early 2024 and this involved the use of lawyers. There was also a strategy reported to file more trademarks, which the Foundation did in July.

Audience Reaction

While all the trademark kerfuffle was going on the WordPress community became increasingly concerned about something similar happening to them and sought clarification from Automattic and requested clear guidance around how they can and can’t use WordPress. Developers also had concerns regarding their reliance on using open-source products related to WordPress given their access could be removed without much notice.

Open-source CMS Ghost’s founder, John O’Nolan, said in an X post “The web needs more independent organizations, and it needs more diversity. 40% of the web and 80% of the CMS market should not be controlled by any one individual.” Others soon followed voicing similar sentiments.

User Logins to WordPress were changed to include a disclaimer that the user wasn’t affiliated with WP Engine in any way. This created confusion in the user community and threatened trust.

Next Moves

• The first hearing for a primary injunction will take place on 26 November unless there is opposition.
• 159 employees took a severance package and left Automattick on 3 October. Nearly 80% of these workers came from Automattick’s Ecosystem/WordPress division.
• A new executor director, Mary Hubbard, formerly TikTok US’s head of governance and experience, has been employed to replace Josepha Haden Chomphosy, who was one of the 159 people who left Automattick on 3 October.

In Summary

So, it’s a matter of ‘watch this space’ to see what happens next, and given the history so far, don’t expect the contenders to ‘kiss and make-up’. It’s really sad to see such squabbling in the tech industry, but not overly surprising, given the model used. Good faith can only go so far.

In the meantime, anyone with a WordPress website that’s dependent on WP Engine for its plug ins and themes might want to consider their options. If your website is a WordPress site and you’d like to move it to somewhere out of harm’s way while you still can, we’d be happy to help you with that.

Contact us to learn more.