Update: Matt Mullenweg openly shares the cell phone number of WP Engine CEO, a woman, with a total stranger. Now tell me this isn’t personal. And dangerous. 1
No, I’m not talking about Elon Musk. I’m talking about another mediocre white dude in tech that has too much power over the internet. Of his own volition this man just dealt a blow to the entire ecosystem of WordPress.2 And why did he do this?
Because he can. So he did.3
And that’s a danger to WordPress and its users.
While I’m a big proponent of “Don’t bitch. Build.” I need to give myself some space to just bitch for a moment because I am also a customer of the company coming under attack. And if I have to leave my hosting company—I have to leave WordPress.
Because this move is a blatant disregard for the people that use WordPress, such as myself. The attacks, lawsuits, and petty4 personal grievances against this company has set a precedence for any and all WordPress commercial endeavors going forward.
The victim is being blamed for the attacks they are facing5 and I’ve not seen any official commentary on the collateral damage: the individuals. The employees that now worry about their jobs, the agency owners (big and small) that have systems in place to manage their clients that are now fucked over, the workload being put on individuals to figure out what the fuck is even happening that just wanted a website for their small business.
What about the people, Matt?
With the trademark registration6 of “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress” this July, this all simply screams groundwork for commercially taking hostage the entire WordPress project. The confusion over WordPress, the open source project, The WordPress Foundation, and WordPress.com the hosting company is enough of a headache. Guess how much of all of this this one individual controls? Too much.
I’ll be curious to see if this is the downfall of the open source project or the company that controls its commercialization. But who am I to guess? I’m only a witch. And Automattic’s South Node is in Libra.7
So, that’s my bitching. I’m tired of tech bros not considering the consequences of their actions. I’m tired of the lack of transparency from the folks that shout for it the loudest. I’m tired of being in the crosshairs of corporations’ greed.
Now, to build on this I’m going to go draft a plan to ensure my clients are well cared for with or without WordPress. Because if there is one thing I care about, if there was one thing I worried about first, it was my clients. The people.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20240927163608/https://ma.tt/2024/09/on-theprimeagen/ ↩︎
- For reference, WordPress powers over 40% of the websites on the internet right now. That’s a massive chunk. ↩︎
- https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/ ↩︎
- Trademark policy of “The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.” (Archive.org Captured Sept 19, 2024) updated to alter the policy and single out WP Engine “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.” (captured Sept 25, 2024) ↩︎
- https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-reprieve/ ↩︎
- https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=98646183&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch & ↩︎
- WHS, with a birth date of midnight, November 21, 2005 San Francisco, CA USA ↩︎