Automattic reduces WordPress contributions [LWN.net]

Automattic has announced that it is reallocating its resources away from contributing to the WordPress project as a response to the WP Engine lawsuit:

As part of this reset, Automattic will match its volunteering pledge with those made by WP Engine and other players in the ecosystem, or about 45 hours a week that qualify under the Five For the Future program as benefitting the entire community and not just a single company. These hours will likely go towards security and critical updates.

LWN last covered the ongoing WordPress saga in December. [Thanks to Paul Wise for the heads-up on this latest development.]

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Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 16:00 UTC (Fri) by cen (subscriber, #170575) [Link] (31 responses)

A company whose primary product is Wordpress announces they will significantly reduce work on Wordpress. What could possibly go wrong?

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 16:33 UTC (Fri) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link] (10 responses)

They keep on sounding so… hurt?

“Automatticians who contributed to core will instead focus on for-profit projects within Automattic, such as WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. Members of the “community” have said that working on these sorts of things should count as a contribution to WordPress.”

Like, what? “Community” in scare quotes, weasel words, it all sounds like they're bitter at something someone said about something WP Engine did at some point. They really don't come across well.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 17:32 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (1 responses)

> Like, what? “Community” in scare quotes, weasel words, it all sounds like they're bitter at something someone said about something WP Engine did at some point. They really don't come across well.

Yeah. I feel like the basic position is pretty sympathetic: "Hey, this is open source, but it costs a lot to run these important supporting services. We need other companies who are benefiting from them commercially to kick in and help!" ... but the communications and actions make it pretty hard to _stay_ sympathetic.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 18:52 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

The thing is that contributions to wordpress.org shared infrastructure from all the vendors in the WordPress ecosystem would be a lot more likely if wordpress.org/WordPress Foundation were an actual independent entity and all the vendors were peers rather than the personal plaything of MM. The inability to let go of control (and stunning emotional immaturity, will to dominate) has created all this unnecessary drama. I guess I expect that given the obvious technical risks involved for all the vendors/users in the WordPress ecosystem that it will be effectively forked into Autommatic and everyone-else variants. I see a lot of parallels with Canonical proposing infrastructure components that don't become canonical, because of the licensing and inability to act as a peer among vendors.

Re: Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 22, 2025 20:07 UTC (Wed) by chexo4 (subscriber, #169500) [Link] (7 responses)

This reads like Matt’s writing

What a loser

Re: Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 22, 2025 20:55 UTC (Wed) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link] (6 responses)

No matter how much one disagrees with Automattic's recent decisions, that comment was not polite or informative; when criticizing people in LWN's comments, please make complaints interesting.

Re: Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Mar 13, 2025 5:29 UTC (Thu) by chexo4 (subscriber, #169500) [Link] (5 responses)

My apologies

Matt is screwing with thousands, perhaps millions of people’s livelihoods, over his ego and hypocrisy.

He has spent basically the entirety of the whole scandal doubling, tripling, quadrupling, pentupling, down, etc.

He could have literally done nothing and had a better outcome than this deliberate and continued tarnishing of his legacy and work.

Hence, the previous comment.

Re: Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Mar 13, 2025 13:36 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (4 responses)

> Matt is screwing with thousands, perhaps millions of people’s livelihoods, over his ego and hypocrisy.

Ah, so it's okay for others to screw with Matt's (and Automattic's) livelihood, just not the other way around?

Seriously, the entitlement is breathtaking here.

Re: Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Mar 13, 2025 15:17 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (3 responses)

In case you didn't notice: there's a material difference between saying "hey, community, this isn't sustainable, everybody please contribute" and selectively going after one single hosting provider who isn't even responsible for the majority of traffic.

Re: Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Mar 13, 2025 15:27 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> In case you didn't notice: there's a material difference between saying "hey, community, this isn't sustainable, everybody please contribute" and selectively going after one single hosting provider who isn't even responsible for the majority of traffic.

Automattic isn't legally (or morally) responsible for anyone's customers but their own.

Re: Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Mar 14, 2025 10:07 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

I didn't say that. OF COURSE they are not responsible for anybody's customers.

However, neither is WPE, who is (for the most part) simply offering tailored hosting.

So I do wonder what exactly he expected to accomplish by going after them specifically … other than to throw the whole community into a massive black hole of FUD?

Re: Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Mar 14, 2025 12:05 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> However, neither is WPE, who is (for the most part) simply offering tailored hosting.

So you're saying WPE isn't morally and legally responsible for providing "tailored hosting" to its customers? (ie the ones paying it?)

Relatedly, what gives random customers of WPE the right to expect, much less demand, anything of Automattic? After all, they're paying WPE, not Automattic.

> So I do wonder what exactly he expected to accomplish by going after them specifically …

What is Automattic supposed to do, if not go after the commercial entity with whom they have a legitimate dispute?

(I'll repeat yet again -- Just because Automattic has a legit beef and has the right to seek some sort of relief doesn't mean that they haven't gone about it in a particularly boneheaded manner)

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 16:44 UTC (Fri) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link] (19 responses)

A company who sued WP Engine complains about having to spend significant time and money to defend against (counter) suits. It would make for great comedy, if it weren't so sad for Wordpress, the Open Source CMS, which - despite all shortcomings - helped so many people and organizations to easily build up with an online presence.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 16:48 UTC (Fri) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (1 responses)

To be clear, Automattic and WP Engine traded C&Ds, but AFAIK Automattic didn't and hasn't actually filed a suit/countersuit against WP Engine. They did a lot of other things, but WP Engine was the company that actually started legal proceedings. (We covered the start of this mess here.)

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 17:22 UTC (Fri) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link]

It should be noted, though, that the press release is not talking only about suits, but “legal attacks”. And it's pretty clear who started attacking whom in this case. The press release, though, makes it sound like WP Engine started this mess and WordPress is just busy defending themselves in court.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 10, 2025 16:54 UTC (Fri) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link] (16 responses)

PS: I was probably wrong, Automattic didn't sue, but rather tried to push them into rather harsh terms for their usage of an Open Source software (https://automattic.com/2024/wp-engine-term-sheet.pdf).

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 11, 2025 4:14 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (15 responses)

> PS: I was probably wrong, Automattic didn't sue, but rather tried to push them into rather harsh terms for their usage of an Open Source software (https://automattic.com/2024/wp-engine-term-sheet.pdf).

No, No, No.

This has nothing to do with *using open source software*. The software is released in pure source form under the GPL. No usage (or modification) restrictions whatsoever.

This is about *SERVICES* that stand outside the scope of any open source software license. Nothing in the GPL or any other F/OSS license, entitles anyone free use of any third party services.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 11, 2025 6:49 UTC (Sat) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link] (14 responses)

Did you read the PDF I linked? That says nothing about services. It talks only about trademarks and brands: License Grant. Automattic will license to WP Engine use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks and branding.
For this, they demand 8% of gross revenues. To me, that doesn’t sound like a friendly Open Source community but rather like business practices you might find in Sicily. And as others have pointed out, even if the trademark payments were reasonable, one would expect them to go to the charitable WordPress Foundation and not to Automattic, the for profit.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 11, 2025 10:53 UTC (Sat) by aragilar (subscriber, #122569) [Link] (10 responses)

Not that I'm agreeing that how Automattic has been going about this whole thing, but "WordPress" and "WooCommerce" are (as far as I know) two very different things in terms of how they're produced/sold/etc. with "WooCommerce" being very much a proprietary project (and the trademark isn't associated with the WordPress Foundation) and and open source (I believe, I've never actually used it) only because of the GPL and the mess that is WordPress licensing. I suspect this announcement implies that Automattic is going to spend more effort on their proprietary extensions/services like "WooCommerce" (and I'll bet they'll create their own separate plugin server and use that to block off WP Engine from their plugins/try to make WP Engine pay the amount they wanted originally that way), which could hollow out the WordPress codebase.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 11, 2025 11:13 UTC (Sat) by burki99 (subscriber, #17149) [Link] (9 responses)

WooCommerce is GPL as well: https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce (the license is a bit hidden, but you find it for example in their composer.json)

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 11, 2025 12:49 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> WooCommerce is GPL as well

Be that as it may, nothing automatically (hah!) entitles any random person or company to use the instances that Automattic is hosting.

Software can be used to provide services, but services are _not_ software.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 12, 2025 2:02 UTC (Sun) by aragilar (subscriber, #122569) [Link] (7 responses)

My understanding is that every WordPress plugin has to be GPL due to the way they connect into WordPress, that's why the trademarks are being lent on (and why Automattic could legally fork WP-Engine's plugins). It sounds very much like the ecosystem is held together by good will and trademarks (and hence that's why everyone is being weird about money and the apparent breaking of norms, because they can't withdraw their code), because the licensing is such that everyone has to open source their plugins if they don't want run their own hosting platform.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 13, 2025 12:11 UTC (Mon) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link] (1 responses)

Technically the GPL does not require you to publish your software for everyone to use, it just requires that you give source code to users of the software.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 13, 2025 17:00 UTC (Mon) by edeloget (subscriber, #88392) [Link]

That's not enough : the GPL also mandate that the user is given some important rights, such as the right to modify and redistribute using the same license ; so even if you make me pay for your GPL software I still have the right to redistribute a free-as-in-beer version of the same source code (and those to which I distribute it also have the same rights).

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 13, 2025 12:57 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> because the licensing is such that everyone has to open source their plugins if they don't want run their own hosting platform.

And apparently the system is also designed such that running your own hosting platform is well-nigh impossible ...

Cheers,
Wol

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 13, 2025 15:16 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (3 responses)

I think at this point though it's inevitable that a consortium of Auttomatic's competitors and customers will stand up a new infrastructure brand and the ecosystem will insulate itself from the risk of a single rogue upstream.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 13, 2025 15:37 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

The problem is that the act of trying to do that is a Hail Mary "succeed or die trying". And it's likely to kill everyone, WordPress included ... the option that has the least risk for everyone is a hostile takeover of wordpress.org ... and Matt is likely to press the MAD button ...

Cheers,
Wol

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 13, 2025 17:17 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

It's primarily a brand management and marketing problem, not technical though, right? All of the developers, customers and service providers in the ecosystem have source code licenses, in the same way Autommatic "took over" maintenance of a plugin which they depended on that was developed by a competitor, so too could their competitors. The real sticking point is that they won't be able to use the WordPress(tm) trademark, except by reference, without an unlikely shake up of the WordPress Foundation/wordpress.org, so they need to get a critical mass to understand that "GrafSquash(tm)" or whatever is the "new" WordPress with detailed instructions on how to change the update repo for an existing install, for people who are not that invested in the drama. There seems to be plenty of president of forks moving on with a new trademark back in the day with Hudson/Jenkins, OpenOffice/LibreOffice, or Mambo/Joomla and other examples im forgetting.

In fact the OpenOffice v LibreOffice transition is a cautionary tale on the power of branding and trademarks, since IIUC the 2014 version of OpenOffice still has substantial new installs even though it's effectively abandoned, because its well known.

WordPress has such a large installed base it's not credible to me that it could be killed, no matter what nonsense Autommatic gets up to, but it could definitely have a substantial change in how maintenance is funded and its name.

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 13, 2025 21:33 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> It's primarily a brand management and marketing problem, not technical though, right?

Yes. Somebody needs to fork Wordpress, set up a competing organisation, and win the battle for customer support. Which is likely to attract Matt's ire, and quite likely imho to trigger MAD.

We'll see. If we're lucky, the courts will wrest Wordpress.org from Matt on the grounds of fraud, and then let the chips fall where they may ...

Cheers,
Wol

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 11, 2025 12:47 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> For this, they demand 8% of gross revenues. To me, that doesn’t sound like a friendly Open Source community but rather like business practices you might find in Sicily

s/Sciily/Everywhere trademarks are a thing (ie everywhere)/

*nothing* in _any_ F/OSS license grants the user free reign to use anyone's trademarks. Indeed, the opposite is usually explicitly the case [0]

There are reasonable arguments about how Automattic's actions are "bad" but coming at this from an "It's open source therefore we are owed X[1]" is _not_ one of them.

[0] Eg the MPL, ASL, and GPL include clauses to this effect
[1] Where X is "anything other than the complete corresponding source code". [2]
[2] Which only applies to copyleft-type licenses [3]
[3] And even then only if one receive binaries

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 11, 2025 12:59 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> s/Sciily/Everywhere trademarks are a thing (ie everywhere)/

Pizza, you're missing the "nice-a business you have-a here. Would-a be a shame-a if anything-a happened to it-a". (You seem to make a habit of that, approving business practices that most people consider bordering on extortion.)

And I think you'll find Auttomatica's demands are based mostly on things that trademark law says are EXPLICITLY PERMITTED. It is an absolutely fundamental requirement of trademark law that - in order to do anything wrong - you start by taking a trademark and using it to describe something that is not the trademarked article. I think you'll find Wordpress has done nothing of the sort.

Cheers,
Wol

Perfect way to kill the project

Posted Jan 12, 2025 12:30 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Pizza, you're missing the "nice-a business you have-a here. Would-a be a shame-a if anything-a happened to it-a".

And you're missing that licensing trademarks after threatening litigation is *business as usual* in most places.

> And I think you'll find Auttomatica's demands are based mostly on things that trademark law says are EXPLICITLY PERMITTED.

That assertion is very much in dispute here, and up for a court to decide.

> In order to do anything wrong - you start by taking a trademark and using it to describe something that is not the trademarked article.

The point of trademarks is to prevent market confusion in a specific field of endeavor. I don't know what fields the Automattic/wordpress.org-held trademarks cover, but it is beyond dispute that WP Engine positions themselves as a direct competitor to Automattic.

> I think you'll find Wordpress has done nothing of the sort.

That's also very much in dispute, and also a matter of a court to decide.

Speculation

Posted Jan 10, 2025 16:43 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

Some speculation about what this actually means is here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650138

Matt forcing a fork

Posted Jan 11, 2025 21:10 UTC (Sat) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link] (3 responses)

Via another post on the Wordpress.Org site it appears Matt has decided to force a fork, by the people talking about the need for restructuring how the Wordpress project is run last month (Joost / Karim), by blocking their accounts on Wordpress.Org (used to upload plugins):

https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/

Considering Joost / Karim said they didn’t want to fork, and AFAIK hadn't done anything more since last month, blocking their accounts (and several others) on the justification it’d help them fork seems like… an escalation.

Ewen

Matt forcing a fork

Posted Jan 12, 2025 3:05 UTC (Sun) by aragilar (subscriber, #122569) [Link] (2 responses)

That is such a weird post e.g. "Joost is a self-proclaimed leader in the SEO space, an industry known for making the web better." would normally read to me as being sarcastic, but then the rest of the paragraph and the following ones seem to be written in a different tone. So maybe it was not sarcasm, so why use that turn of phrase?

Matt forcing a fork

Posted Jan 12, 2025 13:11 UTC (Sun) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (1 responses)

The way I interpret it, he's trying to project an image of maturity, civility, rationality, magnanimity, etc. Probably he even believes that's who he is. He thinks he's doing the right thing, and if he explains himself at length then eventually all his detractors will understand him and accept he was right.

But obviously his actions are petty and childish and insecure - banning a bunch of people from the community he owns, for slightly disagreeing with him. To resolve the cognitive dissonance, he has to rationalise it to himself as being for their own benefit (which is nonsense). And he can't control that petty side of himself when writing, so he generally tries to be nice but then adds some insults hidden behind a thin layer of irony, and thinks he's cleverly got away with it because he hasn't written anything openly rude about them. That's why the post comes across as so incoherent - it's not a carefully-crafted satirical takedown of his opponents, it's just a reflection of his own incoherent thinking.

(I'd be more willing to believe it was a carefully-crafted attack if he didn't keep posting so earnestly and/or defensively on his own blogs and social media and Reddit/HN/etc comments. Either his persona is an incredibly elaborate piece of performance art, or - more likely, and more troubling - he's being genuine.)

Matt forcing a fork

Posted Jan 12, 2025 17:21 UTC (Sun) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

Matt purposefully created the illusion that wordpress.org is independent from wordpress.com.
Now he has to live in this warped reality and this has become the nightmare he cannot wake up from.
Maintaining this illusion cost money that he is less and less willing to spend.
As long as wordpress.org is controlled by wordpress.com, it is unrealistic to expect other companies to contribute financially to it.