As a WordPress user for two-decades, I have followed the latest drama in the WordPress world with some attention.
WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has been lashing out against WP Engine, a competitor to his own company Automattic. Both engage in large-scale hosting of small websites, based on modified versions of the open-source WordPress software.
The whole debacle has revealed what a sordid mess the governance of the WordPress project is.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is several things at once, but they’re all centred on the person of Matt Mullenweg.
WordPress is contemporaneously:
- a piece of open-source software, which you can download and install on your own server;
- a commercial offering by Automattic, Mullenweg’s company;
- a brand, a registered trademark, owned by Mullenweg personally;
- the infrastructure around the open-source software, with forums, plugin- and theme-registries, documentation and what not.
There is a WordPress foundation, formally in charge of the development of the software (1) and the running of the related infrastructure (4), but that foundation seems to be entirely in the hands of Mullenweg. It also appears to be largely unfunded, so the expense of the infrastructure (4) probably falls on Automattic (2), a private company.
Joining up these dots, it appears that WordPress is Matt Mullenweg.
Consequently, a fork of WordPress — the traditional way of solving this kind of governance issues — can only copy the software (1), not the other three, which will remain with Mullenweg.
It’s usually about money
I’ve been involved in various businesses in my time, all of them much smaller and less significant than Automattic or WP Engine.
One thing I have observed is, however, that when business people lash out in seemingly unreasonable ways, it is almost always because their companies, and sometimes also themselves, are in very dire financial straits, and they don’t know how to handle it.
The almost erratic way Mullenweg has attacked WP Engine, even to the point of having us declare that we have no relationship with them just to log in on wordpress.org, fits this pattern.
Mullenweg has levied the brand (3) and the wordpress.org infrastructure (4) against WP Engine, but my suspicion (and it is no more) is that the problem is the economy of Automattic (2).
Governance
It is not unusual that founders of open-source projects have a particular role in their management, and that they own the brand or trademark.
Likewise, it is also common for founders of open-source projects to have associated commercial offerings related to the software. Often this takes the form of consultancies or the sale of bespoke services.
There’s usually a foundation where the open-source activities are collected.
However, the way the WordPress brand is used, seemingly without distinction, by both commercial and non-commercial activities, all related closely to the person Matt Mullenweg, is not normal.
The cost of infrastructure
Running all the servers and services around the open-source project of WordPress has a cost, and that cost is no doubt substantial.
It appears that that cost is sustained entirely, or almost entirely, by Automattic, while it should have been covered by the WordPress foundation.
Rumours are that the foundation has no money, and that donations to the foundation amounted to little more than twenty thousand dollars last year.
Now, the foundation cannot — and should not — charge for the software itself. It is open-source, and we can all take our ZIP-file or tarball and walk off with it.
Where the foundation could get some income is exactly from the related services surrounding the open-source software, and in particular the registries of plugins and themes.
It might be as simple as requiring all hosting providers with over a thousand sites to contribute $2/site/year for the upkeep of the infrastructure.
If WP Engine hosts 200,000 sites, that $400,000/year, which they can no doubt afford. Likewise, Automattic would have to pay too, and every other major WordPress hosting provider. It would easily contribute a couple of millions annually to the running of the foundation and maybe even for hiring some people.
The counterpart, besides access to the infrastructure, could be permission to use the brand WordPress in their marketing.
Why hasn’t Mullenweg taken a road like that?
My suspicion is that the cost of the infrastructure is just a minute bit of his overall economic woes (which are entirely my conjecture).
Add to that, that he seemingly fails to perceive any distinction between himself, Automattic or WordPress, which leads him to use the resources of the ‘community’ as a weapon against the competition to his company.
The WordPress foundation must get a life of its own, separate from the person of Matt Mullenweg, if it is to survive long-term.
Leave a Reply