The community around WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. At the core is a fight between WordPress\u2019 co-creator and Automattic\u2019s CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WordPress\u2019 technology is open source and free, and it powers a huge chunk of the internet \u2014 around 40% of websites are built on top of WordPress. Websites can host their own WordPress instance or use a solution provider like Automattic or WP Engine for a plug-and-play solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In mid-September, Mullenweg, who owns WordPress.org and the WordPress Foundation, launched a campaign against WP Engine with a blog post in which he called the company a \u201ccancer to WordPress,\u201d calling it out for not contributing sufficiently to the open-source project. He also said WP Engine\u2019s use of the \u201cWP\u201d brand has confused customers into believing it is part of WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, Mullenweg\/Automattic and WP Engine have been locked in a legal battle. Mullenweg has accused WP Engine of infringing the WordPress Trademark, while WP Engine has hit Mullenweg and Automattic with a lawsuit, accusing them of extortion, interference with operations, abuse of power, and harm to business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The turmoil has affected both companies and the WordPress community at large. Contributors to the open-source project as well as leaders of companies in the ecosystem have spoken out against the fight, calling for governance changes, and highlighting concerns about Mullenweg\u2019s lack of accountability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The community around WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. At the core is a fight between WordPress\u2019 co-creator and Automattic\u2019s CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress. WordPress\u2019 technology is open source and free, and it powers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timesofmedia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}