WordPress War: Grab Your Popcorn for Automattic vs WP Engine

[mheland]

Automattic blocks plugin updates for sites hosted on WP Engine.
The gloves are off.

Update 29/9: wordpress.org is the OpenSource community & foundation, the commercial hosting company is wordpress.com owned by Automattic. WP Engine is a commercial host of Wordpress - a direct competitor to wordpress.com. The WordPress trademark is owned and managed by the WordPress Foundation, wordpress.org,

But speaking this week at WordCamp US 2024, a WordPress-focused conference held in Portland, Oregon, Mullenweg pulled no punches in his criticism of WP Engine. Taking to the stage, Mullenweg read out a post he had just published to his personal blog, where he points to the distinct “five for the future” investment pledges made by Automattic and WP Engine to contribute resources to support the sustained growth of WordPress, with Automattic contributing 3,900 hours per week, and WP Engine contributing just 40 hours.

Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers | TechCrunch

Here is the core as I understand it: WP Engine is not contributing to the Open Source ecosystem. They don’t have to, technically, but should. That’s how this works - you give back to the community.

WP Engine is using resources developed by Automattic’s wordpress.com (User login system, Update servers, Plugin directory, Theme directory, Pattern directory, Block directory, Translations, Photo directory, Job board, Meetups, Conferences, Bug tracker, Forums) and security patches.

But WP Engine is not giving back to the WordPress ecosystem, nor to wordpress.com - WP Engine is owned by Private Equity and making $400m revenue.

[Totalfootball]

Hope it sends people to Ghost. WP is so bad.

[mheland]

WP users believe all these plugins and settings and config and security scans and updates and caching and and general madness is normal. It’s 20 year old tech, on PHP. Built to run fine over a 28.8k modem.