WordPress Founder Calls WP Engine a 'Cancer To WordPress' and Urges Community To Switch Providers (techcrunch.com) 10
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg unleashed a scathing attack on a rival firm this week, calling WP Engine -- a managed WordPress hosting provider that has raised nearly $300 million in funding over its 14-year history -- a "cancer to WordPress." From a report: Mullenweg criticized the company -- which has been commercializing the open source WordPress project since 2010 -- for profiteering without giving much back, while also disabling key features that make WordPress such a powerful platform in the first place.
[...] But speaking last 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, an WP Engine contributing just 40 hours.
While he acknowledged that these figures are just a "proxy," and might not be perfectly accurate, Mullenweg said that this disparity in contributions is notable, as both Automattic and WP Engine "are roughly the same size, with revenue in the ballpark of half-a-billion [dollars]." [...] Mullenweg published a follow up blog post, where he calls WP Engine a "cancer" to WordPress. "It's important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread," he wrote. "WP Engine is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate."
[...] But speaking last 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, an WP Engine contributing just 40 hours.
While he acknowledged that these figures are just a "proxy," and might not be perfectly accurate, Mullenweg said that this disparity in contributions is notable, as both Automattic and WP Engine "are roughly the same size, with revenue in the ballpark of half-a-billion [dollars]." [...] Mullenweg published a follow up blog post, where he calls WP Engine a "cancer" to WordPress. "It's important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread," he wrote. "WP Engine is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate."
Re: (Score:2)
Have you a better suggestion?
If your entire business is to manage a piece of OSS for customers and you dedicate a total of *one* developer to
interacting with upstream, I'd question how good your support actually is.
Re:It's just business and they are outcompeted... (Score:5, Interesting)
We use Pantheon at the enterprise level, and love it. Service is great, they understand Wordpress really well, and we have had no complaints since we converted a large site running Drupal to WP a few years ago. They were helpful every step of the way. We looked at WP Engine before we switched, and as I recall we had a lot of the same concerns with that platform mentioned in this article.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:It's just business and they are outcompeted... (Score:5, Interesting)
It may not be in good faith, but like the OP said, this is the nature of OSS. If I were WP Engine, however, I'd be playing nicer just because if WP wanted to, they could make life a living hell for me by making changes in ways that'd disrupt my business. Hint hint, Mullenweg!
"WP Engine is setting a poor standard (Score:1)
One could say that about a lot of things that are currently extremely popular and are pumping out more money than an oil gusher. Just saying
Wrong messenger (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't know, Mullenweg owns WordPress.com, which is entirely different from the GPL WordPress.org software.
Mullenweg complaining about marketplace confusion about the "real" wordpress is 100% dishonest.
WordPress has not been shy about pursuing their "WordPress" trademark. This is why everything outside of Matt's companies is branded WP. They will get sued if they use the word WordPress or the WordPress logo in the wrong way.
As for developers, try to contribute to the wordpress codebase in a way that Mullenweg disagrees and you'll never see your code get committed. His 3900/hours of contributors have stacked all of the non-profit foundation and technical development teams.
WordPress is alright if you're an outsider needing to build a website on a CMS. But dig too deep and it's drama central.
They both suck (Score:2)
Both wordpress.com and WP Engine have weird non-standard setups. Both have kinda lame support (WP Engine's is less lame, actually).
You are better off using the actual FOSS WordPress software on a normal host. Or a good host, like SiteGround.
Asinine... (Score:2)
I guess what WordPress.org needs to do is release a browser extension or client-side component that allows your hosted Server to proxy the service's outgoing network connections through the customer's web browser for customers.. In order to maintain the convenience of web-based plugin updates then.