The ongoing WP Engine-Automattic issue shows no signs of being resolved and has, in fact, increased in intensity. The conflict started last month with Matt Mullenweg’s spiciest Word Camp presentation at WordCamp US 2024 where he accused WP Engine of being a “cancer to WordPress”.
Yesterday, users who logged onto the WordPress.org home page were surprised to see two new additions. First, there was a new “WP Engine has filed a massive lawsuit” session under the password field linking to WP Engine’s X post.
Second, a new mandatory check box. You could access the account only if you confirmed “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.”
While the lawsuit mention was soon removed from the homepage, the checkbox remains.
WordPress.org later tweeted: “If you have questions on whether you are affiliated with @wpengine or not, please get in touch with them.”
Matt shared in Slack that “There have been a ton of sign-ins since the checkbox went live” He also posted this question in Slack: “What actions should WP Engine do for WordPress.org to remove the new login checkbox.”
Core-committer Colin Stewart asked Matt for more clarification regarding the new checkbox. Matt shared that the checkbox is part of WP Engine’s ban, and the values from it are not stored. Also, WP Engine’s lawsuit has put everyone who participates in .org in the position of possibly needing legal representation.
Several community members have reported being blocked from WordPress Slack including Javier Casares (Hosting Team Rep and also Lead for the WordPress Advanced Administration Handbook), Ryan McCue (WordPress committer, and co-lead on the WordPress REST API), Jono Alderson (technical SEO consultant), Alex Sirota (founder of NewPath Consulting) and Andrew Hutchings (Chief Contributions Officer at MariaDB Foundation).
Community Response
Many are just eager for the escalating drama to end. Community members also took to X to share their opinions.
Rajendra Zore, CMO of RunCloud summed it up best: “Every day, I hope today will be the day this WP vs WPE drama ends. The Community—who built this OSS and has been completely ignored—finally deserves the attention it’s been missing. The most dysfunctional leadership I’ve ever seen is shamelessly on display, leaving the community feeling like a child caught between fighting parents. So toxic! 
”
Bozz Media asked: “Financially, or otherwise” what does this even mean? Is this meant to cover customers of WPE? Either way; Yikes… Beyond the check mark how is an unrelated “news” link about WPE part of the login form in any way a rational or acceptable UI update to .org ??”
Plugin developer Daan van den Bergh tweeted: “I’m starting to dislike WordPress because of this. I don’t care about WP Engine: I don’t use their services/plugins, yet I get slapped in the face with this drama every day. Now a F-in login page? WTF!”
James Giroux (Technical Account Manager at WordPress VIP) published Why Is Matt Turning Up The Volume? He notes “This conflict reveals the true cost of maintaining WordPress infrastructure, and it’s a fight for the survival of WordPress’s values and community integrity.” He continued “Matt is well within his rights as the principal financier of the infrastructure around WordPress to decide who can and cannot access it. He’s usually quite permissive of many things and extends a lot of grace. In this fight for the heart and soul of WordPress, though, he is not holding his punches.”
David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails shared Automattic is doing open source dirty. He says “Between creating one of the most widely used open-source programs and powering half the internet, there’s every tribal reason to side with Automattic over WP Engine’s private-equity owners at Silver Lake….But I suspect Automattic wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to retain WordPress’ shine of open source, but also be able to extract their pound of flesh from any competitor that might appear, whenever they see fit. Screw that.”
He also had this to say: “That’s the deal. That’s open source. I give you a gift of code, you accept the terms of the license. There cannot be a second set of shadow obligations that might suddenly apply, if you strike it rich using the software. Then the license is meaningless, the clarity all muddled, and certainty lost.”
Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel, has shared a Twitter thread analysing the WP login checkbox.
Some took it as a chance to let their imagination run wild.
TheWPGirls have a new song WP Engine Affiliate Blues (Can’t Prove I’m Innocent).
WP Engine Responds
WP Engine has responded in a tweet: “Like the rest of the community, we have seen a new checkbox for logins at WordPress.org that has created confusion amongst the community as to whether or how they are obliged to answer the question posed next to the checkbox. We value our customers, agencies, users and the community as a whole, none of whom are affiliates of WP Engine.”
This is affecting the morale of the thousands of people who voluntarily contribute to their beloved CMS. But then you know what happens when elephants fight.
(For those who might have missed parts of the dispute, I’ll share a quick summary soon.)