Originally published at: https://www.classicpress.net/automattic-vs-wp-engine/
Many readers will be aware of the increasingly bitter dispute currently going on between Automattic and WP Engine. Automattic is a company that specializes in hosting WordPress websites. It was founded by its current CEO, Matt Mullenweg, who was also a co-creator of WordPress. WP Engine is a hosting company that also specializes in hosting…
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Tim. A well thought out and written post.
While I agree with everything you point out, the reality is wordpress.org can ban any organization or individual they want at anytime from the repo - for any reason. ClassicPress is a pretty small userbase in the WP pond. True you don’t step on their feet or infringe on any trademarks etc. However, when you have 100K+ users, maybe that will change.
What I see happening is the new CEO of wordpress.org moving towards a for-profit model. I doubt the WP repository is financially profitable - it’s really a free community service. Probably wp.org would start charging fees to access the repository - and likely hosting and media companies (like mine) would foot the bill for our clients. That’s where I think its headed.
In terms of community, I think the Classic Press repository is free from all the issues currently plaguing the wp.org repository. However, a backup CP repository may be considered as a future solution. Should a developer not be able to continue with their git(?) repository or plugin development.
Yes … and no. There’s one thing I didn’t put in the post because I didn’t want to get into the legalities, though I have said it before here and on Zulip. If CP gets banned from the wordpress.org, bang goes Automattic’s chances of winning its litigation against WP Engine. Since the dispute is all about money, there’s no way they are going to do that.
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few things that I think are wrong here
- the reason wp.org can block WPE is because their servers have a known IP (probably not that simple, but most likely close enough). they can not block cp this way as there is no obvious ip range. (WPE can set up a proxy to go around the BS or clone the repository and redirect the URLs to their own server. Matt probably aware of this limitation which is why the tantrum about AFC)
- This is a monopolistic behaviour by wp.org. At an age when iphone and android stores come under legal challanges for monopolistic behavior, that is unlikely to fly.
- directory or repository that is tomato, tomaato. google do not store the internet (but they did try lol), it is just a directory, but good luck if google will shut down to find whatever you are looking for on the internet.
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As an FYI to this ongoing issue. While it’s good news for the WordPress platform, it’s also good news for the open source community.
As already mentioned by @timkaye the above injunction is just to fix a starting point for the trial to avoid performing it under muddled waters - it serves as a “clean slate” so that claims from both parties can be analyzed by the judges without compromising final verdict.
What the verdict might entail we do not yet know, since parties have yet to go to trial.
This is just a “neutral standard procedure” because very verdict must weight on the situation without penchants (if WP for example is not obligated to reinstate free access when a verdict comes that states they can make people pay for access the verdict itself is useless and baseless).
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Because of all this drama I keep seeing people on my social media feeds calling for a community governed and funded fork of WordPress, but when I tell them there’s already one called ClassicPress - if they’ve heard of it at all - they complain that it’s “not a healthy fork,” or “isn’t very active,” or is “still reliant on WordPress org.” I really don’t understand why people are so dismissive of ClassicPress? Seems pretty healthy and active to me!
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@KMH I doubt any of them have actually tried ClassicPress, certainly not in the last year or so. I also think that, in some cases, it’s a convenient excuse for them not doing anything.
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I would say CP has come a long way in the last year.
v1 may have been WP without blocks, but v2 is more robust, has a path away from WPorg (though being able to use almost any non block related WP plugin is still a BIG plus in my mind, and allows WP users to convert much easier).
To be honest, if someone is uneasy about the future of WP, now is the time to make the switch to CP, because if using the ‘classic’ plugins with WP, your conversion is easy right now. As time goes on and CP becomes more independent with respect to using WPorg for themes and plugins, it could also be a more complicated conversion than it is right now.
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A lot of people are under the impression that a WP fork should be completely independent of WP’s ecosystem from the get-go. It just doesn’t work like that, but I’d love to see them show us how it’s done. 
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To be honest, if someone is uneasy about the future of WP, now is the time to make the switch to CP, because if using the ‘classic’ plugins with WP, your conversion is easy right now.
I have made that point to a few friends who, like me, are tinkerers more than developers, and it gets a little traction, but not much.
Just read the latest babbling on Reddit about Matt shutting down some of wordpress.org for the holidays. Those commenting there clearly don’t understand why he’s done this. No, he hasn’t gone crazy.
The point of this is to emphasize that the wordpress.org website belongs to him personally. He’s trying to make that very clear to the judge. If the judge then accepts that, it severely weakens WP Engine’s case.
Alternatively, she might take the view that he had effectively misrepresented the position before. It’s impossible to say at this stage.
Just wanted to make this point. Whether you’re for or against someone, don’t just assume the best or worst. Matt’s actions here have a purpose, whether you like it ir not.
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Mmm, and doing this means every WP plugin or theme developer needs to wonder what’s next: not being able to upload new ones to wordpress.org is effectively denying you 90+% of your market. Why continue to develop them with not even a schedule, just a “hope” that normal service will be resumed “sometime” in 2025?
What is it with rich man-babies with surnames beginning with M wanting to destroy their sites?
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Morton-Rand Hendricksen wrote on this also:
He’s not saying anything new, and he continues to be bafflingly obsessed with bureaucratic structures. How WPCC changes anything is a complete mystery to me, just as his own project in 2018 with Rachel Cherry made no sense.
I also don’t understand how, when Matt Mullenweg makes a bad decision, suddenly the software is problematic, when it was fine the day before.
If the open source software was good before (and it was), then the obvious solution to missteps by the project leadership is to fork it. The leadership model then develops organically. Does that sound familiar? That’s ClassicPress.
Actually, CP’s biggest mistake was to focus too much on governance structures at the beginning instead of seeing what actually worked in practice, but we are well passed that error now.
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That’s funny!
Yes, “…At the end of the day…” All people who like CP to advance—as in the small community we have now—should be making a boat load of themes and plugins. This will make people look more closely and feel more confident about CP. They will have a better plate to serve the dinner on and some devs my be surprised we use Github as our source for themes and plugins; not a “server.” (at least until MS decides to charge for GH. LOL)
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@JeremyCherfas got me thinking.
The ‘tinkerer’ is a class of users I probably also fit into better than any other to be honest. I would like to say I am a developer, but then when I follow posts by people who actually know what they are doing, it makes me realize that I am more hack than dev.
The issue is the same though, how to convince people that CP is a safe and valid alternative to WP. When I first started the conversion process it was a bit of a love / hate thing when v1 did not play nice with a lot of newer plugins etc.
However, once v2 came out, it was not long until I was able to get all my sites converted without having to give up any of the plugins I was using (admittedly I was using the classic editor, and a few needed a patch or rollback to keep them running).
For me, CP was the logical path, in fact I had contemplated how I would keep WP going with the classic editor if WP actually did end support, which goes back to being a ‘tinkerer’ who can get a long way with code, but I know shutting down core updates and trying to keep my own version of WP running would cause problems at some point.
The community here is helpful, and the vast amount of info out there on WP is and will continue to be valid for CP even as CP moves further away from WP (in a good way).
All this Drama with WP only makes me more certain that switching was the right thing for me.
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Yes, but there needs to be a larger userbase to support the plugin and theme developers, such as yourself (and thank you). Otherwise developers are giving their services for free - and that model doesn’t last long.
So it’s a Catch-22 really.
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I think the trigger is what the bad decision (really, a succession of bad decisions) was.
Anyone here before the past few months agrees, I suspect, that pushing Gutenberg to core WP rather than keeping it as a plugin was a bad decision. But if you had a business developing WP-related themes / plugins, deciding to stay where the vast bulk of the market was is a reasonable choice to make.
Now, he’s been trying to extort a rival (and saying a factor in that was that his mum was confused about whether he was behind them), then seizing one of their plugins, locking them and their users out of the domain that’s hardcoded into WP as the primary source of plugin and theme updates, then stopping everyone else from uploading to there, while posting in the way that he does…
He’s decided that he IS the software, and that’s the problem.
If you were in a relationship with him, your friends would be telling you to notice all the red flags and get out, now.
Certainly, if I were in the business of making WP themes, I would be urgently learning how Ghost and Hugo and… themes work.
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