The turbulence surrounding WordPress has not relented. Automattic CEO and co-founder Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of five contributors to WordPress.org. The cause of his ire is an alleged plan to fork the project, even though such an initiative isn’t actually happening.
Mullenweg’s blog post is written in a highly sarcastic tone. His ire is directed mostly at Joost de Valk, creator of the popular Yoast SEO plugin, and Karim Marucchi, who runs a small WordPress-targeted firm called Crowd Favorite. The two allegedly plan to fork WordPress, although both men deny this.
Fork or no fork?
De Valk and Marucchi both wrote about their WordPress vision in recent times. They would like to see WordPress governed in a distributed and democratic manner from now on. Simply put: the goal is to diminish Mullenweg’s control as Automattic-CEO over the project. The latter has seemingly interpreted this as a threat, not just a suggestion to change WordPress policies.
Mullenweg, therefore, stripped De Valk and Marucchi, as well as three other individuals who recently or in the more distant past thwarted the Automattic CEO, of access to the WordPress.org accounts. At least, that seems to have been Matt Mullenweg’s conclusion.
Expensive behaviour
Calls to change WordPress have been ongoing for some time. For example, 30 WordPress contributors signed an open letter in December calling for a change in the governance model of the open-source CMS project. This referenced the highly public fight between Mullenweg and WP Engine, a WordPress website hosting provider. Again, Automattic denied access to critical WordPress tools, preventing WP Engine from updating its plugins.
The court has already reversed this, and a lawsuit is pending, which WP Engine has initiated. The open attack on WP Engine from Mullenweg may cost him and/or his company dearly. After all, he demanded millions from WP Engine and additional open-source contributions, even though this is indefensible based on the project’s GPL license. Incidentally, that license does allow forks, where there is no mention that this would lead to retaliation. Mullenweg added that unwritten rule at his own initiative.
Also read: ‘Thousands of WordPress websites use malicious plugins’