My turn for a reaction comment. Some background: ASU Engineering is currently a WP Engine customer. I am an active user of their product having switched about 90% of our portfolio over the course of the last 12 months to multisite architecture on their servers.
Opinions here are mine alone and don’t represent the Arizona State University, ASU Engineering or for other members of the WordPress community here at ASU.
These thoughts have accumulated over the course of the last 2-3 days and I’ve tried to organize them as best as I can.
The WordPress Foundation and Matt Mullenweg
Having listened to Matt’s speech and read his initial content about the particular private equity firm in control of WP Engine, I’m mostly in agreement with everything said at WCUS.
- There’s nothing in the history of Silver Lake to suggest that they won’t extract maximum value out of a resource that is offered for free. And there are literally no examples of companies that they have acquired that have been improved as a result of their leadership. (Except if you measure improvement as profit.)
- I believe that Matt really believes in the power/patterns of open source technology. The ethos behind those values are one of the key reasons why the WP community has its 40% adoption rate and a nearly 20 year history.
- In Matt’s eyes, WP Engine, therefore has become either a competitor who is gaining an unfair advantage or a community member who does not share the same values as the rest of the community.
- Neither is an acceptable arrangement if the level of incompatibility rises to a certain crescendo.
Actions taken, lawsuits flying, bans enacted. Didn’t see it coming, but I don’t think anything was done in bad faith. It was very public, very loud and had a lot of collateral damage. But transparent in its purpose.
Do I think that Matt could use some assistance in terms of HOW those decisions were reached and communicated. Heck to the yes. I really hope that some form of governance model for wordpress.org is eventually implemented, or at the very least he learns to trust other people to help shape the message.
WP Engine
There’s way less in the way of public response from WP Engine about this whole thing. Particularly, there’s less in the public sphere that argues against Matt’s definition of “community involvement” or that positions WP Engine as welcome contributors in the WP community.
If the yardstick by which we measure “community involvement” is contributions to the core project, WP Engine has clearly not been making that a priority with the time and resources available.
The same could be possibly be said for other hosting companies. But there are also primary examples of hosts and other WP-adjacent companies who really DO align themselves with building the ecosystem for all. WP Engine is clearly not one of these companies.
According to Matt, this “ask” and refusal to participate has been going on for the last 6 years. That’s more than enough time to rectify the issue.
People within WP Engine have been fired for speaking up about their company’s willingness to commit to WP core. (Again, according to Matt.)
It will be interesting to hear WP Engine speak on their perspective of “community involvement” when I do eventually have a conversation with them. It is likely that they will point out that they measure contributions by providing products and services to the community, some of which are freely available.
But having looked at that argument myself, I realized that the things they are likely to place in this category are all acquisitions as opposed to things they have built. Maybe I’m missing something. But I am willing to listen and re-evaluate if their argument also makes sense.
- ACF’s free version = Delicious Brains (or Elliot Condon originally).
- Local – local development environment = a product developed by Flywheel
- Frost – block theme, one of the first FSE themes = acquired from Brian Gardner
- They sponsor WordCamps but only to promote their own products. I don’t see any of their staff members listed as speakers within the 2024 WCUS conference.
Values
Maybe most importantly, I don’t think that the values of WP Engine match those of the WordPress project as a whole. Or at least they don’t right now. As a customer awarding business on behalf of a public university, this is probably the most troubling part of our current relationship with WP Engine.
Looking at this in a different lens: My personal values also more closely align with the open source ethos of the WP foundation than they do with what I perceive of WP Engine. This personal thought exercise was not even much of a contest.
I also think that the values of ASU Engineering (my employer) align more closely with those of the WordPress Foundation. Case in point, I spoke about this at one of the local WordCamps a while back. Didn’t think that the thought exercise would come it as handy as it has over the last 2-3 days… but there you go.
https://phoenix.wordcamp.org/2023/session/bringing-an-engineering-spirit-to-everyday-wordpress/
So, what do you do if suddenly you realize that your values don’t align with a business partner? You find a new partner and try not to burn bridges on the way out. I think that’s clearly the right move at least for ASU Engineering and I’ll be communicating that to my team here for further evaluation.
If this alignment of values does take on a more visible role in our selection process, then organizations like Pressable and WordPress VIP should become top of mind investigation targets as we move. Both of those hosting companies are owned and operated by Automattic and are therefore heavily involved in maintaining WordPress as an open source product for everyone.
I’ll also add that our former hosting partners at Pantheon were VERY receptive to some efforts I made to outline problems with WordPress on their platform. That lead to some really big improvements within and the inclusion of multisite as a front-line “it’s really on the menu” product that they offer. Their community contributions to WP Campus, WordCamps in general and within our walls at ASU will also likely place them on the short list of new/old partners for ASU Engineering.
Things to watch
- WP Engine will be forced to rebuild infrastructure that provides core updates, plugins and themes within their WordPress product.
- Will they “take advantage” of the fact that they now control the marketplace… and decide that Automattic products are no longer allowed?
- That would include Jetpack, Akismet for starters – both low hanging fruit.
- WooCommerce would be a major pushback.
- Will the default themes be shipped with their version of WordPress?
- And will they go further? Do they suddenly mask or prevent the discovery of other products that compete with their own stuff? Will they go all-in? Acquire other WP products and prevent anything else from being installed that competes?
