You may be aware of the strange feud between WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg and web hosting platform WP Engine. If not, you'll find a quick overview below.
But things took a very silly turn today when a new checkbox appeared in the WordPress login system that requires users to declare that they have no affiliation with WP Engine …
The WordPress vs. WP Engine Battle
WordPress and WP Engine (WPE) have long been on bad terms. WPE hosts WordPress sites, and Mullenweg has long argued that the company doesn't contribute enough to the WP community.
Things got out of hand, however, when Automattic began demanding that WPE pay millions of dollars for a trademark license. WPE responded by suing Automattic, claiming extortion.
For the past two weeks, [WordPress] has been implementing a scheme to ban WPE from the WordPress community unless it agrees to pay Automattic tens of millions of dollars for a purported trademark license that WPE does not even need.
Defendants' plan, which came without warning, gave WPE less than 48 hours to either agree to pay them or face the consequences of being banned and publicly slandered. During that short time, Defendants sent ominous messages and photographs designed to intimidate WPE into making an extortionate payment. When WPE did not capitulate, Defendants carried out their threats, unleashing a self-proclaimed “nuclear” war against WPE.
Mullenweg took this badly, banning WPE from WordPress.org.
Pending lawsuits and litigation against WordPress.org, WP Engine no longer has free access to WordPress.org resources […] Why should WordPress.org provide these services to WP Engine for free, given their attacks on us? WP Engine is free to offer its customers their hacked, twisted simulacra of the GPL WordPress code, and they can use WordPress the way WP Engine intended, keeping all the profits and providing all the services.
Mullenweg's own employees were not his supporters. When this became clear to him, he essentially told them to support him or leave. According to CIO, many chose the latter.
Mullenweg decided to pay the holdouts to leave, offering what he called “the most generous severance package possible”: $30,000 or six months' salary, whichever was higher. There were two circumstances: staff had until 1:00 PM Pacific Time on October 3 to make a decision, and there was no way to be hired back by Automattic.
By the deadline, 159 employees — 8.4% of the company's workforce — had accepted the offer to leave, including one person who had started just two days earlier.
New WordPress Login Requirements
As spotted by 404Media, a new checkbox has been added to the WordPress login form.
WordPress.org users are required to confirm that they are “not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise”; before registering a new account or logging in […] Users who do not check this box will not be able to log in or register a new account.
WPTavern reports that several well-known WordPress contributors are currently blocked.
Several community members have reported being blocked from WordPress Slack, including Javier Casares (hosting team representative and lead of the WordPress Advanced Administration Handbook), Ryan McCue (WordPress committer and co-lead of the WordPress REST API), Jono Alderson (SEO technical consultant), Alex Sirota (founder of NewPath Consulting), and Andrew Hutchings (chief contributor at the MariaDB Foundation).
9to5Mac's Take
While Mullenweg may be right that a commercial WPE could show WordPress more love, the fact is that WordPress has made its code open source under terms that allow commercial use.
No matter the argument, this is not the way to solve the problem. In particular, moving the new login field has all the hallmarks of a childish tantrum. Please leave WordPress users out of this.
