The WordPress mess
WordPress is the world's most popular open‑source blogging and content‑management platform. In its 20‑plus years of existence, WordPress has been something of a poster child for open source, similar to Linux and Firefox. It introduced the concept of open source to millions of bloggers, small‑business owners, and others who have deployed WordPress to support their web‑publishing needs. Unfortunately, it is now in the spotlight due to an increasingly ugly dispute between two companies, Automattic and WP Engine, that has spilled over into the WordPress community.
Background
WordPress is a PHP‑based, GPLv2-licensed, content‑management system (CMS). It was forked from b2 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little in 2003, after b2's development stalled. As blogging became mainstream, WordPress was the tool of choice for many aspiring bloggers due to its ease of use and the fact that it was free as in beer and speech.
In 2005, Mullenweg founded Automattic, which started out offering WordPress hosting via WordPress.com and comment-spam protection via the Akismet service. Its portfolio of services and holdings (including the Tumblr micro‑blogging platform) has grown substantially since then; it includes the WooCommerce online-store platform, Gravatar web-profile service, Newspack news-publishing platform, and others. WordPress hosting, however, remains at the core of its business.
Update
3 new takes:
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Ruben Schade ☛ WordPress, work, and why optics matter
This leads us to the latest furore in the WordPress community, and how it has exposed a fundamental truth that people in PR have known since they wrote their first press release, but that engineers continue to ignore at their peril: optics matter!
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Andrea Contino ☛ WordPress Drama
A completely nonsensical drama, really. I don't know WP Engine or its business practices, but it seems to have the fault of adopting open-source software and, in the full spirit of open-source, shaping it for their needs. Or at least that's how I understand it.
On the other hand, it seems from WordPress there's an attempt to change the rules of the game once it has already started.
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404 Media ☛ ‘The Community Is In Chaos:’ WordPress.org Now Requires You Denounce Affiliation With WP Engine To Log In
WordPress.org users are now required to agree that they are not affiliated with website hosting platform WP Engine before logging in. It’s the latest shot fired by WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg in his crusade against the website hosting platform.