Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg The accounts of many WordPress.org community members have been disabled; Some of them are pushing to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project.
Community criticism of WordPress governance is nothing new, though. The latest brouhaha started back in September. Mullenweg was publicly reprimanded. WP Engine, a commercial hosting company built on WordPress without returning much profit. Things soon escalated (read it all). Here) file with WP Engine Lawsuit After Forbidden. From access to key WordPress resources; Then a court Ordered WordPress to restore access..
Among these things, Key figures within the wider WordPress community have stepped forward. Joost de Valk — WordPress-focused SEO tool Yoast (and The former Lead of Marketing and Communications for the WordPress Foundation) — last month He released his “Vision for the New WordPress Era”. It refers to a potential crossroads in the form of “federal and independent repositories.” Karim MarucciThe CEO of enterprise web consulting firm Crowd Favorite echoed these thoughts. A separate blog post.
WP engine State of standby. To hire a corporate hand.
Mullenweg has his share. The idea was publicly supported. of the new WordPress fork — a term that can take on a life of its own with separate contributors when someone takes code from an open source project and creates a copy. (It is also possible to integrate such contributions back into the original project.)
Forked hairs
Automattic earlier this week was announced. It will reduce its contribution to the core WordPress open source project to align with WP Engine's own contribution, with a weekly hourly metric. This encouraged de Valk. Take it to X. Marucchi said on Friday to indicate his “willingness to take the lead on the next WordPress release.The team is ready.”
collectively A hawk versus Mao Contribute approximately 10 hours per week to various aspects of the WordPress open source project. But laden with irony. Blog post Published this morning, Mullenweg said they were shutting down their WordPress.org accounts to “force their independent efforts to get off the ground.”
“I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models to join WP Engine in their new endeavors,” Mullenweg wrote.
At the same time, Mullenweg also revealed that three other people's accounts were closed with little explanation. Let it be Reed., Heather Burnsversus Morten Rand-Hendriksen. Reed, that's interesting. Chairman and CEO of a newly formed non-profit organization called. The WP Community CollectiveIt plans to serve as a hub for “collaboration, support and resources” around WordPress and the broader open source ecosystem.
Burns, a former contributor to the WordPress project; I took X this morning. Noting that she hasn't been on the project since 2020, I'm surprised by her closure. Bluesky, Rand-Hendriksen It is recommended. Mullenweg is targeting him and Burns because of their prior opposition to governance at WordPress. He wrote
So why did he (Mullenweg) target Heather and me? correct governance; Accountability As 2017 started talking about interest policies and more. We both left the project in 2019. He was still angry.
It should be noted that terminating a WordPress.org account may affect affected users through that channel, either on the main project or any other plugins or themes they may have included. However, Hosted on GitHub. Anyone can go through the project.
In what seems like a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, Mullenweg said the new fork could be called “JKPress” and that they might hold a joint “WordPress + JKPress Summit” next year.
“Joost and Karim have bold and interesting ideas, and I'm really excited to see how they do,” added Mullenweg. “The beauty of open source is that it can take them all. GPL code in WordPress Send them their opinion. You don't need permission; You can only do things. They can even be integrated into WordPress if they create something awesome. The ability to freely flow code and ideas between projects is part of open source's engine for innovation.”