Days after WP Engine provides web hosting services Got a preliminary injunction against WordPress. Co-creator Matt Mullenweg and rival hosting provider Automattic, Mullenweg announced. WordPress.org is on vacation..
WordPress.org — WordPress plugins for the community; Site that provides access to themes and other artifacts — new account registration; New plugins; layouts, We will stop providing free services, including photo guide submissions. plug-in reviews; Mullenweg said in a blog post..
In response, Written by Joost de Valk, former CEO of WordPress-based SEO optimization tool Yoast. Blog post About taking a centralized and independent approach to WordPress. His views were endorsed by Karim Marucchi, CEO of Crowd Favorite, a business web consulting firm. A separate blog post.
“We, the WordPress community, need to decide if we're ready to control everything and do things we don't agree with or if we want something else. For a project titled 'Democratic Publishing', we've lowered democracy too low.” de Valk said.
In his position, de Valk made five points about creating an organization like the WordPress Foundation to lead the project and transfer all community assets, such as themes and plugins. He also suggested giving the WordPress brand to the public domain. The WordPress Foundation owns the trademark and Automattic has an exclusive business license to the trademark.
He also said that all plug-in mirrors should be federated and data should be shared between these servers. In October, After Mullenweg banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org. Controlled WP Engine's Advanced Custom Fields plug-in It was given a new name called Secure Custom Fields.. De Valk said on his blog that this situation should not happen again.
Mullenweg commented on de Valk's post and said that this project should continue under any name other than WordPress. “I think it's a great idea to lead and operate under a name other than WordPress. trademark There's no way to accomplish anything you want without breaking new ground from a brand and public perspective,” Mullenweg said.
Ever since Mullenweg and WP Engine locked horns in September, there have been calls about changing the Open Source WordPress governance model. Earlier this month, The 20 signatories, including major WordPress contributors, criticized Mullenweg's actions and urged him to find “community-minded solutions.” Open letter.
While at Mullenweg WordPress forks are open to ideas and even welcome them.He fiercely defends the community's current operating model.
For further steps, De Valk said he will speak with leaders in the WordPress community in January to determine the path forward. WP Engine welcomed this initiative in a post on X. Committed to working on the project with other leaders.
“The success of WordPress as the most popular CMS is not the success of anyone or open source code alone. It's about advocating for the global WordPress ecosystem and technology, and their time to build the global WordPress ecosystem and technology. talent trust and thousands of developers who have invested resources; agencies; It's a result of businesses and other things,” he said.
Correction: This story was updated on Dec. 23 to correct the URL for WordPress.org, as de Valk is the former Yoast CEO.