The Pettiest Drama in the Tech World Is Taking Place at … WordPress?
You may not typically think of WordPress, the blogging platform turned ubiquitous content management system, as a workplace rife with corporate drama, or as an instigator of petty public beefs. Then again, you may not know much about co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who, as CEO of parent company Automattic, controls an empire’s worth of popular web software and infrastructure—and is unshy about ensuring that everyone knows this. (Indeed, Slate pays Automattic for use of the Parse.ly analytics software.)
Over the past couple weeks, Mullenweg has been waging war on one of WordPress’ longest and most successful clients: WP Engine, a hosting service launched in 2010 by a tech writer who wanted to figure out a way to keep his personal blog from crashing. The tool he built, which relies heavily on WordPress’ open-source code, provides a gateway for budding website builders to not only buy and manage a domain of their own, but to also gain access to premium features for custom designs, cloud storage, and tracking analytics. This made it a popular option for users who like the WordPress template but also desired a more full-fledged system in exchange for their money.
But on Sept. 17, for the first day of WordPress’ annual WordCamp U.S. summit (touted as “the premiere North American event for web professionals”), Mullenweg published a blog post on his personal site that celebrated the ideals of open-source software and criticized companies that “treat Open Source simply as a resource to extract from its natural surroundings, like oil from the ground.” It didn’t take long for him to get into specifics—and take a shot at WP Engine directly.
