By Emma Roth , a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and ed

Automattic cuts WordPress contribution hours, blames WP Engine

submited by

Style Pass

2025-01-10 19:00:19

By Emma Roth , a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, is scaling back its contributions to the WordPress open-source project, according to an announcement on Thursday. The company says it’s decreasing contributions to “match” the amount of time companies like WP Engine spend on the ecosystem, further escalating the tension between Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and the community.

Now, instead of spending 3,988 hours per week developing the WordPress project, Automattic says it will now contribute around 45 hours as part of Five for the Future — a program that encourages companies to give back five percent of their resources to WordPress.org. “These hours will likely go towards security and critical updates,” Automattic says.

Mullenweg, who also co-founded WordPress, criticized the third-party host WP Engine for contributing 40 hours a week to the ecosystem and called it a “cancer” to the community. On the Five for the Future page that tracks contributions, the number of hours contributed by Automattic is already dwindling.