Did Automattic commit open source theft?
The below was originally published in The Pragmatic Engineer. To get timely analysis on the tech industry like this, on a weekly basis: sign up to The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter. If you are into podcasts, check out The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast.
Imagine Apple decided Spotify was a big enough business threat that it had to take unfair measures to limit Spotify’s growth on the App Store. Now imagine that Spotify sued Apple for these unfair practices. In response, Apple would then:
Of course, this would never happen, right? All this would appear anticompetitive, not to mention legally dubious. And yet, substitute Apple with Automattic, App Store with WordPress.org and Spotify with one of the most popular WordPress plugins: and Automattic’s CEO is accused of orchestrating events similar to above. Taking ownership of a plugin called Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), which is built by Automattic’s largest competitor, WP Engine.
Automattic is the creator of open source WordPress content management system (CMS), and WordPress powers an incredible 43% of webpages and 65% of CMSes. WordPress is popular for several reasons: its permissive GPL license, robust themes, lots of customization options, a strong brand, heavy development investment – and not least, for being around for 20 years.
