I believe in this instance he’s referring to WP Engine installations of WordPress pulling from the WP.org plugin & theme registries.
There is a longer story in which Mullenweg has claimed that WP Engine does not contribute sufficiently to the WordPress open-source project, and that the use of “WP” in their name supposedly created confusion and infringes the trademarks of the WordPress open-source project. WP Engine disputes this.
Of course the elephant in the room is that Mullenweg is the CEO of a rival for-profit WordPress host (Automattic), but has made his claims against WP Engine from his position in the open-source WordPress project.
Perhaps a board of non-Automattic WordPress project people would come to the same conclusions about WP Engine, but the current situation reeks of conflict of interest.
Ultimately the ones paying the price here are the users of WP Engine-hosted WordPress installations, who have been cut off from plug-in and theme updates with no warning.
WP Engine is also claiming that Mullenweg tried to "extort" them. He allegedly asked WP Engine to pay astronomical amounts of money to WordPress, or he'd go on a smear campaign against them. THe demands were allegedly refused, and it seems that he has indeed started such a campaign.
The claims were made in an official letter to Automattic that included proof in the form of screenshots, and that was written by a legal professional[1]. I personally think it's unlikely that an actual lawyer would risk their reputation and fabricate something like that.
> They had the option to license the WordPress trademark for 8% of their revenue, which could be delivered either as payments, people (Five for the Future .org commitments), or any combination of the above.
I see. What a BS. It's obvious that this is a business move by Automattic.
Akismet was (is?!) bundled with every fresh WP installation. That is a product by Automattic, so why is it bundled with the Open Source "product"? It's an unfair competitive advantage over every other company/person that provides a plugin for that. Nobody cared or was just feared to pick up that fight.
Drawing the line at WPEngine seems random, too. There are so many bigger or smaller competitors in that space, it's just somewhat random to pick them out and complain that they don't give back.
Conflict of interest, perhaps. Reading about the issues though, gimping the product for pennies and then modifying customers sites to censor things.
At some point, every bad behaviour in a software ecosystem affects other parties and even if his personal role does cause a conflict of interest all the things mentioned seems to point to a party that doesn't respect the ecosystem.
This is the equivalent of NPM, Maven or PyPi cutting off an enterprise artifact repository because they don't donate enough to keep those services running. Especially the lack of notice makes it an unprofessional garbage move.
Does the notice need to be public? They are fighting for a while, I think WPEngine knew what Automattic demanded (and hence could foresee what happens if they continue). They were/are probably already working on an alternative.
Imagine aws offers a hosted node application service.
Then, because aws doesn't give anything back, npm blocks the aws ip range, and suddenly existing aws customers can't install modules or security updates.
That's pretty much what happened here. I get the "you should give back" ideal, but make no mistake, this is because wp engine is eating their lunch.
Automattic offers more than just the source code of WP.
Anyone is still free to use the source, but the services they provide are not free.
> Imagine aws offers a hosted node application service. Then, because aws doesn't give anything back, npm blocks the aws ip range, and suddenly existing aws customers can't install modules or security updates.
It's a good analogy. AWS does it a lot, but it does so with open source projects that do not have much paid services. Reading from the article, Automattic provides many services (possibly paid, in some freemium model).
I'd welcome if some projects manage to get AWS to give back. They do way too little if you ask me.
> I get the "you should give back" ideal, but make no mistake, this is because wp engine is eating their lunch.
Yes. Giving back could be a deal that involves money.
I understand it would be ideal for business to give back with money to open source projects, but this issue is being handled in the worst possible way by Matt.
So WordPress code is FOSS, so you can theoretically change the code, except when you change the line that will keep revisions to cut your costs, if you do that he will yell at you.
WordPress' repository is free as in beer, you can download all you want without paying. Heck, even WP code is setup so it downloads from there by default. Except when you happen to host in a company that has a very specific set of issues (alleged trademark issues + profits over a particular threshold + not giving back to community; other companies who have only one of those issues but not all of them are fine), then he'll block you.
The main issue here is the lack of a clear contract of what you can or cannot do. Seems like he is just figuring out the rules along the way. This gives to external observers the impression that the whole thing is unreliable.
Open source makes absolutely zero distinction about how the source code is provided. You aren't required to keep a free-to-use service up to download your code. You only must produce it when requested.
Not too long ago you would pay for disks containing open source software.
There is some further discussion in the HN thread on the WP Engine incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41655578