WordPress vs. WP Engine
A war in the web universe affecting hundreds of millions of businesses
Today more than ever, websites are essential for business and communication. WordPress has established itself as the dominant content management system (CMS) in the global web market. Against this backdrop of popularity, companies like WP Engine offer specialized managed WordPress hosting services. As well as many high-quality and functional professional plugins. Although both sides work closely with the WordPress ecosystem, a dispute erupted between them. Shaking the community and raising important questions about open source, trademarks, and competition.
A little background: WordPress and WP Engine – A recently symbiotic relationship
WordPress is open-source software, meaning it is free to use, modify, and distribute. This allows companies like WP Engine to build a business based on WordPress. By offering a hosting services optimized specifically for this CMS platform. WP Engine focuses on providing high-performance, secure, and easy-to-manage WordPress hosting. And making it a popular choice for many businesses and web developers.
The sparks of conflict: Trademarks, competition, and a lot of money
The conflict flared up around two main points:
- Use of the “WordPress” Trademark: Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and owner of the WordPress trademarks, accused WP Engine of improperly using the brand for commercial purposes. Automattic claims that the use of “WP” in WP Engine’s name creates confusion among users and implies a false sense of official partnership. They insist that WP Engine should pay licensing fees for using the brand.
- Restricting Access to WordPress.org Resources: Automattic took actions that temporarily restricted WP Engine’s access to certain WordPress.org resources, such as the official plugin and theme repository. This created problems for WP Engine customers who were temporarily unable to update WP Engine’s free plugins on their websites.
The arguments of both sides in detail:
- Automattic/WordPress: They defend their right to protect the WordPress trademarks and argue that their actions are aimed at protecting the community and ensuring the sustainable development of the platform. They believe that companies that benefit from WordPress’s popularity should contribute financially to its development.
- WP Engine: They dispute the accusations and claim that they use WordPress software in accordance with the licensing terms (GPL). They believe that Automattic’s actions are an attempt to stifle competition and impose a monopoly in the WordPress ecosystem. They also emphasize that they are active members of the WordPress community and contribute to its development.
The Consequences for Businesses, Users, and the WordPress Community:
The conflict had a significant impact:
- Uncertainty and Confusion: Users were placed in an uncertain situation, with many wondering how the dispute would affect their websites.
- Update Issues: The temporary restriction of access to WordPress.org resources created problems with plugin and theme updates for WP Engine customers.
- Division in the Community: The dispute divided the WordPress community and created tension between different groups and companies.
- Raising Important Questions: The conflict raised important questions about the balance between commercial interests and the ideals of open source. As well as the role of trademarks in this great open source environment.
What happened afterwards?
After the initial escalation, the tension between the two sides decreased. WP Engine took steps to resolve the access issues and communication with WordPress.org improved. Although a full resolution of all disputed issues has not been officially announced, the situation has stabilized.
Lessons and conclusions:
The WordPress vs. WP Engine case is a precedent of great importance that teaches us several things:
- The Importance of Clear Rules: There need to be clear rules and guidelines for the use of trademarks in the context of open-source software.
- Balance Between Commercialization and Open Source: A balance must be found between commercial interests and the ideals of open source to ensure the sustainable and productive development of the ecosystem.
- The Importance of the Community: The WordPress community is crucial to the platform’s success, and good relations between all participants need to be maintained.
The dispute between WordPress and WP Engine is a complex story with many nuances. It is important to understand the context and the different points of view to learn lessons and avoid similar conflicts in the future and between other developers.
You read: WordPress vs. WP Engine
Category: Technology
WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion. WP Engine needs a trademark license to continue their business.
I spoke yesterday at WordCamp about how Lee Wittlinger at Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102B assets under management, can hollow out an open source community. (To summarize, they do about half a billion in revenue on top of WordPress and contribute back 40 hours a week, Automattic is a similar size and contributes back 3,915 hours a week.) Today, I would like to offer a specific, technical example of how they break the trust and sanctity of our software’s promise to users to save themselves money so they can extract more profits from you.
WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred. Every change you make to every page, every post, is tracked in a revision system, just like the Wikipedia. This means if you make a mistake, you can always undo it. It also means if you’re trying to figure out why something is on a page, you can see precisely the history and edits that led to it. These revisions are stored in our database.
This is very important, it’s at the core of the user promise of protecting your data, and it’s why WordPress is architected and designed to never lose anything.
WP Engine turns this off. They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of the changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that to protect your content. It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content. If you make a mistake, you have no way to get your content back, breaking the core promise of what WordPress does, which is manage and protect your content.
Here is a screenshot of their support page saying they disable this across their 1.5 million WordPress installs.
They say it’s slowing down your site, but what they mean is they want to avoid paying to store that data. We tested revisions on all of the recommended hosts on WordPress.org, and none disabled revisions by default. Why is WP Engine the only one that does? They are strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem, giving our users a crappier experience so they can make more money.
What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for it.
This is one of the many reasons they are a cancer to WordPress, and it’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread. WP Engine is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate. We must set a higher standard to ensure WordPress is here for the next 100 years.
If you are a customer of “WordPress Engine,” you should contact their support immediately to at least get the 3 revisions they allow turned on so you don’t accidentally lose something important. Ideally, they should go to unlimited. Remember that you, the customer, hold the power; they are nothing without the money you give them. And as you vote with your dollars, consider literally any other WordPress host as WP Engine is the only one we’ve found that completely disables revisions by default.
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