A lot has been said and written on the whole dispute between the WordPress project and WP Engine. In this post, I am not going to describe the issue, as there are far more reputable sources available, for example: “Automattic Responds to WP Engine’s Cease and Desist with Legal Action” over on WP Tavern. What is a fact, is that this dispute has grown into a legal battle now between Automattic (in lieu of the WordPress Foundation) and WP Engine.
When this all started to unfold, I didn’t feel like I had a voice in this whole ordeal. This changed over the last 24 hours, when WP Engine was banned from WordPress.org. This effectively causes users of the WordPress software, while hosted on WP Engine hosting platforms, to no longer be able to install or update themes and plugins. And as much as I wanted to stay out of this discussion, this rubbed me the wrong way.
I’m all for fighting the good fight, but not at the cost of user experience.
Do not burden end users with your legal battles
Regardless of your stance on this whole dispute, this is the wrong way to handle this. End users should never be on the receiving end of the consequences caused when two companies go on a legal battle with each other. This is especially the case when the party causing this disruption, is WordPress. A piece of software that has historically bent over backwards to make the software as user friendly as possible. The software that is so focussed on to not burden the end user with anything beyond their control, or comprehension.
That same WordPress, be it the open source software project or the WordPress.org website, is now purposefully limiting the functionality of websites, in which can only be perceived as a way to leverage the outcome of the dispute.
This should never, ever, be the way to take on this dispute. No matter how heated up the discussion got, no matter how many lawyers are about to be screaming at each other in your legal battles. Never, ever, should you burden the end user with the fallout of a legal fight between two companies. There are no winners in this fight.
This hurts the entire WordPress ecosystem
For the first time in over 15 years being involved with the WordPress project, I am ashamed of it. This hurts the trust in a software project that so many people have grown to love, as developers but more importantly as users. The users who love it to manage their websites with. Heck, I’m writing this post on a WordPress powered website right now.
The users of the WordPress software on affected WP Engine hosting platforms are now suddenly confronted with a website that is no longer functioning the way it did the day before. This will inevitably frustrate them and in no way they will have the means or information to comprehend what is causing this. This hurts the trust in WordPress as a software project, as a piece of software to democratise publishing, as it always so proudly proclaimed of itself.
We’re far beyond the point where this is an action against WP Engine. This is impacting the ecosystem of the WordPress software as a whole, whether they are hosting on WP Engine hosting platforms or not. This hurts us all.
Transparency and open source governance
It’s completely beyond the scope of this dispute that there’s an obvious lack of transparency between WordPress the open source software project, the WordPress Foundation and the for-profit company Automattic. This is even further enlarged by the fact that Automattic has “the exclusive commercial rights from the WordPress Foundation to use, enforce, and sublicense the world-famous WORDPRESS trademark, among others, and all other associated intellectual property rights”, which means that Automattic is the business entity challenging WP Engine in this legal battle. But this has one big damning side effect that is worth mentioning: The WordPress project is being used as the face of this dispute.
The home page of the WordPress software project is now littered with anti WP Engine blog posts, which if anything makes me pretty uncomfortable (as my friend Danny van Kooten so eloquently put it). The WordPress.org website, nor the WordPress Foundation, should not be part of this legal fight between two business entities. I fully understand that this is deemed good for exposure of the issue, or perhaps even putting pressure on the decision making. In my humble opinion though, this is not the way; the desired outcome does not justify the actions put into play at this moment.
We can do better. We should do better. Never, ever, should end users be burdened by the result of a legal dispute, especially if it is done by choice in a (hopefully futile) attempt to swing the dispute in the favour of one of the parties involved. For the continued health of the WordPress project, WP Engine should win.