Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress contributor accounts due to alleged fork plans

CEO of Automattic and co-creator of WordPress Mullenweg died He deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, and said two of them were planning to lead a new fork of the open source WordPress project.

Although community criticism of WordPress governance is not new, the most recent uproar began in September when Mullenweg was publicly reprimanded WP Engine, a commercial hosting company built on WordPress, to make money without offering much. Things quickly escalated (read all about it.) here), with the introduction of the WP Engine A lawsuit After it was Forbidden From access to the main WordPress resources, and then the court WordPress command to restore access.

Out of all of this, key figures from within the broader WordPress community have stepped forward. Joost de Valk – WordPress Yoast-focused SEO tool builder (and former Marketing and Communications Lead for WordPress Foundation) – last month Published his “vision for the new era of WordPress”, He discussed the possibility of creating “unified and independent repositories.” Marucci creamCEO of enterprise web consulting firm Crowd Favorite, echoed similar thoughts in Separate blog post.

WP engine, meanwhile, He indicated that he was in standby mode To lend a corporate hand.

For his part, Mullenweg did just that I publicly supported this idea From the new WordPress fork – a term that describes when someone takes code from an open source project and creates a version, which can take on a life of its own with a separate community of contributors.

In laden sarcasm Blog post Published this morning, Mullenweg refers to De Valk and Marucchi’s plans as a “fork”, although the duo have not announced any such plans – however, De Valk has discussed the idea of ​​creating unified “mirrors” (stock version). for themes and plugins, among other changes.

“Just having mirrors of WordPress.org doesn’t really solve the problem of one party controlling our single update server,” De Valk wrote in his post last month. “For this reason, we need to make sure that these mirrors federate with each other, share each other’s data and… allow independent themes and plugins to be hosted there.”

In a statement sent to TechCrunch, De Valk reiterated that at no point were they planning to split WordPress, with Marucchi Transfer the same message on X.

Get forked

Earlier this week, Auto Announce He will reduce his contribution to the core WordPress open source project to align with his WP Engine contribution, a metric measured in weekly hours. This prompted de Valk to do so Take to X on Friday to indicate that he is ready to lead the next version of WordPress, with Marucchi adding that “The team stands ready“.

Collectively, De Valk and Marucci Contribute approximately 10 hours per week to various aspects of the WordPress open source project. However, Mullenweg said that to give their freelance efforts “the boost they needed to get off the ground,” he deactivated their WordPress.org accounts.

“I highly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join their new effort,” Mullenweg wrote.

At the same time, Mullenweg revealed that he had also deactivated the accounts of three other people, offering little explanation: Sea Red, Heather Burnsand Morten Rand Hendriksen. Reed, it is worth noting, is President and CEO From a newly established non-profit organization Named the WP Collective Societywhich aims to serve as a “neutral home for collaboration, contribution, and resources” around WordPress and the broader open source ecosystem.

Burns, a former WordPress contributor, I took it to X this morning to express surprise at being deactivated, noting that she had not been involved with the project since 2020. On Bluesky, Rand Hendricksen Suggested That Mullenweg was targeting him and Burns because of their past objections to governance at WordPress. books:

So why is Mullenweg targeting Heather and me? Because we started talking about the need for good governance and accountability and conflict of interest policies and other things in 2017. We left the project in 2019, and it seems like he’s still holding a grudge.

It should be noted that deactivating a WordPress.org account prevents the user from contributing via that channel, whether it be to the core project or any other plugins or features they may be involved with. However, as it is Hosted on GitHub Also, anyone can still access the code if they wish to fork it.

In what seemed to be a sarcastic suggestion, Mullenweg said that any new fork could be called “JKPress,” and they could hold a joint “WordPress + JKPress Summit” next year.

“Jost and Karim have a number of bold and interesting ideas, and I’m really curious to see how they pull it off,” Mullenweg added. “The beauty of open source is that it can take everything GPL code in WordPress And charge their vision. You don’t need permission, you can just do things. If they create something cool, we might integrate it back into WordPress. This ability for code and ideas to flow freely between projects is part of what makes open source a driver of innovation.

This post has been updated to provide clarification that De Valk and Marucchi did not say they were planning a fork, and that a suggestion was made to create mirrors of plugins and theme repositories, while also offering to lead the next version of WordPress.